The Thirst

The old man stumbled drunkenly into the grimy pub and slumped onto the bar stool closest to him. There was no one there when he sat down and no one came to his assistance with a strong drink to still the unquenchable Thirst.

The Thirst, that horrible state of being that overtook his senses and drove him to the brink of insanity.

The Thirst made him do things. Unspeakable things. The Thirst consumed him; it triumphed over his senses and steered his thoughts and actions.

When he dared to mute it with water - a thing he stopped attempting years ago - it would leave his tongue swollen and tasting sour and metallic.

He soon switched over to the beer and spirits. While those things didn’t get rid of this pestilence in the slightest, at least they distracted him from his misery.

He had just stumbled into this slummy pub behind the railway station and it stank of sewage and was desperately cold. He felt a sharp breeze and looked over to a small porthole window that had been taped over with a plastic bag to make up for a lack of glass. The ancient bag flapped around merrily as it allowed arctic winds entry to this dismal place. He wasn’t worried, though, the cold wouldn't be the thing to do him in, it would be the Thirst. He clutched this throat to try to loosen his sticky esophagus, but it did nothing to soothe his ache.

A haggard looking woman emerged from the back room and took her place behind the bar. She looked like she’d applied a thick layer of makeup to cover up about three decades worth of faded eyeliner and lipstick.

“Come on love, gimme a pint of yer strongest.” the old man said, licking his dry lips.

She didn’t even look up at him when she answered, “Get out, you dog. I ain’t servin’ ya: I can smell you from ‘ere - you’re done.”

“Oh, come on, love! Don’t be like that - give a dog a bone! You don’t know what it’s like, walkin’ around with this Thirst like nothin’s gonna soothe it!”

She stopped mopping up a patch of stickiness with a moldy looking rag then and looked up at him. “Aye, I do know what that’s like.” She held his gaze for a moment before disappearing off the bar again and then returned a moment later, tossing him a punnet of grapes. “Try these.”

“Are you havin’ a giraffe?!” he spat as he shoved the grapes back at her. Before they reached her end of the counter, though, she stopped them and firmly pushed them back toward him, looking fiercely into his eyes and saying, “You try these and you won’t regret it, I swears it. Now go, I ain’t servin’ you nothin’ wet.”

He waited a few moments to test her resolution, then got up awkwardly from the stool with a grumble and a grunt when it became clear that she meant it. He threw a last annoyed look over his shoulder, grabbed the grapes, and stumbled out the door and into the cold, icy air.

He stopped in the doorway of a long abandoned building and fiddled with the plastic foil covering the fruit. Then he plucked one of the bigger green grapes off the vine and popped it into his mouth. He noted there weren’t any seeds, which was just as well because he hated those.

He pulled a couple more grapes off the vine and chewed them before it hit him - the burst of juice. It soothed his shriveled tongue and cheeks - and just to be sure he hadn’t imagined this sensation, he threw another handful in after. His parched throat was lubricated with the next swallow and the cotton mouth sensation he’d had for years was washed away as though it had never been there at all.

His eyes brimming, he sank down to his knees in the bunched up snow in that doorway, and as the snow flurried all around him, he cried tears of happiness and relief.