Dead Land Journal January 1st 2028 New Years Day

It's a brand new year. We had a rather small celebration last night. Really, none of us felt like partying. Why celebrate something as empty as the passage of time. Billy did have a bit too much to drink and made a few passes at Katherine that were shot down faster than a French soldier can run up a white flag. The kids shot off some fireworks at midnight. Billy somehow managed not to blow up anything he wasn't supposed to although his big fireworks finale involved launching a small garden tractor into the air with a home made catapult and detonating a C4 charge in it's fuel tank. Fortunately he got the trajectory right and the debris landed well away from anything vital.

I think Billy has been given waaay too much free time.

At midnight Kyle and Jeanette were curiously absent and when they did show up both looked a little ruffled and flushed.

After the smoke cleared Pastor Tom lead us all in a prayer. It was a beautiful and moving prayer. But I was too fuzzy to remember any of it this morning.

I don't drink.

I Don't Drink.

I DO NOT DRINK.

I have been drunk exactly 12 times in my life. And each time I tell myself this in the morning. My head feels like it was used as a golf ball and then screwed back on too tight and crooked. I am trying to type quietly because the typewriter sounds like a hammer striking an anvil, inside my skull. I wonder how much Excedrin I can take before my liver claws its way out of my belly to die peacefully under a table somewhere.

I don't drink because I don't know when to stop. I don't think I made too much of a fool of myself. My bad leg pretty much kept me seated most of the evening. I'm not sure, but I think I serenaded Beverly last night. Around 2 in the morning she helped me into bed talking to me as one would a small child. She undressed me and I think she even tucked me in.

Katherine has been entirely unsympathetic this morning. Not just to me but all of us poor souls that overindulged in spirits last night. She greeted me like she was addressing a lecture hall full of students with no PA system. Sounded like a damn bullhorn in my ear. But she did promise to give me something for the hangover.

I do NOT drink!

I think I need to go throw up now.

© 2009 R. Keith McBride