When the GOVERNMENT takes your money you feel like dying

When the GOVERNMENT took all of Jim’s money he had a hard time dealing with it. That first night he went into a convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes. He smoked each one slowly in the park across the street from the store. He sat there all night with his hands calmly set on his knees only moving the right hand periodically to his mouth to take a drag then slowly back to his knee. He stared off into the night thinking about a lot of things… how he had never smoked a cigarette before… how it tasted better than he had thought it would… how the smoke made him feel safe… how the animals in the park seemed to understand… how that one star twinkled to the exact rhythm of the car alarm going off a block or so down the road… how the clerk at the convenience store really didn’t even stop to look at him… how he could probably have ripped him off for everything in the register and slip into the anonymous night without ever having to worry again. He thought about starting a life of crime… going underground… living on the lamb. He thought it would be the right mix of romance and danger… just enough to bring him back to life.