It Begins

Wandering around for a few hours to smell the roses and have a smoke, he had no real destination in mind. His head was racing with a hundred thoughts and he knew he only had time for maybe forty of them if he were lucky and everything worked out perfectly for each one.
"Better to just forget them all" he thought, but he knew some of those thoughts were there to stay: and just a few were mocking him.
He checked his pockets for his life essentials: cigarettes and a lighter. The lighter was always in his front right pants pocket, it was easy to find. The cigarettes were a different matter.
When he left his house a few hours ago, he had five cigarettes to his name. He knew he had smoked four of them, but he knew he had one more. His search became frantic. Both his hands were flying into and out of pockets with one hand usually checking a pocket right after the other hand had just left that same spot. Pants: right, left. Shirt: left breast. Jacket: inside left breast, inside right breast. Nothing! Outside right hip pocket, outside left hip pocket. Nothing! He tilts his head down as if he suddenly got the power to see into his pockets to find what his hands are obviously missing. As he looked down, a cigarette fell from Heaven onto the ground. Not from Heaven, from behind his right ear.
"Schmuck" he thought.
"So why did you leave" one of the thoughts asked. This was one of the mocking ones. "Why did you leave her? What the hell were you thinking?"
He reached into his right pants pocket, his trembling hand fumbling around in the darkened hole. It took him five strikes to get his silver Zippo to light, but he got it. She was an old reminder of his college days; one of the few things he seemed to be able to keep.
The lighter was a funny story actually. He was part of a "crowd" in college. They were the sophomore "hippies" of the campus. The party crowd with their first apartment; the Dead Shed. One wall was covered entirely with Pink Floyd posters, arranged chronologically by the album they represented. All posters for Animals had to be left of The Wall posters, but certainly before the prism of Dark Side of the Moon.
The furniture was all donated by their parents, who were of very moderate means, so the apartment looked very nice. It was a natural hang out.
Over the two years they lived there, friends would start to bring their friends over and there became the Cast and the Guest Stars. The Cast were the people who were hanging out there daily, while the Guest Stars were the friends and random people who would find their way to the apartment. He never fully understood why, but people actually cared what level they were at.
One week, the same Guest Star kept coming over with a friend of his; neither name sticking to his mind. The Guest Star really loved the "vibe" in the Dead Shed and wanted to circumvent the long and at that time unknown process to ascend from Guest Star to Cast. At the mall he had looked at a Zippo in the department store, but had no money at that time to get it, but he really liked it and said so. The Guest Star took it upon himself to buy the lighter for him "for no reason", but was understood to be a bribe for Cast status. Needless to say, years later he has the Zippo and has forgotten the kid's name.
"His name was Adam you arrogent prick" another thought told him.
"Was Adam?" the Mocking thought came back, "Did he kill Adam too?"
"Did he kill Adam?" he thought to himself, "Wait a minute!"
He just realized what was said. "What do you mean kill Adam too?"
"You left her. What the hell were you thinking?"
To be continued