Flash Fiction 1st Place: The Game Changer by Kelly Rees

Remember how it felt like sulphur corroding our throats when we took a swig of the strong stuff? We’d laugh into the sleeves of our knock off designer jumpers until we ran out of breath and hair clung to the back of our necks with sweat. It would be just the two of us, back when we were young enough to feel fresh the next day. Fresh enough anyway, fresh enough to do it all again the week after. People stared as though we were just the right side of crazy, but we loved how it loosened our tongues and toasted us from the inside out.

We would lie on an overgrown blanket of grass, for what felt like our whole adolescence, counting the diamonds in the night sky until they all blurred into one. Knitted together, drinking, and sharing the sort of secrets that only the best of friends like us are willing to part with. Then we’d walk with legs like cooked spaghetti strands, eyes halfway to sleep, while we took the long way back to my house, decorating the pavement with the contents of our insides as we staggered.

Back home, we’d skulk past the flickering light of my parent’s living room on the way up the stairs. They’d be in there, transfixed on the glow from their favourite sitcom, my dad all grim and moody, wishing he was any place else. Upstairs we’d try and wash off the smell of the night that had somehow grown into our hair and hovered on our clothes like a mist that was almost thick enough to chew.

There’s a saying my mam used to say to me – It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. I never did get it, because that hardly ever happens. For us, it was fun until I grew up and you found you couldn’t live without it; even when the seizures started.

By the time I found out, you were too far gone. Liver-deep in appointments, medications and incredulous excuses. The days for you eventually became as painful as sandpaper over a newly swollen burn and throwing up transformed from being our old late night weekly ritual into your daily burden. You’d have been better off losing an eye I’d tell you, but the sound of my voice just drifted past you and floated skyward. Something else I’ll never get.

I was on a train when I got the call. I’d come to accept I’d receive it one day. I caused a scene you’d have been proud of when your dad relayed the news that broke me – it made the ticket guy all sticky and agitated. Once I hung up, all I could think to do was grab a glass of the strong stuff and drown myself in enough of it to feel somewhere close to toasty again.