Snow in white sheets fell across the silent city, and piled in huge banks in the wide, empty streets, and the wind whipped up the flakes into a wicked frenzy, and the world, in frigid awe, looked out towards the snow and silently cursed the cold.
 
It was almost Christmas Eve, and all the stores across the city were open late to combat the surges of last minute shoppers, those who had waited too long, or those who had forgotten altogether, though the blizzard and unexpected drop in temperature kept most in doors, away from the howling wind and ice.
 
Few cold souls dared to wander those frozen, glacial streets, and those who did would later regret their decisions and head home in a rush after only half their errands had been run. And those, poor, unfortunate wretches living out on the streets cursed them in their heads, “Damn, lucky bastards.” They’d say and then they’d huddle under corrugated cardboard and old wooden crates to keep warm, anything to block out the damp, miserable cold.
 
One such wino, an older fellow, a man who had seen countless winters, didn’t bother to take shelter in any damn alley, he just kept walking. ‘Cuz he knew walking was the only way to keep death from knocking on your door, unless of course, death was what you really wanted, and in that case, he’d just laugh, ‘cuz walking out in the middle of a damn blizzard will do that to you too.
 
His feet were frozen solid and the soles of his shoes did little to stop the wafts of cold air from finding its way in, and his bones were brittle from malnutrition, and he smelled of urine and sweat and icicles hung from his beard and mustache.
 
And he pulled his knit hat tighter over his head as the wind blew fiercely around him, bitterly, and unforgiving, but the wino soldiered on, stepping through the miserable drifts of snow, his feet and legs slowly numbing from the cold.
 
“If death should take me,” he thought, “it should take me now.” And he sighed heavily, and groaned with disgust as a blast of ice and snow pelted his face and bare hands. He wanted nothing more than to die, die cowering in some drafty basement, or abandoned warehouse, die in a heap of rags with a bottle of some cheap alcohol clutched in his hands, as if the alcohol were some simple, all-powerful savior, a god that men had forgot.
 
All the old wino wanted was an old bottle to crawl into and die, his fingers held his coat closed, and he cursed his rotten, rotten luck.
 
Though despite the wino’s angry pleading, his luck was about to change, for there in the alley ahead of him, peeking out from beneath an old plastic milk crate, a bottle lay on its side, frosted and smoked, and the wino pushed his way closer, licking his frozen lips as he went.
 
A bottle was a bottle was a bottle.
 
And he lumbered towards the alley, picking up the bottle in his cold hands as he did, his eyes glowing as if he’d found the holy grail itself.
 
“Nicky, your miserable luck is about to change.”
 
The alley was not much warmer, though the buildings on either side did protect ol’ Nick the wino from the gusting wind and pelting snow, and he sat down behind a green metal dumpster, fingering the bottle as he did, a grin on his stupid face.
 
“The luck of the Irish, that’s what this is,” he said, “Whiskey, vodka, gin, it don’t matter. S’long as it takes the chill off these useless bones, s’long as I forget to feel.” And he popped the cork and put his lips to the spout, and waited, but nothing came.
 
“Empty?” He cursed, and was about to throw the whole foul thing against the brick wall when all of a sudden, a thick, dreamlike smoke began to pour from out from the bottle, like fog rolling in off the bay, and the wino squealed in fear, as the smoke, now spreading across the whole alley, began to form a man, and the man reached out for him with a strange, exotic grin.
 
“Ah, my master, it’s so good to see you.” The fog said, and the form shifted and the djinni in the smoke smiled, “Well,” he said, “then shall we begin?”
 
The wino backed up, closer to the cold, concrete wall behind him, his fingers clawing at the dirt below. The djinni approached, “You know how this goes, don’t you? Three wishes, that’s all you get, but three wishes can change your life, my master; and three wishes, let me say, can make you very happy indeed, especially for a man like yourself.”
 
The wino just fondled the bottle in his hands then, his grey eyes never leaving the face of the strange, smoke-like demon before him. He opened his lips to speak but no words came out, and he fumbled in his mind, searching for the keys to complete sentences, then he finally spoke, a toothless grin,  “The luck of the Irish, that’s what this is,” he said, “Whiskey, vodka, and gin, it don’t matter. S’long as it takes the chill off these useless bones, s’long as I forget to feel.”
 
And the djinni, with his large, exotic smile, with his arms spread wide, was more than happy to oblige.
 
