AUTHOR'S NOTE: Woooo! Longest Tom story of mine to date. New Year's wasn't too long ago so it's not hard to see where the inspiration for this thing came from. Started it some time before Christmas and I've finally finished it up thanks to the help of one of my friends. English majors are awesome friends to have. Tru fax. Anyway, title pilfered from the song "Auld Lang Syne", which is that song that is often played at New Year's but no one really knows the words to or the meaning. I hope my friend doesn't mind me quoting her, but I can't think of a better way to describe the title choice. "...people never really pay attention to classic songs because they assume what they're about based on the context they're used to seeing them in, which kind of fits Tom, too." So yeah, read and enjoy please!
Tom generally didn't enjoy getting drunk or even slightly buzzed for that matter. Alcohol in amounts that produced more than a general fuzzy feeling usually had the most unpleasant habit of bothering his stomach in the worst way in the mornings that followed, and he didn't like the idea that enough of the stuff could cause him to do things and subsequently have no memory of them or the events that occurred as a result when he woke up from an alcohol induced stupor. He didn't like that one little bit. He didn't enjoy knowing that could end up losing control of himself and not know it; especially recently as the ability to control himself, even when sober, was becoming increasingly difficult with each day that passed. Still, tonight wasn't just any old, dark, cold, night. No, tonight was special. Tonight was New Year's Eve, and wasn't getting drunk what normal people did on nights like this? Get so shit-faced they couldn't see straight? No, that wasn't it…not exactly anyway. No, normal people got drunk in the company of friends, family, loved ones, and just the general comfort of companionship of other people because, even if you didn't know them, people in a bar were people either way. That was not what Thomas was doing. He was drunk all right, but it was more of a stronger than normal buzz than full blown drunkenness. He also lacked the company of family and loved ones and friends. There was no companionship to be had for the parking attendant. No, he was drunk and sitting on the roof of his apartment building with nothing but two small packages of firecrackers, a pack of matches, and the cold winter wind for company.
Truth be told, Thomas hated holidays like this. They only reminded him of how painfully lonely he was and filled him with more melancholy than reckless, spirited, glee. Holidays in general were nothing but annoying chores when one was alone. Having to be cheery for other people lest they get up in your face about not being "in the spirit". It was even worse when the weather was cold and made him yearn for the California sun and its warmth, and the same train of thought made him long for the familiar faces that resided on the opposite end of the country. The sort of people he would have spent holidays with…mother, father, and people whom at the very least called themselves his friends. It was nights like this that it was particularly hard for him to remember why he'd come all the way to New York City in the first place. Thomas tried to focus in on the logic of it all, but in his state he was in no mood to try very hard. Such thoughts only made him feel colder as he sat on the roof overlooking the city with his arms crossed as he tried to convince himself that it wasn't cold and that he wasn't lonely. Tom hunched his shoulders defensively against a gust of wind and looked down at his "companions".
"I should do something about those firecrackers…" he said to himself with an odd sort of conviction and finality as he pulled the thought out of what would seem like thin air. He couldn't actually recall having gotten the firecrackers or if it were even legal to purchase and set them off in New York City without some sort of fancy permit that he was certain he didn't have. Still, at the same time he could not remember how he had gotten himself onto the roof of his building, so he figured that the little explosives were from the same blank space in his memory and logically had to have been his. It made a lot of sense…to Thomas anyway. There really was nothing in the world like alcohol-induced lapses in memory. Tom reached over and grabbed one of the packages of firecrackers that sat beside him and due to darkness and some disorientation misjudged the distance and ended up knocking the darn things to the ground and out of sitting reach. "Ah shit…" Tom grumbled as he carefully scooted off the crate he had been using as a seat, taking extreme caution as in his state the crate felt like it had to have been at least twenty feet off of the ground. Fortunately it was more like three feet, and stumbling from that height would have probably only produced a scraped knee. Painful, but nowhere near lethal. Once his feet were on the ground he dropped onto all fours like a dog and started feeling around blindly on the roof's surface for the firecrackers that were masked by darkness. Tom half wished he was a dog so he could just sniff out the smell of firecracker, which would make the act so much simpler, but alas it was not so.
