The World of Myth Magazine

Harley Malcomb held the cigarette between his index and third fingers. He inhaled deeply, taking the smoke into his lungs while his body exploded in ecstasy with his last cigarette.

After forty years of smoking, he'd decided he would quit the filthy habit once and for all. He savored that last cigarette as his fellow bar patrons rang in the new year. Tin horns tooted, confetti fell from the ceiling, and everyone cheered, ringing in the new year in and out with the old.

2010 had come. It was only a matter of months before no one could smoke indoors anymore. Restaurants and bars followed suit after the effort was put forth to end smoking in public places.

It was time. Harley was glad he had lived in the past when it was acceptable to be a smoker. The fashionable time of smoking had passed. He'd made it this year's New Year Resolution to quit.

"I will not have a cigarette in 2010," he told his friends. He would have told Doris, but she had died last year. The year he made his Resolution to double his income. Oddly enough, his income doubled when Doris died since they lived on one paycheck. All his new year resolutions had come to fruition in the last few years. He was confident that the one of quitting would stick.

Harley climbed off the bar stool and headed for home, feeling good about his resolve to quit. He let the dog out when he got home and then let Spud back in when he scratched at the door.

"There's a good boy." Harley locked the door behind the dog. It was nearly one morning when he climbed the stairs to bed. He tossed and turned, unable to sleep, thought about the half a pack of cigarettes in his overcoat, and went downstairs to rummage through his pockets. His Resolution was forgotten in the urge for nicotine.

Harley pulled the pack out of his pocket, relieved, but sighed. It was two-thirty a.m., on January 1, 2010, and he'd quit smoking less than three hours ago.

He wrestled with himself. Technically, it wasn't during the daylight hours of the new year, right? Wasn't it still the celebratory nighttime before the first day of the new year?

"Stop it!" Harley jumped. There was a man in his living room's darkness, wearing a trench coat and smoking. Harley could see the red glow of the cigarette when he inhaled.

"What the hell are you doing in my house, and who are you?" Harley barked. This vision had to be a dream.

"I'm your failed New Year's Resolutions." The man coughed. He was significantly overweight.

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Remember a few years ago when you resolved to lose weight? I think you vowed to lose fifty pounds, wasn't it?"

"How could you know that?"

"I am your failed resolutions," he coughed again, taking a drag off his cigarette.

"I lost seventy pounds that year. So, I didn't fail." Harley sniped back at the man in the shadows.

"I gave you cancer that year, so you'd keep that Resolution. It wasn't because you had the desire or the willingness to change your diet," the shadow man scoffed.

"You gave me cancer?" The man nodded in agreement.

"Why'd you do that?"

"So, you'd keep your promise. Every year you made a resolution and broke it. But then, one year, you wished that you'd keep your resolutions. That's when I entered the picture. Remember when you made the Resolution to double your income? You don't think Doris getting hit by a bus was an accident, do you? I pushed her into the bus, and as a bonus, you collected a bit of life insurance, as I recall. I do a lot for you, Harley, and I take the brunt of things. I took those seventy pounds from you and must carry them daily. I have to live with Doris's horrible accident," the shadow man made quotation marks with his fingers. Harley shrank back, and Spud growled.

"Now you went and quit smoking, so I must take up the filthy habit. The things I do for you, Harley, you don't realize." The shadow man lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old before he tamped the used butt in an overflowing ashtray.

Harley was speechless, looking at New Year's Resolution, he felt sorry for the guy, but he also was jonesing for a nicotine fix. He jumped up and rummaged through the bathroom, finding a box of nicotine gum; ripping open the package chomping eagerly on a small piece, remembering too late that he didn't give up smoking months ago because the gum didn't do a darn thing to curb his longing. What made him think it was going to take now? He shook out another piece and added that to the flavorless one in his mouth, waiting for the ecstasy effect. It didn't come, and it frustrated him.

"What happens if I light up this cigarette?" Harley held the cigarette he'd taken from the pack to Resolution's face, who chuffed at his counterpart.

"You don't want to do that, Harley. If you get me mad, there are consequences. You made a promise, and I am here to make sure you stick to it."

"But I was drunk, and I'd just had a cigarette. I had resolve then. I don't have it now," Harley whined. The shadow man jumped up from the chair. Spud bared his teeth at the man who told him to lie down. Spud whimpered, putting his tail between his legs, and ran behind the couch. Harley had never seen his dog back down to anyone.

"Look, Resolution, there must be a compromise we can make. I'm dying here, don't you see?" Resolution squinted his eyes, shaking his head at Harley. This guy was unbelievable.

"Harley, there is no compromise. You said you would not have a cigarette in 2010. I am here to make good on that promise.

"What are you going to do, Resolution? Kill me?"

"If I must. You wished you could keep your resolutions; I am here because of it. Do I like living like this having to control your every whim? Harley leaned forward, snatching the lighter off the coffee table. Resolution leaped at him. Harley ran up the stairs. He would lock himself in the bedroom. Resolution followed him up the steps grabbing him by the collar. Harley bounced down the stairs.

"Ow!" He cursed, rubbing his head.

"Harley, you made this happen. Don't you see, you can't undo what you've wished." They sat in the living room, staring at one another. Harley fell asleep on the couch. For two weeks, Resolution didn't leave his side. Every time Harley thought about a cigarette, Resolution was there, punishing him.

One day Resolution was gone, and Harley was relieved. The guy was obnoxious, but Harley realized it had been weeks since he had the urge to smoke, and he had Resolution to thank for that.

On the cusp of the new year 2011, Harley was back at the bar with his friends. While intoxicated, they made resolutions for the New Year, and Harley remained quiet. There were consequences to what he wished for, and now that he knew that he had to find a way to ditch Resolution.

Perhaps he should wish that Resolution would disappear, from his life, that he no longer needed the spirit to visit him. That was what he said out loud.

"I wish I had no more New Year Resolutions." His friends laughed at him. Suddenly Harley felt the weight come on. He was seventy pounds heavier, and his clothes split. He felt the struggling breathing of being a smoker and coughed.

"Harley, are you alright?" His friends asked, concerned at the sudden change. Then he looked up and saw Resolution, looking trim, standing in the corner, laughing at him.

The door to the bar opened and in limped Doris, still broken from the bus that hit her two years ago. Her rotting corpse dragged across the floor toward Harley, who screamed and clutched his heart. The mother of all widowmakers took him out, and he lay dead on the bar floor.

Doris walked by the onlookers, unseen, and took Resolution's hand.

"Thanks, Doris. I didn't know how to fulfill his wish this year. You were a big help." The two walked out of the bar arm in arm.

"Harley was successful again with his New Year's Resolution." Resolution bragged to Doris, but her tongue had long since rotted away, and she didn't comment. The shadow man let go of Doris's hand and watched her limp down the street toward the Oak Grove Cemetery.

Resolution was finished with the Harley Malcomb task, thank goodness. Sighing, he lit a cigarette and felt ecstasy explode through his body when he inhaled deeply. Then he heard another man wishing for his New Year Resolutions to come true.

"Crap." Resolution dropped his cigarette on the ground grinding the butt with a twist of his foot, a terrible habit he picked up last year. Someone had invoked his services again. He hoped they weren't too hard on him.

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