Ruby Red Marionette

ten | catapult

“We’re above the age limit, and God damnit, we’re gonna make use of it!”

Tyler waved his one-hundred dollar bill in the air, spit dripping from his bottom lip, his eyebrows furrowed in a fiery screaming match against the bartender. Carlos’ car somehow brought us to a liquor store not too far away from the park, and we - somehow - ended up drunk. I didn’t know any of these people I was surrounded by, but seeing them in their drunken, sloppy states made me feel like I’d known them for years.

Because, for once, the people around me were just as lamentable as I was.

The bartender, after having had enough of pleading that Tyler not further his humiliation in front of the ten or eleven people in the bar, released a deep sigh and prepared drinks for all of us. I didn’t know what they were; Tyler had requested what he wanted, but the commotion that followed made it seem like long ago.

The six shot glasses of pee-colored liquid were passed across the bar to us. The manner in which each of us picked up the glasses reflected what our personalities turned into when intoxicated. Yvette giggled uncontrollably as soon as the drink was presented to her, and halfway through drinking it she had to spit it out because she couldn’t contain her laughter. Batul kept a straight face the entire time; she picked up the glass, held it in her hand for a few seconds and then, seeing that she couldn’t shatter it, drank the shot like it was a bitter medicine. She stared forlornly at the back of the bar, her face stiff and unpleasant. Isaiah was in a daze also, but a less angry one than Batul’s. He stared down at the glass like it was a black hole, almost falling into it, and then dipped his index finger into the glass and stuck it in his mouth. Then he looked up at the ceiling, stumbling a few steps back, and finally swallowed the drink and sat down on the bar stool. Tyler, who had already displayed that he was the messiest kind of drunk man there could ever be, violently swallowed the drink and then slammed it down on the bar. The glass immediately crushed, but Tyler’s expression remained that of a rockstar about to perform.

Carlos’ intelligent, asshole-ish personality was only heightened when he was drunk. He called the bartender over to him, apologized for his friends’ behavior, and asked about the contents of the drink. He then got into a conversation about how much money there was to be made in the bar business.

And, as for myself, there was nothing. I was always a disaster, so liquor usually didn’t affect my normal personality. It just made things a bit more fuzzy.

As I watched the people around me, feeling an itch near the scar on my thigh, I remembered why we were so drunk: on the way home from the park, the heat in Carlos’ car wasn’t working and Isaiah was getting cold. I offered that he take his jacket from me, but he insisted that I keep it. Instead, he asked that we stop at a liquor store so that he could get a drink, which he claimed would make him warmer. Tyler thought that it wasn’t fair that Isaiah got to drink and he didn’t, so he went in the store with him. I followed them, since being under the influence of anything was one of my hobbies, and the rest of them slowly got dragged in.

Carlos, after taking a few sips of Isaiah’s drink, began accidentally switching lanes and falling asleep on the wheel. So we thought we would stop at a restaurant to wear off his drunkenness, and then when he was close to sobriety again we would go home.

Unfortunately, the restaurant we went to had a bar, and we only dug ourselves deeper into the hole.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Batul stood from her stool and headed for the door. I grabbed her arm.

“Do what?”

“This, Geneva.” She freed herself from my hold. “This. I shouldn’t have to say it explicitly.”