Justin

Damien Hirst was at a lost; nothing was popping into his head.
He was low on swindle and the thought of losing the mantle of world’s biggest con artist troubled him dearly.
A big show at the Tate Modern was looming and Hedge Fund managers were inquiring where to waste some fleeced dough. He did not want to disappoint and while his drinking days were behind him, he felt a trip to the Groucho Club W1 would serve some inspiration.
###Ordering a lemonade at the bar and plucking out cashews from the mixed nuts he looked around for any familiar faces. In the corner he spotted Robert Pattinson and Taylor Swift giggling behind tall gin & tonics, in the opposite corner Lilly Allen and Prince Harry were playing strip poker. “Christ I’m old and irrelevant, where’s Bono when you need him?”
###Finding a booth to sit down he thought for a moment then pulled out a freshly sealed Moleskine sketch book.
“Who are you trying to kid? “
Hirst looked up and saw a bleary unkempt woman with a lob sided mouth holding a glass of wine.
“Tracy you old hag what gives?”
It was Tracy Emin part time artist, full time drinker.
“Started to take up drawing have we?”
“What’s that on your arm? “
“Ah… my new fabulous purchase from Camden Town”
“What is it?”
“A thermos”
Tracey put the red and white thermos on the table and sat down.
“Wicked eh?”
“Not bad dear, I like the Marlboro logo” Said Hirst leaning in to a get a better look.
“It’s my new handbag darling; my man Winston hooked me up ‘Nice Price Winston’ always comes through”
“I wonder what it would be like suspended in formaldehyde.”
“Bleeding Hell Damien you stuck for ideas again?”
“I got the Tate Modern pending “
“Oh great I get a funky handbag and you want too drown it in slime, you know this very rare Damien, years ago if you bought a certain amount of ciggies you won a gift, in this case a thermos”
“What about we do a joint piece, we could call it ‘The Physical Impossibility of two aging Con Artists running out of luck” chuckled Tracy.
… I tell you what; you give me the thermos and whatever price I sell it for I’ll split 50 / 50”
“What about Winston?”
“We’ll throw him a bone”
“Okay money bags” resigned Tracy pulling on a Marlboro.
###Hirst made a call.
###At Sotheby’s today Damien Hirst pulled off another coup with another large sale for his latest work “How to Con the Art World on a Regular basis”
###Camden Market was bristling with people; a queue had formed outside Winston’s stall, Tracy was standing at the front when she saw Damien approaching.
“Oi Damien!! Over here”
Damien Hirst stood gazing at the racks of thermoses; there must have been thirty of them swaying in the wind.
“I think you owe Winston a skeleton” smiled Tracy.

Erin

Christmas morning. He is awake before the sun, anticipation coursing through his small body. ###

He's 12 and this will be the first Christmas he will spend as part of a divorced family. Fortunately his excitement is greater than his dread as he makes his way to the tree. Lights on, he scurries around the house waking up his mother and sister. ###

A new schedule has been created. Mom's house in the morning, with gifts and breakfast; Dad's in the afternoon. ###

After the divorce, Dad has been struggling. Life has found him unemployed, with little means for himself, let alone gifts for his children. Of course these are things that his son doesn't have the ability to understand and see. ###

Christmas at Dad's apartment. He slowly tears back the newspaper to reveal a thermos. He is thrilled. A thermos to keep his hot chocolate warm, to take his lunch to school. ###

Years later, when clearing out his room for his move to college, he finds the thermos. Only then does he recognize the logo: Marlboro. He thinks back to that Christmas and realizes that his gift that year, the Marlboro thermos, was purchased with Marlboro Miles, a reward program that allowed smokers to earn points that could then be redeemed for items. It was then, for the first time, that he was able to understand his father’s situation after the divorce, when he desperately wanted to provide a Christmas for his children and was only able to do so through his chain-smoking.

michelle-leona

The Passing Gift
###
###
“You can't give it to him. It's tasteless.”
###“But Daddy is tasteless!”
###“Daddy is dying!”
###“So what? Because he's dying, he has no sense of humor anymore?”
###“He’s not himself anymore. You haven't been here - haven't seen how he's deteriorated. Just go up and see him before you do anything stupid, ok? Promise me you'll get your head out of your -” (her sister never could swear) “and look at him before you do anything stupid like giving a man dying of cancer a cigarette branded thermos!”
###“But daddy was the quintessential Marlboro Man. He’ll -"
###"Daddy was a lawyer"
###"Love it," she finished.
###“You are crazy!”
###Her sister got out of the car and slammed the door then looked back at her through the open window.
###“If you do, I promise I will never speak to you again.”
###She looked at her sister's red blue eyes till they turned away. The angry footsteps receded and the distant indifferent door slammed. Angry and almost crying, she leaned over to roll up the passenger side window.
###
The parking lot, filled with closed and quiet cars, gave no token of another living being.
###
She rolled a joint, lit up, and stared down at the Marlboro Thermos lying on the seat. It was so Dad. She wanted so bad to bring it to dad and to laugh and drink with him conspiratorially but she was not sure that her sister was not right (in this one thing only): that their dad’s dying changed everything.
###
She thought most people cling to the idea that there is something in them that transcends this degenerating flesh. She unscrewed the top and took a swig of Old Crow (his favorite). But she knew the body is not just a vessel for spirits but rather the essential spirit maker. It would be lovely to think of her father dying like he lived, with a smoke in his hand and a sexy squint, but this is a suburban hospital and he'd be wearing a cotton gown, sporting a plastic wristband and tubes, and (god she hated hospitals) he’d be engulfed in that terrible hospital smell. How could a person be the Marlboro man in a place like that? She thought she might get hysterical, so she put out the joint and left the passing gift on the seat.
###
Her father, very tiny and humble, was so happy to see her but so weak. She kissed him on his forehead after sitting with him for a half hour and said she'd be back. She did go back of course, and to the funeral, doing all that a daughter should do in these circumstances, though not as much as her sister.
###
When it was all over, she felt that old familiar tug to move on. To New York she went and brought that Marlboro thermos with. It would be her last deliberate change. She was not getting any younger either. Her body would get the cancer too someday. Then her sister would arrive to put her things into piles and arrange for their transport to relatives and friends, thrift stores and charities. There they'd remain, occupying space on shelves and in drawers, long after she'd passed away.

