FFM 2022 2: Deadly Glasses

Challenge: A phobia should be the plot’s central theme and any genre is fine. Optionally, the first and last sentences both should be 13 words long.

I wrote about methyphobia, also known as the fear of alcohol.

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The glasses glimmer like disco balls, beckoning their victims to come get poisoned. No matter where I look, the crystal glimmers at me, trying to blind me and make me slip. Make me give in. Make me take the deadly shot.
“C’mon, man, it’s just a drink. These guys serve non-alcoholic stuff, too. Just take a water if nothing else; you look stupid without a glass,” they say, trying to push a glass of some clear liquid — either water or that toxic stuff they call a drink — into my hands. I recoil. I cannot take the risk of it being alcoholic. If I drink it, I’ll die. That’s what happened to Grandma years ago. Or maybe I’ll kill someone else like Dad did. Alcohol kills. Sometimes it kills the drinker, sometimes it kills someone else. I can’t die nor kill, especially not because of that poison.

They laugh at me. They don’t understand. They are enthralled by that poison and there’s nothing I can do to make them snap out of their madness.

I have to escape. If I stay, the temptation of the glasses will overcome me. It overcame Grandma and Dad, so it will overcome me too if I stay.

I have to run now, before it’s far too late to stop me.