My most shameful day had started with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Back then, I’d thought that if I drank wine, it wasn’t like being an alcoholic. Vodka or whiskey was the drink of choice for alcoholics, not wine. Not white wine. That was civilised. You don’t put a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in a brown paper bag and sit in the park.
I was at home on my own. My parents had been dead six months. I sat on the floor in the living room of Mum and Dad’s cottage with a smorgasbord of disgusting items littering the floor. Leftover cartoons of Chinese food that had barely been touched, crusted over with congealed grease along the rim. Bowls of cereal strewn across the carpet heavy with clotted milk. Half-eaten sandwiches attracting flies. I sat in the middle of the mess and I drank my wine. Who was I kidding? I knew what I was. I saw the mess and I knew that I was at rock bottom; despite the Pinot I’d bought from the Bishoptown newsagent with a pair of sunglasses over my smudged, shadowed eyes, I was an alcoholic. A depressed mess.
After draining the last of the wine, I wandered into Aiden’s room. It was untouched. Every now and then I’d come in and dust away the cobwebs. I’d sit on his bed, lift up Walnut and still smell the faintest scent of my son. But I hadn’t cleaned his room for a long time and there was a thick layer of dust along the windowsill. Worse still, a large, fat spider sat on top of his pillow. The sight of it was so wrong, so jarring, that I lunged forward, punching the pillow. The spider scuttled away before my fist connected, probably running under the bed. But I kept going. I punched the stuffing out of Aiden’s pillow, and then I threw back the duvet cover and threw the mattress to the side. A roar built up from my chest as I ran my arm along the window sill, knocking away his trophy from sports day—third in the egg-and-spoon race—and a framed photograph of when he’d met his favourite footballer.
I ripped down his poster of Iron Man. I threw his clothes out from the wardrobe. I tore the covers from his books. And then I stopped. I wiped my eyes. A sense of calm washed over me and I knew what I needed to do.
There was a second bottle of wine in the fridge so I opened that and took a long swig. There was no need for glasses anymore. Who did I need to impress? Who would care? There wasn’t anyone left. On my way through the house, I picked up a picture of us all together. Aiden was at the front wearing his Superman cape. I was behind him with my hands on his shoulders. And on either side of me were my parents. Dad on my left, Mum on my right. I didn’t cry, I just smiled and cradled the photograph to my chest.
I’d already turned my bedroom into something of a studio. There were a dozen or more paintings stacked up along the walls. I picked one up. It was a self-portrait. I hated this portrait. It was angry and torn-up. I’d used reds and blacks. My teeth were bared. I was ugly and ill in this painting, with booze-soaked eyes because I’d painted it while wasted, barely able to see the canvas with my blurred vision. I hated it. Setting down the wine bottle, I picked up the box-cutter knife I used to trim my canvasses and stabbed the knife into the canvas. Slowly, I dragged the knife down.
A great fire burned inside of me and I knew it was time to extinguish it. What was the point of life if it was just pain? I felt like I was standing inside a burning building and my only choices were to jump or let the fire consume me.
I was sick to death of the fire.
I collapsed onto the ground, dropping the torn-up canvas next to me, before taking out a second knife and placing it on my lap. Then I swigged from the bottle of wine. I was so numb from the alcohol, I figured it wouldn’t hurt at all. I thought of the fire roaring within me. I thought of all the shit I’d been through. I thought of Aiden’s coat pulled from the river and how the river continued on, rushing and gushing through the country while my son was rotting somewhere. I didn’t even get to bury him. I didn’t even get that much.
I cried out before I plunged the knife into my wrist. I screamed before it even hurt. The pain wasn’t from the gushing wound, it was from the fire.
Burning. Burning. My skin on fire. I screamed and I screamed until the flames finally died down. When I looked down, the blood poured out of the wound and I began to feel deliciously woozy. This was it. This was how I stopped the fire. If only I’d known sooner that it would be so simple. I started to fall back onto my bed, smiling. Finally, I had stopped the pain and finally I had found the inner strength to jump from the burning building.