His tongue felt heavy. The crowd separated slightly as John’s gaze throbbed in and out of focus. His stomach curled up and released quickly. This familiar sick feeling didn’t end up in his throat…it just burned in his gut as his breathing got heavier. Maybe this was an illness….or maybe it was just sadness….either way he knew why people died of heartbreaks.

She was across from him….about 5 metres away…he couldn’t see her face, just the outline of her hair, slowly brushing the guy’s shoulder. Her hands caressing his neck. The guy’s muscles bulging from a tight dress shirt. John could see the soft sparkle of her earrings as they swayed to the music. He didn’t want to stare, so he dropped his eyes to the floor. They unfocused for a second. He had seen enough, but he still couldn’t believe it. Almost wanting his eyes to be lying to him.

The beat and bass seemed to lose their momentum as the soft thumps in his chest became the only thing he could hear. He wasn’t gripped to anything, his body slowly fading from all feeling.

Why did he feel like he lost? Or that something had just gotten ripped out of his chest.

John looked to his left…he could feel his mouth gapping, the inner of his gums and the back of his throat becoming dry. His eyes felt like they were losing their strength like they were trying to drop out of his skull. He quickly looked up to his friends….they were still looking in the direction he was just glued to. Their eyes were still processing what was in the corner… the girl wrapped in a guy she told John not to worry about.

John looked at the leftover whiskey in the small plastic cup barely staying in his hands. He drained it quickly, trying to get a sense of feeling back into his chest. Still not feeling his legs, he managed to move back towards the crowd, brushing past drunk bodies writhing against each other, all spitting drunk versions of lyrics that already soaked the air. Everything seemed to slow down, but he wanted desperately to move quickly…to just trudge his way out of the club floor of quicksand and be somewhere else.

Finally, his eyes found a gap and he managed the rest of his body through it…he slotted the now empty cup on the bar as he passed it. The bartender smiled at him as he grabbed a napkin…she seemed to sense something was up, her eyes immediately switching from welcome to concern…maybe he did look as worse as he felt.

John quickly turned away, the door was further along. It seemed to be a rush in a moment as familiar faces patted him on the back, some smiling and nodding when they spotted his face. He half smiled, the sick burning feeling in his stomach making it hard for him to exchange any kind of warmth in any kind greeting.

Security guards in black and high vision vest’s watched him as he exited, carefully trying to keep to their conversation. For some reason John felt like they knew… he adverted his eyes to the floor, a slow wave of anxiety cursing him as his setting became all too embarrassing to look at.

The blankness interrupted every so often with the sickening thump in his chest. He could feel it in his cheeks as the cold night air gripped him, the seconds between his exit and the paced walk out and up the road measured by the sound of his footsteps on concrete.

It took him five or six metres before the crowds started to thin out. Small groups of belligerent douchebags, racked up and talking about what to hit next and bundles of cold girls trying to drag drunk friends to their feet and into Ubers. John could smell the piss and vomit as he tried his best to navigate through it. His mind still empty and acidic, the rest of his senses trying to brush off the disgusting scene around him.

A couple of arms brushed his shoulder, a guy called out to him, probably trying to be funny with his mates… a couple of girls in short matching maxi outfits smiled and asked him for a light, a cigarette limply hanging from their fingers. He could smell the vodka on their breath, as he looked up and shook his head. The words “no” and “sorry” barely leaving his lips as their faces went from flirty to dismissive. John ignored whatever drunken curses were thrown his way.

He finally stepped away from the last crowd and looked towards a small concrete ledge with a fence line behind it. He made his last steps, reached out and gripped the cold steel till his hands went numb. The feeling of tearing off the bars from their home tempted him, but he settled for twisting his fists around it instead. He let go as the chill stung his palms and turned around, letting his back slump against the fence then onto the ledge.

He was drunk…he knew it…but even that couldn’t numb the acidic lump that had grown and formed a tumour inside of him. He slowly pulled his head back against the railing and opened his eyes to the night sky.

Maybe this would help….but the memory of her around that guy swerved in and out of his mind.

John lowered his head, closing his eyes and rubbed his knuckles along his forehead. The slow rhythmic feel of bone on his temple begged to be the solution for the lack of energy that once pumped through his body. His mouth fell open, and fog erupted from his mouth, he could smell the remnants of his drink and the thick layer of spit that coated under his tongue started to feel fat under his lip.

John felt gross…he felt contaminated. Like a poison had entered his blood and started bloating him from the inside out. His breath felt like toxic fumes and his eyes started to emit a swelling of acid like tears that stung from the corners of his eyes. The sickness seemed to layer itself over the lump of anxiety that called his stomach home.

This was familiar now…it had happened before. Maybe he was the problem…his mind racing back to every little moment, any little thing that he could’ve done. Something to help make it last…to make sure this hadn’t had happened. He searched and searched and searched…but all that came was memories that he once treasured. One by one like little snippets of a film, her hair floating in the breeze, her teeth as she laughed at his jokes…the soft touch of her hand against his bare chest…cuddled up half-naked in the backseat of his car. All of it was slowly being tarnished by what he had just seen. A venom that had now made those snippets of the story they shared slowly turn black ….and into a sick joke.

John lifted his head from his hands, his face numb to the chill of city air. He shut his mouth and began to steady his breath, leaning back and propping his head up to the sky….slowly letting the poison take over.