Pills and Alcohol

Pills and Alcohol

By Adrian Berg

    He woke up in a dingy apartment, his apartment. The smell of week-old pizza tickled his nostrils. Above him a ceiling fan was going about its steady revolution, as if it had no other purpose in the world than to keep turning around, and around. His bed sheets had not been changed for over a month and were starting to stink and turn yellow from the constant exposure to his perspiration. His body was covered in a fine film of sweat. It was not anything new, just like any other day. The nightmares were getting worse, more vivid, and for each night he dreamt about it he woke up in an increasingly more sorry state. He slowly crawled to the foot of the bed and peered over the ledge, staring into the face of doom, the pile of his dirty clothes casually strewn about the floor. None of them were fit to be used, but in the lack of willpower necessary to do laundry, all he could do was pick the ones that smelled the least and put them on; socks, a boxer and a t-shirt. He sat on the edge of his bed, waiting, like on the brink of something terrible. He wondered why it had taken so long to surface today; usually it came as soon as he opened his eyes. Not today. He thought that maybe for once he had been given a break; some higher force had granted him respite for just one day. Very optimistic he got up to stand on his own two feet, thinking that today might actually be the first day of the rest of his life. He was wrong; it would be the other way around.
    The pain hit him like an express train.  The moment he stood up a barrage of electrical shockwaves, something that he had become so familiar with; coursed through his head. The headaches were getting worse parallel with the nightmares. In the beginning they had felt something like needles pricking at his brain, now it was more like a group of construction workers, eagerly having a go at his membrane with sledgehammers. He shambled himself over to the kitchen, a mountain of dishes greeted him. There was no food to speak of but coffee and old pizza; centuries old. He put on a pot of coffee, the pot being pitch black due to the lack of washing, and grabbed himself a slice of cold pizza. His teeth dug into the curled-up piece of food, and instantly recoiled. That piece was beyond eating, even for him. The pizza was callously dumped in the already overfilled bin, along with some other junk from the counter. After having cleared out some litter he found that there was a box of painkillers left, hidden beneath his own garbage.  He hung casually around the kitchen until the coffee was done, then he downed three painkillers with the black caffeine drink, consumed from a mug that had the letters “single and happy” spelled on it with bright and happy red letters. “Single and happy my ass”, he muttered to himself. The coffee was downed in one large swallow, to cover the taste of the pills he told himself. But in its wake was left a burning, bitter, sensation running down the length of his throat. Beside the box of painkillers was a bottle of genuine Russian vodka, it was full, and it was his last bottle. He grabbed and took a deep draught from it. He popped another two painkillers and topped it off with another drink of vodka. The sensation in his throat was still there. It passed quickly, or it was covered up by the headache, he didn’t really care. The mug was quickly refilled before he dragged himself back to the bed and sat down. For a while he drank the coffee in small sips, not for any particular reason; just to make his morning ritual last a bit longer than usual.
    Either it took a few minutes to finish his coffee; or it took a few more, time wasn’t really something he bothered to keep track of at this point of his life. He did care once, but after she had left him he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything anymore. Thinking of her it didn’t take more than a fleeting glance over at the turned-over picture to spur him into action. The mug was quickly discarded in favour of the picture he hadn’t looked at in a very long time. It was a picture of her, the love of his life, before she left him. She looked so pretty on the picture, in her summer dress, her long, flowing, brown hair easily catching the shifts of the wind. As on cue the searing pain shot from the back of his head all the way to the front in one massive jolt. The pain made him tighten his fingers so hard that the glass on the picture creaked and gave way, leaving a sizeable crack in its previously flawless surface. “Shit”, he cursed loudly. In behind the pain grew a primal anger. The rage that had built ever since she took her things and walked out his door, and was continuing to build as his life got worse. A sudden jerk of his hand sent the picture flying through the room, only to crash into the wall opposite to the bed and rain down on the floor like a shower of broken glass. He stared incredulously at the hand that had thrown. He had not meant to do it; his arm had just acted on its own. He was starting to lose control of himself. The poor confused man got back up to his feet and started to walk towards the bathroom