Author's Note: It was in a dream, or perhaps half consciousness I found with hands sweeping aside the old and familiar, I found this. I'd like to present something I've never done before, it begins with an A and ends in a Y.
You don't remember me do you? You're looking at me like I'm a stranger here to kick you out of this rotting garret. I can't say I'm surprised though, were we ever really introduced? I must say I hardly recognise you, you the once starry eyed English boy with a voice like...heaven...have become a drunken lurch curled up in the corner of your garret surrounded in shattered and empty Absinthe bottles. You remind me of a larger version of Toulouse, grieving from day until night, crying until your eyes could not become any more bloodshot. Yes, Toulouse was in love once, a very long time ago. But even though he loved, he was never, what you would call 'loved in return'. Perhaps that's why he could never remember his line.
You look up at me as I say that, which doesn't surprise me either. I can tell you're wondering how I, of all people, know anything about your play. I confess I kept myself updated on its progression – purely on the hope that you might fail as the bohemian's new writer and they'd come crawling back to me.
Yes, I can tell what you're thinking; if you had failed as their writer perhaps she would never have fallen in love with you? Perhaps, even though it might've still killed you inside a little to know that she would never love you, she would never have let herself fall for you if you hadn't have been so amazingly brilliant with words, it might've been better that way. It might've saved you all this kind of...existing...you struggle to achieve each day.
I've been here a while, don't you know? No, you don't, because you've been asleep. Or unconscious. Or maybe even on the verge of death. I've been here since last night; you let me in, blind drunk. I can understand your confusion; your eyes were glazed over with visions of that horrid little green sprite that so often plagues the vision of so many men who think they're strong enough to drink Absinthe. You fell into your little corner almost immediately after letting me in and ceased to move – and I thought you were dead until I heard your hoarse, heavy breathing and a little later you cried out her name in agony as you tossed and turned on the cold and creaky floorboards. Her name sounded so sorrowful coming from your lips – drunk and dead to the world as you were – it wasn't hard for me to see all the hurt and bleeding of your heart underneath the blanket of alcohol that you had tied yourself up in, I am a writer, just like you and we writers can see these kind of things.
You're looking at me as though you're wondering why I am here. Originally it had been to gloat, to rub your face in the fact that it would've been so much better if the bohemians had left me as their writer. But Satie is right, you're already broken enough and whatever I wanted to sneer at you to begin with would only prove to be a waste of time – you're barely absorbing anything I'm saying now. It is ironic, because I always pictured a grieving heart like you, broken and shattered beyond all repair, to be a strangely beautiful thing, something once perfect in colours brighter than the sun and richer than the garden roses now so fragile, so decayed, crushed carelessly to the ground still with all those beautiful colours. I suppose I was wrong. The sight of you brings me such a terrible sadness, heavy and never ending on my shoulders. Especially when you loved her as much as you did, oh yes, I know how much you loved, I've heard stories. The story of your love is told in the streets and you haven't even written it yet.
Was it worth it? All that love, that barely lasted long enough to grow, was it worth it to end up how you are? How things ended, how the curtain fell? To be left here in a dank and dirty room, bottles of intoxicant as your only comfort and memories of the past as your only assurance that life was once beautiful – almost tormenting? You look at me with your bloody eyes as if really noticing for the first time that I am here, your hair coarse and unkempt falls across your forehead and your teeth are still white as they flash behind your lips as you speak,
'Shh, Audrey, you're drowning out my memories.'