The Beauty of the Desolate - Intro: An Exploration of Circular Habit

He awoke abruptly in his chair. The first thing he noticed was the headache. The familiar morning pain of a night spent drinking. His eyes blinked slowly and heavily, his hands resuming their normal resting place on his thighs. His ragged brown shirt was left unbuttoned at the top and his feet were still wearing their usual dusty boots. Rubbing the numbness from his eyes, he gazed stupidly around the house. It was a prison from which he never could drink enough to forget. He sat quietly for a moment, blinking the sleepy stupor from his eyes. With an angry grunt, he rose and stumbled to the sagging calendar on the wall and marked another X. Another day. The little calendar, his only companion in this wreck of a house, never went a day without one. Today, he marked the 365th. A year since she had left.

He trod sheepishly to the kitchen and groggily punched some buttons on an ancient coffee maker. The button tops that had long fallen off left exposed metal pieces sticking out like tiny metallic soldiers. The glass coffee pot was stained brown from lack of washes and the grimy residue of old coffee lined the inside. Within a few minutes, drops of the hot liquid fell reluctantly into the pot, mingling gingerly with the leftover grounds of yesterday’s batch.

He groaned, stretched his arms, and then bent to place his hands on either side of the sink. He tried unsuccessfully to recall last night, but his drunken haze prevented him from remembering anything but fragments. He assumed it was the same as all the others.

365. A whole year. His knuckles whitened as he clutched the sink. He kicked the cabinet underneath it. His rage intensifying, he grabbed the top dish in the rotting kitchen sink and threw it across the room. The little plate hit the window with a tiny explosion of glass and the pieces fell gravely to the floor. 

He walked back to his chair, sank, and, with another angry grunt, fell again into tumultuous slumber.