The one thing Noah had figured out was that he was too old to be both drunk and crazy. Since he didn’t have any control over the latter, he figured sobriety would be the way to go. He’d gone from five or six a night to a single 40oz. Sometimes a 32oz of Miller High Life would do. Some nights he wouldn’t even finish it. Too busy with life, for once. Too busy tripping out. Too busy carrying on. Living life. He was almost proud of himself.
The visions had started for him about a year ago. They went on without any real pattern that he could discern. He figured that it was like trying to decipher the phase of the moon. Or the tides. Or El Niño. You either could or you could not, and if you could understand it, somehow, you’d realize that none of it was up to you. He had visions. He tripped out. He dealt with it. He had visions. So what? It did not mean he was crazy. It was life, that’s all. Getting mad at things you couldn’t change, now that was crazy.
The visions came at night. These nocturnal phantasms would weave in and out of his periphery until they became solid enough to walk in front of him. They were animals. Only ever animals. No monsters, no demons. No bugs, no aliens. They were giant elk and woolly rhinos. Creatures long since gone from this and all continents. One time he spotted a coelacanth stranded in a culvert. Its strange fins half-submerged in mountain run-off. When he managed to climb down the side of the road to help it, the thing had vanished. Guess it had better places to be.
I can sympathize, he thought.
“Here’s to you,” he’d say and raise his bottle.
And then they would disappear back into the ether. Off to wherever it was where they really belonged.
Nzdorvie.
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