EPT"Hello, John," was the rejoinder from a chorus of like voices. "We are very happy to have you here with us today, John. We hope we can help you quit smoking."
"Yes." Said John the Demon. "It is tragically difficult for a demon to quit smoking. First of all nicotine is even more addictive, even without the added chemicals in traditional cigarettes. I don't smoke cigarettes. I'm a pipe smoker. But even as a pipe smoker who orders out for his tobacco, sometimes going as far as to go beyond the sea to obtain an ounce or two of high quality pipe weed. What makes it difficult for a demon to quit smoking is that among demons the use of pipe weed is a storied tradition passed down from the generations. Every great demon of my clan has smoked once in his life. The other factor that makes it so difficult to quit smoking is that we like the instruments used in this pursuit. Demons to a man experience a marked aesthetic pleasure to behold the appendages of tobacco inhalation. There is nothing as fine as the long curved stem, appended to the pipe end, with the mouthpiece, the concentrically curved disc, the accompanying sigil, the masterfully cut wood. Even a cigarette, with its thin fuselage, tufted and feathered elongation of stuffing, rough and dry skin, wistful and comprehensible body, taste, odor, and insufflation, so perfectly remiss on a bright sunny day, or one's own perfect company under overcast skies. There is nothing like smoking for the mind of a demon, which sees so clear under ordinary circumstances, and affords so few lusty pleasures when sojourning on some wistful pastime."
"Yes, John. There have been some hard cases here before. You are far from the first Demon to visit these parts. You can call me Marren." These syllables were uttered by a tall, gaunt man with a grisled beard reaching down to his xiphoid process and just about half as wide as the lateral curves of his pectoral muscles. "Put yourself at ease about the means of your approach. Everyone here is a Demon, a former Demon, or a man of troubled conscience looking to experience some revelation about the use of tobacco and how it can be bad for one's health."
John the Demon looked thoughtfully at the pale fall of light across a ragged pair of leather boots. A long tear in the right boot was sewn up with stitches on either side of a jagged line about a centimetre across. The left boot had a square patch of greenish fabric across its mauve exterior. The patch was above the nose just along the flat of the foot. The light made the patch stand out at the height of the foot. The boots had thick, black rubber bottoms which looked like they might elevate the feet above most standing puddles. John the Demon observed the wearer of these boots to shift in a four-legged chair with a brass bottom. He introduced himself as Quon.
"I gave up smoking my vaporizer five years ago. It had an orange cylindrical chamber about ye high." Quor pinched his fingers together leaving an inch and a half in between. "I used to fill it with the damned liquid, whatever I could get, and nothing with no THC in it either. Just straight nicotine, clear like morphine ready to into the vein. Nothing better than them little ethereal clouds puffing out from your mouth when you take a little draw on the end of it. Like straight sucking the nozzle of a Super Soaker, big reservoirs empty of soapy water, all sopping wet from playing with your friends. Of course, I don't know how it is for a Demon growing up, I imagine you've got it a lot harder with no Super Soakers or anything like that. You probably guessed already that I'm just a man with a troubled conscience. Least I was."
"Thanks for sharing, Quon," Said Marren. Marren's appraising eyes beheld the ragged silver locks drifting down to the middle of Quon's back, the weird lighting of the otherwise empty cantina casting highlights down Quon's grizzled mane. "Vaporizers are the worst of all. There's nothing more tempting than those shiny pistols brimming full of toxic chemicals." Marren's eyes were steady on John the Demon as he spoke. John's searching mind reminisced on his own vaporizer. It had been nice in a pinch. No fire, just an innocuous fluid inside a glass tube. John the Demon preferred the Dragon's Blood flavor, but when he couldn't get that John would settle for Aqua del Sol.
"I never owned a vaporizer," John the Demon said solemnly, expecting with clandestine certainty that his Demonic power would, as it always did, erase any doubt from the minds of his audience as to his veracity. "The underworld is stuck in the late 1800's with the advent of smoking apparatus, and besides I don't think any demon worth his salt would be willing to part with one given the relative scarcity of currency."
"It's good you never owned a vaporizer." Said the other demons, half-demons, and converts. John espied a familiar face, a young man with pinpricks of light in his eyes, falling just outside the pupils. The man had dark irises and wore a tight-fitting vest over a long-sleeved silk shirt. The outfit had a big collar fuzz, like something from the Renaissance happened its way to front and center, except it wasn't frilly and stood up a bit. The fabric around the man's waist was tight-fitting and tapered all the way down to his ankles. John the Demon remembered this young man's name to be Rolero, and that he was a full-fledged Demonic Understudy. John had politely made Rolero's acquaintance at a dinner party last autumn just before a Demonic Queen took her leave. John the Demon thought back on how the bright candelabras had expired and the room had been cast in darkness. John the Demon had scarlet irises of which he was very proud, and which illumined dark spaces, so John the Demon was very thankful for the customary blackness into which Demonic Gatherings so often absolved themselves. John the Demon imagined he had made a fantastic impression upon the impressionable, young Rolero when the lights died and his eyes blazed like twin suns.
"I have in my time owned many cigars, humidors, cigarettes, cigarillos, canisters of tobacco, rounds of nicotiana rustica, snuffs, and experimental strains. So I do not wholly absolve myself of life without the pipe."
