American Rush

American Rush
Mark Coleman

I hurry to my room with a glass of ice and my handle. Down it with some cola, cause I’ve been vomiting blood, and I can’t handle straight whiskey yet. I quickly pour myself another. I don’t slow down until the shaking subsides, and I can manage to tilt the bottle without half of it ending up on the carpet. I sit and stare at the un-wall papered white through a disappearing glass of light brown.
The melting cubes question me, as I switch to my cheese ball Vegas shot glass. Plenty of people count down before sinking a shot; I count all the fucking shots I take. I try to find some imagined reason in the undulating lines to convince me to not put a gun in my mouth. The hinges creak blasphemy, and the wind’s a semen thirsty whore. They’re equally sickening.
I just walked to the liquor store on legs that felt like they were permanently attached to stilts. Real slow over the ice. I’ve split open my brow, and broken a lot of teeth lately. I’m half way through the booze that the greenbacks allotted to me, and I’m slurring at my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The bastard looks like someone that I’d like to get in a fight with. You know when you see someone, and whimsically wish them nothing but harm. The asshole in you kicks in, and you’d love to see a stranger get pummeled by a revolving door. That’s how I feel.
Punch the mirror, and wrap my bleeding hand in toilet paper. Pieces of glass are standing proud in my knuckles. For a minute, I think that I’m an asshole. But than I realize that assholes get laid, far more often than me. All of a sudden, I feel strangulated by an overwhelming sense of guilt. Pulling the glass out of my knuckles, I try to put the mirror back together, but it’s a no go. I wrap my hand tighter, and resume my drinking.
The world swims around me. I stare at the fish tank, and I’m sure that by some witchcraft, I’ve been transported into the plastic pirate’s body. Maybe my hiccups are producing the bubbles that are emerging from his helmet. I do about ten double takes, before I realize that, maybe, I’m being slightly ridiculous.