Chapter One: Drunk (Patreon)

Before

I stand at the edge. The breeze tousles my hair, running through like a caress. One moment it pushes at my back as if to say ‘go’; the next, it presses against my front as if saying ‘no’. The wind is as indecisive as I am.

The street so far below looks like a river of light, the impatient sound of horns blasting through the air even up to me here on this rooftop. It would take so little. I would hardly even have to make a choice, just...stop resisting. The wind’s encouraging shoves would do all the work for me.

Yet, I can’t. There’s something in me that refuses to take the step, or even just stop resisting, however easy it would be. I sigh and step back. The people below will never know what might have happened. Trudging to the door that lets onto the roof, I clomp down the stairs to my apartment floor.

My arm feels like lead as I lift it to unlock my door, my fingers so clumsy they might as well just be wooden sticks embedded into my palm. When I finally get the lock open, I’m already out of all the energy which prompted me up to the roof in the first place.

Slumping into a chair, I reach for the whiskey bottle beside me. I take a swig of whiskey, chasing down the burn with another. My aim is to get so drunk that I can’t think; if I die in my sleep at least I will have succeeded in doing what I went up to the rooftop for in the first place.

*****

I take another swig of whiskey. The burn has long faded by now: I’m more than halfway into my nth bottle of spirits by now and my throat has gone numb. Or maybe I’ve just stopped caring. The last few hours are a blur. I couldn’t say whether it’s been hours or days since I started drinking as if my life depended on it.

If my life depended on it. Hah, funny, I think, but the bitter amusement fails to even twist my lips in the mockery of a smile. What life? There’s nothing for me to lose except my heart beating and my lungs pumping: surviving, not living.

“Firrrred,” I slur out to the empty room, feeling the way it tastes in my mouth, how it twists the tongue. “Unemployed.” Another unsavoury word. “Failure,” I spit. I’m still thinking about it, which means I haven’t drunk enough. I tip the bottle back but more sloshes on my face than in my mouth. I curse bitterly, lamenting at the world, God, and anyone else listening about the fact that, with this final death-knell, my life is officiallyover.

Something flickers in my peripheral vision and I automatically turn to look. It takes my alcohol-sozzled brain a good few seconds to register what I’m looking at and then, in the very educated way all drunks have, I question reality:

“Whas’a?” Standing up and stumbling forwards, I wave my hand vaguely in the air underneath the apparition, and then throughit.

“Stop that,” the ghost says a mite crossly. “This is difficult enough without you interrupting the projection.”

“Wha? It speashs?” I murmur drunkenly, staring at the approximately 30cm tall pearly-white figure floating a few centimetres off my table. It looks like a man, a neatly-dressed figure in what I muzzily recognise as a vaguely medieval doublet and hose. Like, one of those Elizabethan portraits of a gentleman, but with less poofy trousers and a more normal-height collar. As for its face, it looks rather like a stereotypical villain with a pointy beard, mustache, and a dark look that grows even darker as I prod it again.

“Stop that, I said!” the figure barks at me. “Are you...drunk?” it, he, then asks. I shrug languidly.

“Maaaybe,” I draw. Looking around, I can’t see the whiskey. If I can question whether I was drunk or not, clearly I haven’t had enough. “Where’s z’whiksy?”

“From the looks of it, you’ve had more than enough,” the ghost tells me disapprovingly. “Thisis the only hope for my legacy?” he mutters under his breath “Gods help me.” Sighing he speaks louder. “I don’t have much time. Drunk or not, listen to me now.” I hold up one finger that turns into two as my eyes unfocus.

“Whisksy firssst,” I tell him as firmly as I can make it. The man sighs, clear annoyance in the sound of it.

“Next to you, on the floor.” I lean over the arm of the chair quickly, almost tipping over it as my centre of gravity shifts too far. I see the bottle on the floor and grab it, sloshing its contents a bit as I lean back. Already down by more than half, the liquid doesn’t actually leave the bottle despite the abrupt movements.

