“it was full,” he says. “just bursting.”

his hat was soaked, drops forming at the dip in its brim. sufficiently fattened they’d fall, one by one to the concrete, their individuality lost in the millimeter-deep puddles there, like cult members.

“and thank god it’s over.”

another year gone, another digit flipped, another micron calcified on the stalagmite of self.

“what do mean, thank god it’s over?” it asks good-naturedly. it wriggles about as it asks though it ought not to. it knew what he meant.

“you know what i meant.” he manages. his tongue feels giant, a wet wad in his mouth, tracing the edge of a hundred teeth at once. the rain is unstoppable. his socks are wet. the paper bag in his hand clings tight to its bottle.

“you realize time does not stop on january 1st walter. nothing has actually changed.” it says this matter-of-factly. it does not mean to be cruel.

“you know what i meant.” he repeats with even less feeling if that’s possible. what comes out sounds like “yuh-noh temint.”

“it’s just that the whole thing is so unsubstantial. demarcating one discrete portion of time, titling it, filing it away from the rest; as if the act of re-numbering actually created a new reality. these lines are drawn specifically to cross…”

“please, please, stop talking.” he interrupts. “i have to sit down.”

he does not so much sit down as crumble into pile right there beside the road. his wet coat makes a slapping sound on the sidewalk. his bottle clanks against the curb but does not break.

“careful!” it complains, twisting its prostomium away from its anus, setae bristling.

walter isn’t listening, propped there on one elbow, his eyes closed. headlights and neon flash his eyelids. he imagines a massive sun burning off its hydrogen into helium and wonders whether the aliens who live nearby must talk in those funny high-pitched balloon voices.

“anyway, as i was saying,” it continues “you might argue a case for the astronomical basis of calendars, going as far back as the babylonian through the julian and the current gregorian, thus inferring a concrete meaning for these subdivisions you romanticize, but in point of fact…”

the rain is falling hard against the back of walter’s hand. the paper bag is disintegrating and peeling away from the bottle he’s holding. it feels as if it were molting, the shed skin flopping over his knuckles; bunching between his fingers. a group of revelers on the opposite side of the street are singing and blowing plastic horns.

“...january 1st has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary. the calendar attempts to follow the tropical year, but to make a strong argument for a deeper significance i’d say you’d also need to take the equinoxes and solstices into account, not to mention synodic months…”

walter feels sick.

christ he thinks, what time is it?

he opens his eyes in a futile attempt to steady the wobbly world, he may as well be sitting on a waterbed, strapped to a spinning helicopter blade, itself connected to a out of control ferris wheel. he looks at his wrist but he’s not wearing a watch.

“...i suppose i understand the desire.” an involuntary shudder moves over its segments. ” the new year as a clean slate. the chance to begin again, to start over and do it all better. the notion of progress. the feeling of being part of the continuum. a witness to history. etc. there is a certain naive poetry to the whole thing. the dancing, the libations, the saccharine old songs. i imagine the familiarity of the ceremony is comforting.”

walter shudders as well.

“isn’t it somewhat ironic walter that each new year is celebrated in exactly the same way? the desires for tradition and renewal butting heads as it were…”

strange guttural sounds answer, as walter’s stomach clenches into a sailor’s knot and he hunches over, vomiting against the back tire of a honda mini-van. he sets the bottle down and vomits a second time, then a third; a long thick line of spittle composed of equal parts saliva, bile, and fermented agave stretches from his lower lip to the road.

“...whoa. you alright walter? you still with me there champ?”

he groans and lays his forehead against the cool wet blacktop. directly in front of him, two inches from his nose, is the bottle. its protective bag has totally disintegrated by now. walter looks at it a bit dazed. looks at its gold label. looks at the sun icon, the red and black lettering. 

“walter?” it asks sounding concerned.

he closes his eyes. he imagines something is looming over him. its a huge tapir, balanced improbably on its back legs. holy sheet! it looks angry. it’s eyes are beady but wild. what’s it doing?! walter thinks, horrified. it’s pissing gasoline all over walter’s chest, that’s what. and in one nostril of its prehensile nose it’s holding a lit match.

his eyes snap open. he sees the words monte alban hovering in front of him on the bottle. it’s nearly empty. he realizes he is quite literally laying in the gutter, in the rain, beside a pile of his own vomit. he looks at the juicy worm which seems to wriggle about in that last warm inch of mescal.

“parties over dude.” he mumbles, grabbing the bottle and tipping it sideways toward his mouth. it sound like “ptsys o-er’dd.”

between the sounds of his palm slaps, tapping hard at the bottle’s bottom, he can just make out the over-talkative worm’s last words before falling into the shuddering gastric tumult that lay below-

“¡sí y Feliz Año Nuevo a usted también, usted mono mudo pobre!” it said, tumbling toward the uncertain future.