Magic Bullets

Magic Bullets

I find it pretty ironic that I was only sixteen the first time I got pissed. I find it ironic because my dad is a hardcore alcoholic, has been since I was in nappies. All those opportunities to get drunk passed me by and I dutifully held myself back. All those passed out relatives with tins still in hands, all those morning clear ups and countless drinks poured down the sink. All those bottles upon bottles of vodka, gin and Jack D kicking about the house like glass skittles. Yeah, all that glass, not even recycled. What a f#cking waste.
I started off getting drunk in the kitchen. I reckon I had good reasons. My little sister had been dead five years to the day. Five whole years since the car crash. My dad had this crazy notion to have a get-together with the family, to celebrate her life. Utter bullsh#t of course. It was just an another excuse to get pissed, to go on a four day bender without having to answer to anyone why. Mourning his loss, that's what he wanted you to believe. Getting f#cking rat-arsed, that's what was actually going on.
Predictably, I had spent the day and night watching the family get more tainted and more tangled with the drink. A false accusation here, a seething argument there. It was now gone ten o clock and I had to admit it. I had to face the truth.
Dad said it for me, while leaning on the kitchen doorway for support. 'Looks like your mother isn't coming then.'
He spat out the word mother like a bit of gristle. He was always doing that, chewing her up and spitting her out. I looked up at him, his blue eyes like clouded ice. He stared at me. I stared at him. There was nothing to say, it was already known.
He shuffled into the kitchen, rattling around cupboards. Looking for his magic bullets no doubt. I knew exactly where they were, behind the breadbin, by the sink. Was I going to tell him? Was I f#ck. It took a while but eventually his pissed eyes found them and he popped open the lid. Two pills he shook out, swallowed them dry.
They had given him the pills after the crash, to help him cope. Ease his guilt more like. He had never bothered about seatbelts in the car, and my sister had never stood a chance. It was mum who'd dubbed the pills magic bullets, but that was before she left. They were supposed to cure him, so the doctor said, but they never did. There was never a real cure for anything, mum always said. She'd be saying it now if she were here.
Dad stood glaring at me, thinking of something worthwhile to say. Finally he opened the flabby mouth to speak. 'That's your mother for you, though. Never did give a tossin' sh#t, did she?'
Die, I thought silently. And then it happened. He left the room and I picked up the vodka bottle. Just like that. A simple hand to mouth manoeuvre that took seconds.
I ended up in the pub because a mad fight broke out in the house. It felt good closing the door on that lot, knowing I wouldn't be missed for at least twenty-four hours. I power-walked the streets like a mad wife about to catch the slut in the married bed. One minute I felt exhilarated, the next I wanted to curl up on a doorstep and cry. But the alcohol was already in my veins. I felt my head go hazy, I felt my heart thump. It was pretty exciting. No wonder people stick with it, I thought.
It was warm inside the pub and busy, very busy. Loud people laughed and louder people shouted. A different kind of madness than the one I'd just left. It was late on, everyone was drunk and no-one was noticing such trivialities as a lone girl walking in with her blue eyes already glazed over like sugar icing. Just like her dad's as well. What a f#cking tragedy.
The woman behind the bar asked what I wanted.
'I don't know,' I told her seriously. What did I want, from the pub, from life, from the sweet vodka in my bloodstream? 'I'll have more,' I said. 'Double vodka with coke.'
'A big drink for a little girl.' The guy standing next to me was arching an eyebrow. I kind of knew him, Kyle his name was. He'd been three years above me at school.
'I can handle it,' I told him.
I downed it in one go to prove it.
He smiled into his pint as he watched me. His eyes were dark, I noticed, like bitter chocolate. They seemed to reflect no light whatsoever. There was something capturing in that. Something drew me in. I realised I was staring. I looked around for the loos. I wasn't really needing but I had to stop staring. Make it look like I was doing something.
I marched to the ladies, tried to go but it wasn't happening. Standing over the sink to wash my hands, I turned on the tap and gazed at the running water. It was coloured like weak tea, it looked like I felt. I didn't want to go back out there among the heave of bodies. In here their cackling and clamouring was subdued but relentless. When do they stop, I wondered, and where do they go? Did any of them have to go back to a house as f#cked up as mine? I doubted it. I should have been here with my sister. She would have been fifteen soon. We could have got pissed together. She should have been allowed to do that. It was all his fault, pathetic f#cking excuse for a dad.
When I emerged I saw nowhere to sit, no space to slot in. Yet strangely, Kyle seemed to have space all around him, like some sort of invisible force field. I almost laughed out loud. F#cking force field. Whatever.
I approached him again and he smiled when he saw me, like he knew I was coming back. Maybe it's a magnetic force field, I thought. And I'm the magnet.
'Who are you waiting on?' he asked as I ordered my second drink.
'No-one.' I told him and the dark eyes studied me further.
'So…what are you waiting on?'
'Nothing.' I said. I was speaking the truth.
'I see.' He took a moment to swig his pint. 'So what are you running from? It must be pretty bad.'
I looked away and glimpsed my carnival reflection in the mirror behind the bar. My eyes looked too big on my face and my black hair was askew. Perhaps it's not the mirror, I thought as I got to the bottom of my drink and tasted the kick of a double.
'My house,' I told him, 'is full of drunk, depressed, crazy-f#cks. I came here to get away from them.'
He gestured around him. 'Some say this place is full of those crazy-f#ck types.'
'I don't care.' I said. At least you're not one of them, I thought.
He smiled again, like he just read my thought. As if. That's called paranoia, you know. Thinking people can read all your thoughts.
'I know your dad.' he said and bought me another drink. And another. And possibly another, I started to forget.
Pretty soon I couldn't control my feet, they seemed to swim in some liquid air, dancing without me like they had a mind of their own.
'I should kind of go,' I told him, numbly aware that the vodka had me f#cked.
Kyle observed me and I tried to smile at him through my blurring vision.
'Come with me,' he said, pulling my hand and leading me into the toilets.
My god, he wants to f#ck me in the skanky toilets, I thought, my head still swimming, barely staying afloat. 'I'm not into that.' I managed to say as he directed me into a cubicle.
He closed the door behind us. 'Believe me, you need it.' He was fumbling around in his jeans now, looking for a condom no doubt. Oh my god.
I was sticking to the wall, pushing words out my mouth like they were solid shapes. 'I'm not…some...sort of…slut, you know.'

