(Another contribution to
this fun new E2 game.)
I'm not sure what I was drinking that night, or even precisely
where I was. There were tables and chairs, and a distinct
lack of ceiling. A beer garden, perhaps, or even a private party that I'd somehow managed to attend. My body was only just barely functioning, reeling its way from place to place with almost no input from my mind. I know that I was both
dreadfully tired and filled with a
boundless energy. It was an almost
religious experience, pushing myself onwards and onwards and onwards, to the very boundaries that one must cross to convert self-
flagellation into self-destruction. I didn't quite manage to cross over that night, although my
nurse assured me that I'd come very close.
There isn't much that I can
remember, but a single conversation remains clear in my mind, every word that was spoken imprinted legibly upon my reel of memory. A fat man in a
business suit had come over and sat next to me while I was doubled over and vomiting profusely.
"Nice night." he said, his voice dreamy and
toneless in my rememberings.
"Yea." was my cultivated reply as I wiped
bile from my lips.
"So what brings you here?"
"Where's
here?"
He laughed, then, with one of those wicked laughs that so clearly displays the
mockery from which all humor derives. His teeth seemed sharp and pointed, cutting into his lips and leaving them a brighter
crimson than they ought to have been. "We'll ignore that for now."
"Fine by me." I was
miserable, but not from the drink. I wanted, desperately, to have something to say to this fearless man with
pointy teeth. My very wish that I could speak
intelligibly was defeating me, and I wasn't happy about it.
"So what do you do?" he asked, lighting up a white-filtered cigarette and
speaking as the smoke caressed his face.
"I'm a
writer."
"Are you now? I wouldn't have guessed", he smirked.
"
Surprising." I couldn't believe it. He was actually
baiting me, subtly mocking me and the
degraded state he'd found me in. I could be a
lunatic,
I could be plotting to kill him at this very moment and he was reducing me to a
cliche. I longed for a
witty response, but none was forthcoming.
"I'm a reader, myself. Much less taxing."
"Fun." I was being
stand-offish, I knew it. I was trying to rid myself of this horrible man, in his impeccable suit with his white cigarettes and his bloody red smile.
"
Are you any good?" he asked, seeming amused.
"Fan-fucking-tastic." I responded, raising my head and looking into his eyes, uttering an old standby gleaned from R-rated movies with the conviction that
it summed up my life. His eyes, though, unnerved me. They were brown, a soft shade, a shade for does and girls, but it was as though the whites held captive the colour, as if his pupils were in a slow state of contraction, gradually being forced out in favour of a uniformly milky hue.
"That's good. I don't much like the bad ones." he grinned again, smoke sneaking out from the corners of his lips and brushing up his pallid skin, a drop of
blood in the cleft of his chin.
"What can you do?" I asked, weary and
rhetorical.
"What
do I do, you mean?"
"Yea, what to you do."
He stood from his chair and drew himself up, uncreased his suit and extinguished his cigarette. "
I eat them by the handful."