The Pipe

Care for a smoke, the true essence of the man I killed, for the sake of revenge? A thirst that was never quenched no matter how many times I plunged in the knife, and by the time, I was done, I smoked it all away, the soul that there remained, locked up in screaming, and now this slow, shrill whirring is the scream of someone who has but an eternity to regret what he did.

Something horrible, I presume, something that is punishable not only in this world but in the next?

Indeed, and there was little doubt in my mind that he deserved it, but there whispers around me. Lo!, again and again, I was told of the horrors of the vengeance that flowed within me. I felt every awoke moment of the day and in any dreamt instant of the night, that it had to be me. That not only death should be one last tentative event of suffering, but the knowledge should be placed in the eyes of the corpse, that it was an agony that they didn’t even they were running away from all of their lives, that I had found them at last. Of course, I was told again and again that pursuing such an act was akin to beheading myself, let go of all purpose, let love abandon me completely.

This smoke is quite good, a haze that clouds the senses I think. But you know that. Does it taste better with the knowledge that you have slain with your fingers, that you have satisfied your curiosity?

It does. In the wrong ways. The tongue fights back as does my conscience. Every day and every night I feel it: the twinge of regret and sadness. Let me tell you that a dying man’s words, the last elegant breathing, the slurring of teeth, that is not easily forgotten. In fact, it can place a curse upon you. But when I smoke it away, it burns along, and it gives me strength and power, the temptation again, in a strange way, that I have the opportunity to do something so heinous, and that I could do it again. But I wouldn’t. Because nothing could free me now and little matters.

Will it ever run out, then? The smoke circles around, it makes shapes.

The screams again. Just think to yourself, if you believe in unfairness. What would drive a man to kill and destroy his own life just to destroy another? What kind of unforgivable acts has he committed to myself that I couldn’t let go. An obsession is easily overcome in the body, but no in the thought, and as such, no matter how many people told me it wouldn’t give me anything I craved, I craved it still. And I got a smoke out of it, a delicate, burning inside me when I think and feel and observe what I did.

Would you do it again? Kill in that way, just to smoke with these screams?

I cannot keep them quiet anymore. I listen to them all the time, but now I when I smoke, I feel like that they are burning in a pyre, as they should have. This is a task for someone who is both weak and strong, of which I am neither, so I cling in a matter that is both inhuman and understandable. While he burns, I live disgracefully, there it is: the price of a man for having failed.