Stray Country - Season 1 - A Carousel For Pigs - Chapter 11

Just exactly how many cigarettes does it take to kill you?

 

Most smokers lose count.  But they say there's a guy in the sky who is counting.  Who will never lose count.  And they say come death there'll be a scoreboard of sorts, where a man or a woman or a person's life will be tallied-up and measured.  Something, perhaps, not too dissimilar to the witches calculus, hen-scratches and check-marks it takes to get a loan from a bank.  Where all your human activity is quantified, measure and weighed.  Where people are distilled into ones, zeros and decimal points to determine who gets into Heaven and who gets turned away.

 

Whether or not that is all true is irrelevant.

 

Because there's also another guy in the sky counting.  Perhaps a woman.  A person, up in the heavens but not as far north as God.  Somewhere on the 26th floor.  Philip Morris Building - 120 Park Ave.  These are people counting just how many cigarettes it takes to kill someone.  They have an answer.  A very specific number. 

 

I won't claim to know the number.  But, I can promise you one thing -  

 

That number isn't one.