“Take your shot, stranger. You’ll only get one.” The rumble of the gruff voice near me wakes me from my stupor, coming to my senses to see my finger swishing around the bourbon in my small glass shot. Gross. I glance over, two seats away from me, a burley man with a tangled dark beard, holding his own shots of bourbon. He scans me as though i’m an old friend, and i can tell he’s already taken a shot or two from the way he wobbles in his seat, holding onto the counter and how his eyes can’t focus on me entirely and are slightly glassy.

“Oh,” I say quietly, glancing back down towards my drink pulling my now wet finger out and wiping it across my v-neck t-shirt.

“Your first time drinkin’ I reckon? The first drinks the easiest I tell ya.” He says to me, his eyebrows furrowing as though he’s trying to figure me out, his eyes squint. He waits for an answer, though not pressuring me as he looks ahead the counters at the assortments of different drinks lining the walls, I feel out of my element.

“Uh, yeah.” The lie rolls off my tongue easily, and i’m sure the bourbon would have the same effect. I stare at it with such intensity I hope the shot will shatter and it’ll be my que to leave. But it doesn’t. And I am still in my seat two seats away from the older man with a kind face and broken gaze.

“Don’t worry kid, when’d you turn twenty one?” He asks, in a swift motion downing one of the shots and slamming it towards the counter afterwards. A shiver crawls up my spine.

“Last week.” I state blankly, keeping my eyes glued to the table. I start to trace the wooden pattern with the no-longer wet finger, every groove felt by my fingertips. I feel a tiny splinter form. The laughter and music that had encapsulated the bar when arrived had died down to a quiet and calm atmosphere, the red lights reflected onto me and the man’s skin from the windows behind us, contrasting with the blue lights behind the counter ahead of us.

“Well here, raise a glass with me. We’ll do it together.” He raises his second glass up to the air, giving me a sloppy but soft one-sided grin. His body wavers but his face stays calm, welcoming, and even with the action of swallowing the liquid in the glass looming over my head like the plague, the tension in my shoulders loosen at the sight of him.

I grab the shot glass, the liquid almost pouring over by how vigorously my hands shook. My chest gets increasingly heavier, the ringing in my ears from the past weeks suddenly quiets, silence overtakes me and my face takes on something indifferent without the constant roaring pounding my skull.

Before giving myself time to think, i raise the glass to my mouth and tip my head back. As the glass empty’s my whole entire body is warm, not even noticing before the hairs that are sticking up across my forearms and the way my blue lips wobbled and shook. I make no face when the liquid hits my lips. There are black spots in my vision but there is liquor in my system.

It doesn’t matter where I go. Oxygen avoids me because it knows i’m a waste of breath. There is nothing poetic about it.

“-kid, kid come back to me, your gonna pass out!” The man is standing over me, his hands hover over my shoulders when i wish my eyes open. I hear someone crying. I can’t breathe.

“Hey, hey, keep them eyes open! What’s goin on with you, there’s no need to be afraid,” His eyes are blown out in panic. Did I cause this? Am I the one crying?

He grabs my hand and leads it to his chest, his warm sweater soaking into the cold of my palms. I distantly feel his heartbeat, and I imagine that the sound is filling my ears. “Breathe with me kid, in at four, out at four, okay?” He begins exaggerating his breathing, visibly moving his mouth for each breath he exhales.

“I ruin everything I touch! Oh my god,” I violently grip my hair with my freehand, pulling and yanking until my fingers are constricted and turning purple wrapped with stray dirty-blonde hairs. My cheeks are slick. “I lied- I lied to you i’m sorry!” I distantly hear myself shriek.

“No, no son it’s okay! I don’t understand what your talking about, you just need to breathe-“ Every single wrinckle on the man’s face is contorted into something worrisome, his mouth opening and closing like a gold fish, words unable to come out.

At some point my crying subsides to small sniffles, and my breathing becomes something similar to his, though even as i calm he chooses the chair closest to me, our knees grazing each others as he orders another round (possibly for the both of us). My head is pounding, a future migraine on the cusps of beginning, keeps me grounded as I pinch the skin on my elbows.

“I’m an alcoholic.” He says looking towards the side away from me a few moments later, he quietly hums a tune while drumming his knuckles against the table. He says it so quietly, a secret being spoken into late nights at the bar, three words with so much pain built into them it takes your breath and all you can do is mariniate in the silence of self-loathing.

