At 11:59 AM, Brandy stood on the sidewalk, watching the others enter the West Side Group. She gave a slight smile to them all, but inwardly she judged them all in turn: That one looks like a junkie…and she’s GOTTA be a hooker…and oh, sir, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
She took a step towards the door, then stopped. This was ridiculous.
She didn’t belong here. Out of all places in the world, she certainly did not belong here. She wasn’t like them.
But today, certain things had come to her attention. Certain things were getting out of hand. Certain things had to stop.
Let’s get this over with, she thought. It was high noon, and she heard the meeting begin with a prayer. She reached for the door and stopped again. She felt bad, interrupting a prayer. She could wait a few more minutes.
“As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, becoming ever blacker…” Matt’s voice rang out. But Rick had to stifle a laugh. To him, King Alcohol’s Shivering Denizens sounded like the name of some 60’s acid-rock band: “And NOW, please give a Big Easy welcome for…KING ALCOHOL and the SHIVERING DENIZENS OF HIS MAD REALM!”
It was easy to stifle the laugh, though, since he knew firsthand that King Alcohol’s realm truly was mad. His last night on the town, two months ago, had consisted of three hurricanes, countless shots of tequila, and then…
The dance floor was packed with zombies. Corpses with cyanotic-blue flesh pulsated all around him to a funky beat. Scents of smoke, sweat and perfume had given way to the noxious unseen gases of decomposition. The undead had no choice but to smile, as their tightening lips peeled back from gray teeth and scabrous tongues. Bodies twisted and turned and fondled each other, even as parasites rippled underneath their bloated skin. They were all around him, and even more were pouring onto the dance floor. He turned to Emily, his date, praying that at least SHE would be unchanged…and her eyes were like two rotting hardboiled eggs. Beetles and maggots poured out of her smile…
Now he was shivering. It was the last thing he remembered from that night, but afterwards Emily had angrily filled in the blanks for him: he’d fled, taken her car, drove it through the doors of St. Luke’s (thankfully unoccupied) Church, and had attacked four policemen when they’d entered after him. Supposedly he’d been screaming something about needing sanctuary, but the policemen had translated this as needing nightsticks and tasers.
After a few days in jail, and thirty more at good old Hayden Hill Sanitarium, he was quite sober. His judge had mandated A.A. meetings as part of his probation, but Rick privately thought he would’ve ended up in ‘the rooms’ with or without probation. His love affair with tequila had gone from blissful to horrifying, and he was hanging on to his job by his fingernails. Looking back on it, he’d ended every workday with a six-pack (“A coroner’s best friend”, Dr. Coyne called it), and spent every weekend night at a different club, throwing all his available income to various bartenders that never remembered his name.
True, the rooms were threadbare tombs of folding chairs, bare tables and coffee—and sadly lacking in hotties—but meetings only cost him a few dollar’s donation, while the clubs had taken his every last dime. My God, how much have I spent on that venom over the last year? Hell, the last TWO years? Five grand? TEN? No wonder all I’ve got is an apartment, a car and a TV. He scowled, trying to kick out the self-pity.
There was something else about the rooms, too. Something about the way people opened up to each other, and shared their innermost thoughts…it was simultaneously horrifying, fascinating, uplifting and addictive. The ‘denizens of his mad realm’ were friendly, too, in comparison to the barflies who would break a bottle of your head for looking at the wrong girl. Even though some of them looked like death warmed over, there was a light glowing in their eyes that looked like hope.
“Anyone have a topic?” Deacon Blues asked. There was a huge pause as everyone looked at each other. Apparently nobody did. “Well then, how ‘bout madness. Anyone got some old madness they want to get off their chest?”
The door opened and an elegant, platinum blonde woman came in; she looked incongruously out of place with a long fur coat and sequin-rimmed sunglasses.
Everyone noticed her, and Rick noticed how they noticed, and she seemed well accustomed to the effect. She gave a fast, polite nod of acknowledgement to the room in general, then sat down in the folding chair closest to the door, sweeping her coat daintily as she did so.
“My name’s Kyle, and I’m an alcoholic…” One younger man began; he looked barely out of high school.
“HI, KYLE!” Chorused from twelve-odd others, Rick included.
