The sight of the rumpled bedcovers increased his fury. The night was ruined, tainted, the idea of stepping in and escaping gone, replaced by the ugly and brutal reality that escape was ever elusive. He had thought perhaps tonight he’d sketch after he drank, had been feeling a pleasing tug of creativity, but it was all shattered by the sheets, soft and yellow with age, disheveled and stained.

Reaching over, he tore the sheets completely off and tossed them in the corner of the room. Mouth dry, he undid his shirt collar and sat in his chair, sighing. He felt tired all the time, his human body protesting the abuse he rendered it. His tray was next to him—pipe, glass, spoon all waiting. The bottle. Gabriel unstopped it, poured from it until the tumbler was half-full, and reached for his spoon, the sugar already carefully resting in its well. The shaking in his hands had stopped, and he focused with total clarity on the task, body tingling with anticipation, heart beating faster. When he poured water over the spoon, the liquid in the glass below kicked up a deliciously beautiful cloud, and he watched it, appreciating the swirls and ebb and flow as the absinthe turned a milky white. While it stirred and mixed and mesmerized, he struck a match and lit his pipe. The opium took him down into a relaxing languor, the absinthe pulled him back up into sparkling awareness. Together the two gave him a shade shy of bliss. Between draws on his pipe, the first glass went back smoothly, settling into his limbs and easing the ache. The second he drank just as fast, and by the time he was pouring and stirring the third, a cloud of smoke rising around him, blurring his vision and his brain, he remembered Anne, and beckoned her to him.

She went onto her knees in front of him, undid his trousers, and stroked his bare flesh as he relaxed back, eyes closed, glass in hand. He sipped and reached, seeking the sharpness of mind, the sense of confidence, of clarity, the absinthe brought. It was ironic that escape could be achieved by such pure and clear thinking. Gabriel felt more intelligent when he was in the bottle, more rational, more decisive. Perhaps the night could satisfy him after all.

Anne was caressing him with her hands, the tip of her tongue, the moist inside of her mouth, and the pleasure was acute, bright and crystallized, right. Opium, absinthe, and Anne, and he was almost out of his mortality, could almost reach the pinnacle of perfection that he had known as an angel.