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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina .
Seated at the head of an empty table, Mr. Dreemurr held a near-empty glass in front of his face. His reflection stared back at him with alcohol-influenced cheeks rather than the usual pallor that defined him these days. He shut his eyes; he couldn’t stand to stare any longer. Lightly and slowly, he brought the glass up to his lips and sipped the very last of its contents. For his entire life, the floral aromas of various products from the faraway Vineville made wine his preferred drink. Beer was noticeably worse, and he’d never been a man for liquor. Tonight, however, he’d had a glass of vodka mixed with lemonade. The sweet and sour notes of the lemonade served no purpose other than to drown out the intense bitterness of the spirit. With the hope of forgetting the night, he drank every drop. The glass made a mighty thud upon colliding with the table.
Eyeing the small remnants of alcohol which his dining partners — his wife and the Holiday couple — had left, Asgore stood. The room was dim and shadowy, as the lights from the front room of the store didn’t provide much in the way of illumination, and one of the bulbs in the back had been broken for some time. He would have asked Rudy to help him replace it, but Mr. Holiday’s health was waning, and Asgore thought it best not to put such a task on a man who would likely require inpatient care within the week. He picked up Rudy’s glass from the table. Holding it to his nose, he smelled the distinctive odor of the reindeer’s signature peppermint schnapps. In terms of alcohol content, it was probably even stronger than the vodka. There were just a few drops left, not even comprising a twentieth of the volume. It made sense why; Carol had refused to buy any since he started to get worse. This dinner was probably his last chance to have any for a while. That’s why Asgore had bought it, after all. He tilted the glass up and downed the contents.
The minty taste was so strong that he could only compare it to one other occasion. A few weeks after Dess disappeared, Rudy had come by the precinct at quarter before two in the morning. He was holding a massive bag of bite-sized peppermint cookies. Asgore remembered every word.
“Hey, big guy. I saw from the lights that you were working late, so I thought I’d bring you some of these.”
Asgore graciously accepted, and bit into one of the treats. They tasted as though they were more mint than bread. Rudy took another as he sat down across from the detective. He hesitated before speaking, slowly and uncertainly.
“You know, you don’t have to stay here so late.”
“Well, I might have found a lead. And… it’s important.”
“An actual lead?” Rudy inquired while raising an eyebrow.
“Well, just a connection to someone in Bigtown that saw someone who looked like her. But… maybe?”
“Is it worth staying up till two in the morning for? God, I remember when you’d do this in college. It’d be four AM before the night of a test, and you’d act like studying would help more than sleep would. Come on.”
“College… those days were nice, weren’t they?”
“They really were. Before all the drama of having busy lives. Before we…”
Rudy’s sentence trailed off into nothingness.
“Do you think we made the right choices?”
“We were college kids, man. Hell no.”
“But, what would it have been like if we made different ones?”
“I don’t know. We probably wouldn’t be sitting here at two in the morning.”
Asgore smiled before standing up and shutting his briefcase.
“Fine. Let’s walk home.”
He extended his hand to Rudy, who shook it enthusiastically. The two walked home together that foggy morning. From the morning Dess was declared missing until now, neither of them had smiled. Asgore woke up with the scent of peppermint overpowering his breath.
Asgore slammed the glass back onto the table. Miraculously, it did not crack. His spine cracked as he rose from the seat. Rounding the table, his fingers tapped the ash table one by one; his mind moved from thought to thought in time. His pinky finger fell, and he thought about how it’d really just been one night. The ring finger followed, shifting his mind to the regret that it wasn’t anything more. The sound of his middle finger softly tapping against the wood brought a reverberation of half-thoughts he’d always suppressed: whether it having been “anything more” meant he’d have a better life now. And with a shake of his head and the work of his index finger, those doubts were cast away. He picked up Mayor Holiday’s glass, holding the kind of fancy champagne she’d always loved. It wasn’t as empty as Rudy’s had been, but there wasn’t much to drink. He threw his head back. A mouthful of flat wine spilled into his throat.
Last year, when they made him quit the force, he was sitting in this very room. There wasn’t any wine, and the buzzing incandescent bulbs in the ceiling hadn’t broken yet. He sat before a giant stack of papers, full of terms about leases, rents, profits and losses. The Mayor sat on the other side of the table. Her grimace pierced through him. As he flipped through the papers, she smiled.
“The rent’s on the third page. I think it’s really quite a good deal.”
“It is, Carol. It’s a lot better than I deserve, probably. I just…”
Purposefully, she let out an exacerbated and lengthy sigh. Her hand found its way to cover her face and, as though choreographed to provide a perfect view to her icy teal eyes, her fingers opened.
“What, Asgore?”
“I just feel like, if I had a little more time…”
“No! It’s over. No more time! You can sign this, or I can just kick you off with no alternative.”
His massive thumb clicked the pen twice, before pressing it again hesitatingly. He put it up to the paper and signed his name. He stood up and began to pace the room, inspecting every aspect of this odd back room. He was now the sole owner of the Flower King. Carol stood to shake his hand, before remarking:
“Congratulations. Rent is due on the first.”
“Well- that’s in a week! I don’t have any time to get my affairs in order?”
“You’re the one that signed.”
He slammed the glass down. This time, the base chipped. His eyes glanced at the space around him: his cot, the half-opened bags of dirt, the broken bulb he couldn’t replace. He loved the flowers, but hated the management; every day he had to swallow his sense of generosity to accept payment for those beautiful plants. Asgore had to consume his pride as well, after he couldn’t find her. He knew that, if he just had a few more months, he’d be able to. But no one was willing to entertain it anymore. Finally, he moved to the place opposite his own: the spot where Toriel was seated. He lifted her glass of red wine. It was still near full. As he sipped, he realized why: it was the greatest he’d ever tasted. His hand started to shake at this fact. In his pensive mixture of fury and shame, the glass slipped out of his hand.
Yesterday, they were screaming about something he didn’t even remember. It might have been some stupid prank Kris pulled that messed up the plumbing, or worries about paying for Asriel’s college, or him bringing up the Dess case again. Whatever it was, the reason for the argument didn’t matter. What mattered was that Kris wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Asriel hid in his room. And Toriel was shaking when he raised his voice. The fear in her eyes made him realize he was closer to an animal than a monster. So he slept in the Flower King last night.
The glass shattered. Red splatters covered the table. He glanced down to look at the mess, and thought they looked like poppies. In the front room a few minutes later, he found himself collecting as many of those scarlet flowers as they could. He had much to mourn, after all.