Noir Monologue II

The sun came up like a cheap trick. Loud, gaudy, and way too early. It stabbed through the filthy blinds and landed right between my eyes. My head throbbed in time with the cheap neon outside, and every pulse was a reminder that I’d made it through another night when maybe I shouldn’t have.

She was still there... one leg out from under the blanket like a crime scene half-covered. I couldn’t remember her name, just that she laughed too loud and drank like she was trying to drown something. We had that in common. A smudge of lipstick on my pillow, a shadow in my bed. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t care. Names complicate things. And complications are just another way this city can get its claws in you.

The air stank of sweat, stale bourbon, and something else I couldn’t quite place... regret maybe. I stumbled to the sink, ran cold water, stared into the mirror and didn’t like what looked back. Just a pair of tired eyes in a face that’d seen too much and felt too little.

Out there, beyond the glass and grime, the city. It doesn’t wake up, it comes to. Like a old drunk with a busted lip, swearing this time it'll be different. But it never is. It’s all alleys and ashtrays, broken elevators and broken promises. But I know better. The city doesn’t forgive. It remembers. Filing things away, waits until you’re alone at 3 am and then whispers your sins back to you. And I was still here, which meant I was still part of the problem.

I lit a cigarette because what the hell, one more nail in the coffin wasn’t gonna change the view. And as I stood there, the hangover coiling inside my skull like a loaded gun and watching the smoke curl like a ghost looking for a way out I wondered... not for the first time, how many more mornings I’d have to crawl through before one of them didn’t let me out the other side.