Hurricane Drunk
One more gulp.
She gulped.
It felt like the slivering of lead-heavy, sickly snakes cascading down the sides of her mouth, pooling under her tongue, wheeling in meandering motions down her throat until the thick liquid reached her empty stomach and hit like a tombstone off a cliff into a vast salty ocean. But the ocean was shallow. The concentration of alcohol was increasing. Her taste buds were on the verge of throwing up for her. She was finally drunk.
She kept going.
If she could reach the stupor state she had seen some of her customers in before, that almost vegetated looking state, maybe she'd forget even more. Maybe she'd feel even less. Despite their absolute helplessness these incredibly drunk customers who, with the help of her regulars, she often had to drag out into the street before they threw up all over the bar, always seemed kind of happy. They certainly didn't seem aware of anything around them, the world around them, the trouble they were causing, the responsibility they were chucking aside, the distress they were causing her, or any distress or pain they may have themselves... and that was the appeal.
Her head collapsed into her arms. Her neck lay across her elbow and bent onto the hard surface of the bar, her left eyebrow smothering the woodwork. It smelt like disinfectant, wood polish and beer. She tilted her head slightly and her eyes lazed over to the little clock she had hung behind the bar. It wasn't too late. Maybe she'd move. Maybe she'd slide into her comfy little bed and find comfort in the fluffiness of her new winter blanket. But, then again, maybe she'd just feel that overwhelming loneliness again.
She just wanted- no, she dreamed of a knight in shinning armor swooping into the bar, scooping her up in his arms, carrying her to bed, silent and serious yet concerned, tucking her into her fluffy winter blanket, holding her to him as her mind lulled into peace against his broad and safe chest. It was comfort she wanted. It was peace she wanted. Only then would the inability to sleep go away.
Well, she had a knight. But she didn't have a knight. She had something but it wasn't the knight. Or it was but it was the wrong one, or a halfway house, or a hybrid with something else which didn't allow it to quite tick the boxes. Either way it wasn't what it was.
She didn't know. But she no longer cared! She couldn't even think! Finally she understood the appeal of "getting off your face"!
She collapsed onto the bar and fell asleep.
***
"Tifa."
The world was a blurry mess of black and brown and disinfectant and wood polish and beer.
"Tifa."
The world was shaking. The bar was experiencing an earthquake. She better phone the radio- no, turn it on and listen to the number of casualties and sigh and suddenly feel selfish for wallowing in her own self-pity.
"Tifa!"
The earthquake was getting more violent. She really better get up. She moved. A torrent of poison shot through her veins under the pressure caused by the slight movement. In fact, that would be quite a thing, if, say, she had not been drinking "safe" alcohol in her Corel wine, but instead the incomplete fermentation product, methanol, which was a poison. Methanol actually killed people. She thought this over for a moment, and then found solace in the knowledge that at least Cloud and the children would get plenty of compensation from the Corel Wine Company over her death. It was better than nothing.
"Tifa! Wake up!"
A large shove and she thought she was being pushed across the bar. She found the strength to tilt her head upwards and looked ahead. A sharp light was glinting off the bottlenecks of spirits on the shelf opposite her, right into her right eye. She was dazzled by it. Someone had turned on the lights.
She made an effort to look back at the little clock face hovering above the bar. It was three in the morning, three hours later than when she'd last looked. She must have passed out without realising it.
A strong hand placed itself around her shoulder blade and she began to sober up at the touch. It was warm, but it was cool in comparison to the scolding hot emanating from her skin. She began to sit up but only got half way before she felt an intense pranging sensation across and around the top of her head, as if someone had fitted a hat tight around her temple and then attempted to rip it off. She sulked onto her balled-up hands and propped her head up. A pair of dazzling blue eyes shone back at her; deep and mysterious like the oceans, tired and a little panicked, resembling a perturbed human being. Her rufous eyes had glazed over and were unable to focus on them properly.
The dazzling blue eyes let out a small sigh through their nose. The nose's lips then twitched slightly into a slight twist and then back again. All the way back up shot her eyes to the blonde and elegant, for a guy, eyebrows framing the whole picture.
"You're drunk," the lips finally decided.
She shied away slowly into the nook of her elbow, but then a hand came out of nowhere and stroked the side of her face. She straightened her head suddenly and experienced a head-rush. Her eyes winced and she tried to remove herself from his grip.
"I'm fine," a strange voice replied.
This time just the eyes sighed. Only she had ever seemed able to read them so quickly like that. Most eyes didn't speak so loudly as they did. You just had to be able to understand their language which took prolonged familiarity to learn.
"You've been crying."
The voice was more broken this time. She looked down at the strong hand and saw the glints of little tears on his fingertips. Maybe in between the passing out, the increased distorting of her inner monologue and the acute stench of sharp chemicals rising into her senses she had at one point cried. She couldn't really remember.
"I'm fine." The strange voice was now adamant and clearly frustrated. It was also husky and sore.
She was suddenly levered like a huge bag of rice onto somebody's side, ready to be launched into the back of some trailer and driven off for sale. She struggled in protest but the arms were too strong, the shoulders were too strong and she found herself being removed from her comfortable slump on the stool.
Her feet hit the floor and she tried to stand upright. To her amazement and premature elatedness she managed it. The blurriness of the world began to sharpen out, the throbbing in her head came and went but was less consistent, the nauseating smells were gone from right under her senses. She looked up. Cloud was looking at her uncertainly with a precautionary hand on either side of her. He made her feel like a child.
"What do you want, Cloud?"
He was dumbfounded. His shoulders lost a little of their composure.
"What are you doing?" she asked hastily and pushed against his arms. With resistance he kept them there.
"I don't need you to look after me!"
His arms enclosed and suddenly brought her close. The thud of her body against his resonated through her bones. She could hear the pulsating of his heartbeat over the throbbing of her headache. Her arms had raised defensively with the second nature of a martial arts master in the moment he had clung her to him, and so they weren't quite together; it was a struggling hold. But then his warmth, his strength, his masculine smell, his aura of security and want to protect, his persistence and gentleness, his concern; it was all too much. He wasn't the right one, he wasn't the knight, he wasn't the one she had been hoping for, he didn't love her over another.
She pushed fiercely against him. When he resisted again and tried to pull her closer into his bittersweet comfort she gritted her teeth. She resisted the urge to scream. "Don't touch me."
Silence fell across the room. The empty glass on the bar counter stood by mournfully with its sticky rim of vodka, rum, gin, wine, whiskey, beer...
His hands fell to his sides.
She found the steadiness to walk a few steps away from him. He stayed where he was. Control regained itself helpfully quickly as she reached the stairs, her mobility feeling more as if she was sober. Eyes fixed on her goal she could move easily up and over one step and another until she reached the landing, then her bedroom, then her bed, then her pillow, then her blankets, and then, finally, something resembling sleep.
Cloud remained in the bar. Something ate inside of him. His heart shuddered down his bones into his feet; his eyes were aware of every piece of décor in the room, every piece of evidence of what had just happened. He shut his eyes.
As the image of Tifa walking up the stairs and away from him repeated over, and over, and over, and the sound of her angry and disgusted voice repeated, "Don't touch me," "Don't touch me," over, and over, and over, he felt the squelching of his heart in between his toes, blood threatening to trickle and explode from every fibre of his soul.
With a sudden rupture, his heart finally broke.