The Day After

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Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.

- Robert Benchley

 

 

 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

 

“Whu-?! What’s going on?!” A confused Adrian rolled over in bed.

 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

 

He slammed his hand on the alarm clock and clutched his head.

 

“Hangover!”, he yelled. “Hangoverrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”. He buried his face in his pillow. It was only then that he noticed the pink lipstick marks on it.

 

“Where did you come from?” He asked the stain. Then he looked to his left, a card from a modeling agency with contact details lay next to where the clock had been (it had mysteriously been knocked to the floor). Written on the card in deliciously neat handwriting were two words and a signature “Call me, Kathryn”.

 

Adrian thought very hard and finally managed to say “So that’s what her name was!” although it came out sounding a lot more like “Shotat water namosh”. After a few minutes of grumbling and groaning, he got out of bed, pulled on some trousers and a T-Shirt from his brother’s cupboard and sloped into the living room.

 

“Oh…no”, he squeaked. The house was littered with bottles, plates of food and various slumbering people. Stains were all over the carpet, a chair had been broken, this was bad. So Adrian did what any manly man would do in this situation, he ran away. He moved to the front door as fast as he could, hopping over a Denobulan with a party hat on and a Vulcan that was clutching onto a bottle marked “Giovanni Vineyards” as if it was a newborn baby and stepped outside. Once there he breathed in the fresh air and tried to think how he’d be able to explain this one to Charlie. There was no way that abomination inside could be cleaned up, it was impossible. At best it would look like a bomb had hit it.

 

However, Adrian’s train of thought was interrupted. Catching a sight of something white, he noticed that an envelope lay on the doorstep in front of him with a large Starfleet insignia on it and the heading “Lieutenant Adrian Images”. He picked it up, ripped it open and attempted to read whilst a headache pounded at his brain.

 

Lieutenant Images,

We have attempted to reach you through the normal channels but to no avail. We know however, that you are staying at this residence so we have decided to inform you in this manner that it is imperative that you contact the quartermaster’s office immediately in order to have the items you propose to take aboard the Starship Challenger NX-05 examined and okayed before its departure date on the 12th of September. You must do this the moment you-

 

It was at this point that Adrian’s mind began to wander as he began to wonder where his brother kept his painkillers. Oh and where he could order a taxi for the people who had colonized the interior of the house. He walked back inside. Then he began the process of cleaning himself up, before rounding the sleepers up, then sending them home before taking a tablet or two. With the casa now empty, Adrian scanned the destruction and filth before him as he rolled up his sleeves and knew there was only one thing he could do to solve this mess.

 

So, without doing a bit of cleaning up, he packed all his gear together and leaving the front door key with Mr. Escobar, headed to the nearest cheap hotel, booked a room up till the 12th and after having some breakfast in the restaurant, began to write a reply to the quartermaster.

 

It was Adrian’s opinion, that the prospect of deep space travel, meeting deadly species and possibly facing death seemed completely safe in comparison to attempting to clean that ungodly mess up. Anyway, Charlie wouldn’t mind at all, it was only a little mess…if you closed your eyes and held your nose.