Liz

A Day’s Work at the Dump
or
Monday, March 6, 2065, 11:15am
###Sure, I’m called a Cultural Archaeologist, but who’s kidding whom. We all know it was just a fancy name used by the politicos to justify paying high salaries to otherwise unemployed grads during the Silent Depression. Me, I come from a long line of trash shifters, going back to the days when we were called “Waste Management Engineers.” I love my job, I really do, especially when I’m at the Kills Landfill.
###We had a bunch of newbies start there last spring. They showed up all clean and ready, liquid gloves and facemasks already applied, hooks and steripaks in hand, Wik-E Object Scanners locked and loaded. I had to stifle my laughter. I hardly ever wear the mask. Can’t stand the way it makes my skin feel after it’s washed off. Anyway, there’s not much smell to speak of these days, unless a rare unopened plastic bag is uncovered. What were those people thinking of, anyway? They knew the oil was going to run out - gas for cars, sure, but plastic trash bags? I never got that one.
###Anyway, it was one of those beautiful spring days we get in the North in March. Anything that could bloom did, and the wild parakeets were singing like mad. Me and the kids were going over the plan for the day, dividing into groups, laser mapping like crazy. I took the quadrant no one else wanted. It was far from the food’n drink pop-up and you had to cross one of those green streams that looked like it was solid. It’d been EPAed, but that didn’t mean anyone wanted to get that stuff on their boots. I gave the kids their marching orders: Wik-E everything; cull anything with more than 10 hits. If the scan says the object is more than 100 years old, buzz me ASAP and stay where you are. Too many times, they come running up to me, all excited that their prize from the 20th century will end up in the Museum, maybe even a reality podcast, only to find that they didn’t mark the spot, not even on their gmap. All those piles look alike when you’re trying to find a certain one.
###So I ambled my way to Quad 42. The stream was low, and I was pleased to see the make-shift bridge I’d made last fall was still there. I hadn’t found anything of interest back then, but there were certain places that I couldn’t get to on account of razor wire and kudzu. I figured this must have been a secret military dump, which would explain the off-putting green slime river. This time I’d brought laser cutters and a heat shield mask. It only took about 10 minutes to fry through the wire, and there in front of me was a small metal hut. I pushed open the door, hardly able to breathe, I was so excited. Of course, Crows had been there first, but it must’ve been decades ago, the dust and dirt were so thick. There was a table made of cardboard, a spindly wooden chair (worth a fortune, but looters usually looked for small bright and shiny things. Reason we called ‘em Crows). Lying on the floor was a white and red plastic bottle with some kind of corporate sign on it. The writing didn’t mean anything to me, though I was pretty sure it was English. It wasn’t emitting a signal but that wasn’t surprising. When I swiped my cellpad over the word, nada, which was strange. Then I realized it was even older than I thought. I quickly clicked on my Wik-E and hit scan. Sure enrough, about a million old things came upon the screen; a studly guy on a horse who looked like an ad for skin cancer, an ancient glossy picture of college kids drinking beer and smoking tobacco, an old ancestral hall somewhere in the EU, medical shots showing diseased lungs, etc. I quickly sprayed on gloves and picked it up. Here was for sure an item for the Museum, and yes, even I got caught up in the realty podcast idea. All of a sudden I missed my old partner Shannon. She would’ve understood how important the find was, what a great show it would be, with all this history behind it.. This could make my retirement! But probably my boss Honorable Lotus would take all the credit. So what, no big deal. I would still have this moment all to myself. Softly I repeated the mysterious word “Marlboro,” letting it roll around my mouth like smooth scotch whiskey.

Mary

Dear Jonathan, (a note inside a Marlboro cooler left on a doorstep)
###Here’s your stupid Marlboro liquid cooler that you thought was so cool. By the way, Thermos is a brand name, not a generic one, so, so much for your hipster intellect. I guess if you use this thing for a spittoon that would make sense (go look it up!). Did you think that that alcoholic concoction you toted to the park for our picnic yesterday in this BPA plastic jug would have impressed me? I hardly know you. Did you really think I was going to drink that? I think this Marlboro Man artifact should be best dropped off at the local thrift store. Don’t plan to text me ever again. No way would I ever drink your cool-aide!

