Prompt 1

Writing Prompt #1

Where were you last night?

“Where were you last night?”

Victor lifted his coffee to his lips to avoid Martha’s question; letting the causticity of his favorite drink burn away the sewage that collected around his adam’s apple every night like liquid drano. God, it felt good. Black and strong, the good way. Victor silently relished in the sensation of warmth that sludged down his throat before pooling into the bottom of his stomach; where it continued to smolder like the ashes of a dying cowboy’s fire. Caught up in the sensation, Victor pulled the mug back to his lips, bit off another gulp of coffee, and wiped clean his salt and pepper mustache, without even remembering so much as a trace of the entire action.

“Where were you last night?” Martha didn’t even bother to interject her normal hmmph of disapproval at the fact that he’d ignored her first question.

The mug was halfway to his lips before he realized it was empty. Feigning an interest in the newspaper Victor extended his drinking arm out. His beggers mug held aloft. “Martha, some Coffee?”

Then came the hmmph, then roughly five seconds of silence, and then the familiar shuffle of Martha’s rose laced nightgown across the laminate. Victor was careful not to raise his head as his mug slowly began to gain mass again. Any sign of acknowledgement could destroy his entire ruse, and he might have to actually explain what had happened last night, and why it had been the nearly ungodly hour or ten o’clock before he’d come home to Martha, already long asleep. At the same time, ignoring Martha completely would result in him being denied coffee. It may not have been a razor thin edge he was walking, but it was an old rusty razors edge at least.