Cold Water Flat

It was near 2 am, his third rum-and-coke almost gone, the sounds of Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy, and Etta James croonin', bluesin', and groovin' from his record player on the spare chair in the corner - the record covers and sleeves strewn about the floor a-mix-with empty wine bottles, crushed and ashed cigs, paper-wad piles, and the occasional crumb-infested dish and cup. It had been less than a week since his fiancee had left with his brother - and still he was propped against the cold-water-flat wall which his mattress lay against on the floor. Life was seeming to suck and spin-out, all the while keeping him around for new hells, and yet, with each new cig, each new idea crumpled into piles, each less-coke-and-more-rum concoction poured down his throat, he seemed to live for another night - until his new nightly ritual began again.

When he wasn't pissed-drunk on the floor, he worked day-shift for security at one of the last remaining Five-and-Dimes in flat Midwest Ohio. Hardly anyone came into the store, so he could sneak in the odd drink-and-smoke break during the day - his shift lasting from 9 am till 10 pm, sometimes he'd sneak out around 6 pm and grab a cold draft at the bar down the road, dodging work for the last four hours as draft after draft piled up, shot and shot, drink after drink until the bartender threw him into a cab, paying the cabbie out of pity yet again, where the cabbie threw him back against the wall on the mattress, where he would reach over and pop open a bottle of coke, pouring it and some rum he had lying around into a cup, his ritual beginning again.

However, tonight, as his cheap wrist-watch beeped at 2:30, he slumped down into bed, looking up at the roof above him, mold and water damage threatening the roof to cave in at any minute. His past week playing again for the fourth time that night - his fiancee giving him the news, his brother wanting his hand in blessing and congratulations, the rushed marriage, the rice being thrown and the hand-me-down coupe with cans tied with strings speeding away from the church as his mother cried and his father held her close. He remembered walking down the road some, past shops and churches - couples coming out of every wood work, seemingly to spite him, Fate thumbing his mockery into his face. He found the bus stop, and paid the fee, heading into the big city a few hours away, renting a cheap dive of a flat, and holing up - wallowing and drinking away into self-pitied hells.

He closed his eyes, the alcohol sloshing away the last of the pain, the night finally swallowing him up.

It was near 4 am, his record player playing silence from the chair in the corner, empty rum and wine bottles littered around, broken and given-up-on dreams crumpled into little paper mountains, smoked cigs cold on the floor, dishes piled up near the door - when the roof fell in, second floor becoming the new first. He never woke to feel it, never woke to hear his end approach around him, he never knew what was to come of him, never knew that on the floor above him; in their cozy little honeymoon flat, his brother and ex-fiancee were asleep in bed when their floor caved in dropping them down into a piss-hole of a room, where only the landing woke the newly-weds.

Life and Fate got him down, but only at the end did they get him, in the cold water flat...