“Me and my friend Tony would hang out in the park every Sunday, ‘cause there were these guys who would buy a big Hefty bag and fill it with ice and beer, and they’d drink some, hide it, go off to do something, then come back and drink some more. We knew where they hid it, and they had too many cans to count, so we’d sneak some and they never seemed to find out…we thought it was fun for a while…hell, we were thirteen…but one Sunday they brought bottles instead of cans. We didn’t have an opener, but damn, we wanted that beer! So I told Tony ‘Okay, we can just break the necks off and drink out of them anyway!’—there’s some madness for ya—and Tony said ‘You first’. So I smashed the neck off on a rock, and the beer started foaming right out, and y’know when that happens your first impulse is to get all the beer before it spills away. So I held the bottle up over my mouth and tried to drink the rest that way.” He winced at the memory and took a sip of bottled water.
“I ended up drinking a piece of broken glass. A couple of them, I think. Thank God my gag reflex kicked in, because if I’d actually swallowed them…” He grimaced with the idea and went on. “I puked most of them back out right away, mostly over Tony, and he wasn’t too happy about that. But one of them got caught in my mouth, it slid under the skin. I started bleeding from the mouth. It looked about as bad as it felt.” The others in the room nodded, sharing the pain.
“Tony’s like, ‘C’mon, we gotta get you home’, and I’m like ‘HELL no, my father would KILL me!’” Kyle guffawed for a moment. “You know, I hear other kids say that all the time—’My father’ll KILL me!—and has anyone’s father ever actually done it? Killed their kid? Hell no, but that’s what we think. Anyway, I took my shirt off and used it to soak up the blood. Finally the bleeding stopped, and I figured the piece of glass had just slipped out of my mouth like the others, ‘cause I couldn’t feel it or find it in there. Then I went home afterwards, and told my folks I was playing on the ‘skins’ side in a pick-up football game, and I lost my shirt. They bought it. Lookin’ back on it, I wish I had gone straight home and told the truth, ‘cause I bled from the mouth on and off for weeks afterwards. Tony and the other guys started callin’ me Dracula. I found out the glass was still in my mouth. Now the skin’s grown over it, so it’s there to stay. I’m actually grateful for it, I call it my ‘built-in reminder’ not to drink…” A ripple of quiet laughter passed through the room.
“I’ve been sober two years. I hadn’t come to any meetings in a long time, but I came back because Tony won’t be callin’ me Dracula any more. He got all tore up on vodka the other day, tried to drive home, crashed his car and got killed.” He sighed and took another sip of water. Rick saw the new woman mouth the words I’m sorry, while others said it aloud. “So I needed a meeting. I just wanted to say thanks for still bein’ here, and thanks for lettin’ me share.” Kyle’s voice had gone flat and empty.
“THANKS, KYLE…” the room chorused. Rick muttered “Thanks for sharing, Kyle”, then felt a nudge, and looked over at his sponsor. Matt said nothing out loud, but lifted an eyebrow and turned his palm out toward the room. The gestures meant Are you ready to share?
Rick frowned, thought for a moment—Hi, my name is Rick and I’m an alcoholic, let me tell y’all about this army of zombies I saw the last time I w
as drunk off my ass—and shook his head. Some other time, maybe. Matt nodded, then cleared his throat.
“My name’s Matt, and I’m an alcoholic…”
“HI, MATT!” Chorused the room, except for Rick, who’d been caught off-guard. Matt had given him a ton of help and great advice, on weightlifting as well as sobriety, but Rick had never heard him share before.
“I’ve been sober four years, but three of them were in prison, and the only bars in there were iron, so I don’t even count those years, really…” he said calmly. Rick’s eyes bulged. That had been another detail Matt hadn’t brought up before. No wonder Deacon Blues was so well-versed in weightlifting. “We were talkin’ about madness in general, so this is how crazy I got. I used to do construction back in the day, and my crew’s motto was ‘work hard, play hard’, y’know. We were regulars at the bars every day after work, and we’d have parties at each other’s houses every weekend. I met my wife at one, Sarah, she was great, she’d match me shot for shot, but she didn’t have the disease, I did. After a while she got into bodybuilding so she quit drinking altogether. I didn’t. She got pregnant, and started nagging me to clean up my act, said she didn’t want to end up like Edith Bunker.” He chuckled emptily, then cleared his throat. “She didn’t.
