गांजा

His teary third eye had begun speaking for the first time since he was three. The lack of restraint was prominent as words gushed out of the orifice on his forehead. He said he could see me. My lies, my kinks, my avarice, my pride. He called me a martyr in my struggle against unidealistic ambition and self-righteousness. A closeted bastard of shame. A disgrace to my priesthood, amongst many things.

Fifteen minutes ago, we had yielded to a strange cloud that pervaded our space. The janitor could see it stream out of the ventilation. The nerds on our wing had shut their windows and retreated. The mist that draped the corridors after dinner met our air outside, creating a fearsome haze. Some nights could never treat us with a calmer passion than this.

I was sat on the edge of the bed, helping him unravel as gently as possible. His face was smeared with all kinds of euphoria I was not familiar with. I skipped his turn with the filtration pipe as he sat up, coughing. Bloodshot eyes gleaming under the strobe lights. Someone lay prostrate on the bed next to ours, their fingers mimicking a heartbeat on grimey metal. The tapping pursued the night.

Two skinny brothers sat across us, their spines fused against the walls. I could hear desperate beer bottles jump to their deaths outside our window. The chirp of the crickets, low whirr of the heater and a boisterous chorus from our adversaries upstairs. The captain had been concocting his potion to a deadlier composition by then, urging me to pass it along. I considered our collective urgency and helped.

He belched when the smoke left his body and slumped back down the bed again. In an instant, he grabbed me by the neck and announced that I was a covert homosexual. That our bodies had been sticking against each other for too long for him to not notice. That my concern for his health and general petiteness was effeminate and aided his conviction. I remember making no efforts to dispel accusations and instead shot him with my finger gun, straight at his heart.

The night slowly gnawed away at our patience. The captain began pelting shards of broken glass back at the gods above. His finger bled for his follies. It stirred a verbal row. An exchange of pleasantries in mutual stupor. Until a banging on the door brought us to our feet. The captain led the party out for a scuffle. I stayed rooted to the bed, right next to him.

He was oblivious to the world. The smoke had perforated him just enough. He sat up wheezing, opened his eye again and continued. He said music was a living being. A fascinating creature that had possessed me since birth. But that I treated it the same way I treated everyone else, never knowing better. He said I bet heavily on my computer fingers and flawed sense of speech for a prospectful future. But that what I really desire is fleeting and untenable, for it does not exist. The likes of me, who are inexplicably in love with desolation will eventually perish. He illustrated this by talking about his dead grandfather. A soldier, who like many other soldiers, had seized the enemy’s women and killed for agenda, meeting a fateful end years later.

I felt tears streak down my cheeks as I stood up with apprehension at what he said. At the nature of his blatant analysis of me and this life. I was confused, disturbed and devoid of words.

The captain returned with the rest of his cronies, looking spic and span save their swollen skulls and bruises. He turned up the volume of the disastrous phonk on the bluetooth speakers to drown out their cursing and got back to business. The tapping on the metal was still strong. The pipe was being passed around as if the night was still young. I saw him lay back on the bed, breathing in the atmosphere. It wasn’t long before the reappearing smoke demanded its presence felt. That was when I realised the night would never end.