Three in the morning was not a time any sane man should be up but Booker was. He sat slumped in a chair shuffling a deck of cards between his fingers. There was an empty whiskey bottle at his elbow and a second half empty on the side table next to his chair.
His movements were methodical and smooth requiring none of his focus. He was lost in his own thoughts, staring in the middle distance at the wall across from him. This time in Malta should have been a vacation but instead Booker felt like he was drowning.
It was harder and harder to hide his drinking which meant most nights he went to bed not comfortably numb. That meant nightmares of drowning. Nightmares of his sons dying and his wife passing in his arms. The weight of everything they'd done and all that he had failed haunting him. The mission before this hadn't helped.
And there was no relief he could find except the sweet burn of whiskey. Booker shifted the cards to a single hand, still shuffling them, picked up his glass and drank another large swallow.
The burn chased away the linger ghosts of his son's voice in his head begging for help, begging him to make the pain stop, and then cursing him for his failure to do any of it.
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flatlanders
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Date: 2020-09-09 11:44 pm (UTC)His movements were methodical and smooth requiring none of his focus. He was lost in his own thoughts, staring in the middle distance at the wall across from him. This time in Malta should have been a vacation but instead Booker felt like he was drowning.
It was harder and harder to hide his drinking which meant most nights he went to bed not comfortably numb. That meant nightmares of drowning. Nightmares of his sons dying and his wife passing in his arms. The weight of everything they'd done and all that he had failed haunting him. The mission before this hadn't helped.
And there was no relief he could find except the sweet burn of whiskey. Booker shifted the cards to a single hand, still shuffling them, picked up his glass and drank another large swallow.
The burn chased away the linger ghosts of his son's voice in his head begging for help, begging him to make the pain stop, and then cursing him for his failure to do any of it.