Well, this is it. The final chapter of my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel Master of the Drunken Fist. I do hope you’ve enjoyed the story so far, warts and all. It’s in dire need of a rewrite and clean-up, but since I was going to by busy working on a new novel this month, I thought it would be fun to share this one.
By completing this novel, I gained the discipline and desire to continue writing and become a published author. After completing this novel, that’s when I decided I was going to pursue this as long as possible. I hold this story as something special because of all it represents to me. Long live NaNoWriMo!
If you missed any of the previous chapters, check out the Table of Contents.
Chapter 26
Mike’s bleary eyes took some time to adjust in the near darkness he found himself. He was face down, laying on the floor. Looking around, he thought he made out the familiar shape of his bed through the door frame. He was cold. He must have been laying there for hours, his back was aching badly, but he didn’t have a clue as to how long he was out.
Slowly, he propped himself up on his knees. Dizziness overcame him, a familiar sensation, though never welcomed. Resting back on his heels, he tried to stop the room from spinning. He failed miserably. Stretching out his right hand for support, he leaned a bit to the side as the room kept up it’s playful dance, mocking him. He tried hard not to let it consume him, but in the end, the room won and he vomited all over the floor. He wretched and wretched until he felt as though the next thing to come up would be his stomach followed closely by his intestines. Never in his entire time of visiting the void had he felt this bad.
“Oh my God, this sucks,” he said to the darkness, spittle flying from his lips. Luckily, there was a full moon out on this late autumn evening, otherwise he wouldn’t have seen a thing. He tried to move, but the dizziness overwhelmed him again. Quickly, he stopped. He was in no mood to vomit again.
“What…the…fuck…” he said. “Where are the lights and…am I at home?” Confusion gripped Mike. Always, when he came out of the void, he knew within moments where he was at and what time it was. Now, well, now it felt off to him. It was as though a twisted joke was being played.
He reached down to push himself up to his feet, his hand landing right into the pile of vomit he left on the carpet. “Damn it! That’s fucking gross,” he swore to himself. He wiped his hand off on his pants and stood up, still reeling from the spinning room. He stumbled a bit before catching himself on the couch. Looking around in the dark, he recognized the room as his living room, so he was in the right place after all.
He noticed an eery silence in the house. Nothing was humming, or buzzing, or running. Utter silence. Looking to the satellite box, he tried to read the time, but it was dark.
“We have a power outage?” he asked no one. “Where’s my fucking power?” He then realized why he was so cold on the floor. Without the power, his furnace couldn’t work. “Damn, how long has it been out?” He thought if maybe he forgot to pay the bill, but his memory couldn’t recall when he last paid the bill. Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he ever paid a bill. Noelle always took care of that.
Noelle. Just her name brought shame and love and anger to mind. He knew she deserved better. She tried to help Mike, tried to get him better, but he had none of it. He didn’t see the road he was on, and so, he ran her off. The best thing that happened to him, and he chased her off with his insistence on drinking and visiting the void because they “needed him” there. He smiled at that thought, because they did. They needed him badly. But poor Noe paid the price for his decision. She loved him tremendously, but she was unable to bring him back from his visits. She couldn’t stay any longer.
“Yeah, but that was what, just last week? There’s no way they turned off my power that fast.” Mike started to argue with himself. He was losing his grip on the reality around him.
Mike stumbled into the kitchen, looking for some paper towels and a bucket to clean up his mess, all the while trying every lamp and light switch along the way. None of them worked.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, thinking he could use that for some light. He clicked the home button. It was dead. “Damn it!” he yelled out loud and threw his phone against the wall, shattering the glass screen into hundreds of tiny shards. “How long was I out? Or have I forgotten this bill too?”
Looking down at his watch, he noticed it said Dec. 3 for the date. When Noelle left him, it was early September.
“What the fuck? Where have I been? That can’t be right. It’s impossible. There was no way I was out that fucking long. I’d have died if I was. And wouldn’t someone come check on me, like my boss?” It was then that he remembered losing his job. He thought that happened just days after losing Noe. No one was going to check on him. He didn’t have any friends, he ran them all off long ago so he could spend more time in the void. He wasn’t particularly close to his family, so they wouldn’t be checking on him. He was alone. In the dark.