Kevin

He was old enough to be her father. Not that it stopped him from sleeping with her. Then again, considering he was the disembodied spirit of a hard-nosed private eye possessing a thermos with the Marlboro image stamped on it, crazier things could have happened.
#########
#####She took a long drag from her newly lit Newport as she lay half covered by the sheets.
#####“Oh sorry, you don’t mind that I smoke Newports, do you?” She asked. He explained to her for what seemed like the thousandth time that though he was a thermos with a Marlboro image on it, he in no way reflected the views or cares of the company. He only had one purpose before his spirit could move on to the other side. To find the person who killed his partner…who also happened to be his wife…who also was a really good cook.
#######
#####“Damn I loved that lasagna.” He muttered to himself.
######“What did you say?” asked the woman whose name her forgot.
######“Nothing! Stop smothering me!” He shouted. He rolled over to window and stared outside longingly, or he would’ve if he had eyes. He slowly loaded his Magnum and holstered it in his shoulder strap. He smoothed out his mustache. It was the only thing left over from his former life. He remembered the moment like it was yesterday…because it was yesterday, he was taking this all quite well. He lay bleeding out on the street. His partner-wife dead next to him, the lasagna she had prepared for dinner laid splattered everywhere. He shifted on his side trying to get one last bite of the delicious Italian dish before leaving this world. That’s when the shaman showed up.
########
#######“You there!” The shaman bellowed, “Would you sell your soul to me to seek revenge on the one who did this too you!?”
########
#####“No” He answered, “Just cram some lasagna in my mouth and let me die.”
######“Revenge you shall have!” screamed the shaman.
#########
#######“No, No! For the love of Christ just the lasagna!” but it was too late. The shaman had transformed his soul into the nearest most affordable object, a thermos with a Marlboro image on it.
#########
######“Well this blows” he said staring out the window. The woman was getting dressed. She jotted her number down on a napkin.
#######
#######“Call me sometime” she offered. Then she disappeared out the door. He checked out of the hotel they had stayed in shortly thereafter. He got some sideways glances from other patrons.
########“Oh what’s the matter? Never seen a disembodied ghost inhabit a thermos to seek revenge on someone?” All the patrons reassured him that they had actually seen this before, some just the other day, but that they there were staring because of the condom he still had on the sprocket of the thermos. He grumbled and walked out of the hotel. Not many know what happened to the thermos, only that now again on certain nights when people make lasagna, you can hear the faint sound of a Magnum going off, claiming the life of the one who killed his partner-wife. Either that or it’s a car backfiring.

wyndham

Missing!

One, super-cool, Marlboro Man thermos is the only thing keeping me from getting my butt kicked. Need more proof? I can’t climb the rope in gym class. My arms quake when I do push ups. I play the violin. I’m a 1st generation Korean who now lives in Washakie, Wyoming and is shorter than most of the girls in my class.

Cowboy cool. Rebel smoker. American tough guy. This thermos qualifies me for bad-ass. And distracts from the fact my mom cuts my hair. Caution: contents are hot. And embarrassing. And not what a still prepubescent Korean-American, who’s looking to fit in, wants to be chowing down on come high noon in the school cafeteria. This is the land of Steak-ums. Burgers and fries. Grilled cheese. No fruit, no vegetables. And definitely no Bulgogi. “Eww, gross what’s that?” I can’t risk mean girl detection. A question like that could land me in teen exile forever. So this family favorite recipe of hacked beef, swimming in garlicky-brown sauce, which would appear semi-digested to the general Washakie student body, comes to school with me concealed inside the ultimate American, status symbol, a Marlboro Man thermos.

If found please return to the new kid in School. Who? Me, Washakie’s official WyomAsian mascot. The recent transfer who might have lost his only chance to blend in with a lunchtime crowd made up of guys called Buddy, Jim Bo, Duke and Travis. Go Wild Cats!

Matt

The cold river water on my feet, the breeze, the warm sun, the gnats, the Sunkist soda, the fishing poles, the laughter…###
Every year, we got together for our family fishing trip/reunion. We’d drive out of town to these cottages my family had owned since before I came along. It had a river right down the way where we’d fish… or try to fish, as we never really caught much. There’d be about twenty of us—brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, second cousins—carrying along, having a good time, laughing. Everyone was always laughing. ###
My uncle Dwayne was my favorite of the uncles. He’d always horse around with me. He used to apply pressure to my scalp with his fingertips and say, “Needles to the head!” That got me every time. I remember this Marlboro labeled thermos he used to carry around and how proud he was of it.
“Got it for free,” he’d say.
“Only took me a hundred packs.”
He must have told that story a thousand times.###
His diet consisted of coffee from that thermos and cigarettes. Besides an occasional cough, he seemed to be doing pretty good. I’d sit there with him down at the water’s edge, with my candy cigarettes and lifeless fishing pole. It wasn’t about catching fish, because we never did. It was about hanging out with Dwayne. When my parents weren’t around, he’d sneak me some of his coffee. He was just . . . cool.
“Don’t you tell em’.” He’d tell me.
“I won’t.”
“Y’all boys come eat!” We heard from up the hill.
“I’ll carry it!” I grabbed the Marlboro thermos. My uncle Dwayne smiled, and a sense of pride rushed over me. We walked up to the cottages.###
At night, Dwayne would entertain us with his unlimited joke arsenal.
“You heard the one about the guy and the bear?”
They were always about the guy and some zoo animal. I remember thinking about how funny the jokes were back then. Me and my cousins would be rolling, trying to catch our breath from the laughing fits. Thinking back now, they really weren’t all that funny.###
Seeing Uncle Dwayne in the hospital bed was a bizarre thing for me. Our family was gathered around in this cramped room, and everyone was laughing and talking about old times. Meanwhile, he’s laid up in bed with tubes and hoses going in and coming out of him. He still had that cough, but only worse, and louder.
“Come here.” He called me over to the bed.
“Needles to the (cough, cough) head!” he placed his fingers, now more boney, into my scalp. I still laughed despite his nails cutting into me a little.###
In the hall, I overheard the doctor tell my parents, “Say your goodbyes.”
I didn’t quite know what that meant at the time. I just figured visiting hours were up.###
I remember how the fishing trips/reunions weren’t the same after Dwayne was gone. There was still the cold river, the breeze, the warm sun, the gnats, the Sunkist soda, the fishing poles, the laughter… But something about the laughter was . . . different. I’d still go sit by the river where me and Dwayne used to sit, and pretend to fish, never catching anything. I’d take along with me that Marlboro thermos Dwayne had left me. I’d carry it everywhere. I’d fill it with soda or iced tea, as my parents still didn’t want me drinking coffee. I was too young. ###
For years, I kept that thermos close by; close to my heart. To me, it was a part of Dwayne. But as the years went on, it went from being in my room where I could see it every day, to being tossed among other junk in my garage, still unpacked from my previous move.###
I remember Dwayne sneaking me coffee from that thermos and telling me not to tell my parents.
I never did.

