Though he has seen the sun rise over many of the world’s beautiful cities, there was something particularly unique about this.
David sat alone, taking painful gulps from an emptying bottle of gin, on a hillside overlooking the St. John’s harbour. The sun caught the glass highrises, reflecting into his eyes and intensifying the dull ache across his brow. He had stumbled as far as he could before his body and brain ceased to grip onto consciousness nearly simultaneously, and suddenly David found himself tumbling from a gravel train making the ascent into Kilbride. He recalled flailing his arms around his delicate skull in his final rational thought.
And so he remained, until the rising heat (no such effort had been made to remove his sweater or coat) pushed him to the brink of dehydration.
He jolted awake to the sounds of a silent Sunday morning.
The familiar fear and sense of panic swept over him as he planted his weathered palms against the rugged earth below, realigning himself with the horizon. He felt worn and dizzy, thinking incomprehensible thoughts at an nonsensical hour. Time, throughout his night, had taken a backseat to extravagant trays of shooters, cover at nearly four different bars (for himself and two particular ladies, it must be noted), the type of nightlife that one believes only exists in Jazz-era literature.
That is, until one consumes the proper amount of spirit or swill to see things in such a light, dimmed and intimate but still hopeful. It shines without purpose, and yet it remains important that one finds such a light to live under, even if only for a few moments each lifetime. It had been nine-and-a-half hours since David had felt the glow for the first time, and less than three since he lost all sense of his self and fell into a ditch accompanying a high-traffic intersection.
David’s eyes were drawn to the empty streets below and then farther north towards the waterfront. No roaring vehicles, no clicking and turning of cogs and wheels, and even considerably less foot traffic given the nature of this morning. This day was so unequivocally beautiful that it may have been worth the regret to miss such a glimmering dawn.
And it was, as David repeatedly remarked with all of the energy his recovering vitals could muster up, particularly unique. For though the ocean seemed so close one could open their mouth and taste the bittersweet salts against their tongue and teeth, there was no hint of wind in the air. No gust, no sudden woosh of fresh air against his tired eyes, not even a simple breeze to sway the nestles beneath his feet.
Though a rock just large enough to provide shelter and solace from the now blistering sun lay only feet away, he could find no bone in his body nor ounce of his being that would forgive him for shying away from such a once-in-a-lifetime day. Instead, he used it as leverage to take the strain off of his bum left knee, a childhood injury that seemed to have been severely aggravated by the debauchery of the night before. It remained to this day as a reminder to keep one’s wits about them at all times, and as an indicator that moist air and precipitations were on the horizon.
As he slung his body over the large soft stone standing lone on a grassy knoll and pulled himself up to a sitting position, he felt an inflammation in his knee, a subtle swelling. He recalled the warm tingling he would get as storm clouds raced towards him from miles away, and the sudden clusters of sharp pain that would rise from shin to hamstring as he sat waiting for the year’s first snowfall. The subtle drops in atmospheric pressure, the way clouds settled in over his small coastal community; in a way, these were the only things David considered truly constant in his life, tragically familiar and still utterly humbling. His own personal second-nature.
The recurring throb in his left knee this morning, similar to the one across his forehead, was anything but familiar. It was as heavy as a heartbeat and persisted, refusing to be ignored, like a set of knuckles against the oak door of a summerhouse. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, attempting to give himself both a better view and a distraction. Instead, he found a King-sized cigarette mashed in behind his ear. A lingering ghost of the night before, a reminder of his outlandish behavior. At this hour, it remained difficult to recreate any major events of the evening, though awakening on a hillside alone told him something had diverged from all he considered to be the norm only hours earlier.
In his pocket, he found his first clue to understanding where intoxication transcended into the inexcusable. A matchbook, half empty, bearing the words, “Rocky Isle Pub – cheap drinks, no cover, live music”. Reading it gave him a sickly sweet taste in his mouth, reminding him of shot glasses filled with sugary liquors and palate-cleansing whiskeys.
He did not wish to spend this early start to his day regurgitating, and so he looked down in his left hand at the cigarette he held. It was slightly broken in the middle, which was remedied by removing the half he would not be able to smoke without the doctoring aid of rolling papers. He put the remaining half in the corner of his mouth, and lit a match. Watching the burst of flame slowly climb the shaft towards his fingertips, he marveled at its sheer existence.
On any other day, he thought, there wouldn’t be enough shelter in this whole city to keep a match lit. But there was, after all, something different about this day, perhaps even this whole city. It seemed to have expanded and appeared more grand, more complex than he had ever considered.
He breathed inwards, drawing flame to the broken tip of his smoke. David was not a smoker. But if a whole city could change overnight, so could he. And although he knew not where this busted cowboy killer had come from, it was his to smoke and smoke it he did.
As he felt the first rushes of nicotine flowing through his veins, the ache in his leg intensified for a few moments, seeming to call to him as if someone was willing him to see what he simply could not. It finally subsided, leaving him alone on a hill with his thoughts. But at this hour, he had only one thought. A shallow drag of smoke masked his face as his eyes began to change from disillusion to a simple fear of the unknown. Without even noticing, he began to mutter a single phrase beneath his breath.
“The storm is coming.”
