The Lies Of Dawn

C H A P T E R 23

Five years of sobriety had fallen down the drain.

All it took was one look and Drew had served him the bitter liquid he detested.

The taste was as awful as he remembered it to be but it helped numb the pain. It was almost toxic, poisonous even.

Rubbing alcohol and death.

Well, doctor, the back haired man whispered to himself, repeating the words once again as he finished yet another glass of amber coloured alcohol, the kind Mick used to adore, I wasn’t the one who died young.

Drew kept staring at him from behind the bar but never said a single word. He didn’t need to.

He knew Mick wasn’t coming back.

Salt had been poured over Ax’s wounds and he finally understood what true pain was.

Salt had been poured over Ax’s wounds and an eternal mystery had been solved: monsters can, indeed, feel pain.

He drowned a whole bottle without thinking about the consequences, without caring about how it burned his throat, how it killed his emotions slowly. He was in the middle of the second bottle when a certain man walked inside the pub, heading straight at him.

There was something mildly depressing about an empty bar without the addition of two men in mourning. Especially when one of them looked nothing like his normal well-groomed self.

His eye, the functioning one, was bloodshot telling stories of spilt tears. His scuff had turned into a full beard and he had lost weight, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut you. The clothes he wore belonged to his normal self, and yet, there was nothing that would indicate that the man was anything but a drunk with a lingering sadness in his eyes.

Xavier walked heavily, the weight of the world resting comfortably on his broad shoulders. In his hands, he held a small metallic box with a silver lock. On the top of the box a sentence was painted on with a sharpie: For when I’m gone, it wrote. Xavier might not have truly been lifting the weight of the world but it sure felt like it.

He took the seat opposite from Ax, never looking at him. “Stop drinking that shit.” He told the black-haired man, grabbing the bottle and moving it to his side of the table, sniffing its contents briefly and grimacing as its scent reached his nostrils.

“It was Mick’s favourite.” He replied weakly, drowning the rest of the contents of his glass. “He was an odd fucker. You know, he used to recite pages after pages from books and poems he had memorised to me. I never knew why he even bothered to learn that shit.”

Ax lifted his gaze and gave his ally a long look filled with despair. “I should have told him how much I appreciated those fucking poems when I had the chance.” Ax reached from the bottle but Xavier moved it away before his rough fingers could wrap around its neck.

“I’m sure he knew,” Xavier stated, shaking his head as he saw the waitress move over to them. He didn’t need to make any more movements. She turned around and went to the back of the pub, not even bothering to hide her interest in their conversation. “You’re a fucking mess, Ax. What are you going to do, drink the pain away? You, of all people, should know that it doesn’t work like that.”

Ax would never admit it but the younger man was right.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to drown the sorrow.

“Do you want to know what really happened?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to know. I couldn’t bear it.” He confessed, afraid that those two sentences would make him appear weak. Ax had no one he could confess the truth to, it appeared. “Did you tell Aurelia what happened?”