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John FD Taff

The July Special Guest Writer is John FD Taff

Please feel free to visit John HERE

John FD Taff

LAST CALL
by John F.D. Taff

Hello, I'm Ted, and I'm an alcoholic.

Ted was so nervous about tonight's AA meeting that he'd gone out and had a drink or two. 

Or three, he couldn't be sure.

He'd left the group he'd been with for months after showing up drunk repeatedly. There'd been heartfelt talks, interventions, angry confrontations. They were all like that at first; indulgent of an occasional slip off the wagon, ready to hoist him back on and ride with him through the next bump.

But they always caught on. 

Then, Ted had to find another group.

Those drinks—did he really have four? There was no way he was going to be able to speak tonight. Best to go home, feign illness.

There were few people to see him stumble from the church basement into the twilit parking lot. Just as he got to his car, though, a beefy hand fell on his shoulder.

"Leaving, Ted?" asked his sponsor, Sam, an insurance salesman and a big, solid wall of a man.

Ted turned unsteadily.

"Ted," Sam hissed through his teeth, grabbing him by his damp, wrinkled lapels.

Ted went limp, his eyes focusing on the chunky Million Dollar Round Table ring Sam wore on his right pinkie. He imagined its diamond-faceted sparkles furrowing his cheek under the weight of Sam's fist.

But nothing came. No crunching blow, no explosion of light.

"You, you dumb bastard! I don't know what to do with you anymore."

"I don't know either," whispered Ted.

"You wanna die, Ted?" he yelled, shaking Ted's limp body. "Because, it's killing me to watch you."

"I'm sorry, Sam," Ted said, feeling color rise to his cheeks. "I didn't mean to..."

"Aww, stuff it. I've heard all that shit a thousand times—said most of it myself." Sam sighed, as if he were going to do something he already regretted. Digging within his jacket, he pulled out a tattered business card, handed it to Ted.

Ted had a hard time focusing. "What's this?"

"It might be the only thing left to help you. Go ask the shopkeeper for the...the last bottle you'll ever need," Sam whispered, looking at his feet. 

"You want me to buy liquor?"

"Damn it, for once just do something I ask!" shouted Sam. "You have no idea how hard this is...to send you there.

"I'll go in and leave a note," Sam said, clearing his throat after a short silence. "Tell 'em you're sick. I'll call a cab to pick you up at that gas station down the street."

"Thanks, Sam." 

"I don't want your thanks. You've forced me into a helluva decision here. Just remember what you've got there is a last chance. A shortcut."

Sam turned and shuffled toward the building's entrance.

Ted stood shakily, smoothed his suit.

"Oh, and Ted?"

"Yeah?"

"This really is your last chance."

Sam drew the door open and disappeared into the yellow light of the church.

*****

The shop was in a nondescript part of town, the kind of area that progress had passed and not looked back. A neon sign was propped in its grey-streaked window.

Liquor, it flashed.

The door opened—not surprising Ted that a liquor store would be open this early in the morning—and a little bell jingled as he stepped inside.

The store had a musty, ancient atmosphere; the smell of dust, old wood and stale beer. The sunlight, yellowed by its journey through the grimy window, fell into the store in a fat shaft of dancing dust. The floor's faded, speckled linoleum, worn through here and there, testified to the great number of feet that had stumbled and lurched across it over the years.

The rest of the store was a carnival of colors. 

Every wall, every nook and cranny were stacked with bottles of alcohol.  Endless shelves held bottles of every shape, from elegantly tapered bottles of imported red wines to the short, squat bottles of amber amaretto; from the crystalline row of vodkas to bottles that held thick, green and sea-blue liquids.

The haggard, jaundiced sunlight fell onto these bottles and was rejuvenated, sparkling and reflecting from them as if they were precious jewels.

A man came through a rickety, splintered door marked "Employees Only" carrying an open cardboard box. Ted recognized the pink paper tax seals applied over the caps of the bottles, the sound the bottles made clinking amiably.

Though his head pounded and his gut ached, Ted felt a familiar fire smolder within his blood.  He could see the cold ashes of that same fire had once burned in this man, too. 

