When one thing leads to another

The party was raging on like it was the end of the world. Kegs were being emptied and people were on the dance floor. Nobody cared any longer if they knew how to dance. The alcohol was successful in making sure they embarrassed themselves. Amid this chaotic jungle, a troubled soul chose to get away from all of it. He was having a bad day and to add icing to the cake, he caught his best friend and his girlfriend making out at the party. It was meant to be a surprise for her. He made sure that neither of them had even a sliver of a hint that he was going to come to the party. This cost him dearly. The first sight that landed on his eyes was his best friend’s hands running down all over his girlfriend’s body while his mouth got stuck to hers. First, the music stopped ringing in his ears, followed by the lights getting brighter all around him. There were people all around the sinners but his eyes were able to block out all the noise. They made sure that his brain was receiving every tiny detail of the nightmare before him. His whole body froze for a second. His brain was taking a long time to choose appropriate action. After a while, his brain came to the worst possible action that it could tell him to do. He went to the bar. The bartender was serving a girl a glass full of beer and kept it before her. She turned around as someone called her name. He swooped in and emptied the pint in one go. The bartender was shocked. But also, the scene was hilarious. The intoxicated girl turned around and started throwing a tantrum for giving her an empty glass. 

Our protagonist did not stop with it. Beer after beer kept coming to his table and he kept emptying them with fierce intensity like Dumbledore drinks the potion in the Half-Blood Prince. There was Harry, waiting for him to empty the last drop of beer in the keg so that he could find the cursed necklace. In his case, the broken pieces of his heart. Love is a bitch, truly. People argue that it is beautiful and blissful. They show the clean and tidy room but not the huge mountain of clothes that are stuffed inside the closet. It is time that the story became more entertaining. His friend, for whatever reason, broke the kiss and noticed that his best friend was downing one beer after another at the bar counter. He was able to put two and two together, astonishingly. Lips constantly moved between them and finally, they decided that it was safe for the girlfriend to stay away from him. 

Taking horrible decisions one after another, his best friend approached him and acted like he was seeing him for the first time. I don’t know why people make such bad decisions but they still do. I mean even the obvious ones. The ones that shout “Don’t do this'' and they still go for it. Our protagonist felt the same. He put the glass down slowly, turned towards his ex-best friend and punched him in his smug face. When a person is intoxicated with alcohol and has chugged down almost an entire keg. The first thing that happens when he stands up is, he loses balance. That is a boon most of the time but for our protagonist here that came as a blessing in disguise, or so to speak. He toppled and with his arm extended out into a punch, his entire weight of the body was shifted into the punch. It hit his ex-best friend hard. Hard is a very small word. The one that would justify it would be, “teeth knocked out and falling on the floor with the back of his head barely escaping the hard floor” hard. He did not give another glance at the enemy that lay before his feet. He was more occupied in trying to stop himself from vomiting all over his ex-best friend. The crowd closer to them stopped dancing. They understood what was happening. Like a ripple effect, a stone when dropped in water sent ripples all the way over to the edge, people stopped dancing till it was only the disco lights that moved on the dance floor. But the knowledge of what was happening kept diminishing to the point where the last person who stopped dancing, did not know why at all. He thought this was one of those moments when the entire crowd shouted some sound into the air. Our protagonist was pushing through the crowd and finally managed to get out of the hell hole. 

Alcohol consumption is a cycle, it has four phases. First, the high, people drink for this. They might lie and act pretentious but it’s the truth. Second, is what I like to call the “puke” phase. This is a really important one. An underrated one, I might say. That’s your body saying “Don’t you dare poison me. ” That gives relief from nausea. Later, the third one is the “hangover” phase. For people who went through the puke phase, they are spared a bit. They still bear with the consequences of stupidity but they are shown mercy. The last one is the “regret”, this is more of a heat-of-the-moment, “becoming wise for a short time” phase. Eventually after a few days, in some cases a few hours, everyone forgets everything and starts the cycle again.

Our protagonist has just been promoted to the “puke” phase now. No sooner did he come out of the alcohol-driven madness, he let go of all the beer onto the stairs before him. If it had been water, I could have described the entire screen something like this. The “water” dropped gracefully with a deafening sound onto the stairs. Like a dolphin showing off in the ocean, it gave a splash, jumped high up into the air and proceeded to flow down the stairs, a few steps down like a peacock moving in the rain. But, you and I both know that it was not “water”. Tumbling from side to side like a child who is hit in the head by a football, he kept colliding with the railing and the wall. He was playing ping pong with them. He finally reached the cellar by some miracle and surprisingly found his car. He started with a violent start into the night and tried his best to maintain a steady path. The people in the city were used to a certain “person’s” driving, so nobody was on the pavement or the side of the road.