Finally, Thomas' hand met something that was not the hard asphalt of the roof and gripped it tightly in his hands as he stood back up though he was clearly a bit unstable on his own two feet. He stumbled a bit, but was quick to right himself and act as if he had meant to make his leg jig out momentarily from beneath him. Now, he could see that what he held in his hands was in fact his lost package of firecrackers, and a wicked but victorious grin plastered itself onto his face. The expression was almost gargoyle-like in its exaggeration, but Thomas didn't even notice it in his drunken delight. Normally, he would have been rather sensitive to that since people often had mixed feelings about his smile. Some found it endearing while others found it terrifying, but Tom was the only one on the roof, and he couldn't give a damn if he looked like some sort of snarling animal as he grinned at the packaging he held in his hand. He loosened his grip on the object and brought it right up close to his face, the object lightly touching his nose, so as to read the writing on the package and, if he could make them out, any directions that might have been printed on the dangerous objects.
Tom squinted his eyes as he tried to read the package through darkness and slightly blurred vision. As he took in the bright colors and the words of the package, the parking attendant took note of the package's quality and made an inference of his own. Cheap. These were cheap firecrackers. Probably made by some company with a generic name and no right to be manufacturing products like firecrackers or anything that dangerous by any stretch of the imagination. For reasons he couldn't fathom, this realization stripped the wide grin from Tom's face, and his delight was replaced with knot in his stomach and a building frustration. Who the hell let these people make firecrackers? These things would probably blow his damn face up! They were probably planning that all along too. Those assholes. Before he could stop himself, Tom felt himself chuck the package of firecrackers with all his might away from him and as a result of that off the roof itself.
Tom's eyes went wide with surprise as if he couldn't believe what he had just done. He blindly grabbed the second pack of firecrackers and pressed them against his chest as he listened for the sound of its companion pack hitting the hard ground below. Once he heard it Thomas jogged, albeit a bit clumsily, to the raised edge of the building, package of firecrackers still in hand, and looked over the drop to the empty alley below. Down there he spied the contents of his expelled firecracker strewn about the ground five stories below, which prompted a single thought from the man. Pretty. It all looked rather pretty scattered about the ground in the fashion that it was. He leaned even farther over the edge of the building in an attempt to get a better look and accidentally knocked over a glass bottle, not his own, that had been perched precariously atop the balcony-esc edge of the roof. Down, down, it fell the five stories to the hard ground that awaited it at the end of its fall, shattering into a thousand shimmering pieces of glass beneath the moonlight.
Laughter. The kind that started in one's gut and worked its way up. It took Tom a few moments to realize that the amused sound was coming from him as he bounced like an energetic child on the balls of his feet as he stared at the smashed items below him. He was laughing, and he couldn't quite tell why he was, but he knew what he had to do if he wanted the pleasant feeling to last longer than a few fleeting moments of fragile joy. To test this theory, he stretched his arm out over the empty air and released the firecrackers that he held in his fist and reveled in the sound it made as it met the Earth. Well, it would appear that his theory was correct. What a pleasure it was to see something drop at one's own will. To be in control of it's fate. This feeling of control comforted Tom in that moment as it pushed away his most recent fears of losing it completely. At least he could still control some things even if it wasn't much at all. Something…anything…there had to be more that could go over the edge. Tom wanted to see. To watch as a whole thing broke into a thousand beautiful pieces like the shattering of glass or reality.
Searching around the roof there were plenty of scraps of this and that to fall victim to Thomas' peculiar amusement. The crate he'd been sitting on was the first thing to go over the edge, and he grinned in sheer delight as it met its end and broke in the most satisfying way in the empty alley. There was still more for the man to find. More crates, scraps of metal, glass bottles, dead pigeons, and a whole host of other solid objects became airborne before meeting a sudden stop. Tom's pulse began to quicken with each drop as the adrenaline coursed through his veins and mixed with his intoxication to create a unique high unlike anything he had felt before. Pleasant but somewhat nauseating. However, the wealth of rooftop objects began to become less plentiful, and as the adrenaline high began to wear off Tom found him self leaning on the edge and feeling just as bad if not worse than he had been before when his mind had been free to wander on his loneliness as the high dropped off sharply. All he could focus on now was the pile of broken objects he had created in the alley five stories below and how he was going to reorganize his now incredibly scrambled mind, and the alcohol in his system was doing nothing to aid in his progress of trying to make his head stop spinning.
