Now or Never (Chapter 1)

(Just some fiction I've been working on. It really has nothing to do with anything going on in my life at the moment.)

It had been a vodka or gin sort of day.

It had been the sort of day where you wake up with not enough sunshine in your eyes and too much darkness in your step. It had been the sort of day where you stub your toe on common day objects like end tables or reclining chairs or maybe the doorway to your own bedroom. It had been the sort of day where you casually steal small flat bottles from liquor store shelves–not big, brilliant, spectacular thievery, but small, pathetic, cowardly lifting. And it had been the sort of day where you drink your flask shaped bottles of bitter alcohol in some dark and dirty alleyway across the street, hiding from your family and friends and rain clouds and sorrows.

It had been a cloudy sort of day – but not the heartbreaking kind. It was the sort of cloudy day where you had nothing better to do but stare out your window and wonder if tomorrow would be like this too, but finding that you didn't quite care in the end. It was the sort of cloudy day where you'd stumble home with your pant knees torn and stained and your shirt untucked and wrinkled, muttering something about politics and society or maybe just the rain and wondering if tomorrow would be like this too, but finding that you were too drunk to care in the end. And it was sort of like a punch in the stomach only numbed by anesthesia, and you find yourself going under shrieking something about the end of the world and life as you know it, in your cold basement, only to wake up later with an empty bottle of vodka or gin between your legs.

Or maybe it was just a numb sort of day and nothing more.

A fat raindrop landed on his arm and exploded into a million droplets all over his skin. His large blue eyes looked up in a sweepingly mechanical movement. Another raindrop plopped unceremoniously onto his cornea and burst all over his sight, breaking, fragmenting, blurring everything.

Maybe is was just a rainy sort of day and nothing more.

He thought of how much he'd like to take a swig of something, anything, right about now. He would take anything biting and bitter that would claw against his throat like nails on a chalkboard as he drank quickly and eagerly and deeply. And he would swish the fire through his mouth in an attempt not to choke, and he would feel the flames sting the back of his tongue where the taste buds were the most tender. And he would hiss like a snake when he finally let the liquid tumble down into his stomach, coating his insides like gasoline just waiting to be ignited. And he would light the fire then, with one sweeping, choking, weeping, trembling sigh that was more a gasp than anything else. And he would feel the flames grow and catch and blacken and kill until the numbness gave way to pain and sorrow and anger and fear.

And the fire would burn until he finally relented and extinguished it with shy, quiet tears veiled beneath curtains of shame and confusion.

And he would wake up the next morning cold and neglected and dead and vomiting life, with his head spinning and his hands shaking and his breath hitching. But he was grateful even for this, because at least it wasn’t nothing.

And only then would he let himself get just a little hysterical.

(End of Chapter 1)