Inebriation

Alaina Diaz

Paper 2

 final 

 

Inebriated

 

            Like any other night, this night was consumed with too much booze and too many people.  The possibility of the police breaking up the party was invigorating and yet inevitable.  Row after row of alcohol stood on every counter space, sparkling and dancing merrily in the glow of the artificial light as I flocked to them; like a moth to a flame.     

            The bottle seemed to tip of its own accord  as if my hand had a life of its own; bypassing my brain, nerves and will, feeding my body the poison.  Once recognizable faces now blurred into one chaotic mess.  Time seemed to slow down and the flashbacks began.  Much like the effects of a coke lacerated brain, fragments of my shattered life, like a broken mirror being thrust into my open eyes.  Broken fragments of the mirror began to spin, spiral, and slip beyond my grasp.

            Churning and yearning down my throat, sweet with the tang of childhood pain and loss, bitter with the remnants of alcohol.  The battle between my mind and body almost made me stop, almost. The flickering in my brain persisted, the coke effects continue and like an underground railroad with bad electricity, sparks ignite and threaten to engulf everything around me.  Vaguely I’m aware of voices, unconcerned with my wellbeing, quite simply irritated with the drunk girl who is stumbling around.  So again….My hand, holding the bottle of my beginning feeds me the elixir of happiness, sadness, anger and violence. 

 I am gone.

            With flashes and sparks I arrive to the year 1990 when I was just a little girl of five.  A little girl with scraggily hair and huge hazel eyes that are solemn and old beyond my years.  The sensation of falling and yet flying at the same time overcame me as I was scooped from the ground, and there he was…The consumer of the elixir himself. 

            “Do you see the moths girl?  Do you see the moths?”  He whispers in my ear, his warm rancid breath sweet and sour with the smell of alcohol. I frantically search for the moths I know there will be no escape, no right answer.

            “No” I whisper so soft he couldn’t possibly hear; yet somehow he does.

            “Wrong answer” he whispers back….And once again I am falling and life is weightless, meaningless.  Flashes of my childhood continue, as I flutter deeper into unconsciousness.

            Warm sun streams through the barn door.  The rays of the suns heat hitting the trailer home that we reside in, throwing the spears of light back into my face, my eyes, and I am blind.  Yet my fingers small and dirty still find the sandy pieces of copper, copper that needs to be sorted and cleaned.  One pile high with the sheen of clean copper, and the other, a tangled mess of dirty rejected pieces of copper.  I relate to this pile, the dirty abused pile that has been cast aside, deemed unworthy.  As I stare at this heap and flirt with the idea of delving into the middle of something else’s imperfections, the sun warmed copper seems to gain a pulse, a beat, a life of its own.  The beat fills my ears and keeps tempo with the beat of my heart and I know I’m going to die. 

            Sudden silence…..Blessed silence.  The darkness caresses me and makes me believe it loves me.  In the dark my imperfections disappear and I am almost invisibly whole.  My mind registers the foul smell of something rotting, reminding me of a coffin.  My coffin.  And then I am dead, weightless, floating and for once not scared of what’s next.  As I sink slowly into the mental quicksand that is my soul, I wonder……What about my family?  My brother? My sister?  What will they do with the outer shell of my being, my leftovers of a forgotten life?  Will my body remain on this old sofa and decompose next to an empty bottle of vodka?  Will anyone wonder what that rancid smell is and realize that it’s me?

             I can’t breath and I have to find a way out.  Pounding on my coffin screaming, and just like that I am awake……..My mouth is cottony and dry, the faint aftertaste of vodka remains leaving my head pounding and my heart racing.  The gorge of my youth rises, leaving me gagging, purging my sins onto the carpet, and i am empty, heaving a shell of wasted matter.  The party has waned, leaving only drunken, stumbling idiots looking for a place to pass out.  I realize that this is life and I’m nothing more than a little girl with scraggily hair and huge eyes.  My life is much like the soft fragile wings of a decomposed moth.