Mike figured he must have somehow been in the void ever since just after Noe left and he was fired. But that put him at about two and a half months of real world time gone to be there. He knew he was there for some time, but didn’t think it was that long at all. If so, that meant he must have missed the bills. And his power and phone, if not more things, were shut off. He didn’t have a job anymore either, so getting back on his feet again didn’t even register to him at that moment. He was in the dark. Without his girl. Without his job. Without anything.
The words of Abe, and then of Cortez, came back to him. “Take care of things,” they told him. At the time, Mike was just surprised they seemed to know about anything other than what was happening at the moment. In hindsight, he saw now that they were trying to warn him, to tell him to get his shit together. In his blind desire to be with them, he neglected everything on this side. He was standing in a dark, lonely, cold house to remind him of his decisions.
It was too much. He fell down to the floor, curled up in a fetal position, and just laid there. He was lost.
His mind wandered to the void. He started seeing images of Abe, of Cortez, of Victor, all swirl in his head much like the room had not too long ago. They floated about, like ghosts. He could see Abe running from the Sponser. He tried to yell at Abe, but then saw himself, or what must have been himself, because it didn’t look anything like him, hack away at the Sponser with a hatchet. The same voice that told him who people were in the void was the same one that told him that’s you when he saw the man attack and fatally wound the Sponser.
Then the images swirled, showing Cortez and another man fighting Aztecs on a hill. That’s you he heard the voice again. This man didn’t look anything like the real Mike either, but he knew it was him. He saw the fight and saw how cat-like he was in his actions. Impressed with himself, he started cheering himself on. “That’s it, go on Miguel! Kick his ass!” he yelled. While watching the fight, he noticed the Aztecs started turning black, with long flowing robes and eyes of flames. He didn’t remember that happening at all. It was as though this memory was made up, not real like the others. One of the Sponsers came flying directly at him and Mike flinched, scared of what it might do to him. In the void, he was the hero. Out here, he lacked the courage to stand up to the vile creatures.
Suddenly, the scene shifted again and he saw snow on the ground. It was bright outside. He heard voices, Russian ones, and knew where he was at. There were screams as four Russian men and one woman appeared before him, fending off an attack from about twenty or so Russian men. “Hey, they were Sponsers, not men. I was there!” he said aloud to his knees, still tucked in the fetal position. He noticed how three of the men were cowering and the woman, Anya, was holding her ground. The fourth man, that’s you again the voice in his head told him, was decimating the men one and two at a time. His fury was such that it frightened the rest of the attackers and the defenders as well. He saw how they backed away from him while in his full fledged attack mode. Still, he admired the work he did. He was brutal and efficient in his killing blows. Where the ability came from, he didn’t care. It was just a thing of beauty to watch him hack and slice his way through the enemy. He couldn’t remember why he was fighting them, but that didn’t matter. He was doing really, really well and he enjoyed the show.
Once again, everything shifted. Now in front of him stood Abe, Cortez, and Victor. Mike was taken aback at the sight of all three of them standing there together. He didn’t think there was any link between the three, not that he could tell anyway.
“Mikey, we dun told ya to take care o things back here, didn’t we? Now look what ya dun did,” Abe scolded him.
“Yeah, but you needed me Abe. You told me yourself.”
“Mikey, ain’t you got no bit of sense?”
“No he doesn’t Abe,” Cortez interrupted. This was getting to be a bit much for Mike as now they were all talking to each other. “He has so little sense, and now look at him. He’s pathetic.”
“What? No. No I’m not. I saved all of you!” Mike realized that he was speaking in his normal, everyday English and not the native tongue of either of these two.
“Mikhael, you didn’t save a thing. What did you think was going on?” This time, it was Victor speaking, and he too was speaking not in his native Russian, but in English, though with a heavy Russian accent.
“I thought you needed me, all of you. Each one of you said it yourself. Without me, you wouldn’t be able to succeed. I was there for you!”
There was silence in the dark house except Mike yelling. He stayed on the floor, though by now he had uncurled himself and started moving about while arguing with the air.
“No Mikey, we all dun told ya ta take care of things here. And what did ya do? Tell me Mikey, where are the lights? Where is your phone, ya got service in that damn thing? You ignored us Mikey.”
“He’s correct Mikhael, we all tried to warn you. What you did with that message, it was all up to you. We couldn’t do it for you. That’s what we meant. We said it was something only you could do. And it is. It was,” he corrected.
