The Book of Limbo

Chapter 3

Kota died a week later.

I found out in the paper of all places; the obituaries I had morbidly taken to watching ever since that night. It showed a picture of him smiling in a baseball uniform he hadn't worn in over a year. He looked so young and healthy, his face freckled and full, a harrowing reminder that he was two years younger than I was. Fifteen forever. 

I read in the article that the funeral would be held at mom's local church today. I debated going for hours; getting dressed and undressed, going only to turn around, going again. On my most committed endeavour I even made it as far as the entrance of the church, but when I stood in front of those mahogany double doors, I just...couldn't do it. 

It was hard to walk away, but not as hard as facing mom and Dick would have been, and certainly not as hard as seeing Kota in a box; that would have broken me completely. So here I was instead, doing the only logical thing anyone could possibly do at a time like this. 

 "Another!" I called, clapping my empty glass against the sticky pine of the bar top. 

Rex, the bartender, sauntered over at my call, polishing a grimy glass with a rag that probably hadn't been properly washed in months. That was to be expected though; Rex's Tavern was the dive of dive bars; a seedy basement dungeon hidden beneath the Gallows Pole Hostel where I'd been living for the past few months. 

 A refurbished eighteenth century jail, complete with a death's row and hangman's noose, the hostel and tavern made for a dismal pair. Originally a tourist attraction for those daring enough to spend a night on death's row in a supposedly haunted cell, the hostel's since become a grungy and all around sketchy hub to the town's lowly and forgotten with no where else to go, but at three dollars a night for a cell room with a bed, who was I to complain? It was a long time since any tourists wandered in here, so Rex catered only to the misfit locals, or more importantly in my case, to the under aged.  

"You've been hittin' em pretty hard tonight, even by yur standards." Rex grumbled as he put the glass aside and brandished an unlabelled bottle from beneath the bar, pouring me out another double of amber bourbon. 

"Yeah, well life's been hitting me pretty hard lately." I muttered, raising my glass and downing in it one burning swallow, the fiery liquid trickling down my chin. Almost instantly, I was greeted by a dizzying head rush that radiated a numbing buzz from my chest all the way into my fingertips. I suppose the only merit of an empty stomach was that there was nothing to keep the alcohol from wrapping you in it's intoxicating embrace all the quicker. 

I relished the sensation; the welcome relief from the unguarded ache of sobriety, each drink taking me further and further from the world; anything not to think, not to feel. I've had quite enough of that one day, thank you very much. 

A quick note on drinking your sorrows away:

It's harder than it looks. But as they say, practice makes perfect. 

"Rough day?" Rex asked as he refilled my outstretched glass.

 "You could say that." I muttered, "My brother just died."

 It was the first time I've said that out loud, and it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be, almost as if it were a bad dream I would wake from at any moment. If only that were the case.  I swallowed the drink.