Faust

Phobetor

I switch the record to the side B and tune the volume down a bit. Putting the pistol on the porch and the pretty wooden box on bookshelf on my way upstairs again. From afar or near, it looks like a cigarette box.

      Walking past the branching chandelier on the padded staircase to closet. I slide the extra mag of the 9mm into the slot of my shoulder holster before hanging it back on the hanger.

        As I turn around, finally free from the course of nuisances I'm left in my own element. My eyes drift to the empty inhaler on the table and my mind to the bag of canisters downstair.

      The weight on my chest isn't getting better throughout the day. Like a train without proper lubing and maintenance, to eventually derail.

So I toss another cigarette in my mouth, light it up leading to a dryness at the root of my tongue. So I walk back downstairs to the repeating lyrics with the tone of a man as high as a skyscraper or slept in the studio last night.

"I'm beginning to see the light...."
       Funny, me too. It's right behind the swine bottle standing above the stool.

Not in the mood for delicate work. I open the cabinet to grab one of the biggest containers that can still pass as a whiskey glass and have it swallow Polish vodka to feed it to me.
         ***

       The song goes round and round, the cigarette burned shorter than my pinkie and the glass emptied and filled. Cold fire left its mark in the depths of my throat as if tearing a layer of flesh down for my stomach to digest.

      The liquor's not to blame. In fact, the import brand was dime-for-dime decent with an aftertaste of vanilla and the rush of ginger.

It's the obnoxious noise telling me to do anything but the liquor.
       To think about the meeting.
       About where Viv is right now.
       Were the cops following me in the lanes?
       Was the man with a missing nail from Qins?
       Who was knocking on Ivan's door?
       Each time a peddle rippled the lake, I down a glass. By the fifth or sixth, even an enjoyable savour would be dulled into nothing but shots and shots of tranquilizers and each hurts lesser than the last.

        The vinyl goes round and round. Yet my mind's pulling tricks on me of becoming more and more focus as the bottle went from the top shelf to the coffee table to the ground to the seam of the sofa by my hand.

        Don't think.
        And things will be good.
        It doesn't matter the thought.
        The outcome's set.
        Dice thrown, cards dealt, odds stacked way too high to matter. You could die in an alley with couple of holes in the wrong place or get flayed in a basement or of old age.

And that's that so stop bothering yourself.
      You're out of things to care for long ago. And long enough.

        Words recited in a husky low groan. When it's angry, it may overpower Lou Reed's voice from the speakers. And after a while, even the music disappears. Or maybe the tracks ran out. At least before the liquor did.

        I flipped around to a hard object at my back before it got pushed to the ground along the slope of sofa.

        A loud but absorbed puncture against the floor followed by a clean smack of glass got through the turbulence and stunned my expanding dizziness.

        I climb to the handle of sofa and raise my head off the leather surface to see the slander bottle rolls wobbly across the living room, passed the shadow of the chandelier in the air and onwards.