Paul Andrew Sneddon

So I’m sitting here. I’ve been sitting here for a while. I’ve got a drink in front of me, some beer. Some beer that says local, but it’s made somewhere else.

It’s either that, or it’s a beer made locally that they say is authentically Belgian or French or German or something like that. Then that’s how they advertise it to you.

So you know they are bullshitting you and yeah, I’m sitting here just having a drink. I’m not carrying out a purity test to have a drink at a bar at two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. It’s just this is what it is, I suppose.

So I’ve got myself a beer, and I’ve got myself a shot. If you’re going to get a shot, in my experience, a shot shouldn’t taste nice. A shot shouldn’t be sweet. It shouldn’t be like raspberry ice cream or something, or like a woman’s perfume or something. It should be something a bit more vulgar. A drink to wake you up.

So I ask the barman for a drink like this, and he looks at me like I’m absolutely fucking mental. I’m thinking, come on, man. And he starts telling me that they’ve got all kinds of stuff. So he pours me something, and I say to him, one for you too. We knock it back. And I feel it burn. And I say to him, let’s do another, and he looks at me like I’m absolutely mental. But he pours two more and we knock them back, and I feel myself change just a little. Like something’s just changed just enough that I’m kind of sitting outside of myself and looking back at myself.

And someone calls him down the other end of the bar, so he’s away, and I sit there and I close my eyes just for a moment, just for a few seconds.

But in that moment I’m soaring high over a field. There’s a blue river running alongside it, and I’m over the town. Is it my town? Your town? Someone else’s town? Our town? And I keep going.

Then I’m walking through it.

And then I’m in a room, low lights, we’re at a table. I’m talking to her, and she’s laughing at a joke I say. She’s looking at me, blonde hair, blue eyes. And it’s been 21 years.

Us. Together.

And I smile.

And then I’m moving through the city, past strangers, people. Someone bumps into my shoulder. I just keep moving. They bounce off of me, and another one. Someone’s walking out of a tall building, starts telling everybody what to think and where to be and what to say. I just keep moving., their words just bouncing off of me.

And suddenly I’m sitting down on the rough ground behind where they built the new buildings, and the motorway’s in front of me and the cars are just ripping left to right and back and forth. And I’m smoking something. And I’m thinking about something. I’m thinking about something I wrote years ago. And it’s still with me. It’s still here right now.

And I feel the pulse of the universe.

And I open my eyes, and I take a sip of my beer.

The fridge started beeping. That insistent beep when you left the door open. They used to joke about it. Alright fridge, I see you. He stood in the only light in the room and closed the door. The light disappearing. Gone. He sighed and felt the tension run like electricity through his back and shoulders. Alone in the darkness, he ran his hand through his hair. She had always said he was lucky, he still had his hair. He had laughed, he had never really thought about it. Didn’t worry about it. Maybe that was why.

He stepped forward. He could see the back garden lit by the solar lights they had strung out between the trees last summer. All those nights of BBQ, beer and music. He smiled, he couldn’t help it. He almost tried not to and he laughed. Looked up at the ceiling. Then outside. And turned and went to bed.

He sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the silence. Felt the dark room around him and smiled. The only light from the street outside as he listened to the wheeze in his lungs. He breathed in and counted, one, two, three and coughed. Ah fuck’s sake. Again. This time he made it before the breath escaped.

There was movement on the bed but when he looked over his shoulder she was just sleeping. He stood from the bed and walked slowly to the window. The street was empty, he noticed a fox moving between the bins and past the for sale sign by the steps. The little patch of garden where he had proposed to Emma. Where the kids had played football. He felt the rough skin of his face. Tomorrow he would go to the solicitors and tell them to take that for sale sign down.