Obstacles by Damian Pullen

Everything has gone: my clothes, phone, wallet, wristwatch, passport. I stare at my bare feet, soft and white.  They took my shoes, even my socks. Probably just kids. You crash out, dead drunk, and in the night they strip you.  No mercy.  Not that I deserve it.  I remember nothing, not even the name of the town, but here I am, on a park bench in my underwear, the morning sun already burning.
 
People walking past glance at me, the empty bottle, then away.  Some come back the other way, laughing.  I stagger blindly across the grass and vomit in the flowerbed.  This time yesterday we were together, on the first day of our make-or-break holiday, in a luxury campervan.  Now I’m alone, nearly naked, puking in a public place, in a foreign country, and I stink of piss.  Yes, I pissed myself.  I was that drunk.  I needed to be.  She drove off and left me, like you abandon a dog.
 
I see what she’s doing.  I know I’m going to have to beg.  I gasp, spit, retch again.  Nothing’s left now except white pain throbbing behind the eyes. I need a drink of water and a shower, clean clothes, a coffee, food, money, a bed. Most of all, water.  I want to crawl into the bushes and hide for a while, but the bark chips dig into my hands and knees, so I stumble back into the merciless sunlight, collapse and curl up on the spiky grass, crying.

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