Death Drinker nosleep

“Hi there, friend.”

The world slowly faded into focus as I felt a finger insistently jabbing into my shoulder.

As I opened my eyes I saw that the bar looked like it had long since been empty, and the doors had already been padlocked shut. I must have been too drunk to move before they closed. It wasn’t the first time I’d passed out at the bar, but it was the first time they’d locked the doors shut behind me.

I checked my watch for the time only to find that it had been smashed.

The room span as I shifted my gaze the the source of the voice.

There was a rather thin, sallow man standing very close to me, and when I looked at him his face split into a wide grin.

“You come here every night,” he said as if it were some explanation for his strange behavior. “I’ve seen you.”

“O-kay...” the pungent stench of stale beer rolled across my tongue as I slurred the word out.

“I want to introduce myself,” He continued on, grinning as if he were an oversized child. “My name’s Daniel.”

“R-right...” I said. “Where did my friends go?”

“Oh, they’re gone,” He said. “It’s just you.”

“Okay?”

He moved his face close to mine and went on in a conspiratorial whisper.

“I’ve got something for you, friend,” He said, producing a pint glass from seemingly nowhere and sliding it across the bar towards me.

“It’s magic,” he said. “Would you like a sip?”

I stared down at the blood red liquid, little chunks of unidentifiable matter floating in it. I felt the familiar sting of vomit rising in the back of my throat.

“I uh... no thanks,” I said. I tried dismounting from the bar stool but ended up stumbling to the floor.

“Come on now,” He said. He seized the back of my head by the hair and tugged my face up with surprising strength. “You and I both know you can’t resist.”

His hand gripped my cheeks like a vice, forcing my mouth open. He tipped the cup up and the warm liquid spilled down my chin and throat. It burned at first, but then an overwhelming feeling of peace began to overtake me, and I felt the world swim before disappearing into a haze of oblivion.

I awoke the next morning in my bed, my clothes stained a rusted brown from where the drink had spilled on them.

I put my hand to my aching head as I sat up and blinked around the room.

I wondered if what I experienced the night before had been some sort of alcohol induced hallucination. It had to have been, right?

It wasn’t until I made it into the bathroom to brush my teeth that I noticed something was wrong. I looked relatively normal, only that my eyes looked as if they’d aged fifteen years. There were dark blue bags under both, the contrast with my pale skin so stark that I wondered if they were some sort of makeup and tried rubbing them off. It didn’t work.

I checked my watch and realized that I was supposed to be at work in five minutes, so I decided to call in sick and dedicate my day to cracking open a six-pack of hangover cure instead.

I opened my refrigerator and grabbed one of the cheap beers and chugged it as quickly as possible. Hooking my finger under the plastic can connector, I scooped up the rest of the pack and carried it over to the couch, where I plopped down and flipped on the television, waiting for the beer to take the edge off of my headache.

But relief didn’t come. In fact, as the beer kicked in and I got drunker, the headache only got worse. I cursed myself for buying the store brand beer as I cracked open another can and began draining it. This time, halfway through the liquid started to burn going down, and I spat the contents out all over my glass coffee table.

I blinked as my mind tried to make sense of what I saw before me. The taste of metal filled my mouth as I stared at the unmistakable deep red of blood on my coffee table. I grabbed the dirty wine glass sitting on the corner and poured the beer into the glass, only to see that it wasn’t beer, but blood.

My stomach lurched and I ran to the bathroom, hunching over the porcelain toilet as the contents of my stomach rushed out of me. I stared down at the contents of the toilet bowl: more blood, with little unidentifiable chunks floating in it.

I was beginning to feel dizzy as I stumbled to the sink, spilling water all down my front as I splashed it on my face. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and the thin, sallow man from the night before grinning behind me.

“Hi there, friend,” He smiled. “Are you feeling under the weather?”

“What did--ugh--” The contents of my guts rushed out of me once again, “what did you do to me?”

“I helped you.” He replied simply. He cocked his head to the side and regarded me as a curious child might regard a puppy. “You drink too much,” He said.

My stomach seized up and contracted as I unleashed another torrent of blood and vomit only the tile floor.

“You p-poisoned me...” I managed to gasp out.

“Yes, I did.”

“M-make it stop...”

“Only you can do that.”

“How?”

“You’ve got to drink yourself.”

“What?”

“Yourself,” He said, closing his eyes and nodding serenely. “Here.”

He pulled out a long knife and the dusty wine glass from my coffee table that was still lined with a thin film of black blood, setting them on the bathroom floor next to me.

“Drink up,” He beamed.

As I stared at the knife and cup the most violent spasm yet wracked my body and I drenched the floor in blood once again. My hands began to shake as I seized the knife and opened my wrist with it, letting the blood spurt into the glass.

I felt a strange sensation as I bled, and when I looked down I saw that there were little chunks of something floating around in the cup of my blood. The room swam as I lifted the cup to my lips and drained it in a gulp. My stomach stopped its spasms, and I felt a wave of instant relief wash over me.

I lay face down on the linoleum in my own sick as my arm bled. The world span and disappeared once again, and I awoke to find myself in bed with my wrist bandaged up, the bloody knife and cup sitting on the nightstand beside me.

There was a little yellow post-it note tacked onto the knife that simply read:

“Drink up.”

Submitted November 06, 2017 at 07:57PM by lifeisstrangemetoo http://ift.tt/2yySbeN nosleep