In his mind, he felt he was just touching the accelerator but in reality, he was driving his SUV like an F1 car. A sharp turn was ahead and when he was slowing down and turning with keen attention, he burped. Sometimes life likes to be entertained, this was one of those cases. He burped and lost concentration for a split second and had successfully crashed into a very big power station. I’m not a very technical person to know what he crashed into but it caused a blackout in the city. No one knew if it was the entire city but as far as the eye could see from that party place, there was no light visible anywhere. 

THE WORKING CLASS

A few kilometres in the direction of the North Star from the drunk guy’s car crashed in a power station, there lay a group of apartments. If a person visits the apartment complex (for no apparent reason, let’s just assume that) he would feel like every person who’s residing there is a stockbroker who is thirty minutes late to work. Engrossed in their phones and scurrying like rats from their flat to their car and back again since they forgot something. They passed their neighbours in the morning without knowing that those were their neighbours. By ten in the morning, the apartments would be empty except for a few old souls and even fewer young ones to keep them occupied. Evenings went by as usual and when the clock struck eight in the evening, the apartments were filled up again by tired, irritated humans. After a silent dinner and an intimate conversation with their phones, the rest of the evening is spent before the television or in a call or on Instagram. But one night everything changed. Something happened and the lights went out. The old and the young were the first ones to come out onto the balcony. The working class were still on their phones but inch by inch, curiosity got better of them. They eventually had to come out and sit among the present. Kids started talking, rather screaming at their friends who were on the other side but couldn’t see them. The old were reliving their past moments, a time when people greeted each other with a smile rather than with fake pleasantries. A time when people looked at people’s faces in real rather than on their phones. A time that needs to be cherished and is more important than ever to do so. The working ones sat along with their families, amused at the children’s behaviour and happy to see their old ones smiling, a genuine smile which was like diamonds these days. Everyone switched on the flashes on their phones and it was like a concert in those apartments full of life and laughs.

WHAT HAPPENS TO GOOD PEOPLE?

Let’s go south from the same point, our drunk guy’s car in a power substation, after ten minutes travelling at an indefinite speed, you would land precisely in an isolated house which is being robbed. You heard it right, being robbed. The owners, a newly retired couple, trusted a lot of people whom they shouldn’t have. They were the old breed of people who needed to be in a museum now, cause they still believed humans are good and trustworthy creatures. Trustworthy, hahaha! That's a good joke. Unfortunately, they are a set of very good people. So, like every good human being who trusts the people around them, they got betrayed. In this case, betrayed by their servants in collaboration with their milkman. They got in successfully, how they did that could be another story. They just went inside and then the blackout happened. One might think that the robbers might be panicking in this situation but worry not, they never switched on the lights in the first place. So, they were not even aware of the blackout. Their business continued like usual. Sadly, there is no happy ending to this story and they were successful in looting the house and escaping away from that place. If they were caught, is an entirely different story.

THE POWER PEOPLE

Located at a random location in the chaotic city that was robbed of its electricity, there lay shabby building, patches of wall stripped off and Neolithic era furniture. At the corner of the main room, under the flickering light of an oil lamp, there sat a figure. The light was accentuating the creases on his face, and the dust that was being housed in those creases. The face had neither a happy nor an indifferent expression on it. Rather, it was annoying. Annoyed that some idiot had crashed into a substation and he has to bear the consequences. The phones kept ringing and he cursed the guy every time he picked it up and gave a reply which didn’t help the caller in any way. Little did he know, that it was the same case throughout the city in every office of the electricity department. Remorseless higher-ups calling up the workers and without any warning of any kind, ordering them to resolve the issue. It was a hierarchy of seniors calling their juniors. This process climbed the ladder of the hierarchy up to the top. In everyone’s mind, whoever was concerned with the rectification of blackout, was a unison of curses towards our protagonist.

WHERE IS OUR PROTAGONIST?

Now, where is our protagonist? Should he be even called a “protagonist”? Just cause he went through heartbreak and a betrayal, doesn’t mean he gets the “get out of responsibility” card. Now think about it, when the police question him, his answer ”I got cheated on by my girlfriend with my best friend, so I got drunk and drove the car”. Is this a valid excuse for him or does it sound stupid? If you agree with the former, you got some serious issues. In reality, the latter happened. Police pinpointed the location of his “valid” actions and took him to the hospital. The media, being fast as ever, covered the entire scene till he was admitted to the hospital. The police later charged him with drunk and drive, the destruction of public property and few other cases. Ironically, none of the news was seen by neither his ex-girlfriend nor his ex-best friend that night. Even if they did, they would have shown sympathy or pity, visited him maybe but that still didn’t justify their actions. In the end, everyone fucked up.

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