"Life without the pipe." John the Demon's audience murmured quietly. John the Demon kept his eyes focused on Marren. They were seated in a broad circle on stools with four or five legs, the bar by the door was empty of patrons.
"Yes. The pipe is as they say nearly empty. I have at length ceased my consumption of dry leaves." John the Demon thought idly on the proclivities of his audience. "Like most of you, I just want a friend. I remember making the acquaintance of our comrade Rolero several seasons hence last year. It was a fine occasion, one fit for the Matron of the Damned. All the top brass was there and several tubas as well." John the Demon surveyed his audience chuckled heartily at this. "Rolero had made such a fine first impression upon an unimpeachable bunch, and at the same time succeeded in catching the eye of Mademoiselle Lestrene, who I must admit is no stranger. When I muse upon the lovely character of our impeccable youth it never fails to impress upon me how urgently I must divorce myself of the habits of smoking."
John the Demon smiled inwardly. The Mademoiselle Lestrene came from an illustrious family no doubt. But the Mademoiselle herself was an invalid when it came to necessities of hell. Although due to grooming she admitted no outward trace of her infirmity, doubtless if the amorous gestures of Rolero bore fruit, he would inevitably discover the unsuitable character of the Mademoiselle. John drew a hand to his fastened collar. A long tie in a double Windsor hung to just below his navel, the finery he wore and his black suit cut a ravishing image in the darkness. "Life itself is a grand mirror, gentlemen. Such a bold proclamation as our own does credit to the good-breeding and excellent manners of our company. Look no further than the lapel and one sees the soul of a Demon. But the fetid stink of tobacco on the breath, and the hint of yellowing of the fangs undoes each a handsome lad whose prospects otherwise reach the heavens."
As his name was uttered Rolero stepped forward into the relative light at their center. "Yes, long have I imagined myself the friend of Mademoiselle Lestrene, and seeking some further guidance of a providential figure did I endeavor to ingratiate myself to John the Demon, who I must concede I did not anticipate encountering at such a lackluster convening. Indeed scarcely have I beheld John the Demon before this moment if it should come to pass that John the Demon indulges in such foibles as the tobacco that is our common purpose. I should have appraised John as a connoisseur of the finest colognes with fangs bearing a trace of yellow from the consumption of excellent proteins and a refinement of manner which indicated the enjoyment of the finest spirits, whiskies and rums. It was indeed myself present before the Matron of the Damned, and as in all things I sought to represent my humble personage to the universal approval of my host. I scarcely know what to say now that John the Demon is here in person."
"Why, my good Rolero nothing at all is the most perfect gift of eloquence." John straightened himself and making his way to where the young Rolero stood before them, clapped the young Understudy on the shoulder, and addressed his fellow tobacco-addicts. "Yes, it is unfailingly true that I stand before you today abashed, if somewhat uncertain of the future. It is not uncommon for such esteemed gentleman as myself to find to his utter chagrin that we stand in the same place as Mr. Rolero, and yet excuse ourselves with none of his talent and grace."
"There was once a venerable vampire, self-styled after the fleeting high fashion of the previous century who walked with the tips of his inner toes pointing slightly together, which they said was a consequence of a swimming habit. For this vampire whose name was Floyd was something of an aquatic. Floyd became the captain of a seafaring vessel whose fellow mariners called him 'Monsieur F.' after his habit of floundering about in the water and also as a commentary on his name which was Floyd. They say that Floyd had a bottomless stomach and would have drunk dry the life blood of the Earth as a seafaring man might drink dry a coconut's milk if perchance the captain would let him ashore for a day."
"And it happened that during the long nights, that Floyd rose up in his astral body and convened with the sacred church of the occult whose hidden recesses are forbidden to mortal eyes. And that Floyd feasted upon the sacred sacrament of virgins, whose large and timid eyes, pale skin and coquettish temperament appeased the turmoil of Floyd's soul. That Floyd had the long, flowing locks of his Nordic ancestors, and in craftsmanship and prowess with a blade, Floyd enjoyed the unrivaled sovereignty of ancient kings. It was said that Floyd would fly from the prow of his vessel, and like the soaring bat draw blood in a tempest from the barbaric hordes who he drove before him. Like fattened pigs Floyd's enemies would be greeted with a plenitude of slaughter, and upon his daggers stood a host of eyes like planets in their orbit. Upon the hefty blades of his axes, the blood would run like a crimson screen, and Floyd would gouge the innards and intestines from the human midriff with a thousand swords screaming in the night."
"But once upon a time it happened that a lonely cigarette was presented to Floyd the vampire from a wayward pauper, a man certainly without destiny. And like the rags in which he was clothed, the pauper's offering was a curse. The blood in Floyd's veins was poisoned, the oxygen in his lungs turned stale. The perfect form of Floyd the vampire collapsed, yielding all of its awesome might, in one final and horrifying gasp. So that naught was left but a crystalline brooch which had hung like a pendant at Floyd's collar. Embroiled in black fumes, Floyd's garments tumbled to the stony ground, and his armaments and armors emitted curling smoke of the damned. In a folded pile there lay the cloth and the metal which once had beheld Floyd the vampire. The pauper and his cigarette had done their worst." John the Demon nodded sagely. "It is not only happenstance, but the evils of tobacco which caused Floyd's downfall. Therefore do we caution such impressionable youth as Rolero against the ills which have plagued our indiscretion since the dawn of time."
