Dear Wine

Partridge lifted the wine glass to her lips at an angle that betrayed how drunk she already was. The cheap red threatened to spill past the edge of the glass and over her new white shirt and old grey couch. Annabella watched.

A deer in the headlights. Its eyes reflect perfect, full circles of green light. Were they meant to be so green? The road is endless and the trees are huddling together.

Partridge spilled the wine on her new shirt like her mother’s blood on the table cloth. She remembered her father’s apathy more than anything else. It should have been his violence. It was meant to be his violence, wasn’t it? The sound of his fists, or the slamming doors. It was such a loud affair when he got violent, but she remembered the smells. Sometimes she closed the garage door before she turned off the car—only for a minute or two though. She just liked to remember it sometimes. She probably wouldn’t have made a good mother. Annabella watched.

The deer is not just a deer. It understands more than deer know. Its antlers curl with the knowledge. The rabbit is dead at its feet. The deer killed it. The deer had nothing to do with it. It’s going to rip into your skin. You keep it closer to god. You make it something other than human. It needs to drink it. It needs to chew it down. God is inside you.

Annabella lifted the glass to her lips and tasted something that wasn’t wine. She thought she was drinking wine. It was too sharp. She sniffed. Whatever it was burnt her nose, but she couldn’t place it. She held her breath and downed the glass. Partridge sat down beside her. When did Partridge leave? Probably a week ago. She never came back, not as herself. Annabella watched.

The rabbit has maggots inside its eye sockets. It can not see, but it stares the endless gaze of the dead. The-

Partridge starts to slur. She’s saying something. It’s now, Annabella, focus! ‘don’t you think?’

The sky is purple. Everything is blurred and faded. There’s a greenish, yellow glow that seems to emanate from everything. Not the people though, those aren’t real. Just the things. Everything is turning brown. Not the red though. The red cuts through and sings, pulsing yellow. There’s nothing to cry.

‘Yes.’

The deer speaks. It has a lot to say, but none of the words make any sense. A rabbit is a child is a god and the sun will never rise. A maggot is always hungry. The trees are making the wind scream along the eternal road.

Partridge dabbed at the couch cushion with some paper towel. It was always going to stain, but she patted it in. The paper tried to soak up as much as possible, but it’s on its own. Annabella tries to focus but her bottom lip is bleeding between her teeth. She turned to the T.V. It wasn’t on anymore and the black screen reflected her image back: the tiled floor of their apartment, the fraying couch, her red hair, their broken picture frame that hung crooked over the hole in the wall. Is she dead and gone to heaven? Would she make it past the gates? She watched.

‘The rabbit doesn’t exist, stop worrying about it,’ maybe says the deer. It’s so hard to tell. The rabbit would be upset to hear this, but the rabbit doesn’t exist so it feels nothing. The maggots in its eyes, however, are sad to hear that their meal is gone.

Partridge drinks like there’s love at the bottom of the glass. Annabella watches.

Partridge had swerved, the car had rolled, the deer had lived.