"Morning," the shopkeeper grunted, setting the box down heavily with a disturbing clatter from its contents. He was neatly dressed, clean cut and of an indeterminate age. He wiped a dusty hand on his pants and offered it to Ted.

Ted shook it. "Good morning."

"What can I do for you?"

Ted handed the card across to the man.

"Well, I was referred here by..."

"You're an alcoholic," the man said.

"Well...uhh, yes…and my sponsor told me to come here and see you," stammered Ted, feeling like a teenager on a beer run.

"Did he?" asked the shopkeeper, walking behind the cluttered counter and taking a seat.

"Yes."

"Hmm," snorted the man, tapping the card on the counter and staring at Ted. "What else did he say?"

Ted's memory of the evening was a trifle hazy, and it took a minute to remember first if Sam had indeed said anything more, and then exactly what it was.

"Uhh, yeah, yeah, he did. He said to ask you for…the last bottle I'll ever need."

Silence.

"Sounds sort of ominous, huh?" laughed Ted.

"You don't know how ominous," the man said, ripping the card in half and tossing the pieces aside. He stood, sidled around the counter, walked to the box he'd set down earlier and extracted two bottles. He cleared a space on one of the endless shelves and began stocking it.

"Have you decided whether you want to live or die?" he asked without turning.

"What?"

"Because that's what it comes down to. Living without it or dying with it. It's that simple."  He turned on Ted. "Are you married?  Children?"

"No and no. And I don't see what that has to do with..."

"Well, of course not. If you understood, you wouldn't be here. You'd be sober, going to meetings. Recovering.  But you're here, and you've got to know what that means."

"I don't know what it means or what you mean, for that matter," snapped Ted, beginning to feel the need for a few aspirin and a vodka.

"You're here to get sober."

"In a liquor store?" snorted Ted. "If that's all it took, I should've been sober years ago."

The shopkeeper shook his head wearily, disappeared into the backroom without a word.  He was gone a few minutes, and Ted considered leaving. Just as he was about to, the man returned cradling a bottle in his arms like a baby. He set the bottle down, wiped it with a rag from his back pocket.

"Your shortcut."

The unlabeled bottle held a liquid so clear it seemed empty. Sunlight sparkled blue-silver on its thick, heavy glass, reflected by the cool mirror of the liquid.

"My shortcut?" Ted whispered, staring at the bottle.

"You must be messed up enough—or have someone who cares about you enough—to take a chance.  But man, it's a helluva chance. You asked for the last bottle you'll ever need," said the shopkeeper gesturing toward the bottle.

"When you decide to get sober for good, you drink from this bottle. When you do, it drinks from you, too. It drinks your disease. You'll be able to see it in the bottle, a layer of thick, black liquid.  Every time you drink, the black layer grows. When you finish the bottle, it'll be filled with the black stuff—your alcoholism."

"You gotta be kidding," scoffed Ted, reaching out and taking hold of the bottle. "I'm gonna be cured by drinking a fifth?"

"Cured?" snorted the shopkeeper. "No. Better, maybe."

"What happens if I keep drinking after that?" asked Ted, rolling the heavy bottle in his hand.

"You won't want to.  But once you make the decision to be sober, you'd better be sure.  Because if you drink after draining this bottle, your disease comes back...stronger."

"If this is so easy, why doesn't everyone do it? What's the catch?"

"The same as with any shortcut. They may get you there faster, but not necessarily to anyplace you want to be. Sometimes it's better to go the long way. Even though it may be harder, you know exactly where you are, where you're going."

"How much?"

"Free.  All I ask is that you understand the choice you're making.  It's the most dangerous stuff I have."

"I'll take it," Ted said.

"Fine," replied the shopkeeper. "Do you want a bag for that?"

*****

Ted carried the bottle home, concealing it as if it were, indeed, worse than the alcohol he usually carried openly.

He set it onto the wet bar in his neat and spacious apartment, poured himself a scotch and water, flopped into his leather recliner and stared over the lip of his highball glass at the bottle.

It was not an unusual bottle, and Ted began to feel silly about what had transpired that morning.