Gerry

Six days a week my father was at work, managing a supermarket in Staten Island, NY. He was supposed to be in the office counting out the register trays or making work schedules or pointing out what needed to be done. But he enjoyed the grunt work better: filling endcaps with that week’s cereal specials, stocking the freezer cases with boxed vegetables and tubs of ice cream, collecting wayward shopping carts from the empty lot down the street, grown wild with milkweed and sticker burrs. And on Sunday, his only day of rest, he didn’t want to hang around his family. ###

Before heading out on Sunday mornings to the coin shop to admire the flawless currency so far beyond his salary’s reach, or to wash his Duster at the do-it-yourself place in town, or to escape to God knows where without his wife and kids, he’d sit at the kitchen table with his only true confidants, his Marlboros and Budweisers. Under a cloud of smoke, a dull-gray signifier of comic strip bad luck, he’d empty a couple of Buds. It took a prodigious amount of alcohol to even get my father buzzed. Two Buds was like unsweetened Kool-Aid. ###

One Sunday my mother dragged my brothers out to K-Mart to buy off-brand sneakers, leaving me alone with my father. I could tell by the way he pinched the filter hard as he smoked that my presence was monkeying with whatever his plans were for the day. I passed him at the table on my way to the television when he spoke. ###

“Sit,” he said, the word floating in exhaled smoke. My father was not abusive, never hit us beyond a smack on the rear, but he was a dad—unpredictable, mercurial—and his invitation could carry any number of implications. ###

He upended a Bud, brought it down heavy on the table. He tapped his cigarette over a cereal bowl. I heard the ashes hiss in the dye-stained milk. ###

“Got something for you,” he said. He fitted the cigarette in his lips and disappeared into his bedroom. I heard the click of the wardrobe door lock, the squeak of its hinge. He returned with a brown paper bag and a magazine rolled into a tube. "For you." ###

I took the bag by its strangled goose neck, wary of what could be inside. “What is it?" ###

"Marlboro Miles," he said. "Been saving them up. Got a few hundred. They come on the packs of cigarettes. I looked through the catalogue and don’t want anything, so I thought you could get something for yourself." ###

He unrolled the catalogue before me. The items celebrated bedrock American pursuits: poker sets, with clay chips and polished cards; grilling accessories, like hickory wood chips and tongs and burger flippers; lighters and ashtrays and beer cozies; and all branded with the Marlboro logo. Only one section interested me: the camping equipment. I picked out a long Coleman thermos with a squared-off handle. ###

"Make up your mind?" my father asked. ###

"Thermos," I said. "Looks cool." ###

“Great,” he said. “I’ll send for it.” ###

He stubbed out his cigarette and grabbed another beer from the fridge. Instead of notching the long neck in the opener screwed to the wall, he pointed it at me. “You wanna head out to the car wash?” he said. “You can work the sprayer.” ###

I tried not to smile. “Sure,” I said. ###

He refridged the beer and we headed out, with me riding shotgun in the filthy Duster.

Katie

Red plastic, pebbled, molded. Shiny. Reflecting the morning light. The feel of it against the skin of her cheek, cool and smooth, it had rolled over in the night, or she had rolled over to it she realized, since she was off of the quilt and onto the dusty earth. Some bits of rock stuck in her cheek. She fingered the thermos, caressed it in the space before full consciousness. Pale blues and shiny yellows reflected some how from that red mass of chemical chains--textured but smooth at the same time. Tiny dips and divots pressed into the plastic by giant machines, in a factory, spewing smoke. It had a white, smooth, plastic lid, the Marlboro logo stuck on or painted on or something. Coffee inside. More chemicals. “My chemical thermos,” she thought. So far from where it started in that factory. Now it was in the middle of the desert, in the cool dry morning just before it could be called sunny; the sky, gigantic overhead, the mountains and hills visible in the distance, pinkish in the morning. Somehow she could just sit there and drink it all in. No motion. No action. She just absorbed the beauty of the place; letting some romantic nostalgia wash over. The quiet. The cool air in her lungs. Then the modern brain kicked in, accessing scenes and snippets of Georgia O’Keefe paintings, Georgia herself in a black Stetson hat, all wrinkles and sternness. Picture an oriental rug, and the perfect rock. Red and dark brown patterns intertwine intricately woven by fingers far away. Black surfaces smoothed by time. Beautiful textiles, light and airy, blowing in the wind, with a floral pattern, the subject of a false ad in a fashion magazine. No one dressed that way in the desert. She accessed the beauty of material culture that she for some reason thought of here, in the beauty of nature. She didn’t want to do anything. Paralyzed by the dry cool air and the perfect light. She couldn’t spit it out in any cohesive way. Couldn’t write a song about it. Couldn’t make a dress about it. What about a painting? She wanted just to be it. Be the hills and the sky all at once. She could forget about politics and fracking, and how the whole world was going to shit because this was such beautiful country. And what was there to share it with her? A thermos, from a thrift shop. Marlboro. She had never touched one. That’s not true, in Paris when she was 23 she smoked a cigarette to see what it was like, but had no idea if it was a Marlboro. It was bummed from some sleazy Frenchman just before she went upstairs to the small women’s bathroom of the gay dance club and almost passed out in the bathroom from too many glasses of white wine. That thermos. A worthwhile companion with its coffee flavored water inside. But she had to do something. Fill up the thermos. It was from a thrift store in New York City. Fucking New York City, with everything, except this landscape and this air and these clouds. Did she have to move today? There was no job to go to. She had to meet basic human needs though--water, and later food. Go back into town? She was getting practical which felt wrong in the moment. Dreamy loose knit thoughts always came easier. She’d stay with the thermos as her only companion for a little longer.

