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Monday, December 09, 2002
This fell out of my head and landed on my keyboard a couple of nights ago.
He was a recovering alcoholic, but not in the traditional sense. He was using alcohol to recover from his recent divorce from his second wife. The road to recovery is a long and arduous one, but James' treatment was going nicely.
He took a dose of Jack and shuffled toward his recliner. James nearly sat down in the chair, but missed and was content to stay on the floor. James' appartment was dark and cold, as it often was when he returned from work, or more likely the bars. The single bedroom, 300-square-foot dwelling was where he had called "home" for three years, but since his wife had left, it was just a house. He just lived there, barely living at all.
From his vantage point, the living room tilted slightly and spun slowly. Deciding that it spun a bit too slowly, James took another drink from his bottle of self-prescribed whiskey. It seemed to have an almost immediate affect. He braced himself against the floor with his head and left shoulder, being careful not to spill the medicine bottle being tightly gripped by his right hand.
The silence hung in the air as thick as the stench of alcohol. Time did not seem to pass. James couldn't tell if the he'd been thinking about trying not to think for a minute or for an hour. It didn't matter. The thing he was trying not to think about -- his wife -- was always in the back of his mind. James gagged, caughed, sputtered, and fell into unconsciousness. He spent yet another night with his head in a pool of his own self-abuse.
| Mr. McBastard | 11:14 AM | | |
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