#299

He swallows with some difficulty. As if his drink were not the smoothest scotch in the bar, but a torrent of poison.

It was the words he was having difficulty swallowing, not the drink. The drinks would go down with more and more ease and speed as the night wore into morning. As the words began digesting in the bile he felt rising in his throat.

They would breed a bitterness in his soul that would alter the very course of his life for years to come. Sunlight would cease to shine in his world.

It seared into his mind, never to be erased, only endured as days turned into weeks turned into years.

"I love you, but..."

It's classic. The end always begins that way. And this wasn't new to him. He'd been broken up with before, but this time, this one...he had been so sure of it that he'd given himself away to his lover. Given away his very core. Everything that he had within himself, he'd given. For the first time in his life, he had not held back any part of himself and now, this.

It was done.

He heard the words. He was there at the table, drink in hand, looking at the face and hearing the words, but it wasn't real. It couldn't be.

And then the face was gone.

Simply gone.

No farewell touch. No kiss. No embrace. No note. No photos.

Just gone.

A key left on the table by his hand.

Over.

He kept trying to choke it down, but it wouldn't go.

At last call the lights came up and he had to leave, not because of the closing, but because of the light. Light would make it more real. He had to run, run far into the darkness. Escaping down the street, walking through darkness to his condo, entering but never, never turning on the lights.

Another drink to find more darkness, then motionless, lying in his bed only to get up and move to the sofa. The bed would never be his again. It would have to go. It was full. There was no room for him there now. The memories filled it up and left him no room to stretch out and find the sleep he was longing for.

But sleep was only an illusion. There was no relief there, only dreams. Dreams that woke him bathed in bitterness.

He would shower, but not shave. He would work, but not succeed. He would feed himself, but barely stay alive.

Shame is suffocating. Shame that he gave it all and was left. Shame that he really must be his worst fears of himself. Shame that would bring him to the very brink of his life. Knowing that some day a powerful anger would come. A hate that would drive him in a new destructive direction.

A sick bitter realization that one instant of reaching for a life long love would bring him a decade of trying to become a human again.