Cuban Heat by Emily Chadwick

They say there comes a day in every man’s life when he deserves to smoke a Cuban cigar. A rite of passage, if you will.

My time came a short while after I had turned fifteen.

I was mowing Mr Henderson’s lawn. Now, that doesn’t really sound like a promising start to a story, but I swear it gets better. He came out into the garden to oversee my work, like he always did, standing on the decking like a general and smoking one of his fine Cuban cigars. A curl of dark smoke rose into the summer sky (that’s as poetic as you’re going to get, you know).

As I turned at the bottom of the garden, Mr Henderson fell to the ground. This wasn’t as dramatic as it seems, as he just kind of slumped as opposed to tumbled from the decking. But still, I was pretty shaken up. I abandoned the lawn mower (after switching it off, of course) and ran back up the garden, shouting, “Mr Henderson! Are you all right?”

There was no response.

I wasn’t really sure what to do – my lawn mowing expertise didn’t really cover elderly collapse – so I just rushed inside, grabbed the phone off the wall and called 999.

Once the ambulance was on its way and I had moved Mr Henderson into the recovery position (at the instruction of the nice lady on the phone), I noticed that Mr Henderson’s Cuban cigar was still smouldering on the decking. I was curious, which overrode any apprehension I might have felt about pilfering the half-smoked cigar. Was it really as magical and life-changing as my friends had made it out to be?

I scooped it up off the ground and took a long drag.

Then I coughed, choked, spat and tossed the cigar onto the ground.

Disgusting.

Cuban Heat by Lesley Whyte

The air was thick and muggy. The sky was red streaked with orange. We sat on his balcony, looking out over the ocean. Watching the figures walking along the shore, silhouetted against the bright sky. 

He smoked a cigar. I tried not to choke on cigar smoke.

The sweat crept along my collarbone. A gunshot rang out in the distance. The wind rustled through the trees. Our skin stuck to the warm, metal chairs. 

He smoked a cigar. I tried not to choke on the smoke.

Cuban Heat by Sam Smith

There was a three month period in my life where I would put something odd in the microwave once a day. I had just moved into my first place by myself, so I felt pretty free from rules. Mum would have never let me use the microwave for entertainment purposes. It was for cooking in her house. I used it to warm up my socks on a cold day a couple of times. I did the same with my pants once, but it’s quite hard to know how long pants need to be in the microwave to get them warm but not so hot that they burn some sensitive areas of my body. I have the scars to prove it.

Finding things to put in a microwave wasn’t too difficult. At first, I just looked around my flat, picking up old books and toys from boxes that Mum forced me to take because they were taking up room in her house. Books don’t really do much unless you leave them in there for a long time, then they start burning in a weird way. All the pages curl up and darken. When you take it out, the middle pages are sort of soggy. Toys just melt if they’re made of plastic. Not as dramatic as I thought it would be as a child.

Soon, I started to run out of stuff and I started to steal things just to microwave them. Beer mats, potted plants, sandwiches, fancy Cuban cigars from some prick at a club, hats, oranges. All sorts of rubbish. It taught me a valuable lesson. Everything reacts when it’s exposed to enough heat. I started to apply this theory to situations in life. I argued more with people, stared at them until they felt uncomfortable, shouted every once in a while to see what would happen. It was a strange time in my life.

The novelty of putting things in the microwave eventually wore off when someone complained about the smell of burning plastic coming from my flat. I guess they thought I was making bombs or something because they rang the police, whom swiftly turned up at my door. They shouted at me to get on the ground. I reacted. Currently I am serving a five year sentence for throwing molten plastic at a police officer. Prison is no fun.

Day Thirty

And today's prompt is...

Cuban Heat.