Ω THE LONELY ASHTRAY

Once upon a time a lonely ashtray stood on the bar counter of a bustling club. People used it all night and every night of the week to stub out their filthy cigarettes when they'd done smoking them. All the while drinking and partying late into the night. He was tired of being used like this all the time and being the butt of smokers and drinkers bad habits. The butt of the joke all of his life it seemed. One night a drunk was sitting at the bar counter and using him to stub out his smokes while he drank his beer and laughed with his mates as usual. Soon he was filled to the brim by the very drunk man’s bad chain smoking habit. The drunk looked at him and said, ‘If you could talk I wonder what stories you would tell me old ashtray of mine.’ Much to the drunk man’s surprise the ashtray did answer him out of the blue and said, ‘I would tell you of all the drunk people that abused me and used me to fill me to the brim with their worn out cigarette butts. I would tell you how some of them didn’t make it but died way before their time because of that bad old habit. I would tell you that smoking and partying too much never paid off for any man. A sure way to a sad end.’ Then the ashtray fell silent as soon as it had started talking. The drunk was baffled but being intoxicated tried to ignore what had just happened to him. But the next morning when he awoke with a big hangover he remembered the talking ashtray and what it had said to him. Was he just imagining it all or was it indeed the ashtray of bad Karma? Either way he wasn’t taking any more chances, he quit smoking that very same day and never looked back. Somewhere on a lonely bar counter the old ashtray was smiling. Another one bites the dust.