Public House stories!

A flustered man explodes through the door into the low murmur of mumbling drunk voices. He looks flustered. He is not a small gentleman and his greying hair is receding violently away from his reddened, spectacle filled face. He is well dressed in a perfectly pressed slate coloured suit and red tie, slung slightly lower than the top button would suggest. He puffs out his cheeks and heads briskly toward the bar; his suit rippling like liquid as he moves the air around him with his pace. He sets down on the bar a rather ominous looking brief case and further loosens his tie and collar to let his forced double chin stretch out and disappear again. Perching on the higher of the two stools that remained free, he ordered himself a whiskey-7 and watched meticulously as the bar keep poured a perfect measure of each. “Thanks Brand”, he proclaimed wistfully, as if they were two long lost lovers. “What’s the rush about mate?” came the husky, smokers voice of Brand, the barkeep, but the man waved the question away and sighed heavily. “That good aye?” Considering it was not yet 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, I figure something really terrible has happened and life its self had chased this portly gentleman from a high powered work to my pub. The same pub I dwell at every day as I await my stroke of luck. 

Moments of awkward silence came and went as the man and Brand exchanged pleasantries. He was running away; just like every other tearless soul searcher around me, but things for this man had gone from bad to worse. It started with a dip into drugs and descended into something much worse. About a month before he entered this pub on this day, this red faced man had been on his cheery way to work at the solicitors office he had been at for a few years now, when he was rudely and violently barged unexpectedly from behind almost sending him tumbling face first into the floor with no free hands to stop him if he had. He turned to look at the perpetrator and was greeted mid swivel with an enormous man, towering aggressively over him holding one hand in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “You owe me fucking money mate!”, came the equally aggressive sounding orders from him. Bolder than he should have been, the man replied, “What for?”, inquisitively, unthreatened by this apparent mugger. “This”, he said much more calmly, as he placed a small bag of white powder and a piece of now dusty paper into the mans top pocket and patted it gently as he turned and disappeared back into the London fog. He obviously thought it odd, but didn’t want to be seen taking out a small back of white powder in East London, so he left it there, thinking he could throw it away when he got home or at work even. He assumed that the dealer wouldn’t find him again. 

Later that night when he got home, he had forgotten all about this morning as he was exhausted. Removing his jacket and flinging it carelessly over the back of the arm chair however, sent the pouch of powder and paper tumbling onto the seat and as he rounded it to sit down, there it was. Intrigued slightly he didn’t throw it away but rather placed on the table next to the fruit bowl in the middle of his dank dark flat. There it would stay for the next few days, staring at him every moment he was in the flat. Eventually, the cat was killed and he opened the small bag and took out the piece of paper. He waved it around a little to remove the excess particles, they dispersed sporadically across his carpet and shoes. It smelled glorious. On opening the paper out it read :- 

INHALE!!! 

  - 07956003268

Kranto

“Yeah right”, he thought to himself , but still did not throw either the powder or the paper. It stayed as it was before next to the fruit bowl, but the bag remained open and the note lay visible and questioningly atop of some browning unwanted bananas he never intended to eat. 

Two more days passed and after a particularly stress fuelled day at the office, the man contemplated doing as the note suggested. He sat watching television for a while, where all the time the powder glared at him. He went to the kitchen and back several times; the toilet and back and eventually on the verge of tears, succumbed to the note and emptied half the contents of the pouch over his table and used his card to make a perfect straight line and then he sniffed it courageously back. It tasted like bliss in the back of his throat as it passed through, and it immediately calmed his saddened posterior soul. He was broken down and delighted. He sat still for over an hour, trying to resist the remainder and smiling to himself, in his mind thanking the towering gentleman. Gradually, he could not stop himself, soon after repeating with the remainder of the bag. He wanted more, even after. He decided it was the answer but it’s not. He phoned the number and it rang out. He decided to try again tomorrow or it was a sign to stop; either way he slept so well that night and woke up a different character completely. 

