Ballad of the Bottle by Paul Lynch

And the silence always descends around this time, the shadows in all of us surfacing from the nowhere. I sip my beer in silence, stare at a cockroach scuttering along the floor between my feet. I have no words to say, and I guess that's why I find it so hard in here sometimes. Earl fills my short glass full of whisky on the hour, and I slap the money down on the table. It's an agreement we've had for longer than I'd care to remember.

I started drinking when I was but twelve years old—stealing sips of brandy from my father's cabinet. It's in the blood. My father, the man himself, died of liver failure around a year ago. The last night he was around, he sat me down and handed me a cigar. I lit it, tasted money. I drank the same make of brandy as I had when I was a child, and I listened to stories I'd heard a million times before. You can try and find your own way in life, but it's always down to your forefathers how you end up. As the flames licked the logs in the fire, and his face shone with an orange glow, I saw myself within him—imparting wisdom onto the children I'll never have.

My father always seemed to keep himself under control, and I think that's the difference between us. He kept his demons within, hidden away; had the willpower to truly do that. Much as our problems were, still are, one and the same, my father is a stronger man than I'll ever be. Even from the grave he holds an influence on me, his steely glare descending upon me from high above. But I still remember, Dad. I remember the glimpses of it, the unbelievable lows that all find their way toward us at one point. I remember the whispers and half-spoken truths.

I saw your demons too, and they were just as tall as mine.

You can find yourself losing a whole other part of your very being to the bottle, to the demons that rage inside. The thirst has always seemed incurable to me, destroying as it does any ideas I had of actually going somewhere and doing something. Instead, you'll find that there's little you can do but drink, lowering yourself to levels you never before thought imaginable, then going lower still. Mornings pass by unnoticed, the snake twisting and turning inside. And you can sense the disappointment in the eyes of others- people you once knew, in that world populated with people so far away from any ideas you now have of yourself that they seem almost alien—a society of which you now longer have any part.

But there's still nothing as welcoming as that warm shudder as you take that first taste, despite the damage you know it does. There's nothing that can compare to that. Not now, not after all this time.

I had a daughter, once. A daughter who died before her breath could be taken away. She was barely seven months in the womb, the night we lost her. Sometimes in the dead of the night, I can almost sense her little hand gripping my finger, squeezing it tight; hear her tiny footsteps teetering along the floor.

Earl puts a drink down in front of me as the clock tolls eleven or so. He's not always on time, nor would I ever expect him to be. His problems far outnumber mine, because he lives among the sober, where every second brings up something new and unseen—another thing for his mind to wrestle over. But for an alcoholic, there is only one problem, and the solution is exactly the same thing.

We all have a hard enough time just surviving, and I try to remind myself of that every day.

I let the whisky trickle right down my throat, the warmth engulfing me. I feel its warm embrace hold me close, and it closes my eyes for me, sends my thoughts elsewhere just for a second or two. The gulf between the edge and over it, well, it's closer that you'd ever believe.

 

Paul Lynch: I'm 19, from Liverpool, England. In the midst of my first book, bogged down in plot, but it's coming. I'm stuck in a meaningless job with no real prospects and I used to hate myself but now I'm just nonplussed. Catch him online at http://paulynch0.tripod.com