He took the crystal decanter in his father’s office that was a third full of whisky to the solarium and sat back on one of the reclining chairs, resting the XDM on the table beside him. The whisky burned his throat and bloomed like a hot explosion in his stomach. He’d drank only a handful of times in his life, all of them under the supervision of his father, most of them on holidays and then only a glass or two of beer. The whisky was something else. It had a life of its own, plowing into his veins like hot oil. His skin tingled and the objects around him softened, their edges rounding more with each sip. A heavy weight was in the middle of his skull, pulling his head downward, but he fought against it, tipping it back to pour more of the amber liquid into his mouth. When there was only a thin layer of whisky on the bottom of the decanter, he threw it aside. It didn’t shatter as he’d expected it to but cracked neatly in half. The booze leaked onto the tile looking like a watery bloodstain.
