I came awake in the early morning hours of the long Spanish night. Sweat drenched my chest and loins, my legs shaking, my chest heaving up and down in panic as a scream teetered at my lips, the sound formed but not declared. The resultant effect of my dream, an often repeated affair, were the lasting images of my two girls being dragged from the dungeon which were still freshly imprinted on my awakening mind. The sharp sounds of the frenzied burst of the automatic weapons echoing in the stone room. The stitching of the high impact bullets across the front of my beloved, her blood splattering the stone walls as I stood helpless, bound and unable to change an outcome that brought my own mortal life to an end as far as I was concerned.

I glanced at the cheap clock on the table next to the small double bed. The apartment was not expensive, something a sailor might take with three weeks shore leave in front of him. Three fifty-eight the digital readout said. I glanced at the curtainless balcony window at the dark of the Barcelona night, the India ink sky punctuated by a few brave stars in the spring predawn hours along with a pale waning moon. I sat up and my right hand came to my chin and rubbed the stubble there. When had I shaved last? Two, maybe three days ago? No, longer than that. It was when I went to the American Express office to pick up the draft from my solicitors in Sydney. My bi-monthly indulgences, my self-allotted pittances. That was last week I realized, six days ago.

I still had money, lots of it. That was all I seemed to have now a days and I refused to be subjugated to the fortunes entrusted to me by so many dead people. Pamela, her mother, my ex-wife and her second husband and it seemed like a endless parade of ghosts had somehow inhabited my mind and now into my life pushing dollars at me and continuously whispering spend, spend, spend you'll feel better. How long would it take to make that promise come true? Never, my subconscious whispered back -- have a drink instead. Thank you, don't mind if I do, I answered without speaking.

I'd long ago cast money aside as a possible solution to my misfortune. It'd been almost a year since my life had stopped in that Seville dungeon. Ten months of relentless soul searching and alibi's about why this thing happened and how I should have been able to stop it. The last words reaching my ears as a final epitaph from my loved one's blood flecked lips, "You're not to blame, you never were." Right before that spark of life left her eyes and she became an empty basket of human flesh, soulless and lifeless.

I reached to the small nightstand without turning on the harsh brightness of the sixty-watt bulb on the nightstand, my hand shaking slightly, easily locating the rounded bottle of cheap rose, an honest Portuguese wine I'd made very close friends with over the recent years. My best friend, my only friend, I thought smiling to myself in the dark. I hefted the bottle noticing the lightness of the content and remembering I had downed most of the bottle upon arriving back from the corner bodega where I had drank away my nightly allowance of boozing money before staggering back to my home. Home. What a word for a three-room apartment over a bodega in the low rent area of Barcelona frequented by prostitutes and sailors.

My mind briefly flirted with some song lyrics from a singing duo who had been top of the charts in the rocking sixties or was it seventies? Something about a boxer in a clearing and then being in New York City and finding comfort from the whores down on Seventh Avenue. Or was it he couldn't get no comfort from those whores but tried anyway? Yea, I'd been there on too many lonesome nights. Taking the warm flesh of a hooker to my bed or hers to try and drive out just a few minutes of the loneliness that wracked my guts and tortured my mind. I am leaving, I am leaving but the fighter still remained, the words went or so I remembered them. That was me: still the fighter if just barely, here but unable to leave. God knows I've tried to leave, put the past away in a locked closet, never to be opened. Never. My skeletons, the worst kind. I thought of the young eight-year old, her arterial blood splattering against the tapestries in the stone walled room and I shuddered.

Pouring the reminder of the wine bottle contents into what looked like a almost clean glass or what passed for clean in my current living environment I took a deep sip letting the heady alcohol of the sweet wine do the thing I wanted so much. I needed that magic click when reality became such a blur I stumbled into the land of Nosh where spirits were of the alcohol type and not the ghastly non-human remains of my waking days and non-alcoholic nights. Alcoholics, of which I most assuredly was one yet undeclared to the civilized world, knew what I meant by the click. That magic button that turned the fears of living into the fears of dying without another drink. Alcoholics didn't get drunk, they simply never got sober.

I remember a buddy I had in the Army who finally told me he was an alcoholic. What surprised me was when we went out to drink I thought he'd drink me under the table before becoming drunk. Quite the opposite, he had such a high alcohol content stored up in his system all it took was one or two drinks and he was blotto. Blotto but not were he wanted to be, reaching for that click and bringing on all the horrors and problems of that damned demon rum. Somewhere between that first drink and the M.P.'s Billy clubs playing a tap dance on his head he'd come close but not reached that pinnacle he desired. His anger and madness launching him into combat with half the bar we were in. Unfortunately enough demons hopped aboard his alcoholic express to make the ride a nightmare and an impossible dream on many a night.

That was where I was now, ten months later, riding that impossible dream to oblivion. Never allowing myself to receive enough money to bring serious damage to myself, I'd kept this paupers existence intact for most of that time. The yacht, the Jilly named after my youngest daughter, was gone, auctioned off to some wealthy Middle Eastern potentate for his favorite son's twenty-first birthday. Couldn't bear the thought of being on board her without my unholy trinity; my girls and my woman. The sheik offered me a boat ride for the initial cruise bash that weekend, a final farewell cruise for me, promising young and nubile ladies of the European continent ready and willing to do my bidding to achieve a few shekels from the wealthy prince but I politely declined, handing my Spanish solicitor the draft and the bill of sale for his accountant and tax attorney to take care of.

That's all I was, a go between, handling the commerce of a dying empire as the only candle left flickered in the wind. This world was never meant for some one as beautiful as you, my Pamela, my mind suddenly spoke internally. Suddenly unbidden tears sprang from both eyes to trickle down my whisker-studded face. Crying, a trait I had developed quite nicely over the recent months, or was it years, thank you. Cry on demand just mention a few key names or think of a few key times in my life and they sprang forth. A virtual wishing well of teary cornucopia, unbidden and unwanted but issuing from the ground water of my eyes to sprinkle the gray colored sheets of my bed with morning dew. Aw shit, it's just the alcohol, I reasoned. I'm nothing but a drunken old bastard that can't even face the morning of the day without a drink or two. Pitiful old bastard. ......(cont)