The floor felt cold against his face as he lay there, his brain taking a few moments to begin processing events again. He felt damp and tired as he pushed himself up unsteadily, his fingers parting the congealed vodka that trickled across the tiles. The world around him still felt distorted, strangely distant yet almost perfectly clear for the first time in years despite that.
He stumbled a little as he dragged himself to a nearby dining chair; his hands righting it back to its normal position before sitting down as it had fallen over presumably when he’d landed on the floor during the night. His head was pounding as he rested it against the palms of his hands, trying his best to try and reorganise the events of the previous night into some sense of cohesion. His thoughts were a mangled mess of distorted images, blurred vision and too much shouting.
As he sat there he could feel his mind slowly ticking away to itself, despite all the working parts being flooded in vodka and gummed up with flashes of a nightmare he couldn’t quite place. He glanced around the room, taking in the bare walls and shabby furniture which was broken up by a few cardboard boxes which held what amounted to his life these days. His fingers gently closed over a bottle on the table that was still half full as his eyes landed on one of the more prominent items in the room; namely that of the tattered noose next to his fingers.
As he slowly lifted the bottle he could feel his hand shaking as memory began to flood back, compounding his misery and weariness. His life seemed to be a shambles that was barely being held together, and for what? He’d found his sister hanging from the ceiling after years of living without her only for his life to crumble and to return and try to fix things only for them to almost fall through his fingers. He’d left her in the hospital, or maybe he’d been thrown from her room while she recovered. He didn’t really recall… no… his mind may still be a jumbled and pickled mess but he’d known what happened. He tried to sit with her but they wouldn’t let him, someone had dragged him away. With force and made sure he wouldn’t come back and he’d left, lost and alone till he found comfort in a bottle. He felt an anger bubbling inside for a moment before realising the bubbling seemed to be coming from the vodka rather than simply being poetic licence.
He’d spent far too long in the bottle he decided and stared at the simmering glass in his hand for a moment before he placed it firmly on the wood. Smelling somewhere near how he felt he stood up as best he could and made his way to the shower, needing to tidy up and get himself presentable. Maybe not for his own benefit but for that of his sister.