when suddenly another jolt of pain hit him, this time at the bottom of his right leg. He was left hopping around on his good foot, the left one, trying to steer away from the rest of the broken glass. Looking underneath his wounded leg he could see a small piece of crystal jutting out of the torn skin, droplets of blood forming around it. He had stepped on a piece of broken glass. “Fucking hell”, he mouthed silently, after all; what was the point of saying anything when no one was around to listen? On one leg he hopped on to his destination, the bathroom. To be honest with himself he had to admit that the glass now stuck in his leg was a welcome change in his day, a day when usually nothing happened. With the wounded leg perched on the sink he began to pick at the glass with a tweezer. It didn’t take much to pop the little thing out, and soon he had it lying at the side of the sink, stained red on one side by the blood. On his foot was a hole the size of a pea, a red oval forming over it as he stared at the wound. It wasn’t much to look at, even for him, and so he quickly cleaned and wrapped it. With his little injury fixed he removed his leg from the sink and stood on two feet again.
    In front of him was a mirror, dirty, shabby and broke in most places but the centre, even so it was still a mirror. It had been a while since he had seen his own reflection; what a horrid thing he had become. It came out of nowhere, as if his emotional barriers had been punctured by the shard of glass, he cried. Honest tears ran down his face, streaking lines of moist wherever they went. The image he saw in the mirror became blurred, and then all he could see were the tears welling up in his eyes. A scream of terror escaped his pursed lips, and he fell together on the floor, an emotionally broken thing. As he lay there hulking on the floor, his shoulders bobbing heavy with each sob, he could not possibly know who would come to visit him that day, he would never know because of what he was about to do. After about ten minutes or so he managed to get himself together again, the carpeting on the bathroom, already stained by many dots of red, was now stained by a large watery spot of tears where he had been lying. He looked at himself again in the mirror, but instead of sadness he saw only a burning red anger. “No wonder she left you bum. You’re nobody, you’re scum!”. He couldn’t keep himself in check anymore, and with a violent lash he sent his fist crashing into the mirror, destroying the little that was left of it. Blood began to drip once again on the carpeting, this time from open wounds in between his knuckles. He didn’t bother to patch himself up, and instead went back to the kitchen, the underneath of his leg was hurting, and now his arm was burning with pain. Still it did not outdo his headache, which had begun again for full.
    He fumbled his way to the painkillers and removed the last tray from the packaging. There were five left, he took them all. To get them down he used the entire remaining contents of his vodka bottle, which was a sizable amount for one man to drink in one downing. For a whole fifteen minutes he stood there, not moving, hardly breathing. The headache was still raging, if nothing else it had even built in intensity. The pain in his arm and leg had disappeared; in fact he could hardly feel his limbs at all anymore. With a great effort he began to move towards the door, suddenly had gotten the idea that he should go out and have some fun with his friends, not that he had any friends anymore, they had all left with her, but why not lie to yourself when you are dosed up on painkillers and vodka. Halfway to the door he doubled over and fell to the floor like a human beanie bag. He tried to get back up but his legs had stopped responding at this point. He tried to say something incredibly philosophical and intelligent, but his words came out nothing more than a gurgle. Having lived mostly on pills, caffeine and alcohol since she had left him he didn’t have the strength or willpower left in him to save himself. And so he lay there quite still, not moving; and after a while, not breathing.
    An hour later the doorbell rang. It was her, the love of his life. After being away for almost a week she had started to feel bad about just leaving him without any explanation, and had now come back to say she was sorry, to promise him that everything would be alright. He was on the other side of the locked door, on the floor, unconscious. In her bag she had his pills that she knew he needed very badly, because of his condition. She could only imagine the headaches he must be having due to the lack of his medicine. He couldn’t imagine anything where he was lying, on the floor, his face smeared in his own stomach contents. She wanted everything to go back to normal, she hoped that he would calm down and not break things all the time, she wanted to make his headaches go away. Nothing would be normal after this, he was far beyond saving. The good news for her was that she would indeed no longer have to worry about him breaking things, except her heart when she realized why he was not opening the door.