Lesley Boland #24 hangover

The back yard depressed him.  Overgrown grass.  A hills hoist.  A rusting shed.  Palings falling off the shabby fence.  Everything had been intense the previous night.  A fucked-up piece of work.  Himself and the night.  He had sneered and shouted and pissed in the bushes.  He had drunk beer after beer after beer after beer.  He had lit his next cigarette off the butt of the previous.  The lights of the house had blazed out into the darkness and the world had watched.  

But now, what world?  Possums and crickets, maybe a feral cat.  Neighbours rolling over in their beds and adjusting their ear-plugs.  Neighbours who, before breakfast and getting their kids ready for soccer, had scouted their yards and thrown the empty beer bottles back over the fence.  Not that he cared.  Stupid breeders.  But where was his applause?  Where was the world that worshipped?  It had been so tangible last night; just beyond the edge of his field of vision.  Now he saw clearly a dull suburban landscape and a dehydrated trek to the nearest bus stop.  Glaring cement footpaths.  Rude terriers.  Crappy print curtains in all the closed windows of all the brick houses.  He didn’t even know what suburb he was in.