I tip it back, almost missing my mouth again. By this point, I can barely feel the burn, but the alcohol content soon gets to me as the world starts spinning even more. I tip my head back staring at the ceiling, marveling at the way the cracks are moving round and round and round...

“Now will you listen?” the apparition asks with frustration in his voice. I wave one hand vaguely in the air, almost hitting myself in the face. “I hope you remember at least someof this when you sober up,” he mutters to himself before once more speaking loudly and clearly. “I come with an offer. I need to bestow a powerful inheritance on a successor and the Oracle has indicated that youare my only option if I do not wish my legacy to be destroyed within the next generation.” He continues speaking, but I have lost the ability to focus, staring at the ceiling vacantly as his voice becomes background sound, the odd word filtering in but not making much sense. It’s almost soothing, too much so for my drunken state to endure, and my eyes slip closed without me even noticing.

*****

I keep drinking. That night, through the day, the next night, the next day….the days run into each other. I only stop when I run out of alcohol and can’t find my wallet to go buy more. Great chunks of time disappear without my notice; it doesn’t matter – no one is expecting me for anything. I think I try to head out to the rooftop again, but can’t open the door because my body isn’t working right.

When I finally do return to some sort of rational awareness, I wake to the world still spinning, my head pounding fit to burst, and my stomach telling me firmly that it is about to upend itself. I make it to the toilet, thankfully, and proceed to worship the porcelain god for a good few minutes. When I sit back, my stomach empty but still roiling uncomfortably, my throat feels like sandpaper and my mouth tastes like something has died in it.

Brushing my teeth – twice – deals with the taste, but doesn’t do much for the other symptoms. Tossing back a couple of paracetamol, I grimace as even water running down my acid-burnt throat hurts. I know I need to drink to rehydrate and eat something to settle my stomach, but I really, really don’t feel like it. I’m not a habitual drunk, but even when I have over-indulged a bit, it’s never been this bad. Normally I stop after the world starts spinning, and the worst I have the next morning is a headache, sometimes a small bit of nausea.

This time, though, I’d had a reason to bury my pain in whiskey – and wine, and vodka, and rum. Not wanting to make an already bad morning – afternoon? - worse, my thoughts shy away from remembering why that was. Instead, I push myself to my feet, determined to eat something. Maybe porridge? I know greasy food is supposed to be good for a hangover, but I can’t cope with anything scratchy right now. Maybe if I added some butter to the porridge? Worth a try.

Exiting the bathroom, the first thing that hits me is the stench. Alcohol mingles with vomit and piss and the miasma sends me right back to hugging the toilet. Repeating the previous process once I’ve finished hacking up my guts, I summon up the courage to brave the battle-field. Covering my nose with my sleeve, I stumble through the horribly dirty room to open the windows: if I can at least get the smellout, it’ll make the world look better. Or so I tell myself.

I can’t face doing any more than that and next totter into the kitchen, closing the door and opening this window. At least I didn’t vomit in here, though I can see a puddle of alcohol where I clearly dropped a bottle – the glass shattered and spread across the floor so I’d better be careful with my bare feet. In fact, I really should clean it up straight away, but I don’t have the motivation.

Instead, I just step carefully around the chunks of glass I can see and hope that I’m not stepping on a whole load of unnoticeable shards. Porridge is out of the question: the microwave is close to where the bottle shattered, and so are the bowls. Instead, I succeed in grabbing a cereal box out of the closest cupboard and sit on the kitchen table, my feet on one of the seats. I pull handfuls of cereal out of the box and chew on them dry.

It’s not great, but after a while, my nausea does start to abate. Once the paracetamol kicks in and I’ve downed a good litre of water, I start feeling almost human. The pain I’d been suffering muted, the tiredness of too little sleep starts weighing my eyelids down. Already done with the day, I just lie down on the kitchen table and go to sleep, regardless of how uncomfortable it is.