“We were at a party, this was when she was only about two months along, I guess, and I was freakin’ wasted. There was a keg, and reefer, and whiskey, and some stuff called Absinthe—it’s not only liquor, it’s a freakin’ hallucinogen. And I always had this ability to seem sober even when I was trashed. So Sarah wanted to leave, and I said okay, but naturally I insisted on driving. I thought I drove better when I was drunk, there’s some madness for ya. Actually I’d just keep one eye closed so the lines on the highway wouldn’t double up on me. This time, though, I must have been drivin’ like a maniac. Sarah was screamin’ in my ear, ‘Gimme the wheel, gimme the damn wheel, let me have the wheel!’ She was like a buzz-saw cutting into my ear, and finally I just went nuts. I said ‘You want the wheel so damned bad?! Here, TAKE IT!’ And I ripped it right off the damned steering column and handed it to her.”
The room went crypt-silent. Oh my God echoed through Rick’s brain.
“She held it and stared at me. I think I laughed; it was like something out of a damned cartoon. I thought it was funny for about three seconds, then we crashed.”
Matt choked down a fast sip of coffee before continuing. “I woke up, and Sarah was gone.
“So was the windshield.
“I had whiplash, and a broken rib from the steering column, and a bunch of bruises from hitting the dash. Funny how us drunks cause all the freakin’ destruction but normally get off light, ourselves. Anyway, I got out to find Sarah, and it didn’t take long. We’d hit a light pole, and…” His voice finally cracked. “…She was part of it now. Part of the light pole, I mean. Wrapped around it.” He sucked in a breath, trying to regain his composure. The sound matched the collective gasps that emerged from the others.
Rick couldn’t look at Matt, so he looked elsewhere, and saw the new woman hadn’t gasped. She was leaning forward, staring with vulturine concentration.
“I got vehicular manslaughter and DUI, pleaded guilty of course…I practically asked for a longer sentence, as if that would’ve brought back Sarah, and the child we were going to have. I really just wanted to die—actually I felt like most of me died right then, and I just wanted somethin’ or someone to finish me off—but I didn’t. I did my time, got out and went right into the seminary. All I could think of was doing penance, hoping I could do some good somehow, hoping if I could stop just a few people from endin’ up like Sarah—or me—somethin’ good would come out of it.” He sighed, well aware that he’d dragged the room’s mood down into the third layer of Hell. “I’m sorry to share something so horrible…I just hope nobody has to stop drinking the way I did. Thanks. God bless you all.”
“THANKS, MATT…” The chorus rang out again, thankfully no less dampened from the tale, for there were no judges here. Rick gave Deacon Blues a sympathetic pat on his muscle-corded shoulder. He now felt relatively sure that he’d never get drunk again: to do so would be tantamount to stabbing his sponsor in the back.
Strangely, though, he could now smell a drink coming from somewhere. Had somebody come in drunk? It wasn’t unheard of. Breathing in through his nose, he identified the scent further: tequila. The good stuff, Jose Cuervo Gold, or maybe Patron. The briny fumes crept into his nostrils, and he wondered why he’d ever chosen the foul-smelling venom for his nightcap of choice. The answer came to him instantly: because tequila was so foul. It wasn’t some candy-assed debutante drink. You had to be tough to drink it (and hold it down). Anyone could drink beer, or wine, or low-proof fancy liqueurs, but tequila was for real men. Rick nodded to himself, then realized the thought was sexist. Some women drank tequila too, didn’t they? Hell yeah. Okay, real men, and real women. Not girls or ladies, but women that knew how to party. Hard.
Rick’s tongue slid out slightly, wetting the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t conscious of doing it. Nor did he notice he wasn’t the only one doing it.
Quiet murmurs could be heard from the others; apparently he wasn’t the only one to have smelled it. Rick idly wondered where the scent was coming from; that was the downfall of one’s sense of smell—your nose could notice something but not necessarily find it, not all the time. The murmurs quieted for another speaker, a tall, slender black woman. “My name’s Phoebe, and I’m an alcoholic…”
“HI, PHOEBE!” said the others, while Rick thought Hi, Phoebe, are you the one with the tequila? If so, how much did you bring? Where is it?
