Читать книгу One Night in Copan: Chronicles of Madness Foretold Tales of Mystery, Fantasy and Horror - W. E. Gutman - Страница 15

THE LONGEST NIGHT

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams

no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe

Smokers rebel. Segregated, sneered and coughed at -- “ours is an unreasoned, even absurd pleasure,” they fume, “but it shall not be abrogated.”

“Smokers may well have the right to smoke,” nonsmokers retort, “but that entitlement deprives us of our right not to inhale their foul exhalations.”

Intoxicated by their own emissions, if not by their disregard for the well-being of others, smokers reject their nemeses’ argument as “capricious and arbitrary.” Citing the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence which, they insist, endows them with certain inalienable rights, they counter that smoking is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Sensing free publicity, the Environmental Protection Agency promptly sides with nonsmokers in hopes of diverting attention from its own hazy record.

Arguing that the smoker vs. nonsmoker issue is constitutionally insoluble, the Supreme Court recesses for an afternoon nap.

Smokers keep puffing in designated areas where it is still tolerated, thanks to civil libertarians who would gladly lay down their own lives to protect a smoker’s right to die of heart disease, emphysema or lung cancer. Evenhandedness often leads to absurdity.

Fights erupt. Spontaneous demonstrations turn out ugly crowds in cities around the world, all barking savage insults and threats.

In the City of Brotherly Love an angry roar rises from the mob. All heads turn in unison toward the third-floor landing of a once-elegant townhouse. At the end of a rope suspended from a flagpole flying Old Glory, bound together like ham-hocks, dangle the cadavers of a man and a woman caught smoking in defiance of an ordinance prohibiting such activity within city limits. Stirred no doubt by feelings of altruism, anti-smoking vigilantes had rammed a fistful of cigarettes down their throats.

A few bury their faces, horrified or overcome with shame. Others flee the ghastly scene, vomiting in their tracks. The rest, their qualms flaking away like dead bits of conscience, keep looking in mute fascination.

Wholesale persecution soon follows.

In Los Angeles, the police purge smokers from their ranks and transfer them to the sanitation corps. Most adjust quite well once they discover the metaphysical connection between police work and garbage.

The earth sizzles with rage. The world goes amok.

In Washington, several legislators who at long last concede that smoking is a deadly addiction countenanced by other legislators because it generates huge taxable revenues -- introduce stiff anti-smoking bills. Others, who refuse to return certain favors graciously extended by the tobacco lobby, are slain.

Tobacco companies respond by making falsehearted anti-smoking pronouncements on television and radio, and in print publications. “Smoking is addictive and dangerous to your health,” their ads proclaim. What is left unsaid is that their factories continue to produce millions of cigarettes -- just in case. Their domestic profits slowly turning to ashes, the tobacco companies now rot the unregulated lungs of the Third World.

Counting more smokers per capita than all other nations combined, Japan and China are decimated. The once-buzzing squadrons of polite bespectacled little chain-smoking shutterbugs wearing awkward little western suits have since gone home and now engage in the gentler pursuit of writing three-line poems, dwarfing trees and carving cricket cages out of matchsticks.

Gays and lesbians are next. The deaf; the color-blind; the morbidly obese; the elderly; the miscegenated. The widowed are summarily executed. Redheads undergo mass sterilization. The albino and the flatfooted perish in a bonfire of condescension. Forced to read Chaucer, dyslexics die a horrible death. Stamp collectors are canceled.

There is no shortage of latent martyrs. Others will surely be found.

Soon, one last wisp of smoke rises from the embers like a pipe dream and scatters in the air for the last time.

I blow out the candle. It will be a long night.