Hope and Jack

The following is a short story that was designed to help me kick start my creative writing a bit more. The idea was given to me by a fellow writer and friend, to write a short story of 300 words. Now, I went a bit over by 14, but it felt good to just write. Not try to steer anything, or dig to shape the ideas in my mind. So, I figured I would share with you (or me I guess, since this is my journal).

He always liked his drink a bit much. Too much I think. In times of hardship, the few friends he may have managed to attain were no match for a bottle of Jack Daniels and his utter self-contempt. Embittered, he’d curse them for leaving after cursing them for not giving him space. His excoriations would taste like menthol and madness, and sounded like the ranting of the possessed at the height of being exorcised. Nostrils would flare like the snout of an enraged dragon, as a slow mass of cancerous smoke spiraled out of his body in thin grey wisps. Teeth stained with a dingy yellow by nicotine, hard living and regret, he gave off a constant look of disdain and consternation, even in moments of happiness. Despite all of this, he gave in the most fundamental ways to the few he loved. The children he raised may have had little to do with him in his waning years, but the grandchildren got all that was good in him. They were his moments of love and sobriety. Too proud to admit his failings as he a father, he was determined to find salvation in his love for them. He gave them a link to an older value system, one that was tried and true. He gave them happy hello’s and tearful goodbyes, as they seemed to take all that was holy with them upon departing. But most of all, he would give them hope. Upon his passing, he didn’t have much worth passing along—a few baseball cards, tarnished medals of valor, tucked away, neglected in an old oak case. He left behind his house, and a sense of peace that never seemed to settle there for long. And as his children looked at their children, they hoped that he had finally found his peace between the bottles of jack, and his menthol cigarettes.