016. Crazy Drunk


Red Thomas received a rude awaking.

He had been sleeping peacefully, having finally got himself comfortable on the park bench near the Courthouse, found some Hill Valley Telegraphs, had even got himself a radio, salvaged from…somewhere...and had his old reliable, a bottle of rum close to his heart.

But the soft tunes of the radio were drowned out by something like....

Like...a sonic boom, he felt some of the newspapers blowing away...was he at the airport now...? No, that wasn’t right...

Blinking, he pulled up his woollen balaclava and slowly began to sit up. It was hard to do, feeling dizzy as he usually did these days.

He looked about confused, where had the sound come from? He stumbled out onto Main.

The Square seemed empty, like it always was...maybe he was hearing things? That seemed to happen a lot lately...

He saw dust out the corner of his eye and he turned around so fast he almost lost his balance.

At the far end of the street was the old theatre...it'd been boarded up a long time ago...about the time he finally lost his house…

But now the boards were hanging loose, embedded half inside the theatre was…of all things, a car.

Red blinked his eyes hard, he had started seeing things lately as well....

But when he opened his eyes, the car was still there, in fact it was reversing.

"Crazy dwunk dwivers," Red slurred to himself...he knew what that was like all too well. After all, that was how it had ended for him, his political career, his marriage...everything.

He stumbled back towards his bench and began pulling his papers back over him like a blanket.

"Whoo!" The drunk burst out of the car, he was just some kid...damn youth were going to Hell these days.

"Red!" The kid shouted at him, obviously not so loaded that he didn’t recognise the town’s resident drunk. "You look great!"

That was just cruel...everyone knew Red Thomas looked like Hell and had ever since that day.

"Everything looks great!" The teen looked around the dilapidated Town Square like it was Heaven, his eyes wild.

Red pulled his balaclava back down over his eyes, looked as if the kid was on drugs as well. At least Red could say he'd never gone that low.

The rum made it pretty easy for him to nod off, and that he was, vaguely aware of the sounds of screeching tyres.

But he wasn't drunk enough to ignore that kid leaping over his bench.

Damn kids these days couldn’t even respect their elders when they were trying to get shut eye. He sat up and watched the kid disappear down 1st, lying back down he closed his eyes. The Town Square became quiet, he could hear the radio again and now that crazy drunk kid was gone he could finally get to sleep.

And dream of the days when he had being at the top of Hill Valley life...when everything was good.

Before he had become the 'crazy drunk'.


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