Nash

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. In fact, I blinked once just to make sure. Yep, there she was, running down the street with nothin’, and I mean nothin’, on. Every single roll of fat we had tried not to imagine was running down that street. And after she was out of sight, I walked down to the front lawn and watched her go. She turned right onto Daisy Avenue and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t blame her one bit. ### “Well,” I thought, “I might as well go see Jim Jim.” ### So I got walking and with every step I took I was more and more sure of what I was gonna find. So that by the time I had my hand on Jim Jim’s door knob, not even God himself could have convinced me otherwise. He’d been talking about it for years. About how all he ever wanted was one of those microwaves. And one day when he saved enough, he was gonna get one. Penny was scared shitless of ‘em and I can’t say that I blame her. Swore that if he ever did it though, she’d leave him on the spot. ### So you could not have believed my surprise when I threw open the door. There was no microwave. There was no Jim Jim. Just a note on the table, held down by Jim Jim’s favorite thermos. His red Marlboro Thermos. He didn’t even smoke cigarettes but he loved that thermos. We found it out shootin’ one day, not a soul a sight. Tipped over on it’s side, with just enough dirt on it to prove it could be his. And I could see for Jim Jim it was love at first sight. So I just smiled and said, “It’s all yours.” ### I crept real slow over to the table and gently pulled out a chair. I sat down and lifted Jim Jim’s thermos. Full. I couldn’t believe it was full. And I don’t know why I did it, but before I even read the note, I unscrewed the top just to see what she’d put inside. Whiskey. Ol’ Jack Daniels on the rocks to be exact. Devil woman! ### I went home with more questions than I cared to have answers for. I burned Penny’s goodbyes. I drank Jim Jim’s whiskey and I hid that thermos underneath my sink. And to this day I tell Jim Jim it was the strangest thing, watching that woman running down the street with nothin’, and I mean nothin’, on, swingin’ his Marlboro Thermos with every stride.

Toby

Grandpa has an unmarked grave in a small town in Wales. Due to a misunderstanding between well-intentioned but distant relatives, the funds for the headstone were used to offset other expenses, and Grandpa was added to the traditional family plot.
### The graveyard is modest, unkempt, and cramped. You can’t tell exactly because his is not the only unmarked plot, but there is a constant sense of disrespecting the dead unintentionally. This isn’t Danny Boy; I don’t want them to hear me, but it’s all the more likely that I’ll stub my toe or trip over a root, and cursing in a cemetery, even if from shock, makes me feel all the more out of place.
### My living family is small, so by visiting Grandpa I surround myself with more kin than I’m used to. More cousins – Josie and Elwyn – show me around and tidy things up a little while we’re there. I ask questions, we share memories. I wasn’t able to come to Wales for the funeral, and had never lived close enough for frequent visits before he died. He teased me about a goatee when I was in my early 20s, and I used to take road atlases with me to show him where I’d been all over North America.
### He knew he shouldn’t smoke, but was of an age and disposition where he was never going to stop. Smoking didn’t kill him – he lived until his early 90s – so there hardly seemed much point in stopping. His room at the assisted living place had the unmistakable sheen of accumulated tar and soot. You couldn’t really see it, but you could feel it, you knew it was on everything, and in guiltier moments you hesitated before sitting down in the adjacent chair to his. But he had a love of stories, and as the youngest, I had been told them the fewest times, had the most patience, expressed genuine surprise at the ones I hadn’t heard.
### He smoked the cigarettes which were stylish when he was younger, big unfiltered things with plastic tips. He claimed they weren’t as processed as their sleek, bleached white modern counterparts, and therefore not as bad for him, because he knew I didn’t approve. The ashes ended up everywhere because he had that bumptious quality of people who dribble jam on their shirts when eating toast, and don’t really worry about the stains. Of course, I never said anything, I don’t think my face betrayed me.
### The thermos seemed apt, a perverse sort of blessing. When I found out I was going to be able to visit him, I remembered something he had told me years before. He wished he’d spent more time on the Pacific Ocean. So I went to the beach in Santa Cruz, filled it with fresh ocean water, and packed it away in my suitcase for the trip. It was a bit ragged and battered but the seal was good and it made it to the UK without difficulty.
### When I had my moment alone with Grandpa at his grave, I poured out some of the water on his unmarked spot, and told him I’d brought the ocean to him. The rest I left, sealed inside, to become a makeshift headstone. Rolled up inside, along with the water, was a simple eulogy, written in Sharpie on a piece of thin plastic. ‘I miss you, Grandpa.’

luke

Lake Ocoee by luke kurtis ###

Peter took a drag from his cigarette and looked across the lake. It had been a perfect day. He was always happiest when he was on the water. Today had been particularly good. The euphoria would take a few days longer than usual to wear off. ###

"Hey man, that was great out there today. Just great," Tom said as he walked up and patted Peter on the shoulder. ###

"Glad you enjoyed it," he sucked on the cigarette again. ###

The men paused for a bit, enjoying a few more moments at the lake before the sun started to set. ###

"I really should stop this shit," Peter bemoand to himself as he flicked his cigarette. Tom yawned. ###

They had already pulled out the jet ski and packed up the truck. "Let me take a whizz then we'll head out." ###