On stumbling out of bed the next day; a brisk Sunday morning he was dialling before he had even noticed he was holding a phone. This time the man was greeted with, “aah, it is indeed about time”, in a much more pleasant voice this time before he could even say a word. “What is that stuff? And where do I get more?”, panicked the man; speaking as quickly as if his life depended on it. They arranged a time and place to meet neutrally as neither wanted the other to know anything about them, especially where they lived. Thy met,; another packet was exchanged, a much bigger packet this time, was forced into his inside pocket under the cover of darkness. They parted ways, and as he did so, he heard, “this ain’t free you know?” drift through the night and then the words disappeared from her mind. 

A week, two weeks passed and it was happening every day. He would by the Thursday be inhaling nine or ten lines a night and all the while stacking a higher and higher debt with a violent aggressive stranger. His hair started to fall out and grey over his head, and his face began to get redder and redder. The man fell deeper into trouble and deeper into addiction. Eventually he began inhaling at work and hiding his affliction more and more poorly. He began killing himself to live. 

On that morning of his entrance to the pub he awoke as usual and set down his toast and cereal breakfast, next to a line of his powder, and then a couple more stripes prepared after. When he rocked up at his desk, he immediately noticed his boss, hurriedly making tracks towards his desk, a concerned, angry look etched across his face. The man was bemused and smile politely. ”What the fuck do you think you’re doing? What is that…”, pointing at his upper lip, “fucking drugs? GET OUT! You’re fired! We can’t have you coming in two hours late and off your fucking head! GET YOUR SHIT AND GET OUT!!” He was not even aware he’d been tardy and as he cleared the sweat from his upper, unkempt lip, he wiped off white powder too; trapped in his patchy moustache. Embarrassed and unwillingly he gathered his personal belongings, which were few, and left for home having cleared his face and desk. 

He arrived home with the door kicked wide open and his whole flat looking as if it had been on a fast spin tumble dry. Sprayed on the wall a threat to his life and the number of his debt; it was too great to ever afford, and he was in too deep. He dropped the box of stationary and rushed down the hall, not knowing where to go. He walked at a pace he never had before, off in the opposite direction to work and entered the third public house he came too, as he always had before, alone. Now he sits nervously in front of me taking his last and favourite drink. Having hit rock bottom with a spectacular sudden thud, and he didn’t see the next day. 

By Nate. 

Two days. TWO FUCKING DAYS! I have met you just twice, look at me, talking to myself about how much I love someone I met two days ago. It’s ridiculous. Do you have to be that alone to find love in the first person that even flashes a suggestive glance your way. Sober up. Stop. Two days is not enough. But I love him, I really do, I am not kidding myself again. You promised you’d be careful and just, two days! And after less than 24 hours you’d been taken in by someone else. What is wrong with me? Do I even want to know what I am doing? Probably not, but I think it fair to not keep me in the dark from everyone and everything, am I ruining my mind by talking openly and candidly to these people? He might appear when I am on every substance going he has the most tremendous mind I have witnessed, he has become my new muse to use and abuse so quickly it‘s scary, like most things it scares me. shall I tell you why? The rest of my mind has barricaded me out. my mind blocks me… It won’t even let me hear my own thoughts any more. Two days! I am constantly blocked from doing everything I really want by my mind, it tells me to stop, it stops me hurting myself, it stops me hurting others, even my reflection, you, you scare me, my own face is scary. You look hollow and shallow, and broken and putrid and ill. Grow up. So he smiled at you, so you fell for his falsities, for his charm, for his strong safe arms, his rebellious tattoos, his nose ring, his honest blue eyes, but come on now. Two days? Really. Who can I find to blame for this then. You! It’s your fucking fault, it’s always been your fault, you‘re pathetic. But why? you don’t want to be a pathetic, weak little girl, you’re not a pushover. Nobody i ever meet now will ever be good enough. I have tried to move on, and it’s ridiculous that it’s been so long since you left me and all you have now is an unreachably high standard. You‘ll be alone forever, unless you stop trying to settle for all the attention you can. He was better than anyone I could even invent, even with the imagination that keeps me awake at night. Grow up. Get your head of the oven and stop looking for answers in liquor.