Slowly, from the very far reaches of his brain, came a thought that shined through the clutter of the man's mind as his half sat, leaning on the raised edge of the building, and it was a thought he had had before in passing, but as he waited there, muscles twitching as they relaxed after being used, this thought took on an interesting and new shape that Tom had not experienced previously. What would he look like after a drop from five stories up? Would he look as beautiful and as pleasing to the eye as the pile of this and that, which stared up at him from the alley below? Would his blood glisten in the moonlight like the twinkle of shards of glass or the shine on some of the scraps of metal? Would the sound of him hitting the ground at top speed be as musical as the shattering of glass? Perhaps, it could be that way, but how could he be able to know unless he took action? How could he know unless he tried? He had the power to do it. He still had the control over himself to make that decision. Tom carefully climbed onto the raised edge, and sat dangling his feet over the edge as he continued to ponder. And what about his time in the air? Would it be like flying or would it feel more like the stomach tossing drop of a roller-coaster? Would it cause the same kind of thrill and the same kind of rush or would it be over too quickly for him to get a proper answer? Tentatively, Thomas gathered his legs back to him and then brought himself to a standing position on the edge and looked down at his glorious pile. Perhaps he too would become part of his creation. What would it be like to know that the ground is coming closer and closer? Halfway down would he get scared?
"I'd die…" Tom finally sighed as he stuck one foot over the edge and wiggled it over the drop that he tossed around in his mind as casually as if it were a ball. Would he regret it? "Or I'd get really, really hurt…unless of course I get impaled by a mysterious pile of junk." But I'll probably die, his mind chimed in with a tone cheerier than Tom wanted to believe was possible for such a grim thought. Nervous, he pulled his foot back onto the solid ledge and looked down. And if I should die… "No one would care," he said completing verbally the sentence his thoughts had begun and feeling the heaviness of a frown on his face. "Or even notice…" Tom sighed and once again stuck his foot out over the edge as if extending a challenge to himself. There was, after all, just one thing left on the roof to add to the pile. However, as he stood there a new wave of questions struck him with surprising force. Could he even do it? Did he have the power over his mind to strip away the questions that plagued him and made him pause? Could he take the plunge that he'd forced upon so many objects only minutes before? And if he could…would anyone care? Or would he just be an annoying mess for some cold stranger to have to clean up? The thought made Tom's stomach flip-flop, but he still felt himself starting to lean forward if for no other reason than that he was incredibly curious by nature. How far could he push himself before he faltered leaving himself perched awkwardly between life and death? How long before he realized whether or not he was going to chicken out or go through with the drop? He could feel his balance start to give and himself start to wobble as he did his best to remain balanced on the edge for as long as he possibly could. No one was telling him to do it, but Tom felt accomplished as he stood there, tempting fate.
As Thomas balanced precariously in between the building and the air, the clock must have struck midnight because suddenly there was and outburst of cheers and shouts that came from a bar not far away and still more cheers from the apartments below. As midnight arrived at last, the sudden clamor caught Tom off-guard and caused him to jerk his body forward in surprise. "Shit, shit, shit!" he seemed to yelp into the night air as he felt his body shift farther over than the edge than over the building. Tom flailed his arms frantically as he tried to desperately to right himself and not go down head over heels. In the moments that he felt himself falling forward, Thomas was overcome with something he hadn't expected to feel. Fear. He was scared…terrified even, and he didn't want to know what he looked like smashed against the hard ground. He didn't want to feel the wind or hear it whistle past his ears as he descended. He didn't want to hear his bones crack deafeningly as they collided with the pavement, and he realized that the sounds would be nothing like a nighttime symphony. As he realized this he knew that he couldn't give a rat's ass whether or not people cared or if they'd even notice. Fuck people. He wasn't about to let them get the satisfaction of knowing that they infected his mind in such a way. He was determined to never let them know they affected him in such a way.
With renewed determination Tom pulled his one leg back to the solid ledge as he pulled his torso backward, and as a result a good amount of his body weight, back toward the building. It was enough for him to feel his balance shift from over the drop to over the building in what felt like a comfortable amount. The force of which was enough to make him start to fall backward, which was not aided by the fact that his balance had not quite returned to him. Tom fell back the three feet from the raised edge to the roof itself. He landed with a solid thump and banged his head on ground, biting his tongue until he tasted the coppery flavor of blood. His blood. Gripping his skull, Tom laid on the cold surface of the roof feeling disoriented and sickeningly dizzy. He sucked on his tongue until he felt the flow of blood start to slow down.
