Deluge

I'm looking down on a scene of myself passed out on the floor surrounded by a hideous cacophonous mosaic of bottles and cans and lit candles (the power is out as a result of the storm), face down in a pile of dirty underwear asleep where I fell, empty spectral arms of the coat I never quite managed to remove flowing out beside me in mock crucifixion.  I can't see my real arms.  My feet are wet and my pants are undone and my system houses a raging battle between hash ephedrine and alcohol, forced into oblivious narcosis via cannabis cookies.

     Willy's talking to invisible demons over in the corner between the bed - occupied by zombified Scoopy in foetal position - and the wall, half on a step leading to the "kitchen".  A blanket covers his torso and head while his bare legs and feet stick out through the entrails of some immense vacuum machine into the open-mouthed face of Potsie the Inebriate, stench of rotting foot-flesh fresh in the stagnant air.  Potsie is curled up on the pillow de jour under the desk amongst a million pieces of indescribable litter . . .

     Water from the storm is backed up somewhere, running under the door and starting to flood the soiled carpet.  The roof over the sink was starting to collapse as the drywall filled with water from some unseen leak so at some point in the night Scoopy stabbed it with a Ginzu knife, lancing the suppurating pustulence with the skill of a mortician thereby allowing the excess water to drain out of the structural boyle into the sink, whence filled, overflows onto the counter and shortly thereafter the floor.  Water now invades from both sides of the single room basement apartment, slowly encircling us like a moat around a corpse-strewn isle of garbage . . .

I awake soaking in the nauseous disorienting catatonic haze of time-slip, as a belching puking blood-clot-shitting Potsie lurches around the broken can in his own virulescence with a cursing naked Willie looming over me, ankle deep in cess, drooling and gesticulating madly about rain dogs and flash floods as the stained evidence of the debauched carouse drifts about aimlessly . . . Somebody says something about my arms so I have a nip off the top as the Bushmills floats by . . .

     Scoopy is screaming for a light (his cigarette is clearly broken - I believe he slept with it attached to his lip) and clutching the bed with such intent that I am positive our merry vessel is listing - no, it is spinning down a powerful vortex as Will decides to suck up the sea with the vacuum machine.  Thankfully the power has not been reestablished or we would all have surely been electrocuted; nevertheless Willy is convinced he is doing a good job.  It is now abundantly evident that the ship is indeed foundering.  I quietly close my eyes as we go asunder. . .

© Sartisohn 2003