Aftermath

The child next to me glanced over, curious, at the opening whine of the laptop as it kicked into life, then quickly turned away with an obvious lack of interest. She's eating an apple and swinging her legs against the seat, idly exercising pent up energy that has no other release. The sound of her crunching through the apple flesh synchronises with my waves of nausea, flowing and swaying out of my control, cresting up through my gullet before falling with a heavy splash to the bottom of my gut.

It's the remnants of the alcohol I think – the fried breakfast this morning and the pizza last night combining in a heady, foul mix. Chemical memories of a hundred cigarettes wheeze in and out of my lungs, tasting acidic and thick. The party itself went on to the early hours of the morning, and the few hours sleep I snatched on the sofa as the dawn broke served only to remind me of the benefits I could have gained, but missed. I never even got drunk, in the end, but imbibed so much willing poison for the sake of – what? This, it would seem.

As I left the house to start the long journey home, a friend gave me some ecstasy he'd bought at some point between the cock-piercing comparisons and the snorting of whatever powder it was that someone had thoughtfully tapped onto the kitchen surface. I dropped it as the coach set off and sat back to lose myself in some music. It was, with typical luck, a bad batch though, and the prickling heatflushes and burning indigestion that are only now starting to die down were my meagre reward. Whatever poison had been substituted for the drug made itself felt with abandon.

Overlying it all, of course, a pent up sexual frustration that drugs and drink and the hint of intimacy will stimulate to overwhelming highs. Morphed now, it's died down into a background regret that snakes itself through my mind whispering invidious provocations, taunting and bitter.

Soon perhaps I'll disappear backwards into the toilet and force some fingers down my throat, and whilst thrown around in those tiny walls try to purge my system of anything I can into the queasily shifting vacuum bowl that serves as a bog. Tomorrow I'll spend in bed all day, drinking tea, eating fruit and trying to coax some vitality back into the twreck of my bowels and lungs, scrambled mind and heavy muscles. At the moment it feels as though this cramped coach and bumpy road are endless punishments, my warm bed as unreachable as Tantalus' ever withdrawing salvations. A melodramatic fiction, I know, but a dispiritingly convincing one.

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Addendum: As it turns out, a couple of hours after I'd tapped that out and with a few Mighty Boosh radio episodes under my belt, I felt absolutely fine, if not bone-weary. Still, it wasn't a massively pleasant journey.