I wake up having no clue today would be any different than yesterday. Aches cry out from everywhere on my body. As my legs swing over the side of my rickety cot, my knees give a crackling cry of protest and I am reminded that I am slowly killing my poor, innocent body. What has my body ever done to me? For twenty-eight years, this physical form has served as a vessel for every idea I've conceived, every thought I've grown, every motion I've made for my entire life; it has every right to object after a night of madness such as the one I put it through last night.
While I sit still on the edge of my bed, my head swims with a kaleidoscope of emotions, most of them antagonistic and aimed at myself. Had I really spent another night drowning in alcohol at the saloon? Of course, I had. It had been new year's eve. Even Penny, poor, sweet thing she was, had taken a sip of watered down mead. And as much as I had undoubtedly enjoyed celebrating the changing of the seasons, a night of heavy drinking was neither what my body nor my bank account had needed last night. Yet here I am, stumbling stiffly to the trashcan by my writing desk to vomit. As per usual.
Truly, this is not the best way to start off the year. My new year's resolution had not been to hold my own hair as I spew a putrid stream of last night's regrets. I do just that, all the while wishing Haley and I had ended up sleeping together last night. Not, of course, in the biblical sense, but in the sense that she and I had stumbled home together and fallen asleep in the same bed. This happens more often than it ought to. All of this. The pathetic hangover, the horrific behavior last night, Haley and I falling into the same boat over and over again.
"Oh, Yoba..." I groan the name of the valley's god, sitting back on folded legs and placing my pounding head in my hands. My long hair falls forward to filter out most of the sunlight beaming cheerily through my glassless window, allowing the ache in my head to fade just slightly. The lessening of the pain gives way to a memory of the night before.
Oh, dear. Exactly as I had feared. Haley and I had overzealously celebrated the coming of midnight with her giving me a kiss I still don't know how I managed to reciprocate. I could still feel sunglow blonde curls weaved between my fingers, flavorless lipgloss smearing onto my own lips, the taste of the beer she'd been downing again. It still sent a minor shock through my body, the way she'd grabbed on to my shirt and yanked me over the table.
Of course, I should come to expect this sort of behavior from my best friend, especially under the influence of alcohol. It isn't as though she's never kissed me before; likely the whole town thinks we're together, including that brash boy Alex, who believes he had some sort of claim to Haley since they occasionally speak in the summer and dance together at certain events.
I shake off the greasy feeling that thoughts of that boy give me. There is no use getting even sicker, especially when I have so much to do to get myself back into (mostly) functioning order. While my momentary repulsion had taken my mind off the taste in my mouth, something had to be done about my hangover before I could even begin to try writing my quota for today.
Can I withstand the disappointed look Harvey would give me if I wander into his clinic at...what time is it? Where is my clock? Is it even daytime or is that the moon glaring hatefully through my window? Perhaps I wasn't out cold for as long as I had thought. Or, perhaps, I was asleep for much longer than expected. But one painful look directly out the window assures me that, yes, it is the sun boring into my aching cranium. What a lovely spring day.
Recalling quickly the task at hand, I pat at my shirt, then my pants, then crawl back over to the bed to search for my pocket watch. My hands grasp at the rough sheets, pawing through in a clumsy way while hoping not to find any unexpected sea creature nestling uncomfortably close to where my unconscious body had lain mere moments before. It takes less than a minute of scrambling to find the unpredictable little clock. It seems to have taken up residence inside my pillowcase, so I dig it out and open it to find that it is, regrettably, almost three in the afternoon. Harvey's clinic closes at three as of late, so I am doomed to suffer the rest of today. Just what I deserve, actually.
Getting up from my floor with cracking knees, I let out a heavy sigh that ends with my lungs burning. I've made it through hangovers before. At this point, surely, I am an expert at withstanding my own self-inflicted morning horror.
What I need is coffee and mass amounts of fresh water. A quick survey of my small shanty alerts me to the fact that my grocery supply is lower than I remember it being yesterday. My bank account is not going to like this.
Perhaps all I need is to go about today as I would any other day, I decide as I begin to change from yesterday's rumpled outfit to something fresher (though maybe not as clean as it should be). My normal routine meant shopping for groceries (coffee!), doing the laundry, then writing. Nothing particularly strenuous; just enough to make it seem like I had been the productive, fully-functioning adult with a fulfilling life I often pretend to be.
Of course, when every creak of a board beneath my feet sends me flinching and every step is an uneasy battle with gravity, it is difficult to exude my normal confidence. Instead of an air of poise and elegance surrounding me, surely the stench of last night's ale and this morning's sick reeks from my flesh like an aura of visible filth. I am briefly reminded of a comic from my youth-some child dubbed Pigpen due to his own atmosphere of grime. Perhaps this was my destiny. Filth and alcohol. Edgar Allan Poe had faced no better, and look how highly he is respected.