_____
©2010 Michael Treder 
Michael Treder is a playwright and filmmaker currently living in Montreal. His short-stories have appeared in several online publications, such as the Cynic Online Magazine, Death Head Grin, and Quantum Muse.
 
www.michaeltreder.net
 

It was a sad, pathetic little hotel six and one quarter miles off the main drag, a rundown old lodge with two stories, the upper of which had caught fire sixty-six years ago, and had since never been reopened to the public. Business at the hotel was slow, as was expected, and the owners, now old and fragile, did their best to keep things light and sober, but depression comes in many forms, and the old man put a gun to his temple some years ago.
 
In darkness, Leon pulled his beater car into the hotel’s gravel parking lot, and the stones beneath the well-worn tires crunched and cracked. He staggered out of the car, an ominous, painful trickle of red blood ran down his pant leg and onto the stones below, and he turned a weary eye to the distant horizon line, hardly a glimmer, and he even managed a sigh as he turned to the hotel.
 
The skeleton behind the desk, bony and gaunt, was in reality, a thin, old woman of about ninety, her white hair tied back in a tight, painful bun. With dark eyes, distant and vague, Leon signed his name, and paid the money in slow, painful steps. She closed the register and looked away without even a hint of acknowledgement. His key was slid to him across the counter by her thin, needle-like fingers.
 
And Leon climbed the stairs dragging, his near useless leg behind, breathing heavily as he went.
 
His room was the first door on his left and he struggled with the latch because the key stuck from lack of use, but eventfully it opened once he put his weight into it, and it swung him into the room. He bit down so as not to cry out from the pain in his leg, and the door closed shut tight behind him.
 
The light in the room blinded him only temporarily, and his head began to hurt from the fake yellow glow of the light bulb, and over the lampshade he threw his coat, dulling the luminance immensely.
 
He gazed around the room, still squinting though the bedside lamp barely gave off a glow. His head pounded and even the shadows seemed too bright. The small room seemed no larger than a closet, a single bed pushed aside, a coffee-stained table and a toilet that sweat, leaving a cold, disgusting puddle on the green tile floor in the bathroom. It was a simple room, and he didn’t need much, his was a superficial existence. A last private sanctuary.
 
The 30-year-old wallpaper, as old as he was, the insect covered fly-paper hanging from the ceiling in the corner, and a miserable streaked window that faced east, it was as if it were meant to be. As if God himself had finally looked down upon the earth, and handpicked the little man, and said, “Tonight, I will make this man’s dreams come true.”
 
Leon couldn’t help but notice the sad irony. All his life, he’d fought, and scratched, and worked so Goddamned hard, worked his bloody fingers to the bone, and had never once received a lick, not once had things gone his way, had the stars ever aligned for him. But tonight, a night which would probably be his last night on earth, tonight things just seemed to click.
 
He should laughed, instead he threw up.
 
He already began to feel the changes in his body, the way he moved, the way his feet shuffled against the floor in half steps and his obvious reaction to light. He felt weaker, his bones hurt, his head spun, and his skin felt cool and clammy to the touch.
 
He stepped into the bathroom, small and crowded, a layer of mould along the beige tile of the wall in the corner behind the toilet, and he gazed at his faded reflection in the streaked mirror. He seemed so distant, out of body, like a copy of his former self. Like a sad, sorry alter ego.
 
Leon shuddered, his breath painful and short, and his eyes, now beady and sunken, darted towards the bloody wound in his throat. Hours ago, he had wrapped an old white sock with tape to stop the bleeding, but the sock was now a deep red and stained and a trail of blood ran down his neck and into his shirt, down his busted leg, down to the floor.
 
He ripped a hotel hand towel and applied pressure again to the wound, the pain was nauseating, his mind numb. He stepped back into the room, his head pounding, the light excruciating. He needed to sit down, he needed to relax, Leon needed to think.
 
But thoughts would not come; only memories, only sad, twisted memories.
 
How many had there been? Three? Four? Had there really only been one? His mind blurred, a jumble of misinformation, of misfiring synapses. He supposed that one was all it took. Pale and ugly, like a bat, or a human-like mole, wrinkly and gaunt, like the proverbial creature of the night he was. “Goddamned vampires,” he thought, “Goddamned mother-sucking vampires.”
 
And then he laughed, and there was nothing left to throw up.
 
He felt his body grow weaker, more tired, and the pain in his limbs was severe and it took all his strength to stand, and reach for the thin, rather transparent curtains, which he pulled aside. Far off in the distance, beyond the hills, Leon could see the first glimmer of sun peak over the horizon line, peak over the crest of the earth.
 
And Leon sunk back down onto the bed to wait, to await his chosen fate. “Not me,” he thought, “not me.” 
 
 ________________

©2010 Michael Treader

Michael Treder’s short tales of fiction have appeared in several issues of Quantum Muse and in the Cynic Online Magazine. He currently lives in Montreal.
 
http://www.michaeltreder.blogspot.com