Adrian’s folly

Wrote this in two hours on a challenge to myself.

Adrian’s Folly

March 10th 2024.

Last Edited -April 4th 2024

Adrian saw the bigger picture, and he didn’t care. He had read the stats (actually, he had sort of skimmed them) and he still wasn’t bothered. A goal’s a goal, and Adrian was a stubborn bastard whenever you didn’t need him to be. Even if the achievement, the medal, the literal end goal was him dying, no one could talk his mind off course. That mountain of ground herb, five times his height and three his width, allured him. 

“Any old fool can die of alcohol poisoning,” he would remark, rolling his wrists with disinterest. “I’ll be the first to go of marijuana poison.” Then, he always grinned like he had stolen money right out of your wallet and you were never to be the wiser.

It took him a year and a month to acquire the goods. Another for the equipment and staff but hey that’s for later. One thousand+ pounds of ground, serviceable yerba is hard to come by, mas dificil que parar la Luna en su piscina negra. No seeds, no stems, nothing that’d kill him to inhale. Because of course, it wouldn’t count if it was anything other than his vice of choice that did him in. 

First he tried his usual guy. But, and no offense to the man, he was small time. He was just some chump by a dumpster handing scamming anyone he thought was a little too stupid. He provided one pound. Normally, far too expensive for any regular enjoyer to purchase. I think it went for something like a thousand united states dollars, back in the day that is of course. Adrian, again, didn’t give one. He was going to die at the end, and he had no one to leave anything too and nothing he really wanted to be left. Every last cent he had was going towards this ‘project’. As for housing, food, heat and all that stuff…I let him live with me. It’s the least I could have done for his brothership I suppose. 

Adrian quickly learned he had to move up the line. But no supplier is itching to tell you just who sells them their product for cheaper than you buy it. So Adrian took to what the law might refer to as stalking. It didn’t take more than a few days of waiting for him to get a lead. He went missing for a week and a half, we all thought he had gotten shot up by some don with a low temper. Instead, a satisfied customer rolled back up the driveway with a few dozen pounds in his trunk, ‘disguised’ by some loose tarps. I told him he couldn’t store it in my home, and he understood. So he bought a warehouse just outside the city. 

Over the next rotation he hauled in cart after cart of weed and dumped it in the center of that warehouse, slowly piling it up. When he had his half ton all air conditioned and guarded by blinking cameras he finally set about being able to smoke it.

This is when people really started to argue. No one really thought he’d rustle up one thousand pounds of plant matter, further no one expected him to keep going, to keep trucking onward; not even flinching or slowing an ounce. But our words bounced off him. Slid off his shield like mud. He never cut contact, never shied away. He’d still go about his daily life and correspondences as usual. But you could always see that lush mountain just behind his eyes. 

The waterpipe was special order. It had to be for that size. Initially, Adrian planned for the thing to hold and smoke his entire hoard at once. The contractors eventually talked him down to half the size, and just two massive hits. It stood like the trunk of a great glass tree, eighty feet high and adorned with twisting stair case to the little glass nipple at the top. There stood a crane by the side to life in a great net the drug, and at least a dozen non-spectating paid assistants. Everyone in the room had signed up and down, no one would snitch. 

And so Adrian invited twelve of us to come view and stand at the base of his monolith. Eight of us showed, myself and one old friend utilizing the phone included. Adrian had asked for no speeches, to go quietly and swiftly into his good night. But once he began his great ascent, those below who loved him blurted our final declarations. We could see, each time he passed around to our side of the pipe, and warped horribly whenever on the other face, that he smiled without a hint of weight to his conscience. 

He sat himself comfortably in the beanbag atop the steel platform. He ruffled his hair, stretched his neck, and gave the signal for the show to begin. Samantha, a dear friend of his and mine, turned to hide her eyes in her hands. I sighed and lay a hand on her shoulder, and watched the small crane heave its load over and into Adrian’s bowl. Five assistants approached on scissor lift to tamp and light the plant. 

Adrian inhaled. One massive heaving breath to culminate his play. Ignoring the pain, the burning, the lifetime of tar screaming for him to stop. The waterpipe filled with smoke. The smoke grew denser and tinted yellow, and Adrian gave the second signal. More assistants came and lifted the bowl and broke the seal. Adrian leaned back down, eyes barely open and redder than hell, and inhaled again. The brick of smoke trapped in the glass suddenly broke free and shot up. Adrian horked it all down with expertise and leaned back in his chair glowing with satisfaction. 

The assistants came to replace his drugs, emptied the ash and readied the crane’s load for the coup de grâce. No signal rose from Adrian. No clenched hand or waving fingers to indicate the go ahead.

He was dead. Already dead. Halfway through and something had just…given out. No one wanted to stay any longer, to stare at his smiling corpse. 

I came home to put his little bed in my basement away, and that was that. Nothing left. His weed left to rot in that now unpowered, abandoned building.