“Every night I go home, just absolutely plastered, and when I get home my little daughters are waitin for me at the couch, and they look just so sad, so I tell em i’m quittin’, but then the next night home from the bar, this exact bar in that exact seat,” He pats the seat he was originally sitting at, “I repeat those same words to their sweet faces. I don’t think they believe me anymore.”

His words settle into my skin, they burrow into every crevice and make themselves a home. He looks towards the floor, carving a deep frown into his lips. “I know you are too. It’s okay, you don’t have to be ashamed kid, we are both one of eachother. My son was just like you.” He looks at me, and tilts his head until I take a deep breath in.

“I started drinking when I was eight.” I say, pain laced every word and i felt smog curl around my neck. “My mother made me, so I didn’t exactly have a choice. The funny thing about it is that I never stopped. Back in 6th grade,” My voice trembles and I take a breath in.

“I was sent to the office, and I just reeked of vodka, and I was very obviously tipsy, and when they realized that they called CPS.” A tear streaks down my face, as I speak the bartender comes over with our drinks. I immediately grab one, even though he gives me a warning glance. I down it and slam my fist to the counter.

“They chucked me into foster care,” I make a dramatic hand gesture and chuckle to myself, “like I was trash. I was trash to them, I was another stupid kid with an alcoholic mother. I forced the other kids to drink, I sunk everyone down with me.” I look towards the floor, I taste salt in my mouth. “I would fight too. Hard. The adults, the children, it was all the same to me.”

“Kid you don’t have to tell me this-“ The man said, resting a hand on my boney shoulder. He looked at me with sad eyes, his lips were curled into a frown still. I down another shot. I wave my free hand towards him, and smash the glass onto the counter.

Two ugly, jagged cuts begin to bead on my palm. He yelps and grips my hand, shoving his sweater sleeve into it to stop the bleeding. I once again wave him off, i don’t feel it. I wipe the blood onto my jeans, ugly brown stains forming. That’s gonna be a pain to get out. I don’t stop bleeding.

“I- I thought I was sober. I was supposed to be sober for her. Why did I do this?” I begin laughing hysterically pushing my hands through my hair, waiting for him to say anything. But he doesn’t. He just stares, so I continue. “My girlfriend helped me get sober. I don’t remember the last time I saw her.” I say frowning.

“I’m glad you told me your story, kid.” He says after sitting in the thick silence for a few minutes, putting his arms around my wobbling shoulders and pushing another shot towards me. I gladly take it.

“Is all i’m meant for is poison? I’m beginning to forget everything I once knew, and if i’m a person with no memories wandering forever what’s the point in me being alive?” I ask him, looking into his eyes, face inches away from him as he attempts to hold all my broken body parts together before i become a mound of flesh and bone.

“I think your just livin’. I don’t think everybody gotta have a grand purpose, sometimes people are made for the sake of blindly walkin’ the earth.” He looks towards me shrugging, “You know son, everything you say is kinda depressin’ huh? I don’t think there’s anything artistic to it. Your born and ya die, no matter what happens in between.”

“My name is David. You know I never actually got your name?” I say softly smiling, even if my body is rotting from the inside out I’m still smiling at the man. Even if life isn’t shining inside of him either. Though instead of him reciprocating, the pressure on my shoulders releases and his body is no longer taking up the chair next to me.

After a couple minutes of him being gone I exit the bar, noticing the breeze flowing towards me fast and hard, seemingly rattling everything in its path, though I cant feel the chill seep into my skin so I walk over to stand at the bench of the bus stop until I see that familiar white-and-blue blur whizz past me. I take one last look at the scenery around me, the windows of the bar glowing onto my skin one last time before I stumble up the steps of the bus.

Arriving to my apartment complex I almost crawl up the steps, drunk and trying to make it to the third floor of my building, dirt that accumulates on the staircase staining my pant and shirt. I arrive at door 304 and jiggle my key in while keeping balance holding the doorframe. Though when I look towards my door there is a plaque, and I doubt that it was ever there before.

It’s a navy blue and extremely polished, that doesn’t sound like a drunk thing I’d do, so I pull my glasses out of my pocket to read the small white scribbles on it.

“In Memory of David Admen, twenty years old taken by drunk driving on November 2nd, 2023.” My blood runs cold, and any color that my skin retained was tucked away into nothingness until I couldn’t breathe. I glance underneath the words, “In Memory of Alexis Chadwick, twenty one years old taken by suicide on November 3rd, 2023.”

I am a murderer. I grab death by the hand and hold it, comfortably, like I’ve done it before. Life has a bruise underneath his chin and eyebrow, and my knuckles are stained red. I was conjured by brain, I was not born to a woman with open arms.