Something Nice

The rims of my eyes glow diablo red from years of asphalt beds, bottom-shelf whiskeys, and unempathetic strangers. At least this is what my reflection tells me, a reflection of an empty man in a piss puddle in the gutters of some shit stain town. The preacher at the shelter said God would come into my life. Never did. Guess I can’t blame him.

Guess I’ve got no one to blame but myself. They tried to help me. Friends. Family. Couldn’t stay on the wagon. Or didn’t want to. I never could take this life sober; I don’t know who would try.

I’ve got a liter of the good stuff sloshing around in my rancid guts, fueling me like coal does a steam locomotive. I totter through the streets with dragon-breath fumes. The town folk keep their distance, faces scrunched in disgust. They don’t affect me. I’ve fallen too far, become too numb to feel shame. To feel anything.

I was in love once. Best girl I’d ever met. She left me for some prick with money. Hadn’t seen her in years. She passed through town not too long ago, and I asked if she remembered me. She said that I smelled of shit. And that was it. Never gave a damn what the rest of the world thought, but when she gave up on me, I knew it was over.

A vapory spectre shoots from my lips, into the frigid air. Withered leaves crunch like bones beneath my feet. In the eye of October looms the threat of winter. I can’t take another one of those. No, this will be my last. I’d wanted to do it earlier, but the path was clouded. There isn’t enough booze on earth to stop my heart, and this one-story town doesn’t provide a single skyscraper to leap from.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve had enough with the ruminations of a pathetic old drunk. I’m almost there. Lake Superior. I do hope it’s quick. I hope the coldness of it all paralyzes my body, and I pass out from shock. I hope the great body swallows me whole and doesn’t spit me out.

It’s only appropriate such an insignificant creature should hurl himself into such a vast expanse. So I can be forgotten without a fuss. A speck of sand in the hourglass of the universe, passing to the other side without anybody noticing. I do hope they use an old picture for the obituary. I do hope they find something nice to say.