Days To Burn

DAYS TO BURN
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Jeez! His head was killing him! He'd just sprung into existence at midnight, the very instant after the old geezer had croaked. Baby 2007 had grabbed his first glass of champagne at one second old and hadn't stopped drinking until he was about five and a half hours. Had he really run around naked all night? Ah, hell, they were parties, right? It's not a good party if you don't have a story to tell afterward.

He crashed what, maybe sevenish? He hadn't been tired, necessarily, he hadn't been up the day before, but he was a baby and babies can only handle so much booze. Try it with yours, you'll see. Even so, 2007 could drink any baby under the table. He woke around five this afternoon, puking and throbbing and dry as a pressed flower. "I'll never drink again," he promised the spinning walls. And here he lay in the same crib, even now. Still throbbing, still regretting. The dry toast came back up a few minutes ago and then there were the dry heaves.

He hadn't seen a heck of a lot of daylight, his first day on earth, but that was okay. There'd be plenty of other days. He figured he had at least two-hundred great ones to come later on in the year. Two-hundred was a heck of a lot. What was one day? Looking out at the vast stretch of year before him, it seemed glorious, even in the wake of the his first drinking binge. He'd hit it hard tomorrow, leap out of bed and grab the bull by the horns and all that shit. And if he didn't, he'd do it the day after that. He had days to burn.