A Path Through the Dandelions

by Hank Kirton

Lying in a puddle of purple vomit, Lottie von Scrodd interviews herself as if she is a guest on a highbrow PBS talk show. She is poised and erudite. She talks about her honeymoon and personal philosophies and her struggles with the concept of death.

She accounts for gaps in the fossil record. Recounts her adventures in Sri Lanka with Thad. The host of the show is enthralled. He draws on his pipe like a physicist at a Solvay Conference, nodding along with her spellbinding narrative. He puffs up a smoke-ring that floats over his head, dissipating into the darkness above them.

Lottie lifted her heavy cement head and squinted at the clock. Time was her enemy. The sun was a merciless warlord. She wanted to puke again in a bid to feel better, but her stomach was beyond empty, reduced to a painful, food-rejecting gnaw.

Her hangover had injected her cells with caustic gas. She rolled over. She could feel her angry, damaged kidneys under her back, as if she'd been lifting crates all day.

“Oh god...” she muttered to the empty apartment. The sound of her voice set off a new string of violent dry heaves. All she produced was a drop of drool that clung to her lower lip like a jewel. She rolled over and blinded her burning eyes with her arm. The darkness was a relief for a few precious seconds and then she was back under the burning weight of the day.

“When we were in Sri Lanka, my husband Thad found a wallet full of cash. Can you imagine?” she tells Dr. Paul Rutherford, the distinguished, avuncular host of The Open Eye. “Of course, we immediately turned it over to the police.”

“Naturally…”

“We weren’t even tempted to take it. Even though it was almost three-hundred thousand rupees.”

“Quite a handsome sum…”

“Especially at that time. And there was no identification in the wallet. Otherwise, we would have returned it right to the owner.”

“Of course.” Dr. Rutherford puffs his pipe with intellectual intent.

Lottie had spent the night drinking Purple Haze Cocktails (vodka, black raspberry liqueur & cranberry juice) and now she realized her mistake. She always regretted her reckless experiments. Why couldn’t she learn? Her left cheek was sticky with drying purple puke. Her humiliation was complete. She had reached another utter collapse to the bottom.

Luckily, there was no one else in her life to witness it. She hadn’t shared herself with other people in several empty decades. It became way too embarrassing to be perceived once she’d achieved the wretched age of thirty. She’d aged out of friendships. Aged away from her family. The very concept of social amity had to be abolished, like viral infections and botulism. Just talking to a stranger on the street was like taking a diseased sneeze straight to the face.

“Now, tell me, Ms. Von Scrodd, what do you hope to achieve with this exciting new project of yours?”

“Please, call me Lottie. Everyone does. Well, this initiative of mine will begin building an intricate nutritional network that will prevent starvation worldwide.”

“That’s a bold, ambitious undertaking,” says Dr. Rutherford, clasping his own hands. “How do you hope to accomplish this?”

“It’s not about hope,” Lottie tells him. “Hope is a waste of time. If you indulge in hope too readily, it can metastasize into a cancer on one’s optimism. It eats its way into the sanctity of your cells. Hope is invasive. It blackens the metaphorical lymph in one’s metaphorical vessels. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Hm, I see. I find your cancer analogy fascinating.”

“Thank you. It’s something I strongly believe.”

Lottie rolled over to check the vodka bottle again. It was still empty. Not a solitary drop to tease her tongue with the isopropyl burn and astringent, witch-hazel taste. There was nothing but clear empty glass that mocked her like a canteen full of sand.

The raspberry liqueur bottle was empty as well. She considered smashing the glass and licking the sticky red residue off the shards. She did not. She didn’t want to risk another bloody tongue.

Some of the cranberry juice still remained, but that was so worthless it was just another cruel rebuke.

She’d have to venture outside if she wanted another drink. And she knew she couldn’t manage that. It was a catch-22: she needed the medicine to obtain the cure.

“I understand you recently completed your PhD at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It’s been a very hectic year, what with my new nutrition initiative, finishing my dual dissertations, and my recent marriage to Thad in Sri Lanka.”

“How do you balance that? Your personal and professional lives?”

“It’s not easy!”

Lottie and Dr. Rutherford share a polite, performative laugh. The studio audience remains silent, hanging on every syllable of the lofty conversation.

Lottie suddenly needed to pee. She rolled over on her stomach and tried to push herself up off the floor, but her arms were too weak to combat the wrack of gravity. She surrendered to it, dropping back down and letting her bladder leak into her jeans. It wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to take this drastic action. Her overindulgent drinking often ended with spilled fluids, mute bruises, and amnesia. She’d wake up anchored to the floor. Like now.

