The Devil's Sand

Whisky contains a secret ingredient that nobody knows about, but everyone feels. Like everyone, I have no idea what this thing is called or if it even has a name. Everything needs a name, so I called it "devil's sand." When you sip your Whisky at night, the alcohol carries the sand into your blood, and when it is in your blood, it also seeps into your brain. The brain fights back; God built it too, but as you grow and drink more Whisky in your life, the barricades of the brain weaken, and the Sin enters, drop by drop. As a young man, you can drink five glasses of Whisky and have only a little sand in your brain, but over time, you'll lose God's protection that gives all the young ones, and you are alone. One glass might be enough to get you a full dose.

The sand is truly diabolic. It grinds you down. By the morning, it leaves you weak and disoriented, but the worst is how it changes your thoughts. When you think, thoughts move around in your brain like a big machine turning its gears. If you have the sand, it is clogging your gears. The thoughts break in the best case or move in different directions in the worst. Bad things happen, even to the most peaceful of us.

This is a story Jeff Marquart can tell very well, as he, full of the devil's sand, found himself lying on the floor, covered with his puke and the blood of his neighbor Will. He woke up because the unbelievable smell would not let him sleep anymore. And, like all folks in such a situation, he drew the wrong conclusion: he blamed the Whisky for it when it undoubtedly was the sand. Whisky, people say, is fluid sunlight, but when you wake up like this, it becomes the deadly poison it is. Sunlight poisoned with the Devil's Sand.

It all happened so suddenly. The two friends sat together on the porch. It was a warm evening, still more spring than summer. They would meet like this for years after a day of hard work in the melon fields, mainly at Jeff's place. They would drink Whisky and talk about politics and melons until they would be tired enough to fall into bed. This was so much a routine that their wives one day joked they'd leave because the men had each other. And one day, they did. Will's wife left a note, cursing Jeff and saying she couldn't watch him drink to death. Will never heard from her again.

The two men were devastated, but they arranged quickly. The Devil must have laughed at the sight of them while the empty bottles piled around them, even falling off the porch from time to time. Sometimes, they felt bad and regretful, but they already had so much sand in their brains that their thoughts were jammed. Sometimes, they would even forget they had a bed and start to sleep on the porch. Sometimes, they would forget to eat and only drink instead. They were happy man, except the sand slowed their thinking.

Then, that one night came.

Will drank too much that night, and his stomach could not hold the liquor. He stumbled off the porch, retching into the close dog roses. When he came back to the table, pale and trembling, something changed. He stared at his hands, which held his glass for minutes, silent.

"This is the last drink," he told Jeff, with a firm voice, and raised his glass with shaky hands. "I'm done with Whisky."

Jeff sat in silence; the words hit him by surprise. After all they'd been through, Will was leaving him. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to laugh with. Just him, the old table, and the endless bottles. Jeff wanted to speak, to say anything, but the sand wouldn't let him.

He wanted to beg Will to stay, to make a deal, maybe one bottle a day. Sand jammed his thoughts and left only silence. In that absence of any thoughts, something else grew. What was the point of this life without drinking with Will? That's all they had.

Jeff stared at Will, and in him, the biting sense of betrayal turned to anger, except it was no anger but the sand. And anger twisted into pity. Pity for this fool who thought he could walk away from all this, what they had.

"Fool," he thought, "foolish idiot."

Jeff stood and walked inside. He grabbed his shotgun from the corner and returned to the porch without saying a word. Will was staring into his empty hands when Jeff pulled the trigger. The sound of the shotgun echoed through the fields like rolling thunder. Will's head exploded like a ripe melon, and blood and brains splattered across the table and the porch.

Jeff sat back down and stared at the mess that once was his friend. Only for one second, he could feel the Devil's Sand. "Poor Will," he muttered again and emptied his glass. Then, he reached for the bottle, adding more of the sand to his brain.