Close…that'd been far too close and far too sobering for Tom who was still feeling a bit buzzed after the whole incident. Slowly he managed to sit himself up and slower still got back up onto his own two feet. Cautiously he made his way back to the ledge, doing his best to ignore how very badly his legs were shaking and the bit of blood that was pooling in his mouth. Once there he allowed his legs to give out beneath him. He slumped into an awkward squat and raised himself just enough to look over the raised edge. However, he closed his eyes tightly so as not to see the drop itself. Whether he admitted it or not, Tom was in no mood to look down below again. He spat out some of the tongue blood as he tried to articulate his thoughts.
"Ok…" Thomas rasped through uneven breaths and tired lungs. "New Year's resolution number one…don't try that again," the man forced out in as calm a way as he could with emotion clawing at his throat and making him hoarse, and his voice still shook in a way comparable to his legs from only a minute or so previously. He could still hear the hooting and hollering and carrying on, and he clapped his hands over his ears so as to block out the noise that brought up painful, fresh memories. And Tom had no desire to be reminded. Reminded that he was still alone. Reminded that people had gotten New Year's kisses from the ones they loved while Tom had come close to kissing the concrete with his body. Reminded that even now he was still too scared to just step out onto the air. An unknown amount of time passed as he sat there, hands over his ears and eyes shut as he tried to block the world from invading his space. Once he was certain that the noise had ceased, Tom moved his hands away from his ears, which still felt warm as he stood up onto wobbly legs. Once on his feet he opened his eyes and blinked a few times to adjust them once more to the lighting of the area. He stuck out his tongue and squeezed it gently, absentmindedly causing the bleeding to become stronger once more. Tom released it and pulled it back into his mouth, but admired the dark liquid that now resided on the tips of his fingers and stuck in between the digits. He let his hand drop to his side, and after a few deep breaths looked over the edge one more time. Thomas felt his nose wrinkle in a strange snarl as if he thought the pile of broken junk he was fixating on was going to spring up and attack him from beyond the giant junkyard in the sky.
Even though he knew he was the only one on the roof, the man looked around to make sure the coast was clear before spitting another installment of tongue blood onto the pile in the alley. Maybe for now that would satisfy its thirst for blood as it beckoned the man to it. No…not tonight. Tom had more control than that. He wasn't about to give in tonight. Or rather this morning…details. Minor details. Why was he always poking and prodding at such minor details? Tom shook his head and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. Well, this was a special evening or morning or whatever. This was New Year's Day…a time for resolutions and for changes. What could he change? This time more seriously than his other statement. "There has to be something…" Thomas mumbled into the dark as he tried to think of something, but not just anything. Something big but simple to do. He wasn't going to change jobs. As much as he hated working in the dank parking garage that served as his office he couldn't imagine himself working anywhere else. He'd tried to imagine it but had failed miserably, so that option was out of the question. Tom flipped through a million different options in his mind, but still, nothing seemed to fit his mood or his belief, or lack there of, in his own ability to follow through.
However, as he was about to turn away from the roof in defeat an idea popped into his mind and caused him to stop and think. He had a resolution for himself. He had a damn good one too, and the more he thought about it the simpler it seemed to become. He was going to live in the moment. No more wallowing in the past on things he could have done. It clearly wasn't doing him any good as his most recent venture into self-pity had proven. No, at least not for a few days. Tom was done wading through the shit that had piled up in his mind and had almost pushed him over the edge. He wasn't going to look too far into the future either lest he start obsessing over figuring it out to the point of madness. One moment at a time…he was going to do his damned best to live for the here and now until…well, until he forgot really. And yet, even though the man was sure he'd relapse later on into his own usual moodiness as he always did, he couldn't help but cast that thought aside. Thinking that far ahead was not at all in the spirit of living in the moment now was it? Certainly not.
Backing away from the edge, mind returning to a relative ease, Tom turned his back to it and closed his eyes once more, though this time in thought rather than defense, which he noticed only then felt heavy. Well, moment…if ever there was a time to be influential this had to be it. Tom paused as he waited for the first thought to come into his head as he had determined that to be as best as he could get to living in the moment at that particular second. It didn't take long for Tom to figure out what it was he wanted to do with himself, and he headed for the door that lead off the rooftop, down some stairs. The moment was telling him to go to bed and to sleep off the booze, and if that was what it wanted that was what the man was going to give it. Sleep and perhaps even a hint of dreaming…what could be more in the moment than that?