NOVEL WEB Book One: Leap -Chapter One: Drunk
I take another swig of whiskey. The burn has long faded by now: I’m more than halfway into my nth bottle of spirits and my throat has gone numb. Or maybe I’ve just stopped caring. The last few hours are a blur. Maybe even days. I couldn’t say how long it’s been since I started drinking as if my life depended on it.
If my life depended on it. Hah, funny, I think, but the bitter amusement fails to even twist my lips in the mockery of a smile. What life? There’s nothing for me to lose now except my heart beating and my lungs pumping: surviving, not living. Family, job, self-respect… Gone.
“Firrrred,” I slur out to the empty room, feeling the way it tastes in my mouth, how it twists the tongue. “Unemployed.” Another unsavoury word. “Failure,” I spit. I’m still thinking about it, which means I haven’t drunk enough. I tip the bottle back but more sloshes on my face than in my mouth. I curse bitterly, lamenting at the world, God, and anyone else listening about the fact that, with this final death-knell, my life is officially over. Pity my attempts to make sure of that permanently just ended with me descending from the roof of my apartment block to keep drinking. A failure even in that.
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, just in front of my over-stuffed bookshelf and I automatically turn to look. It takes my alcohol-sozzled brain a good few seconds to register what I’m looking at and then, in the very educated way all drunks have, I question reality:
“Whas’a?” Standing up and stumbling forwards, I wave my hand vaguely in the air underneath the apparition, and then through it.
“Stop that,” the ghost says a mite crossly. “This is difficult enough without you interrupting the projection.”
“Wha? It speashs?” I murmur drunkenly, staring at the approximately 30cm tall pearly-white figure floating a few centimetres off my table. It looks like a man, a neatly-dressed figure in what I muzzily recognise as a vaguely medieval doublet and hose. A bit like what my male coworkers and I wore at an Elizabethan-inspired Christmas party, though with less poofy trousers and a more normal-height collar, even if ours were made with cardboard instead of starched fabric. As for its face, it looks rather like a stereotypical villain with a pointy beard, mustache, and a dark look that grows even darker as I prod it again.
“Stop that, I said!” the figure barks at me. “Are you...drunk?” it, he, then asks. I shrug languidly.
“Maaaybe,” I drawl. Looking around, I can’t see the whiskey. If I can question whether I was drunk or not, clearly I haven’t had enough. “Where’s z’whiksy?”
“From the looks of it, you’ve had more than enough,” the ghost tells me disapprovingly. “This is the only hope for my legacy?” he mutters under his breath “Gods help me.” Sighing he speaks louder. “I don’t have much time. Drunk or not, listen to me now.” I hold up one finger that turns into two as my eyes unfocus.
“Whisksy firssst,” I tell him as firmly as I can make it. The man sighs, clear annoyance in the sound of it.
“Next to you, on the floor.” I lean over the arm of the chair quickly, almost tipping over it as my centre of gravity shifts too far. I see the bottle on the floor and grab it, sloshing its contents a bit as I lean back. Already down by more than half, the liquid doesn’t actually leave the bottle despite the abrupt movements.
I tip it back, almost missing my mouth again. By this point, I can barely feel the burn, but the alcohol content soon gets to me as the world starts spinning even more. I tip my head back staring at the ceiling, marveling at the way the cracks are moving round and round and round...
“Now will you listen?” the apparition asks with frustration in his voice. I wave one hand vaguely in the air, almost hitting myself in the face. “I hope you remember at least some of this when you sober up,” he mutters to himself before once more speaking loudly and clearly. “I come with an offer. I need to bestow a powerful inheritance on a successor and the Oracle has indicated that you are my only option if I do not wish my legacy to be destroyed within the next generation.” He continues speaking, but I have lost the ability to focus, staring at the ceiling vacantly as his voice becomes background sound, the odd word filtering in but not making much sense. It’s almost soothing, too much so for my drunken state to endure, and my eyes slip closed without me even noticing.
*****
I keep drinking. That night, through the day, the next night, the next day….the days run into each other. I only stop when I run out of alcohol and can’t find my wallet to go buy more. Great chunks of time disappear without my notice; it doesn’t matter – no one is expecting me for anything. I think I try to head out to the rooftop again, but can’t open the door because my body isn’t working right.
When I finally do return to some sort of rational awareness, I wake to the world still spinning, my head pounding fit to burst, and my stomach telling me firmly that it is about to upend itself. I make it to the toilet, thankfully, and proceed to worship the porcelain god for a good few minutes. When I sit back, my stomach empty but still roiling uncomfortably, my throat feels like sandpaper and my mouth tastes like something has died in it.