A bottle was not going to cure him of his alcoholism.

But maybe—just maybe—it really was a cure. A real way for Ted to get better, whatever that meant.

That scared him.

The rest of the scotch and water flowed down his throat smoothly, and he poured another—without the water.

If it was a cure, it could turn his entire world on its ear. His life might have been a blurry, lonely and unappealing one, but it was his. It was as comfortable and worn as an old shirt, tattered and in need of a serious laundering, but safe and familiar.

In a life devoid, for the most part, of happiness and laughter, friends and lovers, dreams and feelings, his alcoholism was all these things to him and more.

He was not sure how to live his life without it.

Not sure he wanted to learn.

*****

Ted floated through the next several days as he always did—liquor to work to liquor to home to liquor to bed—without touching the mysterious bottle.

Each night, having nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to meet, he sat with that evening's drink of choice and stared at the bottle, as if waiting for it to do something.

Each night, he sank deeper and deeper into depression.

Ted had never been a social drinker, always a private, furtive alcoholic. When he drank, he drank alone, even at a bar or a restaurant.

He realized that the AA meetings provided him with much-needed social contact—an outlet that neither his work nor even his alcohol provided him.

And he missed that.

Missed it more than he ever thought possible.

Three evenings after his visit to the strange liquor store, he could take the loneliness no more.

Tottering from his easy chair, he grabbed the smooth, cool bottle, twisted the cap off.  He noticed, even in his stupor, that there was no pink tax band to break.

He brought the bottle to his nose, inhaled deeply.  He thought he smelled the delicate bouquet of roses and…oranges?

Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back and threw down a prodigious swig.

The liquid burned coldly at it tumbled down his throat, into his stomach.

Surprised at its potency, he sucked in a deep breath, but the fumes of the stuff followed the good air, consumed it.

Ted coughed, gagged like a teenager tasting whiskey for the first time.  He bent at the waist in an effort to catch his breath, fumbled the bottle back onto the bar.

Like a summer storm, though, it passed quickly.

Amazingly, Ted felt his head clear, his blood pump a little more strongly, the fog at the edges of his vision lift.          

He stood slowly, looked at the bottle sitting on the edge of the wet bar.

A thin layer of viscous, black liquid lay at its bottom, not mingling with the clear liquid above it. Where the layers touched, there was a slight fizzing, as if reacting to each other.

He gently picked the bottle up and examined it.

The black fluid was thick and congealed, speckled through with darker motes drifting within ropey mucous strands. A gentle shake failed to mix the two layers, but did succeed in increasing the furious bubbling along their boundary.

Ted sniffed at the opening again, and this time the smell of roses and oranges was strong.

Underneath it, though, Ted noticed a disturbing smell, gassy and sweet-sick.

Disease. His disease.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he raised the bottle to his lips, took another long draught.

He kept his watering eyes open as the liquid coruscated down his throat, watched the level of the clear liquor fall.

What made him almost drop the bottle, though, was what he saw coming out of him.

A thin streamer of black, like crepe paper, swirled from his mouth into the neck of the bottle, moved upward defying gravity, settling into the black liquid.

He could feel the stuff course through him this time, not just in his stomach but reaching icy tendrils along his nerve endings, licking at his spine.

When the conflagration reached his brain, he passed out.

*****

"Elaine!" Ted yelled from the bedroom closet, where he was down on his hands and knees. "What do you want me to do with all of these shoes? Can we throw some out?"

"Don't touch any of those shoes!" came a shriek from elsewhere in the apartment.  "I'll be right in there."

Ted smiled, shook his head and threw the last of the shoes onto the pile on the floor behind him.

As he scooted into the closet further, his hands closed around a small, heavy box.

"What the hell?" he muttered, drawing it out into the light.

When he saw the battered cardboard box, though, he remembered.

Nervously, he opened it, peeled the wrapping off and saw the mysterious bottle, tightly sealed and filled to the top with a caramel-colored liquid. The two layers, completely separated years ago, had finally come together like a dark, rich brandy.

Ted had never known what to make of it, but now, five years later, he was recovered.

A recovered alcoholic.

