April Flash #25
Based on prompts by Amygdala:
Everything south of Bleeker Street; guy walks into a bar, you cant bottle that
I needed a drink, seriously. The problem was that everything south of Bleeker street in this old, dusty town was even more dusty dingy. Made you feel dirty. Made you feel bad somehow, like everything you knew about yourself was called into question. But it was close, so much closer than anything northerly, so why not. A lot of jokes start this way, dont they? A guy walks into a bar, etc, etc find your own euphemism to go with that. I sat down at the bar which probably hadnt been wiped clean with anything resembling a cleaning product, unless you count spilled alcohol, in decades. I wanted something hard something that would burn going down and pool in the pit of my stomach maybe congeal with the remnants of stress, guilt and worry that were rolling around in there. I ordered a double shot of Whiskey. Straight. That wasnt a kick that was a 1-2 punch. I fought and resisted the urge to double over on the bar stool, feeling its narrow surface was a stake waiting to impale me should I shift in the wrong direction. The splinters were already getting a good start. I sat and stewed in my misery for a moment. My stomach was riding its own roller coaster while I was sitting still. I thought about lots of things, that afternoon. Thought about being trapped in a not-quite untruth, but not quite truth. Thought about all the things I should have said, but couldnt. Thought about wishes that I thought might come true, but didnt. Thought about possibilities that seemed at one point to be endless, and now seemed to be dropping off the edge of a ledge and I just couldnt run fast enough to catch them. More whiskey. I clutched a fist to my gut, either to keep the drinks down or to hold the anxiety at bay, looking up at the cracked, patched and plastered ceiling as if looking for a sign from the almighty that there was a way out of this mess. There were water spots up there. Yellowish orange, filtering through the cracks like a sunny ray of light. I sighed, emphatically. Figures. A drop landed on my head. Funny. I ordered one more shot for the road this one mixed with the anxiety like a beast, but oil and water are not supposed to merge that way. Liquid courage. The heady, yet dizzy belief that everything was somehow going to be okay, that I would find an answer, however unlikely that magical patchwork would work. I puffed my chest out like a man, shook my head and smiled. This was why people drank, I thought. And really for all the stuff you can get out of these distilled spirits of those so much stronger than we are how it makes you feel if you drink enough of it you cant bottle that.
new prompts: klutzy catastrophe; chasing the wake; dreams and disasters