'Hey, I just wanna sober you up,' he was saying. 'what the f#ck did you think I meant?'
I noticed he was holding his hand out to me, palm turned upwards.
'Take it.' he said.
It was a small wrap of coke. I'd seen enough of the stuff in my house with my cousins to know. I had never taken any though. Dad would have flipped his lid.
I took the wrap from Kyle then handed it back. 'I can't cut lines.'
He nodded and began to scrape the powder out onto the cistern while I tried to stay on my feet. He showed me how to snort the line, big breath out, note in the nostril, hold it close to the powder, and sniff…the furry stuff tickled as it went up my nose where it turned wet. Then it started to burn. A sharp taste hit the back of my throat, trickling slowly down mixing with my saliva.
'Disgusting.' I retched.
'Yeah, but good.' Kyle clarified.
And he was right.
F#ck this getting-drunk sh#t, I told Kyle. I wasn't touching another drop. It was f#cking overrated anyway. Just like everything else. Just like f#cking life. I apologised to him, for the thinking-he-was-away-to-f#ck-me thing. He said it was cool, I said it was dumb, he said it was ok though, cos whenever a dumb thing happened to one person, a really clever thing happened to another person. That was karma. So maybe right now someone was finding a cure for the flu or something. Yeah, karma. I liked karma, I liked it a lot.
It shouldn't be long then, before karma caught up with my dad. Of all the sh#tty things he'd ever done, nothing good had ever happened for it. It was his fault, the car crash, and he should be in jail for it. He killed her, he knows it. That's why he acts the way he does. That's why he makes everyone hate him. He needs to be hated. I had never thought about it with so much clarity before but suddenly it was all true, like a light was switched on in my head.
I told Kyle everything, in that skanky toilet, in that crumby pub, line after line, in our own little world. I told him about the dad and the depression and the hatred and the drinking. And the mother, how she wasn't any better. How she left after my sister died, she didn't want to look at me, be reminded of her, she couldn't handle it.
'She hates him. And he feels guilty. It's eating him up like rot setting in.'
Kyle was looking up at me.
'What are you thinking?' I asked.
'I'm thinking we need more chiz.'
Another light switched on in my head. 'I know where there's tonnes of it.'
Someone was kicking at the door anyway. It was time to leave, last orders had been and gone. We stumbled out into the street but this time my feet weren't just dancing my whole mind was too. My cousins always had a mean supply of coke on them especially when my dad had his weekender-family-gathering things. I could just sneak in, get some then head off with Kyle. It was simple. Everything was. It had to be, my mind was dancing. And Kyle was the type of person you could tell anything to. We would do this again, Kyle said. F#ck sitting in with your dad every night of the week. We would do this next weekend, and the next. It was great, everything was going to be great. I didn't think about the mad family. I didn't think about the fight, or the fact my mother might show up. But I should have, because good things never last. Karma can be such a f#cking bitch.
We had reached my street and I stopped dead in my tracks, a new rush flowing through my body. A rush of white panic. Bodies had spilled out of my house and onto the pavement, people were shouting, a woman's voice screaming. It had set the neighbourhood dogs off barking. My dad was in the middle of it all, with two men holding him back. The woman stood boldly in front of him, screeching obscenities against the wind like some sort of she-demon.
It was my mother.
'Holy hell.' I said and Kyle instinctively took my hand.
I looked up at his face for a moment, his clear creamy skin such a contrast to the vast blackness of the night sky behind him. He was so easy on the eyes, like viewing the world in soft focus. Turning back to the carnage before me was the hardest thing I had ever had to do.
And then my dad spotted us.
Get out of here, my mum was screaming. She was waving her arms, at me. At us.
I'd only just got here and she was telling me to go. Her face was manic, her eyes bulging. I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat. I'd never seen her like this before.
