A Vintage Petrol Lighter Story Volume 4: Coursing Through The Night

(A Vintage Petrol Lighter Story Volume 4: Coursing Through The Night is a work of fiction presented by DependableFlame.com)

Hello Darkness

The night was no stranger to Elston, in fact it might be his oldest friend or perhaps companion was a better term. Through long sleepless nights when the dark haze enveloped though slumber had betrayed him to his own

frivolous frolicking through the dusking hinterlands the music played between his ears like some searching, grasping Simon & Garfunkel tune.

The night used to be the playground of his demons, the sort of companion his parents would’ve said was a bad influence for sure. There were sounds of the debauched city bleeding through here and there. A passerby below the third floor apartment window hawking up a loogie onto the pavement of the sidewalk. The rap music blaring from the speakers of the low-rider truck just before it squealed its tires leaving the stop sign on the corner at three A.M. The click of the Zippo as the robe clad girl lit a cigarette on the balcony across the way.

Elston certainly felt at home here, despite the barrage of sound effects hurled his way by the night that surrounded him. He’d come to terms with the consequences he’d reaped though it was his own undisciplined approach that had split the night open a few yrs earlier and left his entire life laid bare for the world to see.

Some people spend a lifetime guarding their privacy but Elston neither retained nor cared about any of that. He’d been asked before why he was so honest with his answers and whether or not there was wisdom in his approach. “It’s not like I’m trying to broadcast it,” he’d say, “but ain’t no reason to lie about it either. Lying to myself was what got me there in the first place.”

Visions Of Grandeur

This night was a far cry from the worst he’d every encountered, it wasn’t even close.

That day had started like just about any other. Responsibilities that couldn’t be faced, well maybe they could’ve been but certainly

wouldn’t be as the overwhelming draw to crack that bottle won out. The first sip(which was more like a guzzle) confirmed it all and set him on a course he couldn’t come back from.

Even now, all these yrs later lying here in the comfort of his cool, memory foam bed, he wondered about his state of mind at the time. It wasn’t much use for anything good and simply mimicked the lies that alcohol had come to parrot through him, like propaganda memorized in support for a war but the battle taking place was one he’d turned his eye from then for way too long.

Justifications and excuses were about all that he was good for and a man who is busy lying to himself gives no place to the truth. He was broken, he just wouldn’t face it. Every situation in his life was untenable but he didn’t realize it for the noise cause by all the lies.

It was the noise that would eventually do him in. It had reached a crescendo and he couldn’t stand to hear it. He just needed a break and shouted it from the rooftops but there was no one there who could hear him, like his words were falling on deaf ears or the language he spoke was foreign to its hearers. A tragic situation of Elston’s own doing.

Crumbling Down

Elston didn’t sleep at all the first night he was in the hospital. He had spent a lot of time behind hospital walls but never anything like this. This was

cold and dreary and no one was saying anything at all about going home.

It had started with the opening of the bottle or maybe I should say with the drinking of its contents. Some months prior, following doctor’s orders Elston had weened himself off and quit drinking alcohol. It had been a whale of a battle but he had done it when three months later he let that temptation take hold one last time.

Oh, I’m not saying he just drank that one day either but that last temptation carried him about and abused him like a sailor on the deck of a ship during the perfect storm over and over and over until he came to in the back of that police car. The nurses who’d initially treated him when the cops brought him in thought that he had lost his mind, which he might as well have.

There were hard realizations, a battle for his soul and incongruous notions that bandied about his head. He met a doctor that first morning who would be a great deal of help though not quite so much as Elston had hoped that first day. He wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Strategies were developed as understanding took root. “The liquor is going to kill you man, it’s just a matter of time,” the doctor told Elston, “you can fret about this other stuff all you want but it’s the alcohol that’s gonna kill you. Not the inability to go back to work.”

“But I gotta make a living man, and if I don’t get out of here I’m going to get fired!”

“You need to take care of yourself first and get your alcoholism sorted out before you can be any good to anyone at work.”

Laying Hold To What Is Good

Elston had quit for real all those months ago before that final temptation had led him astray one last time. He was already convinced and good, just not good enough to stave off his lack of will when it came to the

consumption of alcohol. He had known the second he took the first pull off the bottle he cracked open three months later.

Hard to imagine and foolish to give into such temptation just as the liquor hit his tongue, he recognized it as the poison that it was. After three months clean of alcohol, his body was completely purged of it and free. It was a foreign substance that his body had already dealt with and yet here his mind was telling his hands to pour it down his throat again anyway. There was no joy there and Elston knew that long before the cop every showed up.

He felt a perfect sense of justification each morning as he did his damnedest to convince the doctor it was time to send him home. He was now fully convinced of his error and knew that his drinking days were over. The truth had sparked in his mind and would not be snuffed out!

That “companion” who had helped him through hard times and enabled him to fit in where he didn’t think he ever would was now just another bygone crutch. Something he thought was helpful but just lied to and mocked him every step of the way.

(Please leave any comments, questions or suggestions in the comments section of this or any other page at DependableFlame.com. This is a work of fiction and any similarity of the characters or situations herein to those that have happened in real life should be seen as coincidental.)