Deacon Blues whispered in his ear. “D’you smell whiskey?”
Rick whispered back. “No. Tequila.”
They frowned at each other momentarily, then looked at Phoebe.
“I’ve only been sober for a week. I’ve been drinking since I was seventeen, when my boyfriend turned me onto Boone’s Farm at a picnic. Damn, it made me feel good, I thought I was Janet Jackson and Halle Berry rolled into one. And I’d always been nervous around guys, but wine just blew that away. After a bottle of wine, I’d dance with Frankenstein if he’d have asked. The guys called me Super Freak, and there were a lot of guys wantin’ to get with me, and they always brought wine or beer. I thought I was popular, but I was just free an’ easy. I just thank God my folks got me a prescription for the Pill, otherwise I would’ve had nine kids by now. I was partyin’ so much my senior year that I barely graduated high school, but I did. Soon as I was eighteen I moved in with a boyfriend, Devon. He worked at a body shop, kept tellin’ me he was gonna be a mechanic. I took the first job I could find, at Taco Bell. I had this dream I was gonna be a singer, but really all I wanted to do was party. Dreams are fun, but goals are work, y’know?” It brought a crackle of laughter from the others; they could identify with it.
“We got on fine for a while, split all the bills, paid ‘em on time. But then we were partyin’ harder…Devon brought home weed, then coke. We started fallin’ behind on the bills. We fought, ‘cause he wouldn’t marry me, but he still wanted me to cook and clean and do all that stuff, even though I worked as many hours as he did. And then Devon didn’t come home at the regular times, he was out more and more. I called him at work one day, found out he’d been fired a month before. He was on the street slingin’ rock. I should’ve left at that point, but of course my brain was marinatin’ in wine. I got the brilliant idea that if we had a kid, he’d suddenly grow up and be a man. So I stopped takin’ the Pill. Sure enough, I got pregnant, and when I told him he went nuts. Beat the livin’ hell outta me. I had a miscarriage, and some internal injuries…” She sighed deeply. “And I was told I wouldn’t be able to have children after that.”
There were sympathetic murmurs from the others. Rick marveled at Phoebe’s calm strength, supposing most women wouldn’t have been able to share that cold fact without bursting into tears. But clearly Phoebe had already reconciled it.
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“My madness was, I stayed with him. I was so deep in denial I was practically Egyptian.” A few laughs rippled from the others. “I was like, ‘Okay, he took away any chance I had to have kids, but it’s because I tricked him. Or ‘Okay, he deals drugs, but he paid the rent this month’. And ‘Okay, he split my lip again, but I must’ve said the wrong thing’. I switched from wine to vodka, because it made my ‘butt’ look better, as I like to say now…” More laughter; Phoebe gave a sheepish smile.
“He wanted me to start workin’ the street. Said I’d make ten times more than I was bringing home from Taco Bell…he started goin’ on about how fine I was, and I must’ve been drunk, ‘cause I actually thought about it. I mean, hell, we were just scrapin’ by…” She cleared her throat, shook her head, and her voice got quieter.
“Then he screwed up, and said: Besides, it ain’t like you can get pregnant, or nothin’.”
Time itself seemed to halt in the room. Phoebe’s eyes narrowed as she confronted the spectre of the memory. “It ain’t like you can get pregnant, or nothin’. Hmph. Cruel and stupid as it was, that one sentence saved my life. If he hadn’t said that, I’d probably be walkin’ the streets right now. But he said it, and something just snapped inside of me. I heard it, and all of a sudden I was as sober as a judge. I just kind of shrugged, and made like I was about to mix another drink, and when he turned around, I broke that damned vodka bottle over his head. He went down like Tyson had hit him. I just walked out with my purse and the clothes on my back, left him there in that broken glass. Moved back in with my folks, thank God for them, they were prayin’ I’d leave Devon and come home. I thought Devon might come after me, but last I heard he was in jail, busted for rock. That bottle of vodka I hit him with was the last bottle I laid a hand on.” She looked around, seeming embarrassed. “But luckily, I still got my job, and I started singin’ again, at church last week. Sorry, I didn’t mean to tell y’all my whole life story, but it helped. Thanks for lettin’ me share.”
Masters of Horror: Damned if you don't Page 13