Drinking Games

My hands shake as they pass the drink to my lips: a clear indication that my body cannot handle much more. A slow smile smears on my face as each drink sends me farther away from the truth. I sit on a spinning couch and the sounds around me present themselves in slow motion. Once the clear liquid slides past my lips, the strong smell, much like that of nail polish, causes my stomach to lunge forward as the air gathers and gags within my chest.

The bright lights and the swaying people around the room become hidden as my dark hair falls in front of my pained face. Leaning over, with deep gargling sounds choking in my throat, I expect more to begin pouring from me. I can feel the energy seeping out with each pulsing heave, and, finally I feel my head lop to the side, my lips hanging loose, with nothing left in me. As my hands reach my face to pull back the hair, I see the bleached part of it glowing in the light and become fascinated, for but a moment, in the silken look of it flowing between my fingers. I tie my hair in a sloppy bun, and look around with wide eyes.

Everything then suddenly explodes into hyper speed, with the people jerking around in an odd teenage dance while strange colors float around them. The lights are overbearing as if I were tied down in an operating room staring straight into the beam. Right as this thought slugs into my head, two nurses, smiling deviously, glide in front of the agonizing light. Glancing up with only my eyes, my head still lolling downward as if my chin were too heavy to lift, I see their glowing faces. They speak in soft lullabies, but the words don’t reach my ears.

Their cooing and soft noises remind me of morning birds, and I smile as I feel my left eye involuntarily shut. Looking toward each other, they giggle, even though I don’t remember saying anything funny at all. One of them grabs me with her silk hands and cups my own in hers. She then places a little blue pill in them. I look at it curiously; I don’t recall being sick. I notice how it cradles within the folds of my skin, and I think of it as a robin’s egg and my hands as the nest. In a thick, slow voice, I mutter a sloppy sound, “awwww”.

A reassuring noise flows from one of the girls as she moves my hand to my mouth and places a cold glass to my lips. My face cringes in horrible surprise as the tasteless liquid hits my tongue and for the first time all night, I realize how dry my mouth has actually been. The pill pushes against the inside of my throat as the water carries it down into me. My finger sluggishly traces along my chest, pointing out the passage of the little blue tablet. The couch sinks and for a second I think that I have transformed into the blue pill and the couch is trying to swallow me, but as I glance over my right shoulder, I realize that the girls had just sat next to me. I also recognize that these two that I had thought to be nurses, are not nurses at all.

In fact, I remember they came with Eric and had rode in my car with him. They were loud and obnoxious. I remember. From my left a seductive grace travels down my side pulling me from my head, and I twitch in ticklish delight. Swinging my head towards the feeling, I see that she is very close. Her words finally form within my head, as she whispers, “we want you tonight.”

In my delayed voice, I simply answer in slurred words, “What do you want me to do? I can’t move.” When she laughs, I try running my hands to my ears in attempt to protect them from the screeching sound, but my arms are too heavy to move quick enough.

She continues with a voice that a secret has changed, “Wait just a minute, and you won’t be able to stop moving.” My middle finger on my right hand suddenly feels very wet and tingly, looking over I see the other girl has her lips securely fastened around it as she makes humming noises in her throat. Right as I notice the pleasure in this act, a hand grasps tightly around the inside of my thigh. My brain begins pounding against my skull in effort to escape the thousand thoughts that suddenly flood inside my head, and an immense feeling of joy gradually overcomes me as the two persist with their antics.

Both girls standing at the same time, they break from tasting me and reach for my wrists. They weave me in and out of the crowd with the people all swaying back and forth. Suddenly, I imagine them hanging peacefully from thick ropes that dangle from the ceiling, but like a dog shakes water from its back, I wobble my head in attempt to rid myself of this thought. We finally end up tumbling into a dark room.

The quickness of the following actions frighten me. One of the girls pins me straight against the wall and presses her lips roughly against mine. From her mouth, a slick, slug-like thing slips between my own lips and begins to dance. Coughing, I push her away, as best as I could, but as I did this, the other pulls down my jeans and then continues to envelope her mouth around my manhood. Looking down dumbly, I childishly mumble, “When did that happen?” As she continues, an aching begins in my gut as my muscles around my abdomen delightfully tighten, which causes an insuppressible burning desire. I pull the other close to me and stick my slug into her mouth as she had done to mine. A few minutes pass and the aching in my stomach turns to an aching in my chest. Everything moves faster than my thought process can handle.

