Cant

“So.”

“Quite.”

“The pigs are loose?”

“And greased.”

“I see,” he released the blue smoke, letting it flow out of him with all his frustrations, as the good leech had told him.

“You’re hitting it hard today.”

He made a point of never answering indirect questions, especially not from a rising puke such as the man across from him was. Instead he dragged at the pipe and chewed the smoke to help him think. He couldn’t see the walls anymore for the thick blue miasma he had created for himself, he could barely see his conversation partner.

“Tell them…” he would work on that, until he was just a bust sticking out of the rolling blue sea, “tell them that the handle has come off and the screw are sheared. We’ll need a cotton wad.”

“Can’t we just kill him?”

The cant had changed in his time, nothing came easy like it used to.