Snake Eye

There’s a pig on the floor and there are dice in his hand.

The ginger fires his tongue. The vodka burns his throat. With each sip another skin of reality is peeled away. Light pours through him, and he falls. The mule’s kick is his impetus.

Gouging fingernails into his palms, the analgesics numb his skin but leave his mind alert. He stares down at his wrists. Blue veins and purple form a web there, blood coursing through them.

He widens one hand, stretching out his square ended fingers, so like his dad’s, and he presses his thumb into its centre. He feels nothing, and is reminded of a Richard Bachman story, where a man has a hole in the centre of his hand.

For two days now he has eaten nothing, felt nothing, and if anyone could see the state of his handwriting in anything he has written over those two days, they would know the madness that existed in the moment of the writing. They would know the madness in his slowly dropping heartbeat.

If they could see, they would know.

He looks at the pig on the floor. Not a pig at all, but his dog. A dog named Pig that lies at his feet and is doting and docile.

The peeling of reality makes him wonder why the pig is there.

The dice are on the table now. They are red dice, and clear, with white spots for the numbers. They are dice from a yahtzee set, made to look like dice from a casino.

The pig snuffles in its sleep.

He takes another sip and the ginger fires his tongue again.

Two dice. Snake Eye. If he scores, he will know what to do. The same as tossing a coin, or shaking a magic eight ball. If he throws the dice and he scores a snake eye, he will know.

If they could see, they would know.

He thinks about ringing her. He thinks about hearing her voice.

He drains his glass and gets up to fix himself another one.

If he rings her now, she will not say no, and he will fall completely. He will drop away from everything he has built up here and give in to the seduction.

If he’s going to ring her, he must first throw a Snake Eye.

The pig snuffles in its sleep. His slowly dropping heartbeat pulls him down.

© J R Hargreaves 2006