The Fantasy of Oblivion

At the bottom of the bottle she found no genie, no answers to her burning questions, and no cure to the gnawing ache that threatened to consume her…….no peace at all for her troubled mind, only the void of oblivion.

“Hello, Papa.” She said mechanically as she accepted the call. “How are you?

“I’m very good, my daughter. How are you?” Her father responded.

“I’m fine.” She said flatly.

The silence lingered peppered with an unasked question.

What do you want now?

She heard him sigh and braced herself.

“I don’t know how to say this so I’ll just say it and you just listen.” He admitted after several moments.

She gave several moments of silence in return to assure him that she understood him.

“Your mother is dead. I don’t know how. But I found the obituary online.” He said in the same flat tone that she had responded to his pleasantries earlier.

And she knew at once, that when night came she would once again seek what could not be found at the bottom of a bottle.

“I mean your mother, your Mama, that woman.” He clarified before falling silent for good.

His silence, once a way to punish her nearly every mistake or wrong word, served a different purpose now. She was meant to be alone with her thoughts, no guidance, no cues, no sway to believe one way or the other. Her thoughts and feelings were hers alone to deal with, her father could not answer what he did not know and could not explain the deeds or misdeeds of anyone other than himself.

“Thank you.” She rasped dryly.

There was nothing else she could say. What else do you say when you hear that your dearest, almost lifelong wish has been granted? What kind of person wished their own mother dead? Well it took someone indescribable, far beyond ordinary words, to know what that feeling was like.

“Don’t do anything crazy. “ Papa warned her. “I’m too busy to get any phone calls in the middle of the night.”

And with that final warning, they disconnected.

The urge overcame her the moment that the call ended, yet somehow she resisted it. There was no solace for her in the bottle, that much she knew as sure as she knew her own name. So why keep looking? Nearly a decade of her life had been spent on that fruitless quest having begun years before a single sip could lawfully touch her lips. No, instead she reached for the remote to her smart TV and switched it to the web app.

In the days before she’d discovered that deceptive solacer in a bottle, she had had only two things to bring her comfort in one way or another, books and music. Her most enduring comforter was undoubtedly the latter since she had learned how to sing it, move to it, and even make it in the tender early years before she’d learned to read. Books comforted her later, when all that she had once known to be reality, was turned on its head abruptly and permanently.

Never particularly outgoing or open, she had had few friends throughout the years.

If she gave in to the cravings for the large glass bottles of western spirits arranged on the island in the kitchen of her apartment and the small green bottles chilling in her refrigerator, nothing would change when the effects wore off. Whenever she woke up or rather came to from oblivion, her mother would still be dead, and nobody would be able to answer what only a ghost could.

A drag of the e-cigarette she kept for strict emergencies helped ease her inexplicably rattled nerves as she searched and sampled her way to an acceptable oriental rnb number. The cool mint vapor instantly loosened her seizing chest and restored some semblance of calm to her mind. No she didn’t want the details of how and why, really she couldn’t care less. What she wanted to know, she had never quite been able to articulate, and this sense of loss could not be explained.

How does one miss what they cannot or rather would prefer not to remember that they had ever had? There was nothing left to do but lose herself, get lost in the beats and words of some airbrushed crooner, trying but failing to save herself from the demon of addiction.

Even if I can’t go back I’ll still sing again tonight because a heart that longs is a heart that faces the future……..

She eyed the bottles on the counter. What stopped her from screwing off a lid and gulping down a mouthful of sweet relief?

For everything that has disappeared. For all the forgotten nights……

Had her parents ever had such feelings or longings for each other? Such nostalgia passes between all lovers once they part ways surely.

Somehow sleep took her, the events of the day crept up on her and one of the times she lay back on her bed, she didn’t rise again until several hours had passed by.

It was strange to wake up like that. On her bed, a nice quality mattress on the floor, in the center of the room, atop the blankets but not cold. Her blood ran hot even on the coldest of winter days. A light remained on overhead, but not because she’d slipped into oblivion directly from legs too unsteady to bear her weight. No rather, she simply was, in that moment, a normal human being, untroubled and unforced in any way. Not one thing troubled her soul, not one thought raced in her mind, as she rolled to the near side of the bed and rose on solid but heavy legs.

She walked to the refrigerator and took out a carton of bargain store iced coffee. At her bedside, on a low table, was a cup sticky with residue from a Cider chaser. Once fully awake she would buckle down and give her place a good cleaning. For now, since she lived alone now after years of shared quarters, she forewent the drinking vessel.

A swig from the carton cleared the funkiness of dry mouth and replaced it with an unfamiliar milky sweetness. Her stomach lurched then gurgled as it reawakened. Soon the rest of her digestive system would follow suit and purge the body of the latest round of abuse. Strengthened by several quick mouthful, the young woman replaced the carton and closed the refrigerator door to end the device's incessant chiming.

The glass bottles did not appeal to her. There were no answers to be found in their depths. That much she finally understood. Either she would find peace of mind in a definite end to intolerable circumstances or die young in a tragedy never having known what true peace was.

And she'd promised her father, the only parent she had, the only parent she really ever had had, that he would get no dramatic phone calls.

Into the shower and out with freshly washed hair dripping and coiling past the middle of her back. She dressed first in no frills undergarments, baggy sweats, and an oversized top. Then took the time to do her hair, to carefully separate the thick dark tresses with her fingers and oil them. She closed her eyes as she did so and imagined that someone else was giving her such tender care. Another dull unexplained ache in her soul.

The sound of someone punching in the passcode to her apartment's entrance jerked her from the illusion of self-care. Instead she crash landed back into reality.

“My mother is dead.” She said automatically as the door opened. “My father told me she's dead.”

It was a soft, almost inaudible, declaration though.

Nothing had changed, nothing in the reality that had been her life for far too long to change it now. The past was the past and she could do nothing to alter it or heal the hidden broken places. She could only put on her brave face and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Even if I can’t go back I’ll still sing again tonight because a heart that longs is a heart that faces the future…….

“It's a red day and you still wake up at the crack of dawn to clean up? Did you cut your bangs?”

And her own love story, nearly a decade in the making, represented the only future she wants.

“I brought some bottles of that new apricot flavored soju. Let's go up to the roof and hang out.”

In the company of the one she had grown to love, the glass bottles held no genies, only reprieve and acceptance.