print

The Overcoat

That November was dark and wet and the wind howled through the nights, pelting rain against the windows. I drank heavily on a binge that month and my face hung from my skull like a sagging, wrinkled teat, pulling me down over my drink as I hunched at the bar.

Halfway through the month, an ever-present chill infected my feet and hands and spine and so I called Fagan at the office and told him to tell my clients I was unavailable for the remainder of the month due to a family emergency. Fagan didn’t buy it, but he did as I asked anyway.

The next morning, the chill moved into my lungs and plagued me with involuntary fits of coughing that exited my lungs in clumps and chunks. Within two more days, I began to feel the presence of death shadowing me as I drank and wasted my days away.

I guess they found me on the couch in pajamas and a robe with the heat cranked up and the TV blaring, cold and dead as a stone. And now that it’s done, I felt like an overcoat—clingy, rain-soaked, heavy, and cold—was lifted from my body. I’d been carrying it around on my back most of my life, but I’d only noticed it the last few weeks. Funny, I don’t remember ever putting it on. It’s like it grew there. Slowly. But I understand now that I wore it by choice.

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on March 22, 2006 in
Emotion: Disgust, Type: Fiction