Chips? (The Ballad of a Broken Family)

[David Sanchez]

Chips?... Crisps? Which country am I in again?

The thought plagues him as he sways back and forth, from one emotional standpoint to the next in his deckchair.

What language do they speak here? I want to say German, perhaps I'm wrong. Who am I to judge a language by it's language, or a rose by it's current form? After-all.. we all wither in the Winter do we not?

Her footsteps fall like bass-drums in his his ever-absent mind. Even through the soft sand of which continent's name he had forgotten. She has came, she had seen and bless her soul she had stuck by this man for six wretched years of nothingness. David was a shell, worse so; a drunkard on a beach. A shell aspiring to be not much more-so than a shell, a crustacean perhaps; he thought once, but no, just another shell.

David, you're scaring him again. Stop talking to yourself.

Samantha had always been a saving grace, a light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel. Except in such a scenario the tunnel would surely have ended with her, with the birth of Kayden, with the move to San Antonio. With every excuse he made the tunnel grew longer and darker. There was no denying it anymore. This was a defeated man. A man who had excelled at his craft only to be thwarted by his own demons. The bottle, the needle, the pills, the lifestyle. His comedown had never came. in it's place were designer drugs with scientifically glamorous, pharmaceutical names for his various aches. Tramadol, Diazepam, Methadone. It was safe to say that on this beach upon this day, that our dear old David had seen better days.

Look at me David, if it means this much to you, go back to work. just do not drag us down with you. Six fucking years and you still can't put it behind you?

He had always hated it when she cursed in front of their son. Through whatever warped morals he had, that was still wrong in his mind. She knew that, and furthermore knew the reaction that it would surely cause. With one swoop a man ascended from a deck chair. Calm as the still-tide. His body, it wasn't quite what it was yet still, at a towering foot above her the factor of intimidation was obvious. Yet he simply threw something in her general direction. Money, crumpled money at that, whether earned through wrestling royalties or previous used to ingest narcotics. To David, it had always been a thing to discard, never to use. That and a sultry sentence, his first directly spoken words to his reality, his real family in almost three years.

If you're done corrupting our son with your foul mouth, I'd like a bag of Salt and Vinegar Lays, a Jim Beam.. neat.

She had taken the money and left for the small tiki-hut bar structure by the time his drug-flawed brain had registered that he, once again was this child's guardian. No thoughts of sobriety had crossed his brain, her goodwill was misplaced. With a distant chuckle he thought:

Lays.. fucking universal eh.






(TBC obviously, just wanted something up to avoid timewasters and ensure I'm not one, short but I'm trying something new)