Saturday's Storyteller: "It all started with an empty rocks glass and a full bottle of gin..."

by Belinda Roddie

It all started with an empty rocks glass and a full bottle of gin...

...and ended with a scribbled treble clef on my stomach and a half-swollen egg of flesh right above my right eye, punctuating the threaded black hairs of my brow.

The crowd had dispersed from the wedding reception a while ago, and I, desperately alone, remained sprawled against the wall, barely propped up by my own knees as fragments of ceiling decorations spun above my head. Nearby, a server was cleaning up the buffet table, another sweeping the floor of confetti and broken wine glasses. When she got close to me, she frowned.

"You want an ice pack?"

"No, thanks," I sneered, holding up my glass, still rattling with ice and stained with smears of gin. "This'll do just fine."

She propped her broom against the wall and came over to me. The groom had hit me pretty hard after I had gyrated against his new bride. But the server was out of the room when that happened, I think.

"You need a cab home?"

"Sure," I slurred, "but only if you drive it."

"Joke's on you," she murmured. "I don't have a license."

This week's prompt was provided by Kyle Oathout.