A flash of earlier events pierce into my mind, and I can hear them laughing in my head. I recall the annoyance they had caused me. I remember looking back from the driver’s seat and saying something with just enough sarcasm to make them give one last laugh but with just enough truth to make them quiet. Opening my eyes, I find that I am on the bed with one of the girls moving above me as if she’s rowing a boat and I am the boat, and the other biting seductively on her neck. My distorted mind then abruptly alters them into a strange painting of a woman eating a fish, even as it rows the boat for her; this triggers a booming chortle to burst from my lungs. Time passes some more before my head finally begins to clear, and I recollect the little pill, and a morbid realization suddenly swathes me. They aren’t nurses. I’m not sick. And, here I am fully inside of one them. Why? I sputter out my understanding in one harsh word, “Ecstasy!”
“Yes, yes. Pure ecstasy.” The two girls mutter in unison.

My body begins to shake as I start to feel warm. Too warm. I’m scorching as the sweat gathers around my lips. I can taste the salt lingering on them. The tension builds inside of me as I feel like screaming, but disbelief is holding down the sound in my chest. The cry builds and strengthens and takes a different path. It flows into my arms and with a heavy heave, I lunge the witches from me. As they hit the floor in a heap, they both squeal, and a look of fright and disappointment distorts their faces. The enragement carving out of me slightly scares me, and I struggle to allow my breathing cool the fire flaming in my chest. Though, my thoughts cannot be held back in the small confinement of my skull, so I attempt to verbalize them as I spit out breathlessly, “You bitches gave me ecstasy! You… you…. I… fuck… What? I mean… How? I…” Filthy. Used. Pissed. And Helpless.

Feeling too much at once, my body overfills with emotion, and hot tears pour onto my face. The worst part, I realize, is that there is really nothing I can do about this situation. In a muffled sob I finish off with a, “Fuck you.” Pulling on my jeans too quickly, my foot gets caught in the gaping hole in the knee, and I clobber pathetically to the floor. The two girls come to me, and, with their false sympathetic voices, they apologize. My mind is still spinning, and their words become a single constant sound of a dying cat.

They move over me like cobras being charmed from a vase. They smell of liquor and smoke. Their hands reaching for me like tentacles. The anger and disgust starts to build again, but in a much more physical manner. I rush from that feeling as I rush from the room, and I find myself hitting against walls before finally pounding into the front lawn.

The stabbing winter cold cuts into me as I cut into the ground. With my fingertips scratching at the malleable soil beneath me, I let out a grumbling scream. I feel much like a scrap of paper being jostled down the highway by speeding cars. Minutes pass and my chin falls to my chest as energy defies me, and with my head hanging down, I notice how hard I still am and how I still ache for them to move above me. It is this desire, this wanting, that sets me off. I frantically claw at my stomach to release my foe, but when the enemy resides inside, there is no reaching it. The saying, “keep your enemies close” has never been so relevant.

The frustration and aggravation begin to assemble in me once more as I unwillingly tremble from the inside out. Holding myself, I glance around. No one is with me. No one has followed me out to see if I’m alright. No one cares as they all drink and snicker away, safe from the freezing wind that even my numbed body can feel. My hair rests around my bony shoulders, and my skin, reptile-ish from the cold, provides me no warmth.

The great sense of loneliness stabs me viciously from all sides. Finally a hot, thick liquid erupts from my stomach, and like a volcano, I spew the vomit onto the grass. As the smoldering liquid sputters from my mouth and out my nose, the smell and burn of it gags me some more. Grasping the grass between my fingers in attempt to keep me balanced, the green blades slice into my skin. I shudder as the air sucks back in my lungs causing me to collapse. My face smearing in my own puke, I curl into a fetal position and wait to wake up.

The thoughts of childhood sound like the chiming of an ice cream truck in my thoughts. I reminisce a time when all I needed was to be free. As the world slowly blackens around me, my one last thought is the reason why I began drinking in the first place, and before I give in to unconsciousness, I fancy that I feel a warm face nuzzling in the base of my neck, breathing quietly in a soft sleeping rhythm. The sense that this imagined girl feels safe in my arms causes a severe contentment to overtake me as I fall into this dream and forget why I’ve been drinking all along.