Alcohol Chic

Chapter One: Long Way Down, But an Easy Ride

Lily was having a great term. It was fantastic, beyond belief, really. She got the classes she wanted. She had excellent teachers and the things they taught her actually stayed in her head. Her three roommates were surprisingly cool and kept out of her way. To top it all off, for once in her life, she knew exactly what she wanted to do and where she wanted to be. In this semester, this wonderful, glorious, unforgettable time, life, the universe, and everything else finally made sense to her. She walked about the halls of the university, killing a little time until her last mid-term exam, which happened to be Conversational Polish, a class she had no trouble in, though she did not study or do any of the course work.

"Yup," she said to herself, "This is going to be one easy 'A'. If I keep this up, I'll have a 4.0 GPA." She smiled inwardly at her success. Lily had never been much of a student in high school. To be frank, she graduated by the skin of her teeth, since she had preferred racing her car around St. Louis with her plates off, trying to avoid the cops, instead of attending school.

A casual glance at her watch indicated that it was about time she made her entrance. She strolled into the class, gave her ten-minute speech on substance abuse in Poland, got her 'A', and left for her apartment. When she arrived, Lily noticed that the door was slightly ajar, and all the lights inside were off. She was shocked and a little afraid. She thought that perhaps a burglar had broken into the domicile and done God knows what to her roommates, Tiffany, Jordan, and Michelle, and stolen their possessions. Carefully, Lilly opened the door a bit more so that she could reach the light switch. With her other hand she readied her can of mace and then quickly turned on the lights jumped through the door, throwing her mace-wielding hand up to eye level out in front of her.

"SURPRISE!" A mass of people appeared out of nowhere. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LILY!" they all shouted as one. Lily's friends were all present, including some that she had thought were long gone and far away in their own lives. Needless to say, she was more than pleasantly astonished.

Lily did not notice it, but a tall, rather handsome man had appeared from somewhere within the crowd and was heading towards her. The throng of partying people seemed to part somewhat for him. He reached out and touched her shoulder.

"Happy birthday, darlin'," the man said with a slight Louisiana drawl. "I've missed ya, honey."

As he said this, Lily turned to him, and saw a face that she had never expected to see outside of a photograph in this life.

"Daddy?" she questioned. "Is it really you?"

"Sure is, dumplin'. Who else would it be?

"You know I'd never miss one of your birthdays; not for all the crayfish in Nawlins."

"But... Daddy, you... you..." tears welled in Lily's eyes. "You can't be here. You died when I was seven....ARGH!"

A sudden, sharp pain shot through her head. It felt loud, like a thunderclap that kept on clapping. The world around her began to spin and all its colors and textures seemed to smear together and then fade away. For a second before everything shifted and went black she knew what was happening.

I'm asleep, she thought, I'm still asleep and I'm dreaming!

She awoke with a horribly violent start and almost fell out of her bed. Lily glanced around herself as if to confirm her surroundings were indeed real. Convinced that she was finally conscious, she looked at her clock and became painfully aware of the truth of her situation. It was 2:30pm on Monday, September 4. It was the first day of the term.

She had slept through her whole first day of classes.

Shit, she thought, then she spoke, "I need a drink."

Chapter Two: Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville

Lily woke from her dream extremely pissed and dissatisfied with life in general, her life in specific, and with an entirely unshakable sensation that the world made absolutely no sense whatsoever. She sat about the living room of her apartment the rest of the day with several bottles of liquor (some were empty), staring at the walls, and mumbling to herself about how "none of it makes any sense".

When her roommate Tiffany arrived later that day with her boyfriend, a hairy jock named Joe, he questioned Lily as to what was wrong with her.

"What's wrong with me?" she replied, frustration dripping from her words. "Oh, nothing, nothing at all, just EVERY-FUCKING-THING! This world doesn't matter; it doesn't make sense. The wall doesn't make sense, education doesn't make sense, you don't make sense!

"I DON'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!" she bellowed, then her voice trailed off. "I don't make sense."

"Dude, you are one seriously damaged chick."

"You are probably right," she answered as she took a long chug from a half empty bottle of vodka. And then another. Then another, until the bottle was drained.

For every absolutely senseless thing she thought of, Lily took a long draught from one or more of her bottles. She continued in this manner for the rest of the week, trying to drown her Plutonian revelation and turmoil in as much alcohol as she could afford or steal. The latter option she only resorted to at the end of the week when her cash had run out and she was becoming dangerously sober, sober enough to successfully steal several large liquor bottles out of an adequately secured store. Sober enough to add more senseless things to her list and not forget them.

It was early on a Sunday morning, about three weeks after she began drinking, that Lily was sober enough to consider the consequences of her habits. She awoke from an alcohol-induced, dreamless sleep and wretched all over the living room floor. She was surprised to find that her vomit had a red tint to it.

