Winning by Craig Dinsell

Author:Craig Dinsell [Dinsell, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Loudhailer Books
Published: 2020-12-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Quiescent as a cadaver, Miles lies prone in the hallway of his apartment in a pool of vomit he threw up just before he passed out. His cell phone programed to ‘anticipate’ rings and vibrates in his jacket, repeating a rising musical scale. At first he does not stir, then as the insistent ringing persists, consciousness seeps slowly into his skull. His body begins to register pain. His head throbs as he begins to haul his 270 pounds from the hallway over to the sofa where he collapses, panting from exertion. The cell rings again, sending its disturbing tones flailing towards his beleaguered ears. Then the phone stops, leaving the room vibrating with silence and the subterranean pounding of his heart as the air pressure blitzes his eardrums.

His black terrors of the previous evening suddenly reignite, chasing ruinously though his imagination like a wounded animal. He whimpers into the crook of his arm, covering his eyes. His turmoil resolves into a question that is grabbed like a lifeline by his intellect. “What’s the point?” The question stands stark above the reach of his emotion which ends its churn. “What’s the point?” He is suddenly stone-cold sober. The analyst in him ingurgitates the decaying inventory of frustration and disappointment which is his life. “Kids gone. Brother gone. Job gone. Marriage gone. Mom gone.” There is a certain order to the drivers of his despair. It is as if he is in a process of deconstruction. “Health gone, bloody diabetes.” For a moment he finds himself laughing, “Red Sox gone.”

He feels himself disconnected, sinking physically and emotionally into a blackness, a hideous absence of soul, where he is left with only his appetites. His addictedness to consumption. His yearning to consume alcohol, food, weed, sex, sport, cars, anything that he can experience, anything that he can hold, anything that will be certain, that will fill the absence of things that matter.

Then there is Jade. He sees her standing in the half-light of his room as she had years ago. She was beautiful to him then as now. Admiring of him. Accepting. He wanted to give her the world. She was fun. Alive. His secret love. He wanted to consume her and be consumed by her. It was more than just the sex. It was a compulsion that riveted his heart to the out of control engine of his passion.

And then on the nights when she did not come to him, he would constantly check his messages like a teenager. He had to have her attention. Attention he never got. His addiction for her turned to anger, and anger turned inwards to depression. His days became a long, jejune slog relieved only by an occasional visit with his kids or a game at Fenway Park followed by a fumble with some random admiring woman he picked up at the bar of the Boston Ritz Carlton.

For an instant he wonders if there might be something more. Something outside his submission to the ego-god he has created.

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