James Mandarin

Liquor

The rest of the night passes through in a blur.

The colours in the house merge and blend together. The walls spin around in my head. They cave in. They constrict my brain. They talk to me. They hurt my head.

The bottle of liquor is on the floor, its contents long gone. My throat is parched. It burns, it stings, and it irritates my vocal chords. Liquor is poison.

Poison is sweet. Poison is escape.

My knees wobble. They are like the raspberry jelly mum would sometimes make. I stumble through the house. My fingers dig into the wall as I hold onto them for support.

I'm tired. I'm breathless. I'm awake.

Liquor is a funny thing. It makes me so happy but dead on the inside.

I haul my body up the stairs and crawl into my bedroom. The last thing I remember is picking up my paintbrush. The rest is lost in a sea of darkness and alcoholic paradise.

The morning after is not so kind. I am awoken by the stench of my own vomit. The remnants of yesterday's lunch lay all over my carpet. My neck and forehead is covered in beads of sweat.

Turns out James Mandarin cannot hold down his liquor. What a pity; another thing to be added to the list of things he's pathetic at. Dad would be so proud.

I remain on the carpet, covered in my own sweat and vomit. I am no different from Jack and his mates who get wasted down at the pub every two days. That's the thing about Bogans. They're so cool, heavy headed and confident. They can do anything and everything.

My throat is dry. My eyelids are heavy. The erratic sound of my heartbeat booms in my ears. I think it's going to explode.

I hope it explodes.

I hope I die.

I want to die.

I want to sit up and clean my room. I want to take Chloe by the shoulders and kiss her. I want to call up Zen and schedule another skateboarding session.

Liquor is beautiful shit.

It's not very poetic. Chloe would probably come up with something better. She knows how to sculpture words in her poems, which I'll never get to read. I think of standing up and running all the way to her house. I will run to her window, hot and breathless and throw small stones at the glass windows with yellow curtains, like they do in cheesy Hollywood movies. Chloe will open her curtains and smile at me from the window. She'll open the window and say hello. I'll throw my arms in the air and declare my undying love to her. Then, we'd get out of this small hellhole town.

That will never happen. James, the shit head, lacks self-confidence and charisma.

My room is stuffy. It's probably thirty-nine degrees outside, although I'm not sure. Anyway, Australian summers, especially here up north, are hot as an oven. Going into the late thirties is normal. I wonder how those convicts in the eighteenth century survived without air cons and fans. Oh wait, they didn't.

They died. The end.

Thank God it will soon be autumn.

The room begins to spin. My head hurts even more. I don't have time to prepare or brace myself. A mixture of bile, rice and carrots erupt from my system.

After over five minutes of heaving and spewing, I collapse back onto the carpet. The empty bottle of liquor is on the floor, beside my head. I feebly push it under my bed. Dad must not know I have it.