The smokers hang out on the top staircase right by the door to the roof. They claim it's well ventilated enough that they aren't posing a fire risk and sheltered enough that they can smoke in any weather without risking their health. They don't mention that the smoke was there before them, clinging to the ceiling and wrapping around their lungs as they stood on the floor below. It reached for them like a mother going to embrace her child, bringing them up to the top of the stairs and enfolding them in a grey-tinged haze.
The smoke doesn't smell of anything, not even the many months of cigarette fumes that add to the general mass of the smoke carry any kind of scent.
They don't mention this.
The drunks hide behind the skips in the basement, hastily sipping from their concealed "water" bottles and mugs of "herbal" tea. They were their long before the smokers by the roof, the basement has always been a place to forget and to find comradeship. Water dripping from the old pipes mimics the tears shed in secrecy, never talked about but understood in full by people who have gone through the same and worse and survived enough to tell the tale. The drunks function enough to continue being allowed to work in the building and to come into the basement for their routine emotional purge.
They have always been down there, rarely surfacing from the puddles of piss, cheap liquor and rainwater long enough to be remembered by anyone else.
We don't mention them.
The smoke doesn't smell of anything, not even the many months of cigarette fumes that add to the general mass of the smoke carry any kind of scent.
They don't mention this.
The drunks hide behind the skips in the basement, hastily sipping from their concealed "water" bottles and mugs of "herbal" tea. They were their long before the smokers by the roof, the basement has always been a place to forget and to find comradeship. Water dripping from the old pipes mimics the tears shed in secrecy, never talked about but understood in full by people who have gone through the same and worse and survived enough to tell the tale. The drunks function enough to continue being allowed to work in the building and to come into the basement for their routine emotional purge.
They have always been down there, rarely surfacing from the puddles of piss, cheap liquor and rainwater long enough to be remembered by anyone else.
We don't mention them.
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