Reflection.
L.M.Robbins
Hi. I'm Lee, middle aged and I write. Mostly poetry and short stories. My style is punchy, raw, sour, sickly, bitter and sweet. I post here quite often. Take a look in sometime.
Ezekiel Sykes: Journal of a Daemon.
Don't Drink Alone.
Two Tone
Square pegs/Round holes.
Nine Poems.
Six Poems.
Jazz
*A short story advert* Don't Drink Alone.
/LMR____74 • sample chapter • 20/12/2014 16:29:12 • link •
Hi all.
If you would like a zippy, punchy, short horror tale, try the links below:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IZMH8HS#reader_B00IZMH8HS
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IZMH8HS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0#reader_B00IZMH8HS
**TEASER**
Chapter One.
“ Grrr, slosh , slosh, grrr, grrr, ooomm.” Eloise swirls and swishes the rum around her mouth and swallows forcefully, trying to remove the unpleasant taste away from her tongue and down her sore throat. Didn’t work. The weird, bloody, metallic tones still flavour the rear of her tongue that now tingles. “Hurr, hurr, hum.” She teases the knot of phlegm and takes the remainder of the tumbler and drinks it straight down in one gulp. The phlegm and booze aglow sledge down her inflamed, sore throat. Shaking her head she then smacks her lips. The taste of blood and metal still lingers but an “edge” has certainly been chopped away by the axe of rum.
She felt marginally better, a little giddy, but still couldn’t beat an inner chill that had gripped her and gently shook her like a babies rattle. Even under the thermal armour of her plump fluffy P.J’s, her skin had the raised texture of goose flesh. Gaining a rush of strength she flirts up and away the triple quilted layers that have held her- a willingly submissive prisoner- and stumbles up from the confines of her bed. Lifting off the leopard print dressing gown from the back of her bedroom door she hurriedly puts it on. She shuffles out the door across the cherry red laminate of the hallway and into the kitchen diner. She locates the small but expensive boiler system, dials the temp to 25 degrees and slides the switch to “CONSTANT”. Mission accomplished she makes her way back to the sanctuary of her quilted solitude.
Propped up against the white heart shaped headboard, Eloise held another half-filled tumbler of firewater. Watching the T.V. but not really paying attention, the nice warming grip of drink induced relaxation eased the effects of her illness. Taking up the T.V. remote from the lonely pillow next to hers she abused the “CH+” button.
Sipping the booze and pressing the button, barely scanning the T.V. guide overlay that was emblazoned across the bottom of the 50” screen, she stopped abruptly. Tapping the “CH-“she went back a press and scanned the blurb from the guide.” I haven’t seen you in aaagggeessshhh,” a smile escaping after she slurred to the empty room. The title had slapped her across the face. A film. A film from her youth, her late teens. A film she’d watched years ago. A film, (along with huge amounts of rum and coke), that had loosened her chasteness and lessened the grip of virginal knickers elastic. The film that had allowed her boyfriend at the time to breach the Maginot Line of soft cotton and pubic bush and blitzkrieg her senses.
” Ian”, she sighed. She took an extra-long sip of rum. Her first man. He’d died in Iraq. Gulf War One. He’d come back whole in body, he didn’t “die”- as in breathe his last in Iraq, but it’s where “Ian” had started to pass away. It was his mind and soul that were the casualties. He’d always drank, not to excess, even before his first tour he’d like to make merry. Upon coming home, a hero and winner of war he started to drink. Drink. All day and all night. Week in, week out. He’d changed, and not for the better. It was his fault. All that happened after. She had to have the abortion, simply had to. “The thing had to go, it wasn’t right”, she slurred to the Hollywood hunk that consumed the screen. “You look so much like Ian”, she sniffed through self-pity. The hunk fired his gun and continued his killing spree.
Ian had been a giant of a man, good-looking, tough and reliable. Older-headed than his years dictated. Sadly, at the end, when the pin was pulled from the grenade in his mind, and his mind exploded he was anything but. Only himself and God would know what he’d endured out there and brought back with him, as he was a hardman and hardmen didn’t whinge. They just got on with things, even when things were getting on top of them. He just snapped in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Manic and wild-eyed he’d torn through the flat, chucked down every pill he could lay his hands on, and all the booze he could find. Glug, glug, glug. Drink, drink, drink.
Blue lights flashed outside her flat, making her blink and flooding through the large window into her room as a cop car sped past, that reminded her of when the ambulance came to save him. She remembered the white t-shirt that he was wearing was covered in sick and blood and bile. In a hospital, the big one in Birmingham, Ian died painfully; collapsed prostrate across the rank toilet floor, pissing blood and crying to God. The blood tinged spittle flecked the off-white urinals as he ranted hate at Him. Not for long though as his body gave up and let him down. And so did God.
He was only 24 years old.
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