Flash Fiction

Whiskey

The Vignette Gazette Edition #116 — kept

2 min readMar 16, 2026

Minimalist pencil illustration of a small whiskey glass with melting ice on a light background, quiet atmosphere and large empty space symbolizing reflection and solitude. — Illustration for **“Whiskey”** — Pavel Piatrou

I was a regular at that bar. Every evening I came in, took the seat at the end of the counter, and asked for a whiskey with ice.

I looked into the golden, chilled drink. I never drank it right away. I liked watching the whiskey surround the ice, and as it slowly melted, I saw in it the flow of life — a life gradually diluted with ordinary water.

For a long time now, I have felt nothing but emptiness.

I couldn’t remember the moment when I had lost what mattered most to me. The part of me that once filled life with color — the one that knew my desires, my fears, my feelings.

Now my life was filled with nothing but this golden, burning drink. It warmed me for a short while, but it never healed the wound of loss.

“Another one.”

I never stopped at one glass. As if the second one could solve something. Of course, it solved nothing.

Yet I repeated the ritual again and again. Every day. In the same bar.

Setting the empty glass, with a shard of ice still inside it, on the counter, I stepped outside.

And instead of taking my usual way home, I simply followed the sound.

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A street musician was playing Bach’s Chaconne from Partita №2.

I stood there and listened. My eyes grew moist.

And suddenly, for the first time in many years, I realized I hadn’t lost my soul after all.

I had only buried it under years of whiskey and silence.

For the first time in many years, I didn’t want to go back to the bar.

Maybe my soul had never left me at all.

Maybe it had simply kept waiting.

Sometimes the soul does not disappear.
It simply waits until the noise becomes quiet enough to be heard again.

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