Frank sat brooding at the end of the bar. ‘Mel’s Drinks for Skinks’ has a dank and dusty mood to its dully lit atmosphere, and it’s just what the doctor ordered. With his back against the cold stoned chimney stack, Frank stared aimlessly at the ice melting into his bourbon. With an audible sigh, he thought about how he came to be ‘that sad old drunk, with his name symbolically etched into the solid black wood of the bar…’, the seat that no one else sat in. Frank, once upon a time, would laugh with his buddies about the ‘sad old drunk at the end of the bar’. He never once thought that he would become that man.
Becoming angry at the world, Frank began to examine how it had royally screwed him, how it was everyone else’s fault that he had become the man no-body wanted to become. The din of voices and occasional laughter broke through the darkness seemingly mocking Frank. He hated them, he hated that their lives were full of happiness while his had crumbled around him, then he consoled himself with the thought that ‘one day, one day you bastards will be lining up for this stool, one day your lives will fall apart all around you too… and on that day, I will laugh at you…’ though Frank knew that he would not be around for that day, ‘to relish in the destruction of their youth, their lives’.
Then different voices began to pierced through the dark thoughts of Franks mind; the voice of his lawyer telling him that his wife had filed for divorce, that she was taking the children away from him, that she had had enough of his drinking, gambling and abuse, and the voice of his doctor that very afternoon, informing him that the lifestyle that had lost him his family, was now going to take his life. Frank hated everyone at this moment, the drink that diseased his liver was fast becoming a ‘Lazarus bar’ whiskey; watered down straight from the bottle, and his life was playing out in his mind. Even now, Frank blamed every-one other than himself, for his life… and death.
Image source: tinou bao
