For Lack of Absinthe

Run down these dark alleyways, where a dozen thousand amateurs have tried their hands at the game. The stones are slick with rainwater and blood. What month is it? What year? My heart beating that thump-thump until it dies, rattling my lungs as they pull at the cold air. How long’s it been since I left? It doesn’t really matter, I’m back in the city where I first met you, and these changes leave me reeling because I keep thinking we’re 18 and young again.

They’re behind me somewhere, dozens of footsteps splashing through the empty corridor between comatose houses, shadows drawn long by strange light. I’d pray to you to slow them down for me, but I guess that’d be too much to ask. I know I disappointed you, Felicity. Truly, I do. Whatever better place you’re at now, I hope you can hear me. Or maybe not. I hope you never see what I’ve become since you left.

They’re a little ways behind. Maybe a block, maybe two. I can still hide now, if I wanted, running towards that old building we knew so well on the corner of Main and Elm. If it’s still owned by the little old lady we sold it to, she won’t have found out about the basement.

Run, just run. Shoes slapping the pavement hard, saxophone pouring out of some snazzy café popped up since last I was here. A restaurant, soft chink of forks and knives, quiet laughter, quiet voices, quiet merriment. Lamps and their smoky yellowish glow. Close my eyes I can ignore the fact that there never used to be this many people on the streets, fur coats and diamonds hanging off the arms of top hats and monocles. Remember walking down a street after some show, little Eleanor bouncing around her copper curls she got from you? I wonder how she is, our little girl. Keep watch over her, will you, Felicity? Because her daddy can’t do it no more.

The shop glass doesn’t say “The Little Daisy Shoppe” in curly letters. Maybe it means I’m crazy, but it still reads “Sidney’s Café” in peeling gold paint. Run around to the back entrance, putrid stench of rotting garbage and congealing blood. How many puddles of vomit have I witnessed falling onto these flagstones? How many bodies? This living I made for myself, I know you hated it.

Shoulder open the rusted speakeasy door, falling off its hinges in a cloud of dust. The pervasive smell of dead cigars, been there so long it comes to life and lingers here like a ghost. Oh God, I’m going crazy! Alcohol distilled so many times that motor oil tastes better, and smoke all over the room. This residue of an odor from a decade ago, it fills the room with affluent gentlemen and well-dressed ladies, dancing with the dust motes to a broken gramophone playing over and over our favourite songs. Remember this place? The business just kept getting bigger, and we closed this place because we got to so big we didn’t need it anymore. And then, to punish me for trafficking this toxic elixir, God took you away from me. I know it was so, you shouldn’t have died so young. You left Eleanor and me by our lonesome.

Haha. They’re gonna find me standing all alone here, laughing like a madman. They come in right on my heels, aim their guns, nowhere to run.

Oh God, Eleanor. I’m going to die here, aren’t I? And, and I forgot to tell her goodbye. I just disappeared from her life in the middle of the night. Felicity, can you go into her dreams and tell her to forget me?

I’m going to die here. In these hollow remains of where we started.

Run these labyrinth corridors I knew so well, going deeper and deeper into the catacombs. Here is where we stored our wares, and hid together during the so many raids. I think I can still see the stains left by spilt wine, squeezing each other’s hands and grin cold sweat grins listening the footsteps upstairs retreat. The countergirl giving the all-clear signal five taps some long some short.

Pain. Something red spreads across my shirtsleeves, drench my vest and tie. They’re rising fast, like a hurricane wave, shooting now, opening fire and I have no gun to fire back. I’m a marionette, jerking under invisible strings as these little lead pellets bury themselves in my flesh. The ground is rising up, and hits my head and pyrotechnics under my eyelids. Their feet all around me, voices like nails on chalkboard ask me if I’ve any last words. These fading silver strands fleeing my head like tadpoles, gotta pull them back. Help me pull them back, Felicity, I gotta say something to them but I can’t because all I do is laugh as they rip my mouth open in a grotesque grin, Glasgow smile screaming rips flesh open ear to ear oh God make it stop. Cover your daughter’s eyes, Felicity. I hope you never see this.

Blinding fire all around me going black and silence and roaring flames all around. Over and over again on an invisible cliff the pain is driving me back towards the edge I fall. I should have listened to you, Felicity, when I had the chance, this, the devil’s drink. And maybe God would have let us stay together a happy family walking in the park in winter. Oh Lord, you hate me now don’t you? Shit, it’s fading, these silver tadpole strands, I gotta think, think fast. There was something I wanted to say before I died, something important. But all I can think of, every time I open my lips, is how much it hurts to scream.

Oh Jesus Christ, Eleanor, I’m so sorry. Daddy’s so sorry, but… Daddy has somewhere he needs to be. Daddy has to go now, Eleanor. You be a good girl now, okay? Okay? Okay?