Dull, unbroken gray. The skies always looked like this lately. Gray as far as the eye could see. No ray of sunshine, no rain to wash the grime from his face. He'd been wandering for days now, seemingly lost. He knew where he was though. He had simply stopped caring. The stones under his hands felt smooth and cold to the touch but this barely registered through the alcohol-fueled haze that had replaced the spark of his consciousness. He was aware of this, even through the haze. He registered the uneven wobble of his feet. He felt the unshaven beginnings of a beard covering his chin like bristles on a well-used toothbrush. The kind you bought for a few cents and used until you could afford better. He knew perfectly well he should sober up and get his ass back home to save whatever was left of the wreckage that he now called life. He didn't want to. The goalless wandering seemed to him infinitely more enjoyable than the daily struggle of dealing with what he had had and which had so brutally been taken from him. It was as if a switch had been flipped. One day he had just given upon it all, crawled inside a bottle and wandered off into the dull gray abyss of alcoholism. His feet were moving again. He vaguely saw the shape of a bridge as he shuffled out from under it, ignoring the passers-by. They were as blurs to him. Faceless, mindless blurs. On and on his feet carried him. Where were they taking him? Another bar? He'd been thrown out of the last five. He remembered that. He felt at his forehead. A half-healed gash there spilled flecks of blood on his fingers as the crusts cracked under his touch. Pain. Was it pain? He couldn't tell. On the feet went. Shambling along, stumbling now and then. Things started to look familiar. That playground there, why did it tickle his mind so? That car, hadn't he seen it before? The concrete under his feet echoed in soft claps as his feet sought purchase on it, carrying him onward. He was heading somewhere. He didn't know where. Not yet. His head was heavy now. Each step was sending jolts of sharp pain up his leg, through his abdomen and chest, driving straight into his skull. This, too, he knew for what it was. He would need more drink soon. Coming down from a week-long drinking binge was not a pleasant experience. Definitely not one he wished to experience any time soon. The feeling of his steps had changed. Metal. The ground is metal. He stumbled. Metal hit his face. Rectangular shapes, with grated surfaces. Stairs. Slowly, he slid his fingers into the steps and pushed himself up them. Like a wounded animal, he crawled upwards, wondering from a distance where this would take him. Like a wounded animal. He chuckled a bit at that analogy as it played out in his clouded mind. A wounded animal was exactly what he was. Wounded, torn apart and abandoned. Reduced to a mental state not much better than the common rat. Worse, in fact, because he was still conscious of himself. Even the drink could not permanently block that out. He reached what had to be the top of the stairs and hoisted himself over the ledge onto a flat, hard surface. He looked up for the first time in days. A roof. One small outcrop with a door gave entrance to the building below, and there were two ragged beach chairs next to a little plastic table. Their cloth was faded and torn, but there was still something strangely melancholic about them. It took him a few moments to realise. To recognise the empty bottles on the table. To recognise the stairs he had taken as the fire escape of his own flat building. He was back where he had started. Where it had all started. He could still remember the two of them sitting there, enjoying one too many drinks. He could remember her scream as she lost her balance. He could remember the sirens moaning as they arrived far too late. He could remember the silent, accusing stare in her faded, dull eyes as he looked at her for the last time. He could remember the thin golden ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. It matched the one he wore on his. Slowly, he crawled to the edge of the roof. This was it. This is where she had slipped. Now that he lay here, he could see a piece of stone that had come loose from the building. A jagged, empty hole that had become the jagged, bleeding wound in his heart and life. He stood up. It cost him quite the effort to do it. His knees were weak, his head was swimming. He looked out over the world as it stretched beneath him from the foot of the building. The wretched, faded, dull, stinking, gray world. Slowly he closed his eyes. The pressure on his feet vanished as the world started tilting. He no longer felt his own weight. He felt like he was floating on nothing more than air, as it rushed by his ears. A small smile crept over the corner of his mouth as he floated there. He lost consciousness again. All went black.
