Saturday's Storyteller: Last Night

Last Night

by Belinda Roddie

It hit me harder than it should have. All at once, I was flattened, stretched out like a sad lumpy pancake, all the bubbles escaping from my throat. As the night grew darker, I could still taste the cinnamon. The lemon. The rum and the ginger ale. I saw double of everything.

I had drunk far, far too much.

I was wrapped up in my pirate flag. As if that would serve as a suitable blanket against the elements. I couldn't imagine sleeping like, yet here I was - on a stranger's couch, in a stranger's house, while everyone around me sang loudly and guzzled more booze than I imagined feasible.

What did you do with a drunken sailor, indeed.

All my life, I had told my mother that I wouldn't be like this. That I wouldn't be like my father. Or my uncle. Or my eldest sister. All of them smelled like Listerine and hand sanitizer in the mornings. All tried to scrub away the previous night as if it had never happened. But I had heard the gushing of alcohol from chapped glass lips. I had heard their music. And it had grown dissonant.

I told myself, as I faded out, that I would never drink again.

But that was last night.

And tonight, I am still seeing double.

There was no prompt for this week. I just needed to get something out there.