I remembered the night I realised my fate. I awoke standing in front of one of the rows of a vending machine at night. Alive with both the spirit of the company and the zeitgeist of the world around me. The first thing I saw a pretty young redhead woman with her friends, staring and pointing at me, and I could hear faint voices in front of the vending machine glass, the last one perked my excitement even further.

“Come one – I’m gonna try out that new soft drink. The one called Brezis,” said redhead ordering from the vending machine. Looking up closer, I got a better glimpse of her: a tall freckled-face in a blue dress, hazel eyes and a small blue hand bag dandling from her left shoulder, a friendly looking expression and was always smiling at her friends and me standing outside the small shower block building. Instantly my heart was enamoured. She was not a blonde in a bikini like the one on the advertising poster that I had noticed on the wall opposite to the vending machine, but to be picked up by a pleasant woman like that would have been wonderful to me; I felt like my dream was coming true in front of me. Though in truth, I guess it was all puppy love for her that I was happy to be taken by her. She got out her coins form her purse and ordered me, the vending machine coil twisting me further to the end, but then my excitement quickly dimmed to nervousness then fear as I started to see the long drop and darkness below me before I fell.

THUD!

I landed flat on a hard surface, I didn’t hurt much but this was all abrupt for me. I wished I could cry but as a can I had no option to do so. Before I could react, she opened up the hatched and grabbed me from the small plastic pocket and held me around with her one hand like an eagle clawing on a fish. She waited for her friends to get their own drinks before we all joined the small party at the beach. The music was getting louder as we walked closer to the sandy sand floor. Her friends drank theirs before we reached the party, but despite her tapping on my pull tab, the redhead stopped herself, moving her finger away from the lid. she expressed a unwillingness to go further with what she first intended to do with me. She examined my teal and yellow coloured design with the red stripe for a brief moment before ending her focus on me entirely, still clinging on to me as she started to dance with the thirty other people including her friends. She didn’t drink me at all. Instead she took me dancing with her, I was left being shaken about like a Martini for James Bond. The liquid shook in my shell violently have she bounced up and down to the thudding sound to the DJ’s latest recycled track; I was being flung around like a glow stick at a rave developing a headache from the fizzy fluid bouncing inside me that I wanted to scream for it to all end. This was nothing like the brand promised, of course I expected the dancing at a party, but I didn’t expect it to be at this velocity – this lifting to the stars, made me feel like an ascending and descending god with motion sickness, like Icarus struggling to fly but unaware to how to do it.

So much about being the drink of the summer. Bacchus would have nothing on me if it were not for the crowd just dancing. But unlike the god of grapes I wasn’t forgotten by the millions, more that I had been put aside by one person that I really wanted to be with. The beautiful redhead who had me swinging me in the air danced along with her friends and the small crowd of people smiling and having the time of their lives.

Then the shaking stopped. I looked on resting at the stars seeing how small I was before being put down more to the group’s level. With the loud music still playing, I heard deafly something of a private conversation. It sounded like a murmuring panic, the redhead’s distress on her face, tears were about to come out as she flung me back to her belly, her body expression more crutched up, slightly bent back, getting more grievingly verbal and holding me with tense strength. I looked on to see for the distance a young man, with broad shoulders swaggering into the crowd down the makeshift steps to the dance floor. His arm resting on a girl in a black dress who was holding her tacky looking black and golden chained bag. The man had a weak beard, blue eyes and a pink linen summer shirt. He smirked pointing at friendly faces as he were prom king moving further into the party the lady accompanying him who looked just as much disinterested in him as he was with her joining the dance floor. By now the redhead looked more distressed by each millisecond. It was obvious that she was about to cry but didn’t want to show it. One of her friends, a short raven-haired girl in a green dress put her hand around her shoulder and sternly spoke to her,

“Do you want to get out of here least for a while? We can wait near the restrooms or elsewhere at the beach so you can calm down from him. I think you need it. You can have a drink as well if that helps.”

“Yes,” she answered sounding more relieved about the idea, she looked down at me directly still crying, to my own distressed she continued, “I don’t want this stupid drink anymore – I don’t even know why I bought this thing to begin with – it probably too sour for me anyway.”

“It’s okay Clara, I’ll take the drink off you. You go with the rest of the girls and get yourself some water, I’ll meet up with you soon.”

Clara gave me to the dark-haired woman. The redhead and the rest of the group left me with my new handler. Immediately the woman marched the man who was now dancing at the centre of the dancefloor. All the while she got her finger my lid. tightening her grip on me further. The more I got closer, my fears heighten about what she was going to do to me, and because I was just an aluminium can, I couldn’t move myself and could only forcefully prepare myself to what was about to happen. Then she pulled my lid.

SPLASH!

The party stopped at a halt, even the DJ quietened the music seeing what was going on; two burly bouncers came in to investigate the situation, and I was left an empty shell of my former self. The raven-hair woman had thrown the drink onto the man and his summer shirt. I didn’t just get emptied; the fizz had shot out at him at high speeds by the pressure from before. Pure fizzy liquid had gone all over his blank face and shirt, dripping from his gelled up spikey hair. The man looked more shocked than angry. It was like he was processing it all, like something out of the ordinary had just happened that his brain was trying to respond from the humiliation. His accomplice just stood there indifferent was just as silent as the rest of the crowd with her drink in her hand, waiting for this exact moment to drift away so they could go back to partying.

“You always treat a girl like she is your accomplice over there – like the world revolves around you but in the end, you’re a sexist materialistic rich boy who broke my friend’s heart. I hope you’re happy knowing that!”, She chastised him.

Knowing that she had said her peace, the raven-haired woman quickly brisked away, going past a crowd of people still stunned by the whole debacle, carrying me with her despite she was done with me. Halfway her journey back she decided to completely emptied me on any drip onto the sand and seeing no empty bins nearby just threw me into a big patch of grass growing in the sand. She had left me alone to be with her friends.

I never saw them again. They must have gone home afterwards clearly deciding to go back where they came from; I never saw any humans afterwards; I was left alone laying there staring at the bigger night sky. That was when I started to ponder if my existence was a lie. I went to a beach party and got used and then thrown away just like that. No dancing as I get sipped, no people ecstatic that I am here. Just pure reality before sheer blackness, as I slowly get swallowed up by the earth. Even if I got picked up by those whether they intend to look for me or not, I’ll probably get put in a dumpsite and decompose once more forgotten again. The stars aren’t even alive and they have left an actual impression on this earth, dead dinosaurs who get turned into fuel have a bigger impact in making the likes of me – but that is because they have some use to them still, they can be remade and exploited again to produce bigger things to a purpose more relevant to the common man than I could ever offer, and even then, the stars just have a greater impact because despite being practically useless to man, they are they just stand there immovable in front of all of humanity that they take for granted. Me? My brand was just a fad destined to be either discontinued or replaced by something shinier; I was like a wash-up rockstar that only had one big hit wonder before I had fizzed out, and that success was probably was achieved through clever marketing by the company department. Now I started to return to the earth a slow descend. Progress is just making the next product to sell as folks like me fill the earth. Only thing with me now is my story which stays with me for how long I last here half buried in the sand staring at the night sky. All I wished was that could have known Clara better – that kind human redhead.