"You do that, man," Tom chuckled. "I'll grab the cooler--I think we left it by the boat ramp." ###

Peter didn't even bother to go find a spot in the woods. He had no use for modesty and took a leak right off the edge of the dock. ###

Tom had already grabbed the cooler and was headed back. "Any water left?" Peter asked. ###

Tom shook the red and white Marlboro cooler. "A bit, I think. But the ice is gone." ###

"That's all right. Give it to me." He took it from Tom as he shook his cock and slipped it back inside his shorts. ###

"You just let it all out and now you're gonna fill back up," he joked. Peter gulped down the water. ###

Daylight fading, Peter and Tom both headed to the truck. "So, back to Chattanooga?" ###

"The end of a day on the lake is always so sad. But, yeah, I'm beat... home sounds good." ###

The sun had set completely by the time they made it back to the highway. Tom had fallen asleep in the passengers seat. Peter popped in a Def Leppard tape--music he found relaxing enough for driving at night but wouldn't put him to sleep. Exhausted as he was, though, he still struggled to keep his eyes open. ###

After about 45 minutes of driving he relalized something wasn't right. Instead of approaching the familiar highway exits on the route home, he didn't recognize where he was. It was a sign showing the way to The Lost Sea that clued him in. "Fuck," he muttered as he realized he had gotten on 75 going north instead of south. Tom was still sleeping. ###

He got off at the next exit and pulled over before heading back south. He was thirsty again--smoking always made him drink a lot. The water cooler was in the floorboard on Tom's side. He didn't want to wake him up and have to tell him about the mistake. So he reached across the seat, down between Tom's legs, and grabbed the water. He pulled it between his legs, popped open the top, and poured it towards his mouth. A bit of the water went down the side of his face and down his neck. Tom didn't rouse, dead to the world. ###

Peter got back on the highway and headed south towards Chattanooga. He made it home without Tom waking up. ###

"We're here buddy," he said as he shook his friend's leg. "Time for bed." ###

jay

Thermos
###
Look at it, just sitting there. The top is back on again. Did you do that? No? I thought not.
###
It looks so ordinary. Tell that to Ron.
###
It happened so fast! Ron picked it up, started unscrewing the top, and the noise started. It didn't sound like it came from inside. It was everywhere. It came from the center of the earth. Ron flinched and dropped it. It fell to the floor. But the noise just got louder. High ear-splitting shriek. Louder and louder. Coming from everywhere.
###
It lay there on the ground, and the top was still turning. Turning by itself. I looked at Ron. He was staring at it open-mouthed. Then the top came off. Ron stiffened and jerked and fell, his eyes wide, wide open, shocked.
###
The moment he fell the noise stopped.
###
I went to him. I've loved him all these years and knew something was terribly wrong. He was alive, breathing, eyes wide in horror, but not seeing. The last thing he saw was something men shouldn't see. Something that broke him.
###
I knew then. It's a trap. It got part of him. I could hear it humming. An old empty thermos, humming low, like a hive of bees.
###
I figured the trap had already sprung and I could pick the thing up safely. And with Ron all but dead nothing made any difference anyway. I didn't care. And maybe I thought I could help Ron. So I picked it up and looked inside.
###
Nothing. It was empty.
###
I put it to my ear. Beehive. Deep booming echoing beehive sound, deep, deep. Like the echo from a well. Muttering. People talking. Fragments of words.
###
Ron was down in there somewhere.
###
The paramedics said it looked like stroke. I set it down on the table and followed them as they carried him out. The top was still on the floor then. I certainly wasn't going to put it back on, rearm the trap.
###
I rode with them. How long was I gone? Two hours? Ron died in the ambulance. Was that only this morning?
###
I didn't know what to do but come back for the car. Nobody else has been here? How did the top get back on?
###
Look... It's opening...

Peggy

I was just jogging through the park listening to my iPod, enjoying the nice weather...everything was good. I got tired and sat down on a bench. I hadn't noticed there was something sitting on the bench until my arm bumped it. It was a red and white thermos with Marlboro written on it. Strange, I thought. That's a brand of cigarettes. Why would they have their name on a thermos? ### I figured someone had forgotten it so I planned to just leave it there...maybe they'd come back for it. I absentmindedly rubbed the top of the thermos and it started rocking back and forth. I must have rubbed it harder than I thought and unbalanced it. But no! I wasn't touching it anymore and it was still rocking..more violently than before. ### Suddenly the top of the thermos literally popped off and out climbed...well, I don't know what to call it...a thermos genie, I guess. Except, if it really was a genie it was a totally disreputable one. ### All the genies I had seen in books looked well dressed and very exotic. This guy was a mess! Cut-offs, a muscle shirt, flip-flops, pony tail...and he had a can of beer in one hand and a...you got it!...a Marlboro in the other. And he smelled of garlic! ###
"Hey, bro! Whassup?"###
"Excuse me?" I said ###
"What! You called ME! What's your problem? You want them three wishes or what?" ###
"Uh, no thanks. I'm good." ###
"Oh, no! You don't yank me away from watchin' wrestling and tell me you don't want your three wishes!" ###
"No, really, I'm good. Don't need a thing. I didn't know you were in there. It was an accident."###
"Come on...since I'm out here, how about a nice double wide?"###
"Gee, I really don't think so.###
"A lifetime supply of chitlins?"###
"Never touch 'em...thanks."###
"You're awful hard to please. I know! A girt certificate for Wal-Mart! Nobody could refuse that!"###
"Look, I'm fine. Really. Why don't you just get back in your thermos and I'll put the lid on I'll be on my way."###
"Hey, buddy! I'm not good enough for you? You got a better offer from some other genie? You just don't appreciate the finer things in life!..." ###
I could hear him yelling at me as I jogged away, leaving him and his thermos for someone else to deal with