Brushing my teeth – twice – deals with the taste, but doesn’t do much for the other symptoms. Tossing back a couple of paracetamol, I grimace as even water running down my acid-burnt throat hurts. I know I need to drink to rehydrate and eat something to settle my stomach, but I really, really don’t feel like it. I’m not a habitual drunk, but even when I have over-indulged a bit, it’s never been this bad. Normally I stop after the world starts spinning, and the worst I have the next morning is a headache, sometimes a small bit of nausea.
This time, though, I’d had a reason to bury my pain in whiskey – and wine, and vodka, and rum. Not wanting to make an already bad morning – afternoon? - worse, my thoughts shy away from remembering why that was. Instead, I push myself to my feet, determined to eat something. Maybe porridge? I know greasy food is supposed to be good for a hangover, but I can’t cope with anything scratchy right now. Maybe if I added some butter to the porridge? Worth a try.
Exiting the bathroom, the first thing that hits me is the stench. Alcohol mingles with vomit and piss and the miasma sends me right back to hugging the toilet. Repeating the previous process once I’ve finished hacking up my guts, I summon up the courage to brave the battlefield. Covering my nose with my sleeve, I stumble through the horribly dirty room to open the windows: if I can at least get the smell out, it’ll make the world look better. Or so I tell myself.
I can’t face doing any more than that and next totter into the kitchen, closing the door and opening this window. At least I didn’t vomit in here, though I can see a puddle of alcohol where I clearly dropped a bottle – the glass shattered and spread across the floor so I’d better be careful with my bare feet. In fact, I really should clean it up straight away, but I don’t have the motivation.
Instead, I just step carefully around the chunks of glass I can see and hope that I’m not stepping on a whole load of unnoticeable shards. Porridge is out of the question: the microwave is close to where the bottle shattered, and so are the bowls. Instead, I succeed in grabbing a cereal box out of the closest cupboard and sit on the kitchen table, my feet on one of the seats. I pull handfuls of cereal out of the box and chew on them dry.
It’s not great, but after a while, my nausea does start to abate. Once the paracetamol kicks in and I’ve downed a good litre of water, I start feeling almost human. The pain I’d been suffering muted, the tiredness of too little sleep starts weighing my eyelids down. Already done with the day, I just lie down on the kitchen table and go to sleep, regardless of how uncomfortable it is.
Memories of the ghost drift back into my mind as I drop off, but before I can decide whether they’re dream or reality, I drop back into the welcoming blackness of sleep.
*****
The next time I wake up, the sun is streaming through the windows. Just by that, I can tell it’s early afternoon as my apartment faces south-west. The world has, thankfully, stopped spinning. My throat is feeling a bit better, though still rather raw, and my stomach is more settled. At least, I don’t feel like being sick is just a wrong movement away now. I can also smell myself now the odor of whiskey has cleared from the room - I really need a shower.
I’m also lying on the kitchen table, a fact that makes itself very evident when I start trying to shift. Apparently lying on a hard surface with my feet resting on a lower one in terms of a chair is not the ideal sleeping position. Who knew? I groan as my back makes its – very loud – complaint. And my knees. I’m also cold because the window was open and I had no cover.
In fact, the only thing I can say that’s even slightly good about my poor decision-making is that apparently I slept the sleep of the dead and didn’t roll over onto the glass-strewn floor. The thought of which – and the worse state of my sitting room – makes me feel like opening another bottle.
No. I scrub at my face and try to give myself a pep-talk. OK, you got completely drunk. You made a mess of your apartment. Just...take it one step at a time. Go...have a shower. Yeah, a shower would go a good way to helping me feel slightly more human and less roadkill. My problems will still be problems, but at least I won’t stink badly enough to make my nose want to give in its own resignation.
Unfortunately, my shower is in my bedroom, which is through the glass-field. Or through the sitting room, but I don’t even dare consider that yet. I sigh. Clearing up the mess here first, then. Or maybe just enough to ensure I don’t have to go to A and E with glass shards in my feet.
After having succeeded in clearing a path through the danger, I reach my bedroom, jumping in the hot shower with a sigh of relief. The water feels like a benediction, washing away my cares and troubles, if only for a moment. Sadly, all good things come to an end and when my water starts cooling, I realise it’s a sign that I need to get on with other things. The thought of all the cleaning I will have to do doesn’t exactly fill me with glee.
