Random addictions

Greetings,

Seeing the way she staggered he knew it was from a detox unit. Hard time. Being a veteran of a jungle war 10,000 miles away and the group he recognized the symptoms easily enough.

Her face was pale, shallow, pasty yellow. She looked like a zombie. She got out of the car squeezing an extra large jumbo plastic soft drink with a straw bent at an angle. She shuffled across the parking lot and disappeared into shadows leaving the sound of a slammed door in her wake.

A couple of days later while murdering words he heard her door slam downstairs. She passed into into view as her flip flop sandals flapped on asphalt shuffling along the white ward of her memory. She negotiated a flat parking lot full of rusty secondhand cars and trucks along the pebbled hard methodical surface of her nightmare. She went down the slope past prison guard cars, jalopies, trucks with high chrome fenders and expeditionary gas guzzlers out on parole.

She slithered her inconsistent way inside her alcohol addiction past blue trash containers heading to the marine dockside store. For years they sold bait, tackle, hook, line and sinker.

Facing flat growth they switched to booze bait business to meet the needs of thirsty public prison workers, island tourists or locals. Quick and painless for those needing a quick fix, a quick nip-it-in-the-bud Jack’s Daniel dancing all a round.

“Set’m up Mr. Bartender, one scotch, one bourbon and one beer,” sang Mr. John Lee Hooker. Line and sinker.

She weaved her way down and he knew where she was going. No doubts or secrets revealed themselves before torrential coastal rains swept the terrain clean as a whistle. She eased around the corner heading toward her salvation, escaping her self imposed prison of drudgery, boredom and malaise.

Her ghost staggered back uphill, her thin right hand grasping the message of her salvation feeling the crude brown paper bag texture covering a bottle of elixir. Unbroken seal of approval.

She slammed her apartment door on the rest of her day. He never saw her desire again but swears he heard someone on suicide watch banging their head against a wall screaming HELP ME!

Peace.