The Bottle

I followed the smell of the bonfire through the woods, stepping carefully on the hard-packed snow. The scent became fainter, and so I took out a bottle. Placing a tissue over its neck, I inhaled. Suddenly I could hear the voices of my family a little while on ahead. I walked through the forest, monochrome and vague like an old photograph, until I saw my father picking firewood at the mouth of a clearing.

He embraced me, and I put my head on the shoulder of his sheepskin coat and could smell our dog on him. 

"How are you, lemon?"

"I'm good, Dad."

"We've been waiting for you to arrive before we crack out the marshmallows."

He crinkled up his face, showing his whitened false tooth. 

"Where's everyone else?"

He gestured to an empty thicket behind him, and I inhaled from the bottle again. The light changed, and there were my two younger siblings, wolfing down hotdogs beside the fire. My sister saw me and poked my brother: his small curly head turned, and he smiled and started walking towards me, taking big kid-steps in the snow. 

I knelt down and he speeded up, connecting with a big thud. My sister joined us in a hug, her tangled black hair everywhere.

"What took you so long?"

"I'm sorry, it was the snow."

My dad came up behind us with some fresh wood for the fire. I touched my hand to his glove, and his face went sad, the way it always did when he felt the real deep-down happiness he never had the words to express to us. 

 He threw the wood down beside the bonfire.

"This'll last it."

He searched among the branches for a piece of a particular thickness, then turned his crisp blue eyes on me and winked.

"The wood in this forest's too thin. Why, if we want a real fire, we'd have to use something -- child-sized!"

He swept up my sister, who shrieked and wriggled. But their voices were becoming thinner, and the bottle had grown light in my hands. It would be another year before I could afford enough of the stuff, and I would tramp out across the snow to find them making hotdogs or drinking cocoa. It was a beautiful scene, but listening to the laughter I felt lonely, and wished there was a way someone could share it with me. 

Reviews

[Idiotekque]

Interesting. I enjoyed the writing itself, and the subtle twist was nice. Your word choice is refreshing and it's all very clean. I'd be interested in reading a short story from you, or at least some flash fiction. It would be nice to see how well you could develop a chain of events.

I have to ask though, what drug do you sniff from a bottle with a tissue over the neck?

[Donny]

Nice, this is a hard-hitting little piece. It's almost more of a vignette really. I enjoyed it.

[Keve]

You paint a rich picture of family here. The setting and characters are intoxicating and the intoxicant in some measure gives rise to the setting and characters. Interesting and very well crafted.