One shot.
"I feel life for what feels like the very first time. Hold me, Vinnie." Her rough voice played through Vincent's mind like an old film.
"Run away with me. To a place where we can both be free of this and that, free from everything that puts us on the brink of suffocation."
He could see her now, standing in front of him, in her signature get up, a white dress with a vest, one leg tucked into her leggings. Yes, her eyebrows thick and her eyes blue. Her hair sitting messy in a large black bun.
"I'm going, Vincent. Whether or not you join me is up to you." He remembered the day at the train station when she held out one hand, the other holding a suitcase.
"You wanna stir up trouble in the belly of the whale and get yourself killed, be my guest. But I won't be apart of it." He turned up his nose at her outstretched hand. He began to cry, his head on the bar, his hand still clutching the empty shot glass like a mother's warm grasp.
He could hear sirens, screams, and the sound of gunfire.
Two shots.
"Vincent! Vincent it's Charlotte!" No, no, no not this again. His heartbeat was getting louder and louder and louder. "The protest, there was gunfire…She's on her way to the hospital in Boston!" The sound of gunfire went off in his head and echoed through the tall and empty walls.
Three shots.
"If you'd just gone with her…maybe she'd still be alive." Alfred had told him, watching Charlie take her last breath on the hospital bed.
"If I'd gone with her… She'd still be alive." He repeated to himself slowly.
Four shots.
He swore that he could feel the soft touch of her bare skin against his nimble fingers as their heartbeats became one. He could hear her slow breaths, her soft lips and her long hair in the spaces between his fingers where she used to put hers. He cried harder, unable to lift his head again. He saw her eyes, looking straight at him. Her warm smile, her pointed nose.
"Charlie…" He whispered.
Five shots.
"Vincent," A soft voice in the background was drowned out by the voices in his own head.
He sobbed to himself, bystanders either too numb from the alcohol or too thick-skinned to care about the man who was crying to himself who had had too much to drink. He was going numb himself, the ringing in his head was making it hard to get a grasp on reality.
"Vinnie, baby." The voice spoke a little louder this time, catching his attention. Still, he didn't move. He had no will to move, to eat or to do anything, ever again. Nothing, that is, but drink.
Before he could get another shot however, he felt a hand stroke his long black hair across his forehead slowly. It was a familiar touch, but a freezing, cold touch.
"Vincent." The voice was louder this time, sprouting near the hand.
He moved his head up and saw Charlie standing there for real, her eyes were sad, but soft. He stumbled backwards, falling off the barstool and onto the wooden floor, on his knees. Exactly the same as when he'd left her at the hospital. He felt tears race down his boney cheeks as she walked over to him with grace, and fluidity. She looked the same, but paler, and she brought a presence to the room he wasn't expecting.
"Vinnie, baby, what are you doing?" She asked in a cool voice. She stood over him and frowned.
"Charlie…" Was all he could muster in her presence. She knelt and put her hands on his face.
"Who am I looking at? Cause it's not the Vincent that I knew." He sobbed and hiccuped, and grabbed her by the hips, staining her dress with tears.
"I'm sorry, Charlie! I'm so sorry!" He sobbed into her like a baby, all of his words were slurred and almost incomprehensible.
"Hey, someone get this looney outta 'ere will ya?" A tired voice shouted, pointing at Vincent. But he couldn't let go of his long, lost love. He never even got to say goodbye. He never even got to say goodbye.
He kept on yelling apologies into the air as he sunk farther onto the floor, clinging to her dress like a child.
"What is dis guys deal, 'uh?" Two burly men grabbed him by the shoulders pried him away.
"No, stop! I have to talk to her! You don't understand!" He kicked and thrashed but their grip was too tight on his dangly arms. "Charlie," he cried.
"Buddy, there's nobody there," the bigger one grunted. When Vincent took another look, the dress he'd been clinging to was just thin air. There was indeed nobody there.
"No," he whimpered. "No!" He cried out in agony as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.
"'Dis guy needs serious help." One said, holding onto his left arm.
"Nah, just another drunk bastard." The other said, gripping his right arm.
Vincent heard Charlie's calm words in his head laughing like hyenas. He never even got to say goodbye. He let the men carry him out of the bar and throw him onto the streets, where he landed on his side, with a cut on his lip and bruises coating his arms. Everything was blurry, a mess, a delusion. Street lamps were still on, but almost every store and house near him was beginning to dim. He lay there, unable to move, sweating like a horse and drunk like a sailor. And with all hope he still refused to believe his love; the one person who made him truly happy, was gone.
He waited, he waited for a long time for his brothers. Surely they'd notice his absence and come looking for him. Surely. But as the long hours of the night drew on, there was no sign of Joey's barn musk and he heard nothing of Theodore's deep voice. No one cared enough to come find him. He began to cry once again, in his own little pool of pathos, on the cold ground just outside the bar where he'd come face to face with death. He wondered how such cruel world came to be; where his whole one had come crashing down into a million pieces but everyone else's still rode on triumphantly. He wondered if everything would change for everyone else's world just as it did for his.
But nothing changed, and still, no one came looking for Vincent.
But when did things start to go so wrong? Oh right. It was August 3rd, 1887, the day Vincent McFadden met Charlie Rose Bennett.