One
And now as I sit here longing for you in my soul of souls, I know I’ve ruined everything. My every regret dawns on me at once, bearing the weight of every sin I’ve commited and every choice I could’ve made. Every passing moment of my life flashes before my eyes at the rate of stars as they disappear into oblivion in the sky. Photo albums burning away as record players of my life begin to lose their sound. My existence purely decimated to nothingness beyond my body, as it rots on the cement behind the dumpster. I am nothing but the polyethylene that was once a garbage bag bought at the everyday grocery for barely a fucking quarter. Every inch of metal and ink I’ve doused hard earned pay into left now to the price of a quarter. My very soul the equivalent of some metal currency. Everyone depicting their experience of this believe in some way of reliving your whole life again, the eight minute period feeling like eighty years inside the brain. Shit like that can really mess up the way you think.
The position is nothing new to me. Bordering death, clawing for life with my every gasping breath. But this was different now. No one would be coming to find me, and I was beyond saving anyway. My flesh is rotten and my organs have failed, this dumpster above me is boiling in the newly sprung summer heat, microwaving my skin with the heat’s reflection. I never thought this would be my fate. Spending my eternal life rotting in garbage bag, trapped under a thin layer of cement under a dumpster. Shameful is the way I ended up here, sleeping with the enemy until that bed became my grave.
My reckless trail of life choices began in my late twenties, fresh out of the army; my days of grunt work finally over.
I’m a drunk, wasting my days away in bars, starting fights, and drinking the hours up with my growing tab. I hate to feel anything, watching bloodshed in war for almost a decade unplugged some wires in my brain. Growing up, I would start fights, yet, only once in a blue moon I would actually fight back. War changed that part of me. I’d never been good at being violent, except when I didn’t want to be. But now as I approach my thirties I find myself unable to not be violent. Every sober moment I spend is pained by some violent dwelling within me. The liquor dulls my anger, dulls the violence I cause. Doesn’t mean I won’t drunkenly become violent, though it lowers my chances of such. Didn’t take long for the right person to find me at the right time. I can’t remember his name now, his face was always blurred by blood and sweat when I’d look at him. He followed me out to the alleyway once after I got into a bad fight, hell I don’t ever remember recovering from it. I was tripping on some drug I’d bought just down the street not too long before I’d entered the bar, something cheap and laced I shouldn’t have been taking. Some random guy walked by me, I couldn’t feel my hand shaking against the shotglass of vodka, freaked out on the guy passing when I spilled the shot because of how bad I was shaking. Bit off too much more than I could chew, wasn’t a pretty fight I remember coughing up blood onto my sleeve when I got up, and I saw it was just some guy. Just some guy meeting up with a friend to watch the game at the bar. Just some guy. Not someone from my past out to finish what they started. Just someone. This rushing feeling washed over me and my body was as numbing as pins as nails. I stumbled, though it felt like I was waddling like a penguin, all the way out of the bar and around to the dumpster in the alley. My legs dragged me there on their own fruition, and before I knew it I was coughing up blood into my corner of vomit by the dumpster, when I heard the bar’s back door open and close behind me, I glanced back but the light above the door was too bright to see his face. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I wiped the vomit and blood off my lips with my sleeve. My ears were ringing when he spoke, thought it sounded like he said he liked the way I lost a fight. Still not certain what he meant by it.
That night I met a lot of people, people I would never remember the names of. Turns out there’s a large crowd for people who want to gamble and bet on dirty fighting, and people pay a lot to watch someone lose the way I do. I fight like hell, but I was never meant to win a fight, not as long as that guy from the bar was pulling my strings. No matter what it took, even if that meant drugging me before the final round so I’d drop with the first swing. Like I said, unfair dirty fighting. But, the quicker I dropped the more money I earned, so I wouldn’t say it was all bad. Though, I suppose just about everything has it’s perks. These nights were early in my career, fresh meat in the fighting realm I hardly stood a chance. I was lucky if I came out of the ring without some horrible gash or a broken bone. The fights grew more violent the longer I was in it, the violence encouraged my drinking. More often than not I was at the bar before and after a fight. Showing up to fights plastered wasn’t often as pleasing as it sounds, for the most part it’s nauseating which happens to be a total buzzkill; my personal rule number one, never throw up in a fight. As soon as you do you’ve lost. I would know. Alcohol on an empty stomach does not make good vomit, in fact it makes the kind that boils like sin against your throat until you’re utterly convinced it’s burning your skin from the inside out. My days of drunken fighting inevitably lead to this, taking solid bone directly to the gut. It wasn’t a good look, but it racked in a decent bonus in my pay. Amusement is an amazing resource when losing. In the haze of my drunken memory of those nights, I remember just laughing. Laughing as hard as I could, mocking the guy I was fighting. I don’t remember his face. The lights were always too bright to see anyone’s face. Taking all those hits, I couldn’t hear a thing. My ears were ringing, the crowd was loud but only loud enough for me to hear under the overbearing ring. There was a mix of cheering and heckling, though I couldn’t tell what anything was in the state I was in. I just looked around and laughed, because for a second, under all the lights that blinded and blurred the faces of the people in the crowd, the slight flashing my memory seems to take had seconds where everyones faces looked like they were laughing, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing too. Next thing I know I see this guy swinging right for my jaw, and dodging only delayed the damage. I blacked out for a second, waking up on the floor with a broken nose. I don’t remember what happened after that or how that fight ended, and quite frankly I don’t want to know.
A dim light flickered above the broken glass mirror as blood dripped down the sink, coating the cracks and insecurities the marble sink hid in the yellowish green illumination of the bathroom light when sunlight blurred the damage through the cracks in the blinds. I stood dizzily hunched over the sink, laughing silently as blood escaped with each breath I took. Flashes of last nights memories flooded my sobering mind, blurs between substance abuse reminding me of the causes to my current predicament. The kind of idiot I am to think I could make it as a fighter. Just my kind of dumb luck to still be paid for losing, but hell it was a thrill of a fight. The sore ache that echoed and richocheted through my every bone and organ burned my ever muscle and joint. My throat was burning as I panted out every ounce of pain I’ve endured. The alarm clock in the room next door originally set to go off at dawn now having worn itself out of sync with the current time, now occasionally beeping obnixiously random hours of every night. It took me by surprise when the loud beeping from the other room began to go off. The rest of the apartment was dark, the hour barely nearing dawn. The floorboards groaned as I stumbled back into my bedroom, digging through piles of clothes to find the alarm clock on the floor. Once it was off I rubbed my eyes, sliding into bed as my hand went to my nighstand, grabbing a cigarette from the ashtray next to the lamp, reaching into my pocket to grab my lighter to light my cigarette.
wip
