Flash Fiction: Rocket's Race

Day 11

While this day dawns, one step closer to the end, this entry is far more about the events of day 10. The day I started drinking. As I have been as white bread and straight laced as a person could get in this day and age, I have never turned to drink or narcotics to fill the empty parts. Last night I determined that if this was to be my final days, shouldn't I experience all positives? Shouldn't I determine for myself the possibility that I could be stuck to far up my own ass?

With that thought in mind, I headed to a bar. Not a TGI Fridays bar, or something you would see on an NBC sitcom, but a real bar with real drinks and real people. As I paid my cover charge and worked my way to the bar keep, I inhaled the acrid smoke and the smells of age and decay. The smell of regrets, a smell I had just learned to recognize.

I slipped the bar keep a $50 and told him to send me around the world, any type of drink, as long as it wasn't the same as before. I remember the first few drinks, and the last one, but the 6 or 7 hours between are pretty fuzzy. I remember stumbling from a cab, and lurching into bed, my clothes covered in my own filth, but I don't remember what it was like to be drunk. That loosening of inhibitions that comes with inebriation. I just remember drinking more, and feeling worse than I did before. I remember being sick all over myself, and I remember feeling ashamed when I woke up this morning.

Maybe alcohol isn't the answer for me. then again, maybe I should have tried moderation. But when life is staring you between the eyes, it's all or nothing. I haven't got time to do things halfway anymore.

I did leave last night with a chuckle though, after my first beer, the bar keep gave me a cigarette. Having never smoke or drank until that point, what did I have to lose? As I took a coughing drag off the smoke, one of the waitress looked at me and said,

" Honey, you shouldn't that habit. It could kill ya."

I smiled and said,

"It wouldn't be the first thing to do so...."

End of Line.
Gerrad!