Another Whiskey for the Final Time

"We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey." - Kenji Mayazawa

I sat on the uncomfortable bar stool and ordered another whiskey. While I waited, I spun the cheap, plastic coaster around and around 'til I heard an annoyed harumph to my left. I stopped and slouched down even more and started to hit my chin on my fist, blinking with each thump. 

'Here you are, Miss,' the bartender smiled at me kindly. I grimaced back. I plopped a lime into my drink and watched it bob, half green, half golden. I sighed, the same way you do.

Did.
I hate the past tense.

My eyebrows furrowed, further. I took a long drag through the straw and then chucked it out of the drink. I had no desire to guzzle it, though. Whiskey is a slow sipping poison and I wanted to draw out the burning.

I set the drink down and turned my eyes to the TV above the bar, zeroing in on headlines. I'd been so out of touch that Kim Jong-un could have acquired both Koreas and yuan officially the new dollar, yet I wouldn't have known. Catching the date on the top right of the screen, I saw it had only been 4 days. Well, maybe just the Korea thing, then. I tried to give half a fuck about the world's ever crumbling state and the terrorist attacks of the day, but it didn't work. Remarkably selfish is the nature of pain. I started playing with the laminated edge of a menu card, watching a celebrity show. Keeping up with God knows what.

My benefactor announced last call, and I realized the time. The pain boiled in my stomach, churning, nauseating me. Hitting me slowly and then all at once, the breath was quite literally knocked out of me. "Fuck," I muttered as my vision blurred. Hot and wet around my eye, I brushed away every teardrop refusing to let it etch a path down my face. My heart was pounding with the weight of death, who clutched it as it fought to keep beating. Hands shaking, I drained my glass. I shivered as the cool ice brushed my intoxicated lips. It wasn't the time that knocked me cold, it was what it meant. While I sat in this inconsequential bar, the time alerted me that you had completed your last journey; you were mortal no more. The finality of it all crushed me.

Settling my tab, I left the bar and hailed a cab. Hanging my head back, the whiskey ran its course through my blood. My brain was telling me I was drunk and my heart took like a hummingbird, still fighting cold clutches. I can keep fighting, but I'm going to have to give in. I'm going to have to let the cold win. It already has. You, my dearest dilettante, are past. You're past, and the future is vacant.

2 Bowls & A Thin Crust Pepperoni

  

The well contained flame burned blue as the green in the bowl burned an angry orange. The glass cylinder filled with thick, white smoke and I readjusted my lips, sucking even harder. My lungs filled with the taste of a sour, bitter smoke and my mouth watered as I welcomed that familiar sensation. I covered the hollow, glass tube with my hand and leaned back, swirling it in my mouth and letting the smoke escape through my teeth. I watched it climb up and dissipate, leaving only a pungent smell behind. This process repeated itself 3 more times around the room, each person one by one leaning back and succumbing to the sensations.

Vaguely I realized somebody asking me a question – if I wanted food, I think it was – and I could barely murmur a no. I heard a one sided phone conversation and caught the words ‘thin crust pepperoni’ and then the musical notes of an Xbox turning on. Somebody was opening up Netflix and putting on a comedy show. I sunk further into the couch and put my feet up, thinking to myself how they were so light and that it was a wonder I didn’t float away when I walked. Somebody also had had the energy to roll, and held two fingers up to my mouth. I took it and lit it up, my eyes observing every flame that licked the thick paper, burning slowly. The slow burning paper lengthened out every drag I took and I could distinctly taste the wood pulp paper. “Stop using this shit paper,” I told no one in particular as I passed it on. “It’s hard to find anything better on short notice,” no one in particular replied. “Especially when it’s so fucking cold outside. I’m not gonna walk so far to get the good stuff.” I shrugged in agreement and leant back again, giving in to the haze.

It was a shit couch but I could not recollect when I had last been so comfortable. It’s strange because I normally walk around thinking I don’t know a fucking thing, but right now, I know everything. I am Yoda. I giggled to myself. It was like the black hole thousands of lights years away was right at my fingertips and I climbed in to the tunnel. I was vastly insignificant – a millionth the size of a speck of dust in infinity but I held 14 billion years on my fore fingertip. Every seemingly important thing faded away into oblivion. There was nothing, and it felt fucking fantastic. I was shuttling out into space at the speed of light and just as I was beginning the descent into the rollercoaster, I pulled back and began shuttling again. As it teased me again and again and I lurched again and again, I took control of the rollercoaster. I plummeted down vertically through eons of blackness. I slowly unclenched my fists when I realized that there would be no big crash – there was no end. I could do this forever. I came down from the peak and mellowed out into a trough. Fuuuck. I exhaled. 

Abruptly opening my eyes, I scanned the room. I picked it up from the littered coffee table, and filled up the bowl again. Rummaging my pockets for a lighter, I burned every bit of the green away again. It was like the smoke burned away through the bullshit. The TV, the wall, the house behind it, the road, the trees, the lights, the people, the noise – it all fucking burned away and all that was left was the awesome, infinite blackness. And again I was blown into it, simultaneously frozen and falling. I had no weight and I was nothing. I was a part of this blackness and I had no beginning or end. I just was. A human sensation recalled me back to the containment of the four walls again. “When is the pizza getting here?” I asked. “We’ve been waiting for over an hour.” Somebody laughed. “It’s been 5 minutes, man,” they said. “Here, build up an appetite.” I took the thin, little thing again and this time I could see even more hues in the burning paper. As soon as I stopped trying to see, I saw so much more.

I am shuttling through this vast emptiness that has or is absolutely nothing but it makes me understand everything. There is no bad here, there is only my happy place. Just before the doorbell rang. I remember thinking to myself, “I wanna be this high when I die.” Maybe I said it out loud, ‘cause the delivery guy spoke up. “Maybe, but eat this pizza first,” and I laughed.