Interlude: The Shadows of Smoke
Eugene leaned against the crumbling edge of the rooftop, his pink vape dangling idly in one hand. The strawberry-sweet vapor curled around him as he spoke, his words measured, deliberate, almost like a lecture given to an invisible audience.
"Let us consider life," he began, his tone mocking the weight of his words. "Imagine, if you will, that existence is a vapor. Not a river, as the poets might claim—flowing and endless—but a puff of smoke. It rises briefly, swirls in unpredictable patterns, and then dissipates, leaving nothing behind. The first truth: it is beautiful only for a moment."
He took a slow drag, exhaling the pink mist and watching it vanish into the night. "The second truth: it is fragile. Try to grasp it, and it evades you. Try to hold onto it, and it slips through your fingers. We call this evasion 'freedom.' How clever we are to rebrand our helplessness."
Eugene shifted, his gaze fixed on the fractured skyline. "But the cruelest truth? It is pointless. Smoke cannot be captured, cannot be owned, cannot be preserved. Yet we chase it. We tell ourselves stories, build towers to honor the impermanent, give names to the nameless. All to distract ourselves from what we already know: it will fade."
He turned the vape in his hand thoughtfully. "Plato spoke of shadows on the cave wall, illusions we mistake for reality. But even he underestimated the absurdity. We are not merely deceived by shadows—we create them. We convince ourselves that the swirling smoke has shape, has meaning, has permanence. And when it dissipates, we blame the wind."
Eugene chuckled, low and humorless. "So, what then? Do we stop chasing? Sit idly and watch the vapor swirl? Perhaps. But even that act becomes a performance. The pursuit, the apathy—it's all the same. Motion for the sake of pretending we exist."
He raised the vape to his lips one last time, the artificial sweetness filling his lungs. "And so we dance," he said, exhaling a final plume of pink mist. "Not because we believe it matters, but because the alternative is silence. And silence is the only truth we cannot bear."
The vapor curled into the night, fading into the darkness like the fleeting shadow of a thought.