Daniel

Daniel’s body came to alertness before his mind. He knew that had been the case when his vision groggily stuttered into focus to see his feet awkwardly shuffling down the dark and deserted streets. He watched in dazed fascination as one shoe placed itself in front of the other without his mind’s direction, scuffing themselves further into shabbiness on the filthy pavement.

He wrapped his arms around his torso to ward off the terrible chill that had seemed to settle in his limbs. He had to find shelter, someplace safe. But he wasn’t sure where he was or how he had gotten here. The more he tried to remember, the more it seemed as if his thoughts shifted and blurred, like staring at an object glistening at the bottom of a rushing stream.

What had happened to him?

Oh, Danny Boy…

Dirt, the smell clung to him. His clothes were filthy as the graveyard he worked in. Had he gone home at all after work?

He wrapped his arms even tighter around himself as a burn in his gut made itself known. Something about it triggered a trace of memory to rise up out of the fog.

Something was pressed against his lips, it burned as he drank. Acid flowed down his throat in swallow after swallow to settle in his belly like a stab of ice. It burned and burned worse than any hooch or bathtub gin he’d ever been desperate enough for. A vision of golden radiance that pulled him out of the gutter, the only dame to see him as worth more than the dirty, two-bit he’d been, caused guilt to rise in him like a tide. He couldn’t let her down, couldn’t be that bum again.

He gagged, coughing as he tried to push away the fount at his lips. It tasted wrong. Copper and death lingered on his palate. A deep growl sounded over him, like an angry dog and cold liquid pushed against his lips. Blackness grabbed him and pulled him deep in her embrace as he opened his lips again to drink.

Uncoiling his arms, Daniel forced himself to walk straight. Not drunk, then. That didn’t explain what had happened, or how he got here. Daniel looked down at his hands.