Still, I fight against the sense of walking on the deck of a ship and stumble like a bow-legged toddler into the unending sunshine beyond my doorway. The ocean greets me with a soft hiss, a million kisses flying up in droplet form. Though I certainly have no wish to get wet, the cool mist soothes my feverish skin. I scoop up a few shells and let them wash out with the tide.
They disappear beneath the ever-roiling war of the seas and I am left alone once more, a hungover man standing under the weight of my own sweat-soaked sorrows. The ocean spray drenches the front of my coat, discoloring it slightly, but I find myself not minding in the slightest bit. This is the tranquility I often crave between beers in the rowdy pub. Despite the sun shining down on me, the stabs at my temple slow in frequency and intensity. My sorrows are momentarily lifted from my shoulders. But time is of the essence; Pierre closes his shop at five, and though he often seems to have taken quite a liking to me (judging by casual conversations and past festivals alone) I doubt he would stay open any later for me.
The wind buffets my chest, hair streaming back in ribbons of flame, as if the earth itself urges me to return to my path; time slips away far too quickly in the valley. Far quicker than it had back home, and I find myself wishing it had been the opposite. I would give my soul to stay in this moment forever, free and adored by nature itself.
But alas; time is fleeting. My eyes open again, taking in the grey-blue view from my 'front yard'.
"Goodbye," I murmur to the receding embrace of the ocean. My waterlogged feet take me to the partially overgrown passage from the beach to the town. Here the magnanimous, waxy leaves above shelter me temporarily from the sunlight streaming down from above. It's too much for me now that the ocean is a dull roar in the background, too much for my narrowed eyes and cracking skull. Still, I have to withstand the solar misery once my shadowy canopy leaves me. As it does, I am thoroughly coated in the white light of day, and instead of purification, I feel magnification: every flaw left by last night's bad decisions is on full display for the townspeople now, and though there are few of them likely to be better off than I am, I would still love to look better than I do at the moment.
As inconspicuously as possible, I lean down to sniff at the collar of my coat, then at my underarms. Nothing too unbearably wretched, just the scent of the sea. It seems fine enough to me until I run into you.
It happens with so little notification that I scarce have time to notice the transition from bridgestones to pale spring grass before you stand beside me, radiating warmth and blocking out the sun. All I can see are your shoes at the moment. Heavy black boots that trample the new growth. Such gigantic boots could pass through magma and come out unmarred. Your heavily tattooed hand appears in my personal space, struck out in my direction, clutching a wilting dandelion with more daintiness than I ever would have expected. It occurs to me that this is a gift before I realize that I should probably look up to meet your gaze. But I find I cannot.
"I…" I begin, staring at the yellow weed in your grasp. Suddenly, I am sure I stink. I am sure I reek of the stenches of vomit and alcohol and failure, polluting the fine, clean air of Pelican Town. I am unshakably certain that I have taken the form of some monstrous half-formed muck-fetus. There are pomegranate seeds in my teeth, though I haven't eaten one since Fall. My coat is stained and torn and threadbare. My skin is dry and peeling; my freckles, however faded on my face, are unsightly. I am an overused washrag. A scrap of rotten fabric adrift in a filthy sea. I am nothing.
I look up.
To allow myself to call you handsome would be the equivalent of calling the sun a star. Yes, it is undeniably true, the sun is merely one star in an infinite sea of them, and from any other place in the galaxy, it is merely a pinprick in the black velvet of some distant night sky. But the sun-to the earth, the sun is a god. It brings life to Earth in a way that a star billions of lightyears away could never hope to manage. And as I stare at you, lips drying, eyes wide, I feel new life stirring somewhere deep inside of my shell of a body. Some new evolution begins in every cell running rampant through my tributary veins, light blooming like some new form of Genesis. I feel my orbit change as breath returns to my aching lungs. My heart pounds in my chest, begging to be set free so it may follow this change in gravity.
"Hmm…" I say to you, stalling for time. I wince at the sound of my own voice, now sounding so coarse and harsh even as just a hum in your overwhelming presence. But my mind is distracted and oh, oh, I can feel the way your eyes move across my skin. Your heavenly blue gaze is stronger than any hand to ever caress my cheek. My own regard moves back down to the dying flower in your grasp, and I hear myself say, "I'm not a huge fan of this."
The ground might have collapsed under my feet. My knees may have folded under my body. What sort of wrathful curse had I just spat in the face of your refreshingly eager generosity? What sort of revolting mistake of nature am I?
The world seems to slow for a moment, and I am stuck watching the butterflies fluttering around your head in the spring sunlight. They shoot down my throat and take up residence. Damnable squatters.
