#short story excerpt
I can remember thinking ‘this place doesn’t feel like a home.’ The lobby of the building was barren except for a sleepy security guard who didn’t even acknowledge the slam of the door as it shut behind us and I noticed that despite the space’s expansiveness, there wasn’t any furniture. No uncomfortable sofas or coffee-stained end tables typical for most lobbies belonging to apartment buildings. Not so much as a fake plant in sight. The lighting in the corridors and the strange-smelling lift was so harsh and unforgiving on the eyes that I felt like a fly lying dead in one of those Eazyzap bug traps, still twitching from the shock of the electricity. I was almost sober by the time we got up to their apartment so when I was offered a shot of vodka I accepted it like a dehydrated dog might accept water from a puddle during a walk. It singed my throat on the way down and I had to fight not to retch from the aftertaste.
I had met these people not even two hours before at a bar; my friends already knew them but I was a neophyte, a stranger to their many charms: Casey’s overbearing presence that infuriated me even more than the sound of his voice, so smooth that I couldn’t help but be entranced by it despite every part of me screaming that it was all a lie. Matthew’s scruffy long hair and wire frame glasses that reminded me of a book character I’d fallen in love with more times than I could even count, his shit-eating grin that made you feel like you were in on some private joke of his. Fraser’s backwards ball cap (because that’s always been a weak spot of mine) and a sadness so whole within him that I could feel it from the other side of the room, a sadness so whole that I could hear it through his contagious laugh.
Their apartment was on the top floor of the block - an alien space that felt more like being stuck in a hidden pocket of time - and one side of the kitchen was all windows that offered us a panoramic view of the London skyline. The alcohol and whatever we had smoked on the way over had gone straight to my head and staring at the view felt more like staring into a giant snow globe I’d found in one of those shitty gift shops in Leicester Square. My head was spinning in a good way and everything had this undeniable realness to it, like someone had taken a pen and given everything a bold outline. Even the floor had a life of its own. I had to sit down. I perched next to Matthew. We gazed out of the window, pointed out Tower Bridge and the London Eye and he gave me a gummy worm that wasn’t just a gummy worm. It tasted like TV static and made the glands in the side of my neck tingle and just by looking at him I knew that our souls were one in the same.
We had one of those conversations that you can only have while intoxicated, the kind where you discuss parallel universes, protagonist theory and mental illness. Fraser told me that he did cocaine because he was addicted to it. Matthew replied matter-of-factly that he did cocaine to feel like a rockstar, and that pretty much sums up humans, don’t you think? We do things to feel like something else or just anything at all.
That’s why I was there. Because it felt like something.
The supposed heroine clutches a small glass bottle in the palm of her hand, her eyes wide open as she scans the ship’s deck. The entire crew was trying their best to remain on their feet as the ocean waves tossed the boat side to side, water crashing in over the sides and spilling in to gather around everybody’s ankles. First one man tumbles over the side of the ship into the ruthless water below, and then another follows, a few more hanging on to nearby objects in hopes not to follow their friends’ fates.
She then looks down at the bottle in her hands; the intricate glass bottle was full of smoke, pitch black, rolling and writhing. It’s label read: miscellaneous death god, do not drink. Despite the warning, she believes just for a moment what is grasped between her fingers may just be her only option to lead everybody into safety. A moment was all she needed, as she pops off the cork of the bottle and brings it to her lips and tilts her head violently backwards.
The black smoke takes less than a second to invade her lungs and expand, seeping into her blood stream. She drops the bottle to let it splash into the sea water around her feet and exhales, black smoke dissipating from her mouth like fog on a winter day. She lifts her eyes one last time to see her crew continuing to struggle as the ship struggles to ride the violent waves, and then everything goes black.
When she wakes up, she is greeted with the warmth of the Sun’s rays on her face. The supposed heroine finds herself lying on the deck of her ship alone, the only people there to keep her company being the dead bodies of what was left of her crewmates scattered along the ship’s deck around her, dried blood marking everything in sight.
She doesn’t know is she wants to remember what happened, looking down at her red stained hands.
Prompt #2244 bolded above from @deepwaterwritingprompts
