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.