cities of the red night

"If anybody asks...I'm at the hospital." He muttered walking out the door.

Twenty-four hours later on the following evening he stumbled back red eyed and exhausted. His bitter face, his entire persona, seemed at first glance completely anonymous. Normally pressed and clean, his clothes were smeared in black grime and the entire left of his side was discolored from water or most likely piss from his chest running the length of his leg of his pants. He smelled of rotten cantaloupe.

I stood silent as he simply barged into the room and clumsily and wordlessly began removing his clothes. His legs and arms wielded crimson scratch wounds and already had begun to scab over. As I slowly closed the door to my guestroom, he let his stinking, filthy clothes remain where they dropped and commenced catatonically rummaging through my open suitcase that lay on a corner chair. He removed a clean shirt and a pair of undershorts. Sliding them on, he plopped onto the bed and covered himself with the cotton blanket. The rancid reek of stale alcohol filled the room as almost instantly he began to lightly snore.

I ambled over to the wooden shelf under the flat-screen television set and retrieved a crumpled packet of cigarettes. Removing one, I lit up and observed his prone akimbo form.

Nothing more pathetic than a sloppy drunk, I thought. I need to nip this in the bud. The honeymoon, as it were with this character, was long past and his attitude had become downright petulant and condescending. I had become used to him and his persona. At times sweet and affectionate, but sometimes the man gave me a shock with some indescribable twist of malevolent ugliness. He incessantly ciphered money from me for the sole purpose to drink. Not just beer, but hard liquor. As of late, he would sit on the floor or sometimes I’d find him squatting on the curb outside in crying jags, loudly confessing the most vicarious details of sexual atrocities that had been committed to his person during different chapters in a fantastic saga of misfortune.

I let him sleep as I remained awake due to coffee and insomnia. Tomorrow it is time to cut this boy off.