No Sleep Was Given

One for the Road

I woke to my friend, Tom, climbing through my window. It was a summer's night, around 2AM, and the heat had been unbearable for days. For that reason I had left my window open slightly to let what cool air there was filter into my bedroom while I slept. It was a scrambling, panicked noise which brought me to consciousness and immediately I thought someone was breaking into my home. In the darkness I couldn't tell who it was, but as soon as I heard 'help me', I recognised my friend's voice.

After turning on the light I pulled Tom into the room and sat him down on my old brown armchair, which had seen better days.

'Close the window!' he seethed, half shout half whisper, and completely occupied by the nighttime scene outside. 'Switch the light off'.

'Why?', I asked, confused and still half dazed.

'It might see us'.

That word 'it' sat in my mind, distilled and unerring. I would have laughed if Tom hadn't had such an unsettling look on his face. I'd never known him to be spooked by anything, and to see him so visibly shaken took me by surprise and filled me with trepidation. I switched off the light and my eyes adapted once more to the dark. Tom sat there with his head in his hands, the room lit dimly by the street lights outside filtering through the blinds.

'What's going on?', I said.

'You won't believe me'. He looked up at me and, even in the low light, I could see the sweat running down his temple.

'Tom, whatever it is, it's okay'.

'No, you don't understand'.

'Try me,' I said. And with that, he relayed his story in a hushed, wavering voice.

*

Tom had been out that night, no surprise really as he always enjoyed a drink. In fact he enjoyed it too much, and his behaviour of late had been erratic at best, self-destructive at worst. He'd been at the Windarm Lodge, a small old-man's pub near the town main street. I knew why he'd been there before he even told me. His ex-girlfriend, Shelley, worked there behind the bar. A month earlier she had broken up with him; she just couldn't take his drinking anymore.

That night, Tom had dragged a mutual friend of ours, Greg, to the lodge, under the guise of 'a couple of games of pool and just one drink'. Come midnight, as the pub closed, Tom had to be dragged from the bar by the manager and thrown out into the street. He'd been pleading with Shelley to have a drink with him when she finished her shift. When his simple question turned into a bitter demand, he was quickly ejected.

I knew what Tom was like when he had a drink in him, which was one of the reasons I'd refused to go out with him that night. He'd been increasingly argumentative and unpleasant. The break-up with Shelley had made him even worse. We were all trying to help him as best we could. I'm not painting a great picture of him, but when he was sober he was a thoughtful and caring person, and a good friend.

After staggering down a couple of streets and lanes, Tom produced a hip flask filled with whisky which he carried in his pocket, and asked Greg to join him for a few more drinks on the way home. Greg refused, no doubt already having had his fill, and so it wasn't long before an argument broke out. Greg was just trying to help Tom up the road, but instead received drunken insults; Tom throwing around words he'd regret in the morning. After a few minutes of a verbal bashing, Greg gave up and made his own way home.

Tom staggered along the road and cursed Shelley, Greg, and the rest of the world for refusing to have another drink with him. There was nothing else for it but for Tom to drink alone. As he wandered along an empty street not far from where I live, the rain came on, slight at first then torrential; so heavy was the downpour in fact, that he was forced to take shelter and wait for it to pass.