TheBanyanTree: Stories I've Written-Story #1-BLACK VELVET

[Sharon Mack]

Hi!

I've been busy writing lots of stories and doing my "Journal Prompts" faithfully to my other workshop.  They are sort of on the dark side (I get weird sometimes) but at least I am writing.  I didn't want to post them while we were all celebrating Jim's miracle but now that he's safe and getting better I thought I would do so now.  So you've been warned and if you don't like them or there are too many....you know what to do...delete, delete, delete.  As always, comments and feedback are most welcome.

STORY #1

Journal Prompt 

Sunday July 11, 2004
 
Take one tense emotion you've experienced--envy, fear, greed, lust--and give it to a fictional character. Make sure the character is not you, but the emotion should be yours. Create a scene employing the fictional character and the emotion. Involve another person as an antagonist or a co protagonist.

Emotion:  Despair

BLACK VELVET

It is five after two in the morning and I am drunk on the beach.  He left me yesterday morning.  Left me with a slow word and a bare smile.  His face was gray, like the light that had barely begun to show itself in the dullness of our bedroom.  I thought I saw him hesitate and for a flashing moment I had hope.  Hope that it wasn't true. Hope that he was just tired of the fight.  Hope that he would rally, but I was wrong.  It was just my imagination.  I wanted to see it...the hesitation...willed myself to see it.  

I told myself to be cool; he'd come to his senses.  We'd been together too long.  He couldn't live without me any more than I could live without him.  We were a part of each other.  We breathed one another.  I reached out to touch his arm and felt him recoil.  I sucked in my breath and turned toward the wall.  I couldn't let him see the tears.  I WOULDN'T do this...cry...cry like a small wounded child.  I was NOT a child.  He would see this and think me brave.  He would realize my strength and love me for it just as he always had.  I breathed in deeply and sensed his movement toward the door.  I turned, only seeing his back as he went...and I knew it was for the last time.  He meant it.  He was leaving me.

I stood there for the longest time.  It felt like hours but by the clock I knew it had been mere minutes.  I was numb.  What to do wasn't even a question I was asking yet....not then....not so soon after he left.  

But I'm asking now and I am finding there is no answer, except for the one at the bottom of my beloved bottle.  I turn it in my hand and read the label as though I'd never seen the words "Black Velvet" before.  I choke on my sobs and swallow them down with my next swig from my beautiful bottle.  I let it burn all the way down, savoring the hot, fiery feel of the golden liquid.  I want the heat.  I want it to burn all the pain out of my gut.   Black velvet....black velvet....I say the words over and over....I want to feel the whiskey's black velvet on my consciousness.  I pray for the black velvet of drunkenness, the black velvet of unconsciousness*the black velvet of my own dying.

I take another swig and notice that the bottle is almost gone and my despair is still with me.  It's icy cold fingers are wrapped around my heart and my soul.  I drop my final hope inside the bottle...the answer to my question.  The whiteness of the pills disappears as they fizz and growl at the bottom and I lift the Black Velvet to my lips for the very last time.  I lay the bottle down in the cold, cold sand and now I am waiting....

waiting ....

waiting.