THE LIQUID MISTRESS
The Works of Mark Edgemon from All-Creatures.org

Mark Edgemon has been writing for 30 years. He writes and publishes short stories, articles, poetry and scripts, as well as, produces audio comedy productions for over 700 radio stations nationwide.

Contact Mark through his website, Creator and the Catalyst.

THE LIQUID MISTRESS

Alcoholics have always been protective over their relationship with the bottle. They’ll fight you if you stand in the way of their drinking. They’re damned and determined, literally, to drink at whatever the cost. They will sadly see their relationships go, when it becomes a choice between people they care about and liquor. For them, it is like heading their car toward a cliff and flooring the gas pedal.

They become resentful of everyone. And when they finally run out of people to resent, they begin to hate themselves.

This cycle runs it’s course with all alcoholics, except for the ones who have the will to fight and seek help from others, who can support the alcoholic’s attempt to destroy the hold alcohol has on them.

John Delamarr could not fight, because he did not want to fight. His job was a great burden to him. It got in the way of the time he wanted to be either drinking or resting up from drinking, so he could drink some more.

He had already run off everyone who had ever cared for him. “Good”, he thought to himself. “Who needs them”? They could all go to hell for all he was concerned. He hated himself not only because he drank, but also because he was always frightened. He was scared of everything. If he could afford it, he would never go out of his house, except for food and liquor.

Since the liquor caused his real life to deconstruct, he reconstructed a new life with his imagination. As he would drink, he imagined a most beautiful woman, who loved him more than life itself. His imaginary lover’s whole world revolved around him. She took care of all his needs and the wonderful thing about it was, she never aged. He of course did age, but in his mind, he remained the same.

While at work, he longed for a drink and daydreamed about his liquid mistress, who was perfect and waiting for him at home. She replaced all the people, who had left him.

He was constantly looked down on at work by his coworkers and his boss, because of his annoying behavior, which was not enough for him to get fired over, but did cause most people to dislike him, and be dismissive of him and talk about him behind his back.

One trait of his, which was due to his fear, was he personally controlled his environment. Because of that, he was a motor mouth. You couldn’t shut him up. The worst thing you could tell him, if you could get a word in, was you had to go. If he sensed you pulling away from him, he would start clinging to you verbally so, unless you punched him out or ran away fast, he was going to keep you pinned down until he was finished and that could literally take hours. And the thing about that was he would despise you in his heart, for investing so much time into him.

Another annoying characteristic was he was a know-it-all and was always right about everything. Anything that anyone would say, he would counter it and regale everyone with the truth as he saw it.

And I guess the worst trait of all was, if someone made a comment about his drinking, he would become enraged and would tell that person that his drinking was no one’s business but his and he was not going to let his alcoholism be anyone’s excuse but his. That didn’t really make much sense, but it was enough to let people know that he was a hopeless drunk and leave him alone.

Finally one day, after calling in one time too many at work, with an elaborate excuse, why he couldn’t work that day he was fired.

He had enough money to keep himself going for about two weeks, so he bought a little bit of food on the way home and three cases of vodka. You see, he was now depressed and instead of quickly looking for another job, he wanted to cope with the loss by drinking, which of course was not coping with it at all.

When he arrived home, he poured himself a tall glass of straight vodka and the beginning of the end was in sight. Over the next three weeks, he drank around the clock, almost nonstop. He would occasionally watch television, mostly the financial network, because one day, he was going to show them all by inventing a new type of economics that would change the world.

The vodka bottles had a special hourglass type shape, which prompted him to daydream about his invisible mate.

Toward the end of the three weeks, he was dying from alcohol poisoning. He was coughing, throwing up and couldn’t see straight, so he drank even more and faster.

Two weeks later, the landlord, after knocking on the door for days, used his spare key and entered the apartment to find John dead on the floor, gripping an empty vodka bottle.

After the coroner pronounced him dead, he was removed to the city morgue and the landlord had the task of cleaning the apartment, which looked and smelled like a dung heap.

As he was emptying the apartment of all of the alcoholic’s belongings, he brought in a trashcan and filled it with 15 empty vodka bottles, including the one, which the coroner removed from the alcoholic’s hands. There was one remaining unopened bottle of vodka, which the landlord held for about 10 minutes, while he was thinking. Afterwards, he threw it also into the trashcan and took the nearly full trashcan into his own apartment. The landlord went to his cabinet and took his whiskey bottle and threw it into the trash. He then went to his refrigerator and removed a twelve pack of beer and threw it into the trashcan. He even got a bottle of crème de mint from his cupboard and threw it into the trash as well.

He took the trashcan to the road a new man. The landlord would never drink again, to the great joy of his family, friends and the many new friends he would bring into his life, because now with his own alcohol gone, he had room for them.

Copyright © 2007 Mark Edgemon

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