The Cigarette

Tony comes home from a Caribbean cruise to discover something unexpected in his condo.

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Hi, I'm Rob Tale number fifty-three. The cigarette. One of the cooler things that's happened over the years with this podcast is people in my everyday life will listen to it. One of my stories will remind them of a story of their own, and they'll tell me that story. That's the case with today's episode. There's a park I go to a few times a week. There's some people at the park that I've gotten to know over the years, and a few of them listened to the podcast. Recently I was out there, and this guy Tony, he saw me on a trail, walked up to me and said, Hey, I listened to one of your tales the other day, and it reminded me of something that happened to me. I'm not going to tell you which tale because that's a spoiler. He said he had been on a week long cruise, and he got back home into town, went to his condo, where he lived alone and had for the past thirty years, and when he walked inside, he was greeted by the faint smell of cigarette smoke. He had smoked when he was younger, but he didn't anymore. So he walked around his condo and found a mug on his coffee table that had a cigarette butt in it. Somebody had put a cigarette out in this mug. This freaked him out because that means someone had been in his condo while he was on the cruise. It freaked him out so much that he called the police. They showed up, could find no signs of forced entry, asked him if anyone had a key, and he did have a few friends that had keys to his place. So he called all of them and each one of them said they had not been in his condo while he was out of town. And he believed them, but that was really the only possibility, so he just kind of had to let it go. He did have his locks changed, and that made him feel a little better. But then just a couple weeks after that, he woke up and he smelled that faint cigarette smell again. He walked into his kitchen, and there it was, another cigarette butt in a coffee mug on his countertop. This terrified him. Someone comes into your house when you're asleep and leaves evidence that they were there, they are threatening you. He called the police again, they said there's nothing we can do. You should put up a camera. So that's what he did. He got a couple wireless security cameras and set them up so he could see most of his condo. But this was really starting to stress him out. He wasn't sure he could stay there anymore. But what were his options? Stay in a hotel, go stay with a friend. That didn't really feel right either. So he kept sleeping in his condo. And then one night he wakes up and the smell of cigarette smoke is very strong. He knows the person is in the apartment with him. He stays very quiet, but then he feels something on his chest burning. And then he realized he's tasting cigarette smoke. And he looks down and there's a cigarette on his chest. It had just fallen out of his mouth. He was the one that had been smoking. The mug was on his nightstand next to him, and he had no memory of any of this. He had no idea where the cigarettes came from. He didn't remember getting the mug out. Now he was freaked out for totally different reasons. He went to his doctor the next day. They talked about it. It turns out Tony had been having trouble sleeping for a while, and had been prescribed ambient. Ambient can cause people to have these nighttime eating binges where they wake up and food's missing from their refrigerator and they don't realize that they've eaten it. Well the same thing was happening with him, but with smoking cigarettes. It was still confusing because he was like, Where did I get the cigarettes? He looked all over his house and didn't see them anywhere. He checked his new security cameras, but they had not caught him in the act of smoking. When he looked at his credit card bill, he did notice some charges at a gas station, really late at night that he didn't remember. So he was taking the ambient and then sleepwalking to a gas station, buying cigarettes and smoking them. He stopped taking ambient and the night smoking stopped. A few months later, when he was cleaning his bathroom, he took out one of the drawers to clean it, and under the drawer he found the cigarettes in the lighter. And this added another layer. Sleepwalking, smoking Tony had some kind of awareness that he was sleepwalking, and when he went out and bought the cigarettes, he knew he needed to hide them, or that awake Tony would throw them away. Tony was happy that the night smoking was over. He felt some relief. But it wasn't a perfect solution. He wondered why had he not smelled the cigarette until he got back from the cruise? Why didn't he smell it the day he left for the cruise? He assumed that he had gone into this sleepwalk smoking state the night before his cruise, woken up in the middle of the night, smoked a cigarette, and then went back to sleep. But then the next day he left for the cruise and did not notice the cigarette or the cigarette smell. He noticed it when he got back from the cruise. Was he still in that sleepwalking state when he left the house to go on his cruise? And that possibility led to a new kind of existential discomfort for Tony. What else had happened during these sleepwalking sessions? What had it been like to interact with him when he was buying cigarettes? What other weird things did he do? And beyond that, if it was possible for him to have a second waking life without any awareness of it, what other disturbing things was his mind capable of the Rob Tells Tales is produced by me, Rob Tiffen. The cover art is by Marcella Johnson. She also came up with the title of the podcast. Our theme music is by Mitchell Hardic. Thanks to Ben, Gordon, Marcella, and Melanie, who are always there to bounce ideas around. You can find us on Instagram and at robbtellstales.