jack

Jack gazed out at the spackle covering the moon, a paste so white that the reflection vomited into the Atlantic and left a mess that Poseidon hadn’t bothered to clean up. Ice cold palm clutching a quarter-full bottle of Old Crow tucked snugly into its brown bag; Jack made no sound as to better hear the crashing of the sea into the wooden poles holding the pier.

He swigged it for the same reasons any man down on his luck would: each swallow either made the memories easier to cope with or easier to forget. Now all that seemed left was that smart alecky kid on the bus ride down and the way Suzanne could melt his heart into a puddle of goo. Jack assumed there was a God listening to his thoughts, and he silently prayed that the blond-haired traveler was the next to go once the last drops of whiskey had tumbled down his esophagus. He was numb to the breeze, and his legs congealed into gelatin as he climbed on top of the railing for a clearer view of the beyond.

“Here’s lookin’ at you, Dickhead.”

Jack flung the bottle as hard as he could, watching it soar for a second as it reached its highest point of the arc. A second, much larger splash was right behind the first when the container finally hit the water. The salty detergent cleansed the spots of mud on the worn out jacket, and in minutes, the bottle was the only object to maintain its buoyancy.