Flash Friday 5-9-14 hickey, relief, mandolin in Flash Friday

“Jesus! You ok? Jesus!”

“You can’t shake the devils hand and say you’re only kidding.”

“Are you high? Shit. Sit down let me get some iodine, how deep …? What the hell happened?”

She sat down hard.

Just like old times.

She was humming when I came back with gauze, anti-septic and a bucket of water. I couldn’t make out the tune, something honeyed and whiskied, the sort of tune that needed fireflies and an orange moon big on the tree-line.

With some people you smell alcohol on their breath, or spilt in their shoes. With her it was … different. She metastasized it different, if that’s the right word; she made alcohol smell like her. You’d think that’d be sweeter --- I use to think it was sweeter --- but it isn’t. It’s sour and sick.

I cleaned her hand gingerly, swiping away the slow blood to get a look at the wound. She tried to flash me bedroom eyes but couldn’t focus well enough. A thin deep line right across the low inside finger joints. Even her blood had that sour, sick smell.

“So, howya bin?” she slurred.

“Fucking fantastic. What happened?”

“Tuning a, a, S’tuning a Mandolin. Tricky, s’not, is’ot, not, ev’ry good boy d’erves favor, it’snot. Fuckin’ mandolin.”