He held the cheap butane lighter down in the pipe, inhaling deeply as the flame kissed the blackened debris. The air he sucked through the brass contraption was warm and tasted of ash. A coating of resin and gas flavor in his mouth. A dull orange glow of smoldering particles lit the bell shaped bowl.

“I think it’s cashed,” he said, staring into the darkness of the pipe and exhaling a cloud of smokey breath into the freezing night air. The cold was affecting his trip. Icy fingers were tickling his spine, working winter magic on his acid soaked brain, and steering him towards the dark thoughts. A second stretched on into the infinite. His mind spinning in a cyclical loop of intense concentration, revelations, scattered attentions, and chaotic madness before it folded back onto itself to begin again. The full moon emerged from a cloud like a giant glowing eyeball that had passed through some ethereal jelly in the black sky. Some distant watcher in the heavens which gazed upon man’s nighttime transgressions.