Memories of the ghost drift back into my mind as I drop off, but before I can decide whether they’re dream or reality, I drop back into the welcoming blackness of sleep.

*****

The next time I wake up, the sun is streaming through the windows. Just by that, I can tell it’s early afternoon as my apartment faces south-west. The world has, thankfully, stopped spinning. My throat is feeling a bit better, though still rather raw, and my stomach is more settled. At least, I don’t feel like being sick is just a wrong movement away now. I can also smell myself now the odor of whiskey has cleared from the room - I reallyneed a shower.

I’m also lying on the kitchen table, a fact that makes itself very evident when I start trying to shift. Apparently lying on a hard surface with my feet resting on a lower one in terms of a chair is not the ideal sleeping position. Who knew? I groan as my back makes its – very loud – complaint. And my knees. I’m also cold because the window was open and I had no cover.

In fact, the only thing I can say that’s even slightly good about my poor decision-making is that apparently I slept the sleep of the dead and didn’t roll over onto the glass-strewn floor. The thought of which – and the worse state of my sitting room – makes me feel like opening another bottle.

No. I scrub at my face and try to give myself a pep-talk. OK, you got completely drunk. You made a mess of your apartment. Just...take it one step at a time. Go...have a shower. Yeah, a shower would go a good way to helping me feel slightly more human and less road-kill.

Unfortunately, my shower is in my bedroom, which is through the glass-field. Or through the sitting-room, but I don’t even dare consider that yet. I sigh. Clearing up the mess here first, then. Or maybe just enough to ensure I don’t have to go to A and E with glass shards in my feet.

After having succeeded in clearing a path through the danger, I reach my bedroom, jumping in the hot shower with a sigh of relief. The water feels like a benediction, washing away my cares and troubles, if only for a moment. Sadly, all good things come to an end and when my water starts cooling, I realise it’s a sign that I need to get on with other things. The thought of all the cleaning I will have to do doesn’t exactly fill me with glee.

On my way to my wardrobe from the shower, buck-naked but for a towel around my head, I notice something strange on my desk. Procrastination opportunity gladly accepted! It’s a disk with an emblem that I’ve never seen before. I pick it up to inspect the strange item. It’s about the size of a coaster, but about three times as thick and heavy. Made out of metal, perhaps. The emblem is an intricate golden design on a black background. At first I think it’s painted, but closer inspection proves that instead the gold is inlaid. The image is in the style of a coat of arms, with three sections – a horizontal line across the centre with a vertical line dividing the top half into further quarters.

Looking closely, the top left section is a fox – recognisable by its pointy ears and bushy tail - in side profile, but with its head turned towards the front. Next to it in the right hand quarter is a hammer crossed with a sword, the hammer to the fore. Finally, the last – and the largest – section contains, unusually, a spiderweb. I don’t know much about heraldry, but I’ve never heard of or seen a spiderweb in a coat of arms. Idly I admire the quality of the work – the spiderweb is especially beautifully done: each strand is perhaps only a fraction of a millimetre wide, and only visible when the disk is tilted so it catches the sun. Just like a real spiderweb, I realise.

Looking away, I see something I had missed when I picked the disk up, too curious about it to notice anything else. The disk had been sitting on something, a folded up square of paper, to be precise. Setting the coat of arms down, I pick up the piece of paper instead. Before even opening it up, I realise that the paper is some type I’ve never felt before. Thicker, and creamier coloured than I’m used to, I guess it is some high-quality material. It even makes a different sound than I expect as I open it, a deeper rasp and crackle than a normal piece of paper would.

Unfolding it, I realise that I’m holding some sort of letter. The same coat of arms is imprinted in the top right-hand corner – the spiderweb more visible here than on the disk as it is in black ink rather than reflective golden metal. Analysis of the aesthetics complete, I start to read the content, my mouth slackening and mind whirling as I take in the words on the page.