Goodbye

by ALC Punk!

But then, Withnail wasn’t here to tell him that was he? Ever since Marwood’d gotten that part, he’d continued to rise and never looked back. Never saw Withnail again. He’d cleaned up, hadn’t had any ‘recreational’ substances in almost a decade. He did go out every now and then with the crowd, and drink a few. But nothing like it’d been. Sometimes he wondered if he missed it. Sometimes he knew he did.

Cherry’d showed him the newspaper earlier, with the picture of the dead man, as he arrived for rehearsal. "Used ta know this guy din’t ya, lovie?" She’d asked. He’d nodded, silently.

He was glad they weren’t on that night as he was certain it would have affected his performance.

A beggar came up to him, sloshed, and begging for more cash, *So he can go and get more drunk.* Marwood knew. He wondered if Withnail had been like this towards the end. Prolly not. Withnail had always had a little too much pride to beg.

Ten years it had been. Since that day that he’d left, and looked back and seen Withnail. Just standing there in despair. He’d guessed then how it’d end up.

He stood there smoking. He took a long drag then held it in one hand, and began. He declaimed the monologue from Hamlet. It’d always been the speech Withnail’d loved the most. *And he’ll never get to say it again.* he thought, stumbling in his delivery a bit. Then his voice firmed and he continued.

"To be or not to be? That is the question.."

A hit and run. He wondered if the police would catch the driver. He wondered if the report that the man had stepped out into the way of the car was true. He rather thought it was.

He finished the cigarette, dropped it and crushed it under his foot.
"Goodbye, Withnail. You’d’ve been proud of me.. I finally got that part we were always talking about."
Silence.
He turned and went back into the pub, back to the rest of the crew from this year’s production of Hamlet.

Finis.