But dear God, the glowing, inspired nights she spent puzzling out the mysteries of her mind and sipping her delicious way through wondrous levels of reality. They were experiences that had actual value. She didn’t just get drunk and sob along to maudlin songs as other, less enlightened inebriates did.

She was an explorer, investigating the darkest depths of her consciousness. The bottle of vodka was a glass bathysphere plunging her down and down so she could search for luminous life hidden within the dark pressure of her depths.

The pain of the next day was just the exorbitant tax she had to pay for her revelations.

Decompression sickness was as messy and uncomfortable as a breech birth, but it was a necessary facet of the equation. It was a package deal. Everything went together. Like gristle and skin. Like fat and blood. And the bone beneath all.

“So, Lottie, tell me about your young gentleman.”

“Well, I’m biased by love of course, but Thad is the smartest, kindest, most handsome man on the planet. To me, anyway. He’s more than a lover. More than a best friend. More than a soulmate, even. He’s a part of me. We feel like two halves of a whole. We feel truly complete when we’re together. A cell with dual nuclei. Sharing lysosomes and whatnot.”

“Well, that sounds like a fellow I’d like to meet. Would you mind if we bring him out now?”

“Not at all.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the program, Dr. Thad Barsimonson!”

The studio audience breaks into spontaneous applause and rewards Thad’s entrance with a standing ovation.

Lottie began to cry, staring at the ceiling through thick prismatic tears, as if her whole world was drowning. She felt so terrible. Like her soul had been scorched. Abandoned by herself. Sick to death. Nothing could save her now.

She didn’t know why she was sniffing and moping. Making a scene. And then some dim survival instinct must’ve kicked in because a speck of memory reminded her that there was a possible bottle stashed in the bathroom. The glimmer was so brief and far away and vague, she almost dropped the subject, dismissing it as a self-conjured mirage. A false hope. Magical manifestation thinking.

She rolled over and began to crawl, sobbing, toward the bathroom. The carpeted living room was an endless desert. She moved across it like a slug, weak and slow and desiccated. Oh god. It was too far. No, please. No more.

Please.

“So, Thad, tell me how you and Dottie met.”

“Well, it’s kind of a silly story really. We met through a surgical procedure. I removed her ruptured appendix.”

“Really? Under what circumstances?”

“She came into my hospital complaining of abdominal pain and, after a cursory examination, I quickly realized she was suffering with appendicitis. Pretty urgent case too. The inflammation was severe. Scary. She was bloated, vomiting, and feeling severe discomfort. Had a fever too. So, I made the decision to perform an emergency appendectomy. Did it just in time, too. It was set to burst.”

“That’s quite a first date!” Dr. Rutherford exclaims.

The studio audience laughs uproariously and applauds.

By the time Lottie reached the bathroom, she’d already decided the mission was futile. There was no bottle. She was indulging in wishful fantasies. She may as well expect a leprechaun bartender to mix her a black velvet on the edge of the bathtub.

There was nothing here. Why would there be?

But that tiny grain of memory still persisted. A bottle. With something inside.

The bathroom floor was strewn with dirty laundry. She hadn’t done a load in weeks.

She sifted through the laundry, tossing garments aside, hoping to uncover her missing treasure. Her salvation.

“This is so stupid,” she muttered. It was like fishing without a hook and expecting to land a bass. She didn’t have a prayer.

And then she lifted an inside-out, balled-up pair of tan pants and froze.

There was extra weight in one of the pockets. Her dim memory sharpened into clearer focus. She’d been to the liquor store last week, already pretty drunk. She bought another bottle of vodka and, while the cashier’s back was turned, she snatched a half-pint of something from a counter display and slipped it into the front pocket of her pants. It was a spontaneous theft, done on a whim. She hadn’t shoplifted in years.

She had blacked out that night. Forgot all about her petty crime.

Her hand trembled as she reached into the pocket and felt the cool glass on her fingertips. She prayed for something good. Please.

It wasn’t. It was a half-pint of amaretto. She hated that sweet, almond-flavored liqueur. How would her twisted gut retain such vile syrup? It would be a mighty struggle to keep it down.

She’d have to at least try.

“Well, Lottie and Thad, you make a charming couple and we all certainly appreciate your appearance at our little extravaganza. I wish you all the best on your amazing future endeavors!”

The jazzy, big band theme-music starts, and the studio audience applauds for the last time.

The credits roll. The audience begins to file out.

BIO: Hank Kirton lives in New England and writes weird fiction. He has worked in factories, warehouses and kitchens from Rhode Island to New Hampshire. He currently lives and writes in Massachusetts. His books include The Membranous Lounge (Apophenia), Everything Dissolves (HST) and Bleak Holiday (Apophenia).