The Storms Of August

Chapter Eight: Give Me More

I slumped on the wall of the smoky room, trying to tame the earthquake in my vision by driving the drunk further into my system. The mostly empty bottle of cheap wine was at the mercy of my shaky hand, next to bottle after bottle of it's empty companions. I have drank alcohol twice, and never have I been drunk. Hell, last time I had two glasses of champagne under my parents supervision during my cousins wedding and I woke up to the most violent vomiting of my life a few hours later. I'm not much for adventure, she would say.

The already weak soft lighting overhead was partially obscured by the output of countless hits of cigarettes and various forms of marijuana use. I am afraid to say I was a part of it, but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't participate. I can already feel the cancer spreading through my lungs already, squeezing the breath out of me like an old balloon, and I hate to say I don't entirely despise myself or my friends for beginning the slow, painful process of passive self destruction. Well, at least back then I didn't. Everything was warped by the mellow intensity of the moment and of course, like a chaperone to all of our worst field trips and greatest bad decisions, her undeniable, deceiving, irresistible gravity. Wherever she desired us to go, whatever she wanted us to do, we did it. We followed like lost puppies in search of shelter during life's hardest rainfall. We followed blindly, because every sense but desire is compromised when a feeling such as love comes around, however that love may come. She was simply just water, fire and Earth. She was salvation. Like always, she was the sun, she was the flicker of a fire in a frostbitten memory.

Across the room was a sunken red couch, where Nick sat rolling a joint on the armrest while she laid gracefully across his lap, in the position of an accidental goddess. One arm dangled off the side of the couch, over the young man's knee as she held Captain Morgan by the neck, her lips still wet from his temptations. The other was folded under her head as it rolled about, as if off its shoulders, aimlessly at the ceiling while she laughed softly to no one present. She was like a little girl talking to an imaginary friend, still in this world but reaching to another one for company. The loneliest people are seldom alone. Her legs were draped over Joe's lap as he rested his two liter bottle of Chuck E. Cheese on her thigh. The drink is named after his countless number of childhood memories spent at the soda machines within the facility, mixing every drink in the fountain machine into his cup before fearlessly chugging it. Now, the drinks are chosen based on what will get him wasted the fastest. On a scale of one to ten, Joe is currently wherever the wild things are, with his eyes rolled back and his head hanging back as far as his spine allows. It tastes like liquid ass, but it's more for the feeling than the pleasure of the tongue.

Demi hums to herself, extending her arm in the air with bottle in hand, as if to cheer to someone who passed and is now watching her slowly slip to Hell, mumbles a slurred 'Fuck you', and meets lips with Captain Morgan. Then, her head fall to the side and her eyes meet mine. They were different than usual, even in my drunken state I could see the clouds in her sky. The smoke around the small room was from the drugs, but what was around her was something else. Aside from the euphoria due to forbidden activities, the unspoken sorrow was evident in her dilated pupils. I could see the bad memories behind her eyes like a silent film in the form of silhouettes, flashing people and lonely nights on suburban streets made their way forward, hurried by the fact that I wasn't supposed to see them. Demi held our gaze bravely and confidently, although she was seemingly losing an internal battle that tugged at her heart. Torment, conflict, mystery and unresolved issues sat in her foggy brown orbs like an anchor in the sea. Sitting there, in that room with her and the guys, felt like just two souls with clouded judgements and no direction. It never mattered to me how battered she was behind closed doors, it didn't matter that I never got the whole story or the chance to understand. She was the raging tide in a storm that beat against my sandy shore.