That's weird, she thought, I didn't eat anything red yesterday, I don't think...Wait...

The realization hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks. There was blood in her puke.

What minimal training she had as a Premed major (who never attended class) told her that she was bleeding internally and that that was definitely not a good thing. This revelation made Lily simultaneous desire another bottle of whiskey and become severely nauseous at the thought of the brown liquor. Her body took the seemingly more logical action, considering the abuse it had been suffering the past month.

Lily wretched again. The burning pain of bile being forced the wrong way in her esophagus helped sober her even more and cleared some of the cobwebs out of her head. At once, the senselessness filled her mind again and she unconsciously reached for the tequila at her feet. She was about to partake of that distillation of the agave when a new thought, completely unrelated to the others, took centerstage in her brain.

Holy shit, she thought, Am I an alcoholic?

Chapter Three: Get Out on Those Streets, Girls

The possibility of her addiction kept Lily from drinking long enough for her to attend classes for the first time on Monday. It must have been her bad luck that the class was perhaps the hardest, most inane, and boring one the college offered, namely Organic Chemistry. She struggled to maintain her focus and sit through the whole class, but after one hour she gave up and decided to go back to her booze and her perpetual stupor. Anything was better than living like this: coherently aware and existing in this pointless universe.

I need to get away, she thought, I don't care where, as long as it's far and away from here; the farther the better.

"Hey, Lily, long time, no see!" A voice shot out from towards the parking lot.

"Greg?" Lily inquired. "Is that you? Wow, nice hair."

"Thanks, I colored it myself. It's Kool-Aid."

"Really? I didn't realize," her sentence trailed off, implying its sarcasm. Of course you did it with Kool-Aid; your head is surrounded by about a billion gnats!

"You know, Lily," Greg continued, not noticing her sarcastic tone, "You are just the person I've been looking for.

"See, I've gotta make this road-trip up to Vancouver to visit my grandma in the hospital and I really need to get there fast. I don't have money for a plane ticket, so I'm going to have to drive up and I need someone to take over when I need to sleep, so I can get there before, well, before."

Though she had been in a slight lecture-precipitated daze, Lily caught the potential inherent in such an outing. She felt a small pang of destiny, as if her prayer to run away had been heard. Her answer was decided as soon as she heard the word "road-trip".

"Sure, Greg. I'd love to help you out. Besides, I wanted to ditch this town for a while already.

"When do we leave?"

"Is tonight too early?"

"Hell, even right away isn't too early."

"Ok, then. I'll pick you up at your apartment at six o'clock."

"Great," she said. Great! she thought. The situation could not be any more perfect. She had a way to run, and, if she could keep clear of alcohol, she knew she could prove to herself that she was not an alcoholic and get back to her pleasant state of constant inebriation.

Chapter Four: Everything you Want Everything you Need

The trip north was largely uneventful. It was almost pleasant, disregarding, of course, the fact that they only stopped for lunch, gas, and potty breaks, and did not even really sleep during the whole journey. Somehow, they had managed to get from St. Louis to Canada without any kind of horrible misadventures. And somehow, Lily managed to stay sober (at least off booze) the whole way.

Lily and Greg took turns at the wheel, alternating every four hours. Strung out on vivarin, caffeine, and nicotine they made it to Vancouver in significantly less time than specified in the Triple A guidebook Greg kept in his glove box. The trouble began after they crossed over the Canadian border, since Greg had very little information on how to get to the hospital where his grandmother was. All he really knew was the name.

"Damn it!" he shouted, as the fifth gas station attendant he asked for directions told him the same thing. Apparently no one knew where St. A_'s Hospital was.

Lily was not so much frustrated with her situation as she was annoyed. Back in Denver, she had noticed the DT's setting in, and even though the withdrawal symptoms were subsiding, she still wanted a drink more than just about anything in the world.

"To hell with it!" Greg ranted as he slammed his fist repeatedly into the dashboard. "I can't fucking believe my luck! RAHHH!!" He shouted and growled at his invisible persecutors while they sat at a red light. Lily could not take it anymore.

"I've had it up to fucking here with your bullshit yelling!" she shouted back at him. "Deal with your damn grandmother and all your shit yourself! I'm outta here!" She got out of the car and started running. She was out of earshot by the time Greg composed himself enough to cry out "Bitch!" after her. Lily knew what she had to do.

She needed to get drunk. Really drunk.

"I don't need it," she reminded herself, "I just REALLY want it." Luckily for her, bars are almost omnipresent in Canada, especially in cities like Vancouver. Unfortunately, though, she didn't have a dime to her name; she left her cash in the car with her clothes and Greg. Perhaps it was somewhat fortuitous that the first bar she came to (and ran up a massive tab) just happened to be a strip club.

