wine's great, ******** you
------------------------------------
A wide smile, a little song.
Peter scooped up a glass in his hand and took a drink. The wine was overly warm, but the flavor was still there at least. The buzz was there, at least. How long had he been at it now?
How long had he been at it now?
“Five years,” he sighed, “five years.” He took another drink and crossed the empty room. It was Friday night and the alchemy lab was completely clear. He hadn’t seen a student since the official end of class hours that day — no dinner tonight, no reason to eat. It was his birthday, he would tell them. Even professors needed their time away to celebrate some things. But still, just for a moment, his hand touched the wood of the door and he thought to make his escape again. Any day now they would find him.
He shouldn’t have been drinking.
Socially, he could stay upright if he had a friend near either arm. With other professors, amusingly, he was alright. They would have known him in a past life, if they had looked down. They would have seen him under their feet, in the dark like a frightened insect in the shadow or a guilty dog trying to deny what mess it had made of the carpet. But now they were strangers, almost friends, accepting if just for the moment of a person who could help them and do them no harm.
Because maybe he had already done it.
Because maybe he did it and they didn’t know.
“Because they don’t know,” he mumbled, feeling the grain of the wooden door beneath his printless fingers. Because he would never tell them. They would never know.
“I’m sorry,” the words spilled out of him. His vision disappeared into the brass doorknob in front of him, reflecting back a nightmarish version of himself stretched too tall, arched too thin, disgusting but sure. He was himself. He was this thing. Was his vision swaying, or was his body? He retracted a tattooed hand and pushed it against his chest, feeling the heartbeat below musculature made from necessity. Scars made from lack. Tattoos, edges raising in the chill that sank into his skin beneath his clothes. How could the castle be so cold when it wasn’t even autumn yet?
Warm red wine tasted so sour on his lips. He wiped his mouth again, catching stray drops and letting them color his dry, dry skin, papery despite the swamp air coming off the lake and her shores. The world swam into focus a moment, swam out, pulling and pushing, tide and moon. He pushed off the door and swayed even as he walked, every step absorbed into the imaginary flow of knee-high water that suddenly flooded his senses, the lab. The lab.
He drank and blocked her out.
He drank and blocked out the heartbeats slow, slow, slowly ceasing. Soft silence. Fading light in the dark of their eyes, becoming nothing as he took them one by one. He drank and pushed them away, wishing they would leave him alone for a night. Wishing he could drown their vacant expressions, their mouths hung open like fish in a net, so close to life, so intimate with death.
Where were his glasses? He would hide behind them.
He found them with a crunch underfoot, and wine everywhere, too dark to be blood. He sighed. Something hot warmed his cheeks, his nose, setting his lips ablaze.
It all waved in the air, too wet, threatening to drown.
His skin stung. Why did it sting?
Red met red, an exquisite but uncomfortable match of hue on the dark wood floors below. At least the light gleamed of sharp,
sour,
points, reaching into the air piteously, asking to be saved. They had hope. Maybe he did too.
He missed the taste of cheap wine as it evaporated into the air. The sound of glass was like music, singing until the glass became one again, free of the red and red that had clung to it before. Backward went time, as fractures mended and red was staunched, metallic notes free of the profile they might otherwise have sullied.
Pain was not his.
It was not a moment. It was the past.
It was fixed.
The world swam into focus a moment, swam out, pulling and pushing, tide and moon. He pushed off the floor and stood again. The light was gone from the darks of his eyes, and he remembered her. He missed the taste, but knew it would not be the last time.
He took the bottle to bed.
He stayed warm all night, until there was again a wide smile, a little song.
And he was home again.
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Meditations and Developments
A collection of thoughts on characters from various roleplays.
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Chai High Tuba
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