Gun…she was saying. He's got a f#cking gun.
And then came the cracking. Like invisible fireworks, splitting the night air open. I couldn't see what was happening. I couldn't see where it had came from but there was a new wave of screams and Kyle had let go of my hand.
My mother was running up to me, she was grabbing me, pulling me away, her body trembling. We were behind a car now, crouched low. I could see Kyle, but he was lying on the ground.
'What's wrong with him?'
My mother said nothing, only recited the holy-mary prayer she used to sing after dad had beat her up.
'What's wrong with him?' I was trying to move but my mother wouldn't let me. I dug my nails into her arms and she released me with a disconcerting wail.
I stumbled over to Kyle. He was still on the ground.
'Oh please, I can't lose another daughter!' Mum was whimpering behind me.
'Just shut the f#ck up!' I hissed at her. Kyle was on the ground and no-one was caring. I touched his face. 'Kyle?'
He wouldn't open his eyes.
It was f#cked up, everything was #ed up.
My eyes found my dad, he was sitting on the edge of the pavement, head between his knees. Now I saw the dark shape of a gun hanging from his hands. I could hear his sobs from here.
'What have you done?' I whispered in disbelief.
Kyle was still. His creamy skin had turned pale, like milk gone sour.
'He's done nothing wrong.' I was still whispering, I couldn't say it out loud. 'Nobody's done anything wrong.'
Police were suddenly everywhere and mum my jumped to her feet, taking her cue. 'He's a psycho! You get him locked him up! He's killed before, you know!'
Dad got to his feet, held his hands out. Allowed the officers to cuff him. My dad, who normally puts up a fight for anything, let them snap on the cuffs and handed over the gun. He turned his head up to the sky. I'm sorry he was saying, in a voice that didn't even sound like his. My little girl, I'm so sorry. As the officers led him to their car, I heard him say thank you. To the officers, he was thanking them.
'Let him rot in f#cking jail,' my mum was seething.
Dad glanced at her, and at me. The streetlights touched on his face with a soft glow and I could see that he was smiling. He was relieved.
'Sick b#stard,' mum spat.
But I shook my head. 'It's his punishment, mum. He's finally been cured.'
She drew me a look that only distanced us further. The darkness between us seemed to get colder and emptier.
I left her standing alone on the road and sat next to Kyle. The cold from the pavement seeped through my clothes, numbing my skin. I held onto his hand while the paramedics approached. I never understood why the police always arrived before the life-savers.
'Couldn't you have got here sooner?' I said and finally started to cry, tasting a bitterness at the back of my throat. It was the coke I had just snorted twenty minutes ago with a guy I'd just told my life story to. A guy called Kyle. A guy who was now lying on the pavement because of my dad. Because of me.

'There's no need to worry,' the paramedic said and I looked up at him through my teary eyes. 'He's going to be ok, you know.'
I stopped breathing for a moment. And then I was smiling.
Kyle was looking up at me, with eyes as soft as the silky night sky.
'His vitals are fine, he's been very lucky.'
'Must have been a magic bullet then.' I whispered as I blinked the tears out of my eyes.
'What's that?' the paramedic asked but I shook my head and buried my face into my knees.
I held onto Kyle's hand and watched the shadowy figure of my mother as she retreated down the path. She was gazing with languish at the car my dad was in, as it crawled away from the kerb and down the street. I thought I saw the shine of a tear in her eye but it could just as easily have been an evil glint of hatred. Either way, it didn't matter. I realised I hated neither of them now, for the first time in years.
The End

Wow! That caught my attention and kept it until the end! Good job!!

Thank you Night Star. I appreciate you reading it and giving me feedback as that is what I am looking for. I am trying to write a book but lacking confidence in my work just now. Any feedback from anyone else would be greatly appreciated. I could post excerpts from the book too and have some more short stories.

a reply to: Night Star