It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to drink it. She was looking at the bottle and pondering whether she was going to drink it, but really the decision was made and it was going to be drunk. It was already drunk, in the finality of reality, just not yet in the present tense.

The bottle was clear and cold and so was the liquid inside. What it did to her was hot and decidedly murky rather than anything crystalline. But that was afterward. The crisp burn of that initial drink always presented the razor-sharp illusion that clarity would be forthcoming— although that had never before been the case. Maybe this time.

So she was going to drink it. It was inevitable. And yet still she pondered the bottle, the glass, the counter top, debating. He’d only left a moment ago. He could come back. Anything could happen really.

He wasn’t coming back, but he could. There was no law of physics preventing his return. Except the one that declared that it wasn’t going to happen.

She resented the space he left. She resented the silence, not full of his words. Not full of his sounds, his smell, his energy. She resented him for being not-there, for daring to go. She resented herself for her dependence. And she contemplated the bottle, the thing that would fill up the space and blot out the empty house. She was going to drink it. Drink it all.

She fingered the glass, feeling it warm slowly under her hands, seeing it smudge with the oils from her skin. The smudges bothered her. They didn’t fit this tidy picture. She picked up the soiled glass and rinsed it in the sink, drying it with the cloth that hung there specifically for that purpose. She set it, newly pristine, back down next to the bottle and listened for the sound of the unopened door. No, he wasn’t coming back. And she was going to drink this bottle of liquid magic and forget that fact.

She picked it up, unscrewed the lid and inhaled deeply of its contents, which she then poured quickly down the kitchen drain. Yes. She was going to drink it all. One of these days, when he was busy being gone. But apparently not today.

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This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.