Apothecarium

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if it was possible to put our feelings into bottles? To distil emotion. To be able to carry them outside of ourselves and experience them as intensely as we choose. What would that be like?

Imagine that, instead of writing a love letter, you could simply spill a drop or two of your love on to the paper. That, on opening that envelope, the recipient would experience all the colour and warmth and musical cadences of your feelings that words could never put across. Imagine that.

But imagine too, what someone with a pitcher full of hatred and anger could do. Imagine dousing someone in emotions so strong and so bitterly dark that they make you feel physically sick. Drowning someone in fury, making them choke on the fumes of greed and jealousy. Imagine the harm it could do.

The innocent happiness of children, the frustrations and fears of parents. The ignorant hatred and misguided anger of those who intentionally harm others. The quiet joy of creating something truly unique, and the fierce blazes of triumph when goals are met and limits surpassed. So many colours and scents and textures arrayed in bottles and jars.

Do you understand the opportunities?

Do you understand the risks?

Will you step forward and take a look at my wares?

I see you already have your eye on one.

Yes, I think some curiosity is just right for you...

Six AM in Smoke

It’s six in the morning and there’s an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a dead woman on the floor. There’s a knife in your hand too, but you didn’t put it there. You were not responsible for this.

Your fingers are limp around the handle, letting it merely lie in your palm. You cannot recall why it is there, or why you are allowing it to stay there, or if any of that really matters because as far as you can tell from here the dead woman was clearly shot instead of stabbed.

You exhale the mouthful of smoke you were holding. The cigarette in your fingers has burned down almost to nothing, but you take another pull on it anyway. You are unsure of many things; where you are, who this dead woman was, why you are holding a seemingly unrelated knife and whether there will be any more cigarettes after this one is finished.

The empty bottle of whiskey seems less important. You were never a fan of whiskey.

Dimly, you become aware of the sound of sirens somewhere outside. It seems an appropriate sound until you realise that it is moving away from you, not towards. Silence settles back over the room and you exhale another cloud of smoke. The cigarette finally falls apart into warm ash that coats your fingers. You continue staring at the ceiling.

Somehow, you know you should be feeling more than this. Sluggish memories of the time before are surfacing, but they are lacking in the appropriate emotions. You do not remember how or when you got here, but that this is a cheap motel on the outskirts of a city that you don’t know. You recall that this knife you are holding was used to cut the phone line in this room, but you don’t know who used it, or why. You don't know what happened to the gun that must have been there. You don’t know why you are inside this room, how you got here, or why you are still alive while that other woman is dead.

Perhaps it is to do with that needle that’s lying on the nightstand next to the bottle. Yes, perhaps that’s the reason you don’t remember, and the reason that all you really know for certain is that there is an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, a dead woman on the floor, and a knife and a pile of ashes in your hands.