Deviation Actions
Literature Text
The bar is small and dingy, the air thick with the smoke of cheap cigarettes. It swirls above the dark figures, forming a hazy fog over everything. The floor is sticky with spilled liquor, the bartender too busy ignoring everything but requests for another beer or another shot to notice. Not that anyone minds. Each patron is there for the same reason: to forget.
From her corner, sitting alone at a small table, a woman looks on, her eyes glazed by alcohol. The haze in the air reflects the haze in her mind. She has drunk enough that the sounds around her fade into an indistinct buzz; her vision is clouded; she only sees blurry figures around her – if she had been in a brightly lit room, she would not have been able to see much better. In a room full of people, she is utterly alone, just like every other broken soul sitting at the other tables. Some of the patrons laugh... a harsh, hollow laugh, more difficult to hear than actual grief would be.
She has been sitting at her table for a long time. It has to be hours: her bottle of cheap tequila is three-fourths gone, and it’s not her first bottle. Her shot glass sits abandoned, on its side. She gave it up half way through the third bottle, after she noticed she was pouring more of the liquid onto the table than into the glass.
She sighs, picks up the bottle, and drinks deeply. She can’t taste it anymore, a small blessing – cheap tequila is truly nauseating. But the familiar warmth coursing down her throat and pooling in her chest is still comforting. She keeps drinking because she can still remember. She can still remember why she started drinking in the first place. She is, however, unconscious of the tears that run down her cheeks at intervals. In the dingy little bar nobody pays attention to her pain; everyone else is too busy with their own.
The night wraps damply about her. It is the hour of night closest to dawn, at its darkest and quietest. In the silence, only a set of footsteps can be heard, hesitant and faltering. The woman has finally managed to leave the bar – the bar closed, spitting out its customers onto the streets, each lost soul following its own road to nowhere.
She had stepped outside, almost too numb to feel the cold. Her feet had taken her seemingly into random roads, around strange corners. She stumbles, hitting her elbow against a rocky wall. Her tears suddenly come back, and she presses her forehead against the sharp rock. “Please,” she begs silently, to the dark, “I just want to see her again …”
It had been on a night very different from this one. One year ago she had been visiting very different bars in a very different state of mind. The night had been cold and damp, too, but it had been bright. The lights from the street had been dazzling, adding to the sparkle of her eyes. Sylvia’s eyes always sparkled, even when she was angry with her.
She hadn’t meant to argue. She hadn’t meant to make Sylvia so mad. She couldn’t even remember what they had been arguing about. But whatever it had been, she was sure she had only made it worse. It was always that way. She didn’t like to admit it, but she did have a short temper and she could be very stubborn.
The result had been Sylvia hailing a cab – that she wouldn’t have hailed otherwise – and, five minutes later, getting t-boned at an intersection. The thought kept running through her head – that, had they not fought, she wouldn’t have gotten in that cab, at that time, and she wouldn’t have been at that intersection, in the way of that other car. “It shouldn’t have happened,” she thought. Over and over again, the thought ran through her head, it shouldn’t have happened, it was her fault … and Sylvia had left her, with nothing but angry words between them.
The night air becomes oppressive around her. The silence lays heavy on her, swallowing her sobs. “Please, oh, please …” she begs. She can’t take it anymore, the pain, the guilt, choking the life out of her.
From the night she hears footsteps, first faint, slowly becoming clearer and louder. She lifts her head: up the road, she can see a slim figure. The steps echo hollowly in her ears; they are there, but not quite. It is a vision. The silhouette solidifies, slowly at first, until she can make out details, and features, and finally recognizes a face. She calls her name, tentatively, not believing, her alcohol-addled mind unable to understand.
The apparition smiles, her eyes shining in the darkness. The world around her dissipates. She sees the figure approach, her arms encircle her neck: they feel like a cold breeze blowing by. She hears her voice, softly, like an echo. She loves her, it’s okay, she is not angry, and she will stay until the day she dies. A chill runs up her spine, through her limbs. Paralyzed, she smiles through her tears.
On the corner sits a homeless woman, young, frail, thin, and always cold. She has a constant cough, and those who take pity on her offer her coins for a warm cup of coffee. And there she sits, bundled in her rags, sitting on an old piece of cardboard. No one sees the pale arms around her neck, and no one hears that sweet voice, ringing like an echo in her ears. “Soon,” it says. And the woman smiles.