"You wanna keep drinking, ay," said the burly bartender/owner, "you're gonna have to pay for it, babe. And the fastest way to do that is to dance."

"You mean I'm gonna hafta strip?" questioned Lily, drunkenly slurring her words.

"We prefer the term 'exotic dancing', but, yeah, that's the shit of it. You're going to dance, or else I call the cops."

"Shit... I'll do it," she replied hopelessly.

"Good. You start tonight."

"Shit." I can't believe this.

Chapter 5: What Doesn't Kill You (or Consoled a Cup of Coffee)

By the end of her second week of exotic dancing, Lily had made enough cash through tips to pay her incredibly high bar tab and to pay for her part of the rent.

Lily really liked stripping, she liked the people she danced in front of and the people she worked with. She had moved in with one of her fellow dancers, a young Asian girl named Mai Lee, and decided that this was her immutable destiny. Everything about the job appealed to her, especially the fact that now that she was a big draw and on top of her bar tab she had fast cash and got free drinks. It was practically heaven. Well almost. The only thing that bothered her, the one thing marring her paradise that she had carried over from her old life was the memory of Greg and his ailing grandmother. Fortunately, for the past week or so since she ran out of his car, regular therapy sessions with Dr. Jack Daniels and his associates Drs. Johnny Walker and Bud Weiser sufficed in keeping those and other serious contemplations out of her consciousness. The second week it was harder to keep it down. By the third week it was keeping her from dancing as well as she could. Every guy in the audience looked like him; every mop of gray hair had his grandmother underneath of it, though she had never met his grandmother.

"Shape up or ship out, ay." It was the only thing her boss, Rudy, had to say to her. "Either work out what's bothering you or you can show yourself the door. And pay your tab."

Shit. She knew what she had to do. After work that night, she asked Mai Lee if she knew where St. A_'s was.

"Know where it is? Shit, I was born there! It's really simple to get there, especially from here." Mai Lee drew Lily a map and wrote down an explicit set of directions. That's where it is? she thought. Greg and I passed by that place a half dozen times!

"Thanks, Mai. I really need to do this. Shit, Greg's the reason I'm here in the first place."

"Sounds like you owe him. Bigtime."

"What? For dragging me to a place where I am finally happy and as drunk as I feel like being? Hell, I owe him my life and more."

She went to sleep that night without most of the burden that had plagued her the last few weeks. But that last spark of dharma, of duty, reminded her that she only had a skeletal plan of action. The highest hurdle had yet to be jumped.

A lot can happen in three weeks.

Chapter Six: Makes you Stronger (or Don't Kiss Me so Sweet)

A lot can happen in three weeks. Her first three weeks in college, Lily had spent in an inebriated stupor that most fraternity brothers would have killed to attain. In three weeks she had gone from being a drunken college dropout (kind of) in St. Louis to being one of the most popular exotic dancers available at Mickey's Boom-Boom Room in Vancouver.

This transition was possible by an individual named Greg Shelley, an old acquaintance of Lily's whose grandmother, Mona Spinelli, was in a Vancouver hospital in a very bad condition. That was Greg's reason for going to Canada, to see his grand M one last time. It was also a way for Lily to pursue her dream of getting away from what she deemed to be unreality, that is college life.

On an evening some three and a half weeks after they left St. Louis, Lily decided that she needed to find out what happened to Greg and Mona after she stormed out of his car in the middle of the city and got massively tanked at the aforementioned strip joint. The following morning, she headed for St. A_'s hospital where Mona had been admitted.

Admittedly, it was a long shot. After all, three weeks had passed since she last saw Greg and chances are that, whatever her condition might be, his grandmother was not likely to still be a resident of St. A_'s.

That morning, Lily primped herself as best she knew and forwent her usual whiskey-and-pop-tart breakfast of champions and simply headed out as early as she could. She stepped out of her brownstone that she shared with Mai Lee and headed toward the hospital. She eventually made it there, but not in the way she quite expected.

A few blocks down from her apartment, she was hit by a semi going 90 (kmph, it is Canada, after all) while crossing at a red light. Surprisingly she survived the impact, though most of her bones were severely fractured and most of her vital organs had been either punctured or crushed by the crash. Not surprisingly, she did not survive long. The resident on duty in the emergency room in St. A_'s at the time pronounced Lily dead at 8:47am.

Being dead was an understandably disorienting experience for Lily. All the existential bullshit that had been running through her mind for the past six weeks came flooding back. For some reason, though, it just doesn't matter anymore, she thought. I'm finally free, I guess. I can make my own world now.