Adrian

He finally stops as the sun’s rising. The growing yellow sliver smearing light from the horizon reminds him of the time; reminds him what he’s doing. He’s driven this route enough to know every bump and bush along the way. He wonders if he could drive it with his eyes closed, if memory is enough to get him there after leaving the road. But he knows its tiredness talking. There’s no need to pull over this deep in the desert, so he just stops, gets out of the Nova and waits before shutting the door. He makes sure all he hears is the hissing of the engine in the still quiet of the desert. Under the hood something knocks, settles and that’s all he hears so he shuts the door, walks around and stretches his legs. He drinks from the Marlboro thermos rolling around the backseat, but doesn’t touch the food. He pokes the ground with the tip of his boot and stretches his arms behind his back, hears the crack of his spine as he twists the kinks out. Somewhere close a bird flies out from somewhere into the morning. He’s got about three hours until he reaches the border and something about that makes him kick the back fender of the Nova. The noise scares some more things out of their sleep and into their holes and as he spins on the tip of boot away from the car he feels the sun on his face. He closes his eyes and feels the sun warm through his shirt and then through his jeans. He seriously thinks about opening the trunk, but he doesn’t. He never does. The heat from the sun is making his mustache sweat, so he gets back in the car and drives. Three hours later he’s across the border and just past one of the water stations set up by college students, he stops the Nova. This had been his drop off spot way before the water stations started popping up. Before there were kids spending their weekends in the desert giving water to people trying to cross: rebuilding stations smashed by cops. It’s still early so no one’s around to see him get out of the car and unlock the trunk. He looks down and the two kids hide their faces: from the sun or from him. This is why he only crosses kids- they had been on the road more than ten hours and they were in the same spots as when he locked them in there the second he’d been out of sight of their grandmother. The trunk of the Nova is big enough and they’re small, but they’re still huddled close. The girl still has the envelope with the money in it and some address in Flagstaff written on the outside. She squeezes it as he motions them to get out of the trunk. She starts pointing at the envelope and he laughs a little, yanks it from her as they get used to walking again. He goes to backseat, takes another long drink from the thermos. The girl says something in Spanish and he’s not paying attention. If they walk straight in the direction he was driving they’ll make it to Nogales before the heat gets them. Any other way and they’re dead. He drops the red thermos at their feet and it kicks up dust, he gets back in the Nova and drives back into the desert. He’s got 4 more kids to pick up in Morelia. In the rearview, once they pass the thermos between them they set off walking the wrong way.

Ann

Studio 360/Significant Object: Marlboro Thermos

“You didn’t.” Liz addressed Fred, her husband, as soon as she finished talking with the Assistant Principal. “I have to go speak with Steve Granger about Jack’s ‘inappropriate thermos.’ I had no idea what he could have been talking about, until . . .”###
Fred interrupted her. “I gave him that old Marlboro thermos from the garage. It’s big, and it won’t be missed if he breaks or loses it at the picnic. What’s Granger’s problem?”###
“A Marlboro thermos?! Fred, you know the rules – nothing advertising cigarettes or booze, or promoting smoking, drinking, or drugs. Anyway, there must have been new species germinating inside that thing.”###
The thermos had sat on a shelf in Fred’s workshop, alongside a rusted tin lockbox, since they’d emptied out the old beach house. She couldn’t blame Fred for this egregious example of pathological hoarding. The thermos caught her eye several times a year, always prompting her to wonder why she’d snatched it up while her brothers and sisters battled smilingly over croquet sets, doorstops, and anchors. Nobody claimed the sea-glass or quahog-shell ashtrays, but Genie – always the eldest – refused to let Weezie throw them away.###
The thermos’s provenance was a mystery: not the sort of handcrafted or nautical-themed object Mum would have scooped up at a garage sale or church fair. It intimated a bygone era of smoking on the beach with a thermos full of prepared whiskey sours or Vodka Collins to a pregnant, abstemious woman on the edge of forty. She wondered who first brought it into their house, and whether it had been donated, abandoned, or forgotten.###
“I washed it. I actually scrubbed it out carefully, and soaked it for awhile. I don’t know why anyone could object to it. It’s not an article of clothing he would wear all day. He only had it for the picnic. That’s entirely different.” Fred would yield no ground in this argument. Liz would be the peacemaker.###
She had already slung her handbag over her shoulder. “We must have other thermoses.”###
“Actually, no, and I certainly can’t understand buying a new one when we had a perfectly serviceable one. Do you need me to come along and explain that to Granger?”###
“No. I don’t trust you to resist the urge to share your opinion of his intelligence with him. Oh!”###
She pivoted, and went to the kitchen in search of a lemonade iced tea for Jack. She grabbed the half-empty liter jug of half-and-half, amused at the notion that drinking straight from the bottle was more acceptable nowadays than a Marlboro thermos, in a town that proudly sanitized itself for their protection.###
She got into her car, and drove to the middle school. Students were already piling into buses. Most wore t-shirts and gym shorts; some wore the baseball caps that were prohibited during regular hours. Tribal affiliations abounded: school and professional teams, cultural icons, classmates’ bar mitzvah souvenirs, but no alcohol and tobacco products. No Marlboro Men welcome here.###
Her son Jack stood next to Assistant Principal Granger, mortified. Liz ran an obstacle course among the students, coolers, nets, soccer balls, and prizes, in order to hand off the iced tea jug. Steve Granger didn’t bother acknowledging her; she didn’t bother forcing him to. Fred would have, but Jack deserved a respite from the conflict.###
“Do you want me to pour off into . . .?” Liz pointed, while Jack shook his head and waved her off. She swung the offending thermos defiantly as she walked back to her car. Fred had cleaned it up nicely. She would put it back into the refrigerator, so that Jack could drink from it later.

