Vintage Memories

Chapter Eight "Dead Ends and Cheap Thrills"

Warning: This chapter contains depictions of drug use.

If Alastor's desk had any semblance of sentience, it would surely be wailing in anguish.

He drove the nails of his left hand against the mahogany surface in a rhythmic sequence, carving small divots into the wood. His office curtains were decidedly pulled closed to shun away the afternoon light; his thoughts cycled better in darkness. A glasswork desk lamp projected its subfusc glow, the only source of light, onto papers of hotel agendas and other drudgery pushed out of his mind for the moment. His empty glass, centered in front of him, put out a long, watery shadow across wood and paper.

Minutes after Angel left, Alastor abandoned the bar for the safe seclusion of his office to diagnose this unwonted sensation. But despite the rush of the moment, he had made it a point to steal his drink away with him. It was undeniably the best cocktail he had been given since his descent, and to waste it was a sin he didn't dare commit. Everyone drew their moral line-in-the-sand somewhere.

Legato ticks of a towering grandfather clock at the far end of the room parroted one by one after each other. The ticks, with the helpful buzz of the rye whiskey, had a metronomic effect on the beat of his thoughts, jumping from one train of thought to another, never long enough to make any conclusions. This pondering, adrift and without verdict, irritated him.

The last thing he needed was for another hotel inhabitant to come across him now, while his mind separated itself from his body and highballed miles ahead. Vagatha, Nifty, or worst of all, Charlie had this spine-chilling ability— he deemed it woman's intuition —to pick up on the slightest contrast to common or garden personality. Then, there would come a volley of pestering questions. Solicitous and good-natured, indeed, but an infernal nuisance nonetheless.

Even if it had come to that, what was there to tell? He wasn't even sure himself.

"No good comes from doing nothing at all." That good ol' saying, one of the many Mother, in her indefatigable nature, would spout like a record on repeat, came forward in the fracas of thoughts.

It didn't sound like it came from his own mind. It seemed outward, as if Mother was in the doorway of his office, with her hands on the belt of her apron, telling him to 'stop dawdling and get on with it'.

Get on with what? That was the question to add to the ever-expanding roster.

Now he found himself averting his eyes from the door, just in case she really was there, or a visage, or whatever the case may be. For a moment, he felt that if she was there, he didn't deserve to look upon her, not after...

You might need to get your head examined, ol' boy...

The dream came to the forefront of his mind again, but, what happens to most upon waking, the details had aborted and left a scant, abstract outline. The more he focused, the more his vision blurred and his recollection misreported.

Alastor pinched his thumb and forefinger to the junction of his eyes and nose, rubbing roughly there until a galaxy of stars exploded behind closed eyelids.

What he had slept through felt significant. He hadn't considered it when he had awoken, but he couldn't shake that feeling now.

Oneirology, was it?— The study of dreams? There was something about that in a piece he had read once. He remembered dismissing it as delusion-driven pseudoscience, too absurd to be real. However, when he recalled that there was once a time where the idea of Heaven and Hell, demons, and magic held very similar sentiments, he humbled his opinions a bit and opened his mind to this possible reality. After all, he couldn't remember the last time he dreamed to begin with; he had grown accustomed to dead, soundless slumber.