You drop the flower, a crestfallen look crossing your once earnest face. I consider dropping myself from the cliffs on the far edge of town. Surely, it would be far better than the utter mortification in red crawling up my cheeks at the moment. But then the utter glory of your face in misery shocks my mind briefly back into dimness. Are you a saint? A martyr? In what holy mural have I seen such a melancholic angel in my lifetime? Surely, some renaissance great had laid hands upon this beauteous visage-carved it into marble, no, gold, or spent a decade painting your image for some massive cathedral. As I watch, honey drips from your skin in the form of sunlight, night coating your eyelashes and hair. Where could I place you in my memories? Who could you be?
Your eyes remain on my heated cheeks and a grin so abominably crooked flashes your teeth at me. I know, with overwhelming clarity, who you must be.
"You must be Lucifer," I whisper, voice hardly audible as I stare at you in awe. You're hardly taller than I am, three inches more at the most, but I still feel the need to look up at you. You tower over me in ways beyond height, and something previously unnoticed awakens deep within my soul in response to such a realization.
But when my mind focuses once more, I realize you're staring at me with an expression of confusion splayed across your lovely countenance. What have I done to earn such a perplexed expression? It takes me a moment before I realize I have called you by the name of the Christian devil, the morning star. This would surely alarm anyone, except I have the faintest memory of Mayor Lewis describing to me the elderly man who had once lived on the farm at the edge of town. Something about him having a whole host of biblically named grandchildren-one of whom had been controversially named Lucifer. While I had spent the last few years of my life under the gaze of the valley god, Yoba, I certainly had not forgotten the archaic foundations of my childhood; perhaps you are as fallen from grace as I consider myself to be. If your name was Lucifer after all.
As I think, though, another murky memory of last night distracts my mind's eye: had Lewis mentioned the coming of this stranger, you beautiful no-one, to the town? I had the vaguest certainty that he had.
To cover myself and my almost total lack of conviction, I say, "Ah, the new farmer we've all been expecting…" My voice cracks into several pieces on its way up my vocal cords, and audible shards spew from my mouth. How can I explain myself? How can I explain this unsolicited name-calling? As you stare at me, confusion drifting to the most heavenly expression of concern, I add, "...and whose arrival has sparked many a conversation!" Hopefully, this will remove any suspicion you may carry. Hopefully .
I bow in a way that seems pretentious even as I do it. When I come up, you're smiling again, some tiny curve of your pink lips that sends my heart into dips and peaks that, in any other situation, I would get Harvey to check up on. After a moment of staring at you with a massively dopey expression, I say, "I'm Elliott." My words come out as a wanton sigh, and I shock myself. Why not slobber all over you while I'm at it, hm? I force myself to straighten up and fold my hands behind my back, face petrifying into some stony semblance of pride. "Elliott Scott Roosevelt." My own name falls from my mouth in the form of old money and older bloodlines, and I almost flinch at how stuffy I know I sound. But you are unaffected. You are marvelous.
Your smile grows for a split second, then your tattooed hand comes up to your throat and I wonder briefly if you're choking or something of that sort. But after a moment of struggling, you rasp, "I'm Lucifer." Your accent stuns me. I had no suspicion that you would be from England-not London, I'm guessing. You glance around, the sunlight catching your eyes fabulously at every angle, before leaning close. I'm hit with scents that bring me back to age sixteen, when my family took our first vacation to the Ferngill Republic. Of course, we'd stayed in Zuzu City the whole time, and as I inhale again, I realize it's just that oppressive odor that all big cities had. The scent of Jojacorp plastic seating and despair.
Normally, this would easily mark the end of my infatuation. Jojacorp is one of the few things I openly and publicly despise, simply because my father had owned so much stock in them.
But I find myself standing still, your face inches from mine as you manage to whisper, "I live on the farm." You jab your thumb over your shoulder in the direction of the overgrown farmland on the edge of the town. I can picture it now: rustic cabin rotting away where it stands with decades-old vines overtaking the stone foundations and wood paneling, fields ruled by a forest much younger than the ancient, arborous giants surrounding. More than once, Haley and I had snuck onto the premises, aiming for a photographic study of post-abandonment farmland, just to be scared away by the ghostly screams echoing through the forest. To think of such a celestial being inhabiting and rejuvenating such a hellhole is certainly an interesting thought.
I glance over my own shoulder, back at the stone bridge and the leafy tunnel to the shore, then respond, "I live in the little cabin by the beach. It's a pleasure to meet you." I smile gently back at you, wondering if your inability to speak clearly is brought on by shyness. Why someone as glorious as you would ever feel insecure, I have no clue. But when you rub your throat as you nod a silent goodbye, I can't help but wonder if something more is behind this.