Neal

My uncle died 15 years ago, in the summer, of liver and kidney damage. I was a teenager at the time, and I don’t think I mourned much, but I did—and to some extent still do—miss him.
###
The Marlboro thermos was one of his keepsakes. He worked at Philip Morris USA’s headquarters in Richmond, Virginia—my family lived about 10 miles out of town; he lived alone in town—and apparently the thermos was a Christmas gift to all the employees. My uncle worked there for over 20 years, and it was the source of our biggest disagreement.
###
He smoked constantly, and drank constantly, or so it seemed. During the summer I’d see him on occasional weekends, and he always had either a cigarette or a flask in his mouth—sometimes both. I didn’t mind the drinking, except when he drove, and to some extent I didn’t mind the smoking, although when I came back home after being with him I had to scrub the smell out of me in a really long shower.
###
What I did mind was his working at Philip Morris. I was into the environment then—these days, I’m a botanist at the University of North Carolina, with a specialty in fungi—and I thought that what he did for a living was inexcusable. He contributed to death. It was as simple as that, and I told him so.
###
He’d laugh at me, like I was some stupid teenager, and it enraged me. The last “picnic” we had together—we’d go off on some trail, I’d bring sandwiches, he’d bring that thermos full of booze along with a carton of cigarettes—the argument was typically maddening.
###
“Listen,” he told me—I still remember this—“people are gonna die one way or another. Better they should die because of something they like to do—smoke—than get hit by a car or fall out of a building or get electrocuted or something.”
###
“What?” I responded. “That doesn’t make any sense at all! You have enough money. You can get another job. You could probably even retire. Why would you continue to work in a place that kills people?” He laughed, turned around to look at some trees, smoked, and drank. Then he fell asleep.
###
When he awoke, he smoked some more, drank some more, we took a little walk in the woods, he dropped me off home, and died two days later. I’m told he barely made it back to Richmond, checked himself into the hospital, and that was it. The doctors said that his liver and kidneys had been seriously eroded.
###
So my uncle died, and maybe as a result a few more people lived—until Philip Morris replaced him, anyway. I really wish I could have persuaded him to quit.
###
The Marlboro thermos has special meaning for me. It’s not only that it represents the last time my uncle and I spent time together. It’s also because the thermos is where I shoved the Amanita mushrooms I’d crushed; the poison of those mushrooms goes directly to the liver and kidneys, and the taste is easily masked, especially when the drinker is half-drunk. A week after my uncle died, I picked up the thermos at his home and donated it to a curio shop. I told the owner to be sure to wash it good before he resold it.

Niki

The Marlboro thermos lay there in her box almost incongruous amongst the other faux -retro items- the oversize trucker hat, the Art Deco-inspired book ends from Muji. But the thermos logo was too innocent, too minimalist. It didn’t quite fit in with its more recently- birthed brethren. And while she was its rightful owner now, it seemed to balk at the new master. It knew it didn’t belong. A relic of consumer loyalty, this was something that gave a dependable impression of who someone really was. She, it protested, was not that someone.
###It harrumphed that no girl should ever own something of such a pragmatic, rusty hue. This was the thermos that held black coffee for people on early morning exploits; if she insisted on a thermos, hers ought to be slimmer and of a paler shade.

###It railed at her that the angular lines of white and red were really meant to echo the elegant swoops of all those cowboy hats slung low on sunburned faces, stony but reliable. The white crested triangle perfectly recalled the snowy peaks of the Budweiser logo- even if the brick red was now associated with the color of Andy Warhols's Campbell's can. It didn't care. It was sincere and she hadn't earned the privilege of putting whatever frivolous, diet-friendly, eastern-inspired libation she had in mind.

###She sat there drinking her coffee (yes, she conceded to the thermos, it was a latte) in the empty condominium she had shared caring for her late father. She did a last rummage through the things, and began to imagine the ache she would have for her father's voice on all the things she would ever put in boxes to come. As she nestled the thermos deeper amongst her own things, she silently promised she would never, ever put anything with Splenda into it.

Noah

“Its gotta be 110° I figure” I thought to myself as a took a swig from my Marlboro thermos sitting atop a split level ranch house. Roofing is a brutal job, done in the hot of summer days out here in Colorado. At 42 I have done a lotta jobs, but roofing is one thing I’ve stuck with over these years. I try not to think about the future too much, but it seems as hazy as a humid day now more than ever. What ever happened to the working man? Seems nowadays everybody’s gotta have the biggest hacienda on the block and be drivin some fancy foreign auto. Nope, not for me. Ford’s my truck, Coors my beer, and Marlboro my smokes. That “Salt of the Earth” type those Rolling Stones used to get on about, those boys are a dying breed. It was about ten years ago I got this thermos. Sent in about 40 packs of Reds for it, cost me six bucks to ship. I’ve since quit smoking. Doc tells me its bad for the lungs. Bullshit. I figure, a man like myself doesn’t ask for much in this life. I just want a place to hang my hat, a break for a smoke, and nice prairie to watch the sunset fall on that western sky. Life seems to make a lot more sense at that pace, sunrise and sunset. I suppose I’ve got a lot more years to live, a lot more suns to watch fall. But, its a mad mad world out there. Ain’t no making sense of it.
The sun tucked behind a fluffy white cloud, offering the day’s first gift of shade. “Well boys, lets get back to work”, I shouted to the guys taking a siesta under a tree. And to you, “Remember to keep on, keepin on”.