Sid

Sid didn’t care about anything anymore. The fact that he was staring at a Texas beach with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of cheap whiskey in the other after a night of binge drinking three hours away was proof of that. The black watercolor melting point where the ocean met the sky in front of him looked like a promising and somehow romantic resting place. A full moon overhead illuminated the whitewater caps of the small waves as he sipped from the half-empty bottle. His shoes were carelessly thrown somewhere between his beat up Honda and the shoreline and he was feeling the cool water lightly kiss the top of his feet below the cuff of his rolled up jeans. He knew that going into the ocean at night was dangerous, but as you already guessed, he didn't care.

Earlier that night, Sid started his Friday ritual at one of his favorite neighborhood bars after having taken down a fifth of vodka at home to warm up. He never drank vodka in public, but rarely started a night out without it. The place wasn’t anything special. It was, in fact, particularly unspectacular, which was why he liked it. He could sit at the bar, flirt with the cute bartenders and waitresses, strike up conversations with other "solo" drinkers, and diligently hammer away at the crumbling condition of his twenty-five year old liver and lungs. He burned through half a pack of cigarettes and four pints of imported beer within his first hour. Having secured a spot in that area between “cool buzz” and "all out drunk," he picked up his cell phone and called her. She had changed her number a long time ago, but Sid felt a strange, masochistic comfort in calling it up and hearing the recording tell him that the number he dialed was no longer in service. He ordered a couple of whiskey shots and another pint. The brown liquor in the small shot glass didn’t really taste like anything by then, but he smiled as it went down because it reminded him that he had an unopened whiskey bottle in his car outside - just in case. He threw both shots back in quick succession, lit another cigarette, and smiled at the pretty blond behind the counter as he began sipping his cold beer. She flashed him what he considered to be a patronizing smile and turned her attention back to the martini she was making. The bartenders were used to his presence as a regular and considered him to be harmless because he never started fights, yelled, or came onto them in a threatening way. He was just some lonely, unspectacular guy that could handle his booze.

Bored and reaching the point that he would describe as “sorta drunk,” he called up some friends, none of which answered, and began convincing himself that they all hated him. He was sure that they had grown tired of his shit. At first, they probably thought his routine was somehow charming and would be enticed by the drinks he would always insist on buying, but after a while, his constant moaning and rambling about her began to wear them down. He was sure of it. She wasn't all he talked about, though. He’d ramble about anything to anyone who would listen. In any case, it was obvious to him that they had all had enough. He put his phone in his pocket and lit another cigarette. It was 12:30 on Friday night and he was completely alone in a crowded dive. He pretended to send text messages to people so that it would look like someone might be meeting him, but he was pretty sure that anybody who looked his way knew that no one was coming. At one point he glanced up at the television mounted in the corner over the pool tables just in time to see that Navy Seals ad that he really liked. You know the one that shows a moonlit beach where the waves come in and, all of a sudden, everything is dark except for the moon and when the scene lights back up there are these footprints on the ground that get washed away by the next wave? He liked that part. Seeing those footprints washed away struck him somehow. Those guys were badasses. They snuck in, completed their mission, and covered their tracks. There was no evidence that they had even been there. They may as well have been ghosts.

That was all it took. Three hours on the road and a half bottle of imitation Jack Daniels later, he was staggering in the sand and yelling gibberish at the stars. It was pretty incredible that he made it that far without getting pulled over or losing control of the car. He was well past "drunk" when he made it to the beach. He had nearly fallen out of the car when he opened the door and he pitched his shoes somewhere into the darkness because he figured he wouldn’t need them anyway.

A few wobbly moments later, he tossed his cigarette into the wind and noticed a figure that seemed to be in similar clothing with a bottle in his hand, making his way out into the surf. Sid lifted the bottle of whiskey over his head and poured half of its remaining contents all over himself as he watched the man in between the small breaking waves do the same. What were the odds of another guy having his exact same idea at that moment? It was nearly four in the morning on a secluded Texas beach,"why would anyone be out here," he thought. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. The figure disappeared into the darkness. Sid's eyelids were getting heavy and the whiskey started tasting salty. He thought about what she would say about all this as he looked back at his beat up Honda on the beach and proposed a drunken toast. He gurgled out some indistinguishable words and took one more man-sized drink.

The tide stealthily rushed in beneath the moonlight and Sid’s footprints disappeared.