On my way to my wardrobe from the shower, buck-naked but for a towel around my head, I notice something strange on my desk. It’s sitting next to a photo that never fails to make my stomach clench – my ex and I smiling on our last holiday together before she broke up with me. Procrastination opportunity gladly accepted, especially if it stops me thinking about her. The item is a disk with an emblem that I’ve never seen before.
I pick it up to inspect the strange item. It’s about the size of a coaster, but about three times as thick and heavy. Made out of metal, perhaps. The emblem is an intricate golden design on a black background. At first I think it’s painted, but closer inspection proves that instead the gold is inlaid. The image is in the style of a coat of arms, with three sections – a horizontal line across the centre with a vertical line dividing the top half into further quarters.
Looking closely, the top left section is a fox – recognisable by its pointy ears and bushy tail - in side profile, but with its head turned towards the front. Next to it in the right hand quarter is a hammer crossed with a sword, the hammer to the fore. Finally, the last – and the largest – section contains, unusually, a spiderweb. I don’t know much about heraldry, but I’ve never heard of or seen a spiderweb in a coat of arms. Idly I admire the quality of the work – the spiderweb is especially beautifully done: each strand is perhaps only a fraction of a millimetre wide, and only visible when the disk is tilted so it catches the sun. Just like a real spiderweb, I realise.
Looking away, I see something I had missed when I picked the disk up, too curious about it to notice anything else. The disk had been sitting on something, a folded up square of paper, to be precise. Setting the coat of arms down, I pick up the piece of paper instead. Before even opening it up, I realise that the paper is some type I’ve never felt before. Thicker, and creamier coloured than I’m used to, I guess it is some high-quality material. It even makes a different sound than I expect as I open it, a deeper rasp and crackle than a normal piece of paper would.
Unfolding it, I realise that I’m holding some sort of letter. The same coat of arms is imprinted in the top right-hand corner – the spiderweb more visible here than on the disk as it is in black ink rather than reflective golden metal.
The letter is handwritten, a rarity in these times, it seems. The writing is clear, bold, well-shaped. If the handwriting personality analysis I looked at once is anything to judge, this man is confident, well-settled in his position in life. Of course, at least half of that handwriting analysis thing is nonsense, so perhaps I’d be better off reading the thing than analysing the handwriting.
Greetings,
I will briefly reintroduce myself as, due to your...inebriated state during my visit, and the fact that you seemed to fall asleep halfway through, I doubt you took in much of what I had to say. I must be brief: to send the transportation emblem is effort enough; a message is further expenditure and greater the longer the message. Expenditure which I had not anticipated after I paid the cost to project a semblance of myself to explain in person and to answer all the questions of the candidate.
Nevertheless, I shall present myself again: I am Lord Nicholas of Azaarde. I offer you a new life and the potential of power and influence beyond what you ever thought you could achieve, that you ever thought possible: the inheritance that I and my family have built over the last few centuries. A powerful Class, Skill-set, wealth, and further benefits I will inform you of in person. I have no heirs of my own and so it behooves me to choose one suitable.
I have been informed that you are the only hope of my family’s legacy surviving the next generation, but you will have to prove yourself worthy of it: I would rather it dies with me than that it is destroyed by a drunkard. I say this so you know I do not make this offer lightly.
You have the opportunity now of deciding the rest of your life. You can walk away and forget this ever happened, imagine it was a dream. Or, you can take your destiny in your hands and decide who you will be now and in the future.
Should you decide to gamble everything on the chance that you show yourself deserving of what I can bestow on you, hold the transportation emblem accompanying this letter and acknowledge aloud your acceptance. I will warn you: the magic of the emblem will draw you across worlds and universes and there is NO way to return. Any unfinished business will, therefore, remain unfinished.
You have three days to decide; after this, the emblem will return to me and I will know I must look elsewhere for a worthy heir.
I am aware that it would take an unusual type of person to accept such an uncertain offer of potential power in exchange for everything you currently possess, but for the sake of my legacy, I can only hope that you might be such a character, and more, that you might overcome the trials ahead and prove yourself more than unusual; worthy.
My sincerest and most cordial sentiments,
Lord Nicholas Titanbend of Azaarde
I stare at the letter in my hands, my jaw slack even as my mind whirls. Cutting through the depression that I have been mired in for days is confusion, incredulity, and one more. Like the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, I feel the faintest glimmering of hope.