For Tomorrow, We Die

Let us eat, drink, and be merry,

For tomorrow, we die.

.

.

.

An empty glass is raised in the air by a blistered hand, and a man stands up beside it.

He smiles shakily, being the only one that hasn't gotten himself absolutely smashed.

He used to drink, though, so much that he had gotten himself in trouble nearly every day of the week.

I suppose today warrants just a bit of something different.

He starts to talk, and all eyes shift to him.

"I know-" His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. "I know that we're all-" He swallows. "-in a bit of a tough place right now. And, I know that, that this time, we're not getting out of here, that pride and spirit isn't gonna get us out of this one."

The silent bar that reeked of expensive scotch and vodka looked downward, a gleam of acknowledgment in their eyes.

One of these men looked at his brothers, who looked very much like they were biting back tears, and shouted from the back, a pasted smile on his face, "No shit, Sherlock!"

He was met with disheartened chuckles, and a small, "that's Mike for ya," from my friend beside me.

The standing man keeps on going.

"The government's a piece of shit-"

This, of course, was met with applause and insincere laughter.

"-and we're all just useless pieces of trash in their eyes." His eyes gleamed with tears. "According to them, we never contributed anything to society. We aren't important." He went silent.

My friend looked down at his own burned, crippled hand and stowed it away under the bar.

I looked away from him, a former blacksmith, who used to make the prettiest metalwork, and the sharpest weapons.

We were all there, once.

Blacksmithing was probably the only thing that kept our town afloat for so long.

But now-

I grit my teeth.

It was a simple coal fire started from a fallen gas tank that burned down our future.

An accident, they called it.

Just an accident, the government said, fixing their ties as they walked out of their huge marble homes, and looked into expensive cameras.

Just an accident, the newspapers said in a small square tucked in the very corner of the monochrome paper.

Just an accident, that crippled us and took away the one thing we had.

But every damn person here knew that gas tanks didn't just fall.

We knew that it wasn't just an accident.

But revenge and justice that is scrabbled for on borrowed, valuable time, is not going to fix our broken arms and hearts.

We are useless now.

The town that could only do one thing right ended up falling to their death because of an accident.

"Jack of all trades,
Master of none,
But better than a master of one."

The world's harsh in the way that the useless are weeded out and trampled. The world, that we took for granted, that we trashed and destroyed, was too weak to hold the unnecessary.

I take another sip of vodka.

It burns my throat so badly that I could've sworn that I felt it in my eyes.

The moment of silence is up, and the man behind me continues.

"So let us eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow, we die!" He raises his empty glass in the air, and it is joined by whole pitchers of beer and opened bottles of whiskey held by blackened, shaky hands.

A few people sitting beside me drink themselves to death within a few hours.

It's a fitting end, I suppose, for us dirty ragtag artists, who are stubborn to a fault.

I look at one of their faces.

Max, a man who I've known since birth, lies facing the window. His hair is wet with rum, and his eyes are frozen open, his mouth curved in a satisfied smirk.

When they find him, and when they write about him in a one-paragraph memorial, I wonder if they'll call him anything other than "an unlucky man who went too soon".

I wonder if they'll know about his years in high school when he sold drugs to the other kids so much that he was called "Crackhead Max".

I wonder if they'll know about his reckless years, where he flirted with every girl he met at a bar, before meeting his wife.

I wonder if they'll know about how love-struck he was when he met her, how he ran to me in a panic before every date, always babbling about something or other, like the color of his shoes or the type of flowers he bought.

I wonder if they'll ever know him.

I glance at him one more time, and I need to take another sip of my drink.

I know for certain that there'll be at least one sentence about Max dying together with his wife on a cheap wooden bar table, their hands intertwined.

...

The end of the night drew near, and the bar was silent.

There was no one left to pour my drinks.

I leave the bar, and I walk back home, every blink I take bringing images of friends (practically family) lying across the bar, their muscles limp.

I feel like shit.

A headache rings through my ears, voices of deceased friends echoing through my head.

To think that death was so nearby, and so reachable all this time.

It was haunting.

I drag myself to my house, stumbling drunkenly.

Clumsily, I dig around in old cabinets, throwing clothes and the occasional tin of pens over my shoulder.

I eventually find it, and I cradle it in my hands for a second, just to feel the nostalgia.

God knows I'll never feel it again.

What a coincidence it was that the first thing I ever made as a blacksmith was a dagger, made of the cheapest metal, and forged so poorly it couldn't be sold.

I want my beginning to be the last thing I see.

It's all just sentiment, really.

Underneath the dagger, my eyes fell on a book titled, The World is Made of Stories. 

After a second of thinking, I rip the cover off and scribble something under it.

Sitting down on my favorite sofa, I put the book cover on my chest.

It takes a small while for me to stop shaking long enough to do it.

. . .

Before his extermination, resident Lewis Gardner, age 34, was found dead in a chair in his home. A metal dagger was stabbed through a piece of bloody paper, above his chest.

The paper reads:

The World is Made of Stories, and this will not be the ending to ours.

. . .










Author's Note

The World is Made of Stories is an actual book by David R. Loy, which I have not read yet. This was written in three short sittings (two of them class periods lol), and remains unedited because I'm a lazy potato. Although this may only get 10-20 reads, it's still worth saying that any comments or criticism will be greatly appreciated, as I'm always looking to improve.

Don't ever feel embarrassed to tell me that this was a piece of steaming hot crap served on a crap plate, because I will most likely be inclined to agree with you.
Or if you thought it wasn't, I will frame your comment on my wall and further cultivate my enormous ego.

:D

Thank you for reading!