Unable to part with the strange bottle, though, he'd wrapped it carefully and stuck it here at the back of his closet. Who knew why? Surely, Ted didn't.

As his life got better, it became part of his past, dimly remembered, nearly fictional.

"Honey," came his wife's voice again, closer this time.  "I hope you're thirsty..."

Hurriedly, he repackaged and replaced the bottle in the closet.

Elaine walked into the cluttered room, filled with packing boxes, carrying a silver tray bearing two delicate, fluted champagne glasses.

"What's this for?" asked Ted, rising to kiss her.

"Mmm," she returned the kiss. "Here's to our new house."

She passed one of the glasses to him as he raised an eyebrow.

"It's just apple juice," she said in mock annoyance.

"Well, then, to our new house," he said, clinking his glass against hers, draining it and dashing it against the wall.

"Ted!" Elaine laughed in shocked amusement. "You'll wake the baby!"

"We'll give him juice, too!" he yelled, plucking her empty glass from her fingertips and throwing it against the wall.

"I'm so glad you got better so that we could meet and get married and have a baby and get a house and..." she began, folding herself in his arms.

"...and break our glassware in the bedroom," he finished, hugging her.

"That, too," she laughed, snuggling into him.  They stood there for a few minutes without words.  "Do you think...it'll ever come back?"

"You don't have to worry about it."

"I don't," she lied, kissing his forearm. "It's just that you never talk about it."

"I don't like to talk about it. It wasn't a pleasant part of my life, and I don't care to relive it. I got lucky and found a way out...a shortcut that worked."

"Will you tell David about it?"

"I don't know. He's awfully young."  Sensing that she was serious, he turned her around to face him, lifted her chin.

"It won't bother us anymore. I'm a recovered alcoholic."

*****

Fifteen years went by, quiet, quickly…

"Ted!" he heard Elaine call through the mist of sleep. He stirred on the couch, dislodging the newspaper and the indignant cat, who'd also been sleeping.

"Hmm?" he grunted, sitting up.

Elaine stalked into the room holding something that failed to register in his groggy mind.

"I thought you were going to have a talk with David about his drinking," she said.

"I am, I am," he assured her. "I just haven't had the time."

"Look what I found on the floor in his bedroom."

She held the bottle tightly around its neck.

It sparkled blue-silver in the Saturday afternoon light, and Ted remembered the store where he got it so long ago now, with its thousands of carnival-colored bottles.

He remembered burying it at the back of the closet.

"Oh, God, no."

At the bottom of the empty bottle was a tiny bit—no more than a swallow—of rich, brown fluid.

"He's dead drunk in there," reprimanded Elaine. 

Ted leapt to his feet, his heart racing.

Dead drunk…or just…?

"Call 911, quick!" he said, dropping the bottle onto the carpet and fumbling for his wallet. He passed through credit cards and store loyalty cards, through pictures of him and Elaine, pictures of David as a happy, smiling child.

Here…The tattered, dog-eared business card Sam had given him oh-so-long ago.

He bit his lip as Elaine rushed uncertainly down the hallway to David's room, the phone pressed to her ear. Ted heard her tell the person on the other end that David appeared unresponsive, that David appeared not to be breathing.

Dead. Drunk.

Ted remembered the shopkeeper, wondered if he would remember how to get to his place, if he was still in business.

If he carried anything stronger

John F.D. Taff is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of the critically acclaimed novella collection, The End in All Beginnings. Taff has been writing dark speculative fiction for 25 years. He has more than 80 stories in publications that include Cemetery Dance, Horror Library V, The Hot Blood Series, Shock Rock II, Dark Visions - Volume OneOminous Realities and Death’s Realm. His collection of short stories, Little Deaths, has been well reviewed and named the “No. 1 Horror Collection of 2012” by HorrorTalk. His historical ghost novel, The Bell Witch, was released in April 2013, and the thriller novel Kill/Off was released in December 2013. A standalone novella, The Sunken Cathedral, will be published by Grey Matter Press in July 2015.

You can learn more about John from his website at johnfdtaff.com, or follow him on Twitter @johnfdtaff.

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