It had taken years for him to save for the trip. Having done so, having gone so far to the United Kingdom, there was only one logical place for him to go. He waited for it patiently. He went on the castle ruins tours with his friends, and even found the vaults of Glasgow compelling, but they were not what he was there for. He met the Scottsspags. Payne and P3nt being ornery yet jocular over pints, Pixie charming while she sipped her own beer and watched the men spar and joke. Even – (Cain), whose depth he felt somewhat cheated by. A pub discussion could never possibly cover all the topics they could have gotten into you see, but it was excellent to meet him all the same.
Having born these distractions, on their third day, they finally visited his Mecca. The tour group wound slowly through the distillery, the guide highlighting the history, production methods, and apparatus at each stop in a practiced tone only hinting at boredom. On one catwalk, he paused. They were so close to the stills here, he could smell the fumes of the liquor wafting up, barest bits of steam tantalizingly close. He leaned out slightly then farther. Was that smokiness inherent in the batch before it's soaking in charred oak? Was it more an aging of the peaty flavors? He was certain he could tell, if he could just lean farther for another sniff...
Three minutes, and one room later, they finally noticed he was missing. His lady friend commented on it, but was assured he'd catch up. It wasn't until the tasting room at the end of the tour that they finally sent someone back for him. Then began the general search. By that time, his corpse, overcome with the fumes and drowned in the freshly distilled scotch, was already piping away. A policeman might have noticed his face as it drifted by that one inspection port. Maybe he did, but wrote it off as momentary fancy.
If you'd say they never found the body, you wouldn't be entirely right. They did, decades hence, pickled and crammed in the back of that one barrel, just drained for bottles of "Balvenie 30 year cask". They noticed, 12 years after when the first few bottles hit the shelves, that odd moist mineral and smog hint to an otherwise reliable and clean scotch. The people of Southern Massachusetts found it familiar, but never quite put their finger on WHY. Connoisseurs commented on the odd quality to that year, of course, and it became something of a curiosity. For the present years, they always wondered where he went, and how a person could vanish so suddenly and completely.
Then again, people vanish all the time.
:lulz:
NOT THE BALVENIE! :horrormirth:
:mittens:
:cry: Will miss EoC...
:mittens:
Nicely done Richter!
I am a thing of mercy.
He wrote me as choking out in a hoodie under the heat lamps of a 7-11 hot dog stand.
Quote from: Richter on April 27, 2011, 05:19:05 PM
I am a thing of mercy.
He wrote me as choking out in a hoodie under the heat lamps of a 7-11 hot dog stand.
This is the way he'd've wanted to go... :cry:
Almost right, Richter, but EoC actually died choking on steel cut oats after laughing hysterically at his own memorium.
DRINK MY JUICES, FOLKS, SCOTCH IS ON ME. :lulz:
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on April 27, 2011, 06:58:47 PM
Almost right, Richter, but EoC actually died choking on steel cut oats after laughing hysterically at his own memorium.
DRINK MY JUICES, FOLKS, SCOTCH IS ON ME. :lulz:
1) :x
2) :x :lulz: :x :horrormirth:
This is as good as an old fashioned WOMP duel!
(MOAR!) :lulz:
Response up. :argh!:
:mittens:
The wind whipped outside the house as I sat still, the glass, held firm, yet gentle in my hand. I brought it to my lips and inhaled, letting the aroma fill my sinuses before moving, letting the liquor run to my lips for one exquisite taste.
Warm, vaguely smoky, and the slightly chlorinated mineral taste of New Bedford tap water. They said it had an abnormal mercury content, trace amounts or arsenic and formaldehyde too. Well, at my age that was hardly going to hurt.
I started out into the epochal darkness that only an ocean side storm in New England autumn can. Driving raw rain, cold and wet that would defy any insulation outside. The sound of the rain slashed off the windows, and howled around the house. I sat inside on one of the many chairs arranged around the old iron woodstove that had served in the house for decades now, reflecting back on when we had moved it in. Almost the same time as this scotch was put down. Almost the same time as he was put down in it.
It had been thirty years since. After EoC had vanished we all went on, continued to where we were now. Few were still alive who remembered things as they had been, who knew him back then. Partly out of a habit, partly out of memory for him, I'd put aside a bottle of Balvenie. "So we've got something to drink when the bastard shows back up". It had become a yearly habit, and well, we knew now.
I'd invited the others, of course. Those who were still left. They were still travelling though, and would understand me marking the day he vanished without them. So that was what I get for living this long. Certainty of another friend gone, dark, storm, and scotch.
Some of us would relish a draught of this stuff, I knew. Some would refuse it. Some would insist on having some even though condition and age made it so they likely should not.
I looked down at the amber liquor. Was it cannibalistic to drink this? Perhaps. Then again the Catholics claimed to eat more flesh and blood every Sunday than I'd ever get from this bottle. A homoerotic urge then, to consume an old male acquaintance? Hah! In my youth I might have bristled at that, but I was hardly waxing Hemmingway. No, this was memorial. Consume the dead, drink in of their life and their example, remember them, and go on.
"Beats the alternative." The words of another old friend reminded me.
Beats the alternative...
O jesus o god. You didn't just--
!!!
You did, didn't you!
BAD RICHTER! VERY BAD! :lulz:
:mittens:
...
(reminds me of the weed movie where the dudes smoked out with their friend's ashes and became really smart)
Ahaha :vom: hahahaha
Holy shit.
:mittens:
Aaand for reference purposes:
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=29009.0 (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=29009.0)
THIS SHIT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!
ETA: Set me up a glass. Neat, of course.