“No, you’re wrong. That’s not what you meant and you know it!” Mike was starting to lose control of his head. He didn’t know what was right, or wrong, or real, or not. Confidence in his own sanity wavering, he had enough of this. Standing up, he meant to confront all of them on equal ground, but they were gone.
“Oh my God, I’m losing it. I really am losing it.” He no longer saw images swirling in his head, they all disappeared into nothingness.
Mike was lost in doubt as to whether what he just saw was real or his imagination working against him. The more he tried to work it out, the more it slipped through his fingers like grains of sand. He finally gave up. Working through mental problems was not one of his strong suits, it tended to only cause him more grief than anything else.
“I don’t have a problem damn it! Why can’t anyone see it? There is nothing wrong with me!” Exhaustion took over and he sunk down on the nearest chair. And fell fast asleep.
Sunshine warmed Mike’s face. The bright light woke him from his slumber. He’d been sleeping hard, no dreams, no void, nothing. His body thanked him for it, as though it hadn’t had a restful nights sleep in what seemed like forever. He found himself slumped over the kitchen table, sitting in one of the mismatched chairs he used for company. How he slept so soundly like that, he didn’t know. But it didn’t matter, he felt refreshed and ready to take on the day.
It didn’t matter to Mike anymore if he had Noe, or his job, or even if he had power. None of that bothered him this morning. What did attract his attention was the fact that he knew the void was his playground, to go in and do as he liked. As long as he drank, he got there. And he was fine with both.
He giggled while he sat there. A maniacal, evil giggle that would have scared anyone had anyone been there. “I can’t believe it took me so damn long to figure out the connection with alcohol. I’m an idiot at times,” he scolded himself before giggling a bit more. His hold on his sanity seemed to slip, and he didn’t care. He had a place he could go and escape from all this shit. This world held nothing but ridicule and monotony for him. He found true life in the void. Adventure was found there, and he was the hero.
He thought about the void a bit longer and the more he did, the more it made sense to him. More sense than this world did.
Suddenly, he had a revelation. “Hey,” he said, “What happens if I mix the drinks? What if I make a cocktail with more than one kind of alcohol?” Excited by the prospect, he ran to the liquor cabinet and found several half-empty bottles of liquor. There was vodka, rum, whiskey, tequila, some various flavors of schnapps, just a random assortment. “Oh, the ‘shine!” he said and ran into the other room, where he kept the secret stash of moonshine. He ran right through the vomit on the floor, but in his ecstasy, he didn’t even notice the path he made through it on the carpet.
In the silence of his powerless house, Mike mixed the various alcohols together. There wasn’t a recipe he tried to follow, just as much or little of each as he felt necessary. He looked around. His house was filthy. Vomit on the floor, and by the looks of things, it wasn’t the first time there was some on the floor. Bottles lay everywhere. But he was happy. He had the secret of the void. He thought once more of Noe, but dismissed it. “She doesn’t care anyway man, she’d never understand your need,” he said out loud. He was right. He had this wonderful blend of alcohols, his very own “super-cocktail,” and it looked beautiful.
With no one around, in the cold, lifeless house he used to share with Noe, he took a seat at the table and raised the glass to his lips. He couldn’t stop smiling thinking of the wondrous adventure that awaited.
Thank you soooo much for reading my novel Master of the Drunken Fist. I know I wasn’t entirely happy with the ending, but for now it is what it is. If you’ve read along all month, please drop a comment below to let me know your thoughts. What worked? What didn’t work? What would be your ideal ending? Let me know! I want to hear from you.
Thanks again!
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If you’re part of NaNo this year, I’d love to be your cheerleader. Writing can often be a lonely exercise but it doesn’t have to be. You’ve got a ton of others ready to see you hit that 50k mark and I’m one of them.
The book I wrote, titled Soul Windows, is probably my darkest one yet. I wanted to write something closer to a pure horror novel than anything I’ve done before. I think I did it, but time will tell. I haven’t gone back to revising it yet. Immediately after I finished it I went back to an older manuscript set in the same small town of Soul Windows. I have a third book also set in the town and my plan is to release all three of them in rapid succession for a horror “series” in the sense that they’re all in the same world. There might be a few minor tie-ins between them, but other than the setting they are stand-alone books. Once I’m done with the older manuscript, I’ll get back to Soul Windows.
(Almost) Average 