"I'm afraid it doesn't work quite like that, my dear." A tall, rather striking woman with curly black hair suddenly appeared in Lily's line of sight.

"Who are you?" Lily questioned with a trembling voice.

"Oh, calm down, sweetie, I'm not here to hurt you or nothing like that."

"Right, you keep on thinking that. I'm out of here." She "moved" quickly towards the ER's exit. Just as quickly though, she discovered that she could not get any closer to them than she had been the moment before.

"Why do they always try to run?" inquired the woman. "I suppose someone finds it amusing.

"Come on, child. First of all: there is no reason for you to run from here. Second: You can't actually run from here."

Lily stared at her with an open mouth. "You mean I'm stuck here?"

"No, not at all."

"So I'm free to go?"

"At any time."

"But I can't run away."

"Correct."

"I see. WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF MINDFUCK ARE YOU?"

"Oh, dear me, what language. Someone should really have washed your mouth out with soap while you were alive."

Chapter 7: Another One Bites the Dust

Lily was having a bad day. It was not only because she was PMSing. It probably had something to do with the semi that struck and killed her on her way to St. A_'s to find out what happened to Greg and Mona. Now she's dead, disembodied, and for some reason found herself stuck with another soul who is taking great enjoyment from teasing Lily.

"Fuck you," said Lily.

"Oh, so eloquent! That is definitely the result of America's fine public school system.

"If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic."

"Oh, really? Listen," Lily continued, "let's start this again, shall we?"

"By all means."

"Ok. Where am I?"

"Where you are."

"Am I dead?"

"As a doornail."

"Huh?"

The woman tried half-heartedly to suppress a sigh. "Don't they make you read any Dickens in school anymore, child? Haven't you ever even seen 'A Christmas Carol'?"

"Ummm, no, I don't think so."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she responded throwing her hands in the air.

"So I'm dead."

"Yes."

"And I can't move because..."

"Because you really don't want to leave this spot."

Lily stared at her companion, mouth wide open. "What do you mean I don't want to move? All I want to do is get the hell out of here and go wherever I am going to be going. Heaven or Hell, it doesn't matter! I just want out!"

"Running again from destiny again, are we?"

"What do you know about it, lady?"

"Perhaps if I introduce myself, you'll understand, ma fia.

"My name is Mona."

"M-mona? As in..."

"As in Mona Spinelli. Greg's grandmother."

Shit, Lily thought. Could my luck get any worse?

"Oh, yes it could, child."

"You can hear my thoughts?"

"How do you think it is you are speaking right now, hmm? With no mouth or vocal cords or a body?"

"Umm..."

"All your words, your being, you very existence here is thought. You think, therefore you are!" Mona proclaimed piercing the air in front of her with her outstretched index finger.

"Ok. I'm dead. I'm stuck here because I want to be here. And I'm just a thought in my now non-existent head."

"Yup, that's pretty much it."

"I need a drink."

Chapter Eight: So Long and Thanks for the Beer

I need a drink, Lily thought. I need a drink, a way out of here, and this bitch off my back.

"My, dear, that is no way to speak about the dead," replied Mona. "The way you are going, you are really going to offend people here."

"What people? What are you talking about? What do you want from me?!"

"What do I want, you ask? What do I want?! I want you to understand! I want you to fulfill your destiny!" Lily heard Mona's "hand" smack across her cheek before she felt it. She fell to the ground sobbing.

"Why do you keep saying that?" she cried. "What is my destiny?"

Mona looked down at the lump with a bizarre mix of frustration and surprise burning in her eyes. "Your destiny is simple.

"You have a choice, of course. You can stay here as you are or you can suck it up, get your act and your ass together, and at least set his path straight." As she said this her finger danced over to a young disheveled man, bursting into the doors of the hospital's main entrance. It took Lily a moment, but at last she rescognized him.

"It's Greg..." she mused. "You mean, I have to fulfill my commitment to Greg?"

"That's the short of it."

"Why didn't you say that before?"

"You weren't ready for it. And besides, we had time to kill.

"It's your time now, child. Do what you came here to do and then you will be free."

Free. The thought raced around Lily's mind as it had a thousand times before. She always sought freedom: from her family, from her life, and from life in general. She was always running away, hoping inwardly that perhaps someday she could stop, she could be free.

"You know what you have to do," Mona purred encouragingly.

"But how do I... Mona?" Lily spoke out, but only the tepid, sterile air of the hospital lobby was there to listen. She looked down at her hands and her feet and she noticed something. She could feel them. She could feel her body again! She was alive!

Only for a few moments, though, a voice chimed in her head. Just long enough...

"Just long enough to do what I have to do." A smile crossed Lily's face as she traversed the atrium and touched the young man's shoulder. He turned around, and seeing her smiling, smiled too.

Fin