The Time it Takes to Smoke a Cigarette-Part 3-The ashes

the conclusion to macabre and somewhat pointless vision or so it may seem

This time I was on vacation when I had the next vision. As my story unfolds so do I. A friend had accompanied me to sunny Florida for a little rest and relaxation. Why I ever came to this horrendous state I will never know( How about why I kept going back) Anyways, we had been having nights like I usually don't remember, tearing it up and forgetting the real world. We stumbled upon this late bar, at about 2 am, deciding to have a beer. (Like we needed another) All I can remember, it is amazing that I can remember anything, is that this bar was unusually packed and at least 50% of the patrons were women. I had been sitting at this table, transfixed by this blondes a*s, playing pool, and then it was the ashtray that started the whole thing. The ashes appeared to just float out of the tray and form together, as a puzzle, with colored added shortly after. A movie began playing and I was the lead actor. It was an older apartment, say 50s era, a crack house, if you will. Tattered and beaten, like your author, paint chipping off the wooden floors and walls.Even an ancient, footed bathtub in the bathroom. You get the picture. There was your humble storyteller, making love to a woman on the floor of a shaky livingroom. Music pumping to clue a fact that nothing could be heard of the man slinking up the stairs with an ax. A rotund, bearded man in his early 30s who proceeds to swing his ax like a windmill and bludgeon us to pieces, stopping only to wipe his eyes of our entrails. Truly the most horrific vision of my life, though I sit, unfazed with my cigarette burning my finger in this celestial bar. The puzzle of ashes shifts and reforms again. This vision clearly states a little meaning as I watch helpless and unflinching. Just the agonizing sound of children burning in their beds and the smell of flesh charring my nostrils. I really don't think I can stand more of this. I try to break my concentration but to no avail. I saw Jesus for a moment and he kind of resembled me. Oh, that is I, tied to a tree, being beaten by a stick the size of my arm! No bigger! My hooded aggressors stop and remove their garb to reveal corporate executives. They stare helpless and trancelike at the stars above. I feel a sharp pain and hear a tear coming from inside me as I feel my lungs explode, one at a time, as they smile. Clapping has since taken over their grim smiles and my pain subsides as I can no longer breathe but just bleed heavily. What otherwise unworldly gods could create such harm? Are they not human? I know humans to show some compassion! The executives turn to me and wave. I catch the words 'greed' written on the front of their shirts before they trot away like pigs to a slaughterhouse. I look down in my last moments of conscious moments to see my Lucky Strikes lying unscathed by these heartless b******s. My only friend or worst enemy? Are they the cause? Needless to say, I doubted I would smoke ever again. maybe my cigarettes were trying to tell me something or my luck just struck and way I would go. Needless to say, it would be the first night I would remember in a long time.