ache1
(drinking): Jesus this stuff tastes... It feels like some kind of ahm, it has
the texture of petrol or something like that, lighter fuel or something, ugh.
You wouldn’t think liquids could have such, such, so many different textures,
swallowing hard
ache1: but they
do.
Her
eyes still red and wet, and her every vein ahum with alcohol and blood, ache1
sits propped against the bedroom wall in nothing more than a plain white
t-shirt, this pulled up to reveal the enormous swollen belly alien in her own
lap.
She’s
drunk.
ache1:
Jesus? Are you even there?
She
takes another plug at the half-bottle’s neck.
ache1
(sighing): Oh! Lookit me Jesus. Can you see me? I am so so drunk right now
and
sighs again, audibly as she can.
ache1:
I wonder if antler can see me now?
Can see me fucking this all up yet again. Does this make me a bad mother,
Jesus? Jesus? Am I a bad mother for this?
drinking
again at the remnant whiskey before setting the bottle off to one side and
patting her bare abdomen with the same hand.
ache1:
Aaaaawwww, you got your daddy’s liver, baby, you got your daddy’s liver in you.
Tipping
her head forward a degree allows the spill of her mouth’s excess saliva,
another spread of damp upon the white cotton folds covering her breasts. It is
a full calendar plus of elapsed months that has brought her to this state. The
boxes of Moosehead had ceased arriving on her announcement, before even, the gesture underlined with
a single note: Better by far to be the
smallest cog in a fine watch than the face and hands of a poor one. so this
afternoon she’d charged another half-bottle to the room, her own gesture of defiance knowing he would
know, that it would be registered.
ache1:
This isn’t me Jesus. It’s not me at
all.
She
is drinking from herself, or drinking herself from, something not told, the body’s resolute conformity to
the trimesters of pregnancy, and the seeming indifference of this body to the
actual presence of the perceived mental self.
ache1
(sadly): This isn’t me. It’s these
both
hands upon her full breasts
ache1:
and it’s all the shit in here
(ache1:
Sorry ant)
now
moving about the swollen and scar-dappled skin
ache1:
but it ain’t me, no Lord it ain’t. I’m
doing nothing
and
again
ache1:
I’m doing nothing...
reaching
again for the whiskey, turning it in her hand with her thumb tracing each of
the four squared shoulders for the raised glass lettering, and the lettering
not there on the half-bottle
ache1
(the bottle moving across her body): ..except drinking, of course
and
she drinks, and then, holding it before her and only half-joking
ache1:
Jesus, take this cup from me.
Jesus
winces. Of time he has a divine and pangenetic awareness, the entire path of
each atom in all forms visible to him as a simultaneous arc – the yearn of
daydream, its fulfilment and subsequent absorption into the warm pain of nostalgia, all present, all at once. He knows
what he knows, and he winces, winces for this girl, and her boy, and their
unborn child just that thin flesh wall from actual breath.
ache1:
Ohhhh, Jesus, you’re gonna have to excuse me here
as
she carefully positions the bottle upon the carpet
ache1:
but I gotta go take a piss...
rolling
onto her side to facilitate the awkward standing-up procedure
ache1
(rising, and with a nod to his disembodied presence): ..again
and
crosses to the bathroom, passing as she does the single pair of discarded
blood-stained briefs upon the floor.
