Lables on Gin

It was night and the air muggy. I was listening to jazz music by artists I can’t distinguish between in the room half-lit by a navy banker’s lamp when he came in with a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor named after a general who died in the first days of World War One and his back hit the wall hard.

Mycroft, Gin said, he was the hero. He couldn’t remember, he stammered. An hour ago. The fat one, not Sherlock. "People don’t write Mycroft into hero roles", I said. Laughing. Grabbed the bottle with eyes and fists, drinking like it were caloric as water, like Burroughs was a gentleman, what a Joke. Doesn’t matter, he was worth a fortune. "Rights", I said, I pinched my fingers, and he said "Right".

He said he had a dream about a man who spoke with a tongue of morphine, he was sticky when he leaned against anything - the air, open space, just stuck to it–took hold of the table, it came back when he stood straight, back with him. Tethering gravity like led hounds. He was gray and his legs twisted on anywhere like a wrench but not his dick. It was sharp like a knife, and whenever his pants reached ankle, there was only a static screen. Everything below was just a staticy screen, and he woke up, Virginia, and he was puking. I was watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes in the half-lit house. He was doing a lot of drugs. And it was night and the air muggy.