The City Of Symenthia

1 broken man

It is a sad night.

The drooping trees, the dull sky and the paved ground, it all seems to carry a sepia tint as I look at them through the bar's dusty window.

I reach for another shot, feeling just slightly queezy because of having another drink while my throat was burning from the previous one.

Not having to try hard to ignore the feeling, I gulp down its content before placing the glass back on the table with a slam.

This would be the last one. Just like the last one.

That shıt rhymed! Wow, where's Josh!? I need to tell him that he's finally rubbing off on me. I didn't ever have any rhyming pair of sentences till I met that poetic... poet.

I look around, slightly concerned as to why the bar stool right next to me doesn't have Josh on it already.

Where's that artist when you need him? Did he leave me to pay for both of us by myself, again?

My ears seem to have a frequency of their own since all I can hear is the latest pop song by Taylor Swift while the people are seemingly simply buzzing with whatever they're talking about as I look around for Johnny.

I'm sitting eyes wide open and I got one thing stuck in my mind.

Da! Da! Da!

Wondering if I dodged a bullet or just lost the love of my life,

Geez, I wonder what even happened to her! One has to have done both in order to feel that dilemma! How is that even.....oh! The love of your life died while you....ooh, rough! Roughy tough.

I force a blank space into my ears and shake it off, ignoring the sparks flying within me and began again the search for Josh, speaking now, "Jeff! Where, you?!"

I look around, waiting for Josh to magically appear through the monotonous drill of the still abuzz crowd.

The animated people, with the best picture quality I've ever seen in animation, don't spare me even a single glance as I look past them, trying to catch a glimpse of Jeremy, the lawyer who lives above me?

I look up to see a ceiling yellowed with age before I realise that it was Josh that I was looking for.

Close enough.

I sit back down in the barstool I had assigned for myself, and as I can't possibly bother enough to look for my old glass, I ask for a new one. Downing my drink, I ask for another.

Why stop, when I can just not stop?

I look back through the window and the colour of everything seemed to have changed into a tint of electric blue.

The droplets which are striking fast on the window seemed to have cleared all of the sepia away, as it makes way for its own shade of colour.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I'm reminded that I needed to find Jeff, wait not Jeff, Josh!

What about Josh? His room was too messy? Something about clearing away the old memoirs...?

My head starts pounding slightly as I try to remember.

I don't make any sense to myself.

In response to my scratchy throat, I immediately grab another drink roughly and too close to the rim to be considered safe.

The ding of a small bell rings through the crowd's white noise and I look up to see a thin man with a lean figure walking in as I'm about to put my glass back, my eyes burning slightly with strain as I try hard to put a name to his clean, shaved but dripping face that makes him look like a young teenager rather than the grown man that I know him to be. No doubt is he here just for a safe haven from the heavy splattering rain outside.

Countless images, memories, flash before my eyes and the glass slips from my hand before I can grasp either my mind or the glass.

I am already on my feet and charging towards the off-duty officer in his casual tee and jeans before the shattering glass echoes through the bar, shushing everything around me even though most of the people are too drunk to notice.

Josh is gone. He is never coming back because he can't. We locked him up in a grave and put him below tons of earth, blocking his exit forever.

The shouts turn to secretive whispers in my head as my feet wobble determinedly towards the man. I stumble and crash many a times, only to get back up to reach him, destroy him just as much as he has destroyed me.

I dodged the bullet as I ran towards the shelter of a nearby shop, my heart racing and my breathes shallow as I targeted the store's door. All the while forgetting to grab hold of my friend's hand who was just behind me, meeting the fate which was written for me.

As I reach within his reach, I pick up a nearby bottle and smash it on his head using all the force I can gather. The bottle doesn't break, the impact only leaving a measly crack on it, with the leftover poison dripping out of the thin exit and the bottle's mouth, which is now facing downwards in my hands.

We both had just been joking about the overreaction of the rich families of our neighbourhood and how they had decided to leave the whole country just at the mention of a possible red alert. It happened so suddenly, shocking us to the core, shaking us so badly that nothing could be comprehended before it was too late.

The officer looks shocked, not expecting sudden violence. I swing the now empty bottle at the side of his head again, falling slightly from the weight on my legs and the power of the swing.

The bottle crashes into half a dozen big pieces and a million small ones around us, with the neck of the bottle still intact in my hand.

The pain prickled like small shards of glass tearing through my skin. It was too much too handle, the guilt, the finality and the mourning, all coming in seperate crashing waves as I watched myself and those around me break down at the sudden loss.

I use my other hand to grab his hair roughly. His eyes are still wide as I continue to torture him for the collectively commited crimes of his group of police buddies by slamming the broken shard of the glass at the exposed side of his face and neck.

They kept shooting. Even though Josh was having trouble breathing and all I could do was watch, the images burning into mind to come haunt me later, during bad nights and every waking hour's blink. Even when his skin turned pale and lost all glow even under a beating sun and the people around me held me, stopping me from going and trying to help him because they were still shooting.

I see the blood gush out of his cuts and feel his breathing rate become shallower under my grip before I realise what I have done and run for the exit before anyone else realises too.

My hands feel filthy even though technically the only thing on them is the dirt of the various glasses I have picked up today.

That, and someone's death.

I pass out on my couch the moment I lay down on it, exhausted by the long, wobbly run home, the traumatic events steering my dreams towards nightmares.

Another worse than the last night for me, then.