The Watering Hole

I woke up this morning to a gloomy sky, its brooding gray clouds gathered over Southern California preparing to unload a watery onslaught. On television, local meteorologists scrambled to explain the storm that none of their weekly forecasts had predicted. As light rain tapped against my window, the sky let out a tremendous growl of thunder—an angry Zeus writhing in pain.

  Later in the afternoon, a relentless downpour spewed steadily from the moody sky. I decided to grab my umbrella and walk over to my local watering hole two blocks away. My expectations were to see a few familiar faces that might have felt the need to unite and complain about the rain, while simultaneously noting how much the area needed this downpour to finally quench the thirsty grounds of Southern California.

When I arrived, I shook the rain from my umbrella and scanned the room. Not a single customer sat at the bar or any of the dining tables. The only person there was Matt, the bartender, cleaning and restocking as if it were an ordinary afternoon. He looked up and greeted me with the familiar nod reserved for regulars.

“Finally, at least someone decided to show up today,” he said while heading to the back room carrying a box of supplies.

“Yeah, what the hell?,” I replied.

I took a stool and looked around. The empty bar had the eerie stillness of an abandoned Hollywood set shut down years ago. Then the sky cracked again, and thunder rolled over the building like something enormous drawing closer.

“We’re definitely getting it today,” Matt said while returning behind the bar.

“The usual?”, he asked while already grabbing a glass to pour my usual from the tap.

“Ha, you know me so well. Sounds good” I said.

He handed me my cold beer then continued along with his bartender tasks.

“I mean, it’s a little weird, right? That there isn’t a single person here today?”, I said while taking a swig.

“Jesus, it’s just fuckin rain, people,” I muttered aloud

He offered a “I-don’t-know-what-to-tell-you” shrug and headed to the back room.

   A moment later the sound of the front door opened. I turned my head around expecting to greet a familiar face with an “It’s about time” smile. But it was not a familiar face.

The stranger entered without an umbrella, drenched from head to toe. His dark trench coat hung open over a white T-shirt printed with a pink Hello Kitty. Below it, he wore long, brightly patterned shorts and sandals that looked ancient. He drew a handkerchief from an inside pocket and wiped his face. When he finished, he looked toward the bar and smiled as our eyes met. I had not meant to stare, but his appearance sent questions swirling through my head.

‘Definitely not from around here,’ I thought to myself.

He made his way over towards me and pulled out the stool beside me.

“Is this seat taken?”, he asked with a friendly, crooked smile and a voice that offered a tone of comfort and familiarity.

   At first, his seating choice was a bit off-putting by him wanting to sit directly next to me, while clearly acknowledging the abundance of empty stools. But I quickly settled into the idea that simply being able to chat with anyone at this point would be better than simply watching Matt restock spirits.

 “Help yourself, my friend”, I said while scooting my stool aside to offer a comfortable distance for conversation.

  At that very moment when he thanked me and sat down, I glanced through the large window behind and saw the sky light up with a series of quick flashes of lightning that easily penetrated the dark clouds. The flashes weren’t the typical strobe light effect. They seem to linger in a fierce intensity for just a second or two longer than the normal wrath of Mother Nature. 

  Matt returned from the back room wiping his hands with a small towel.

“Thought I heard someone come in,” he said looking at the stranger while quickly processing his outfit. And as every experienced bartender does, he created a mental note, and asked… “What can I get ya?”

“Oh….,” the stranger paused. “I’ll just have a merlot, thank you.”

His voice was distinct in an odd way due to the lack of any noticeable accent. Normally, some inflection of any language would offer, at least, a faint clue of one’s background. There was absolutely nothing to grasp onto that would have revealed his origin.

  As Matt went to retrieve the wine, the stranger turned toward me. Without hesitation, he asked,

“So, how’s your sleep been?”

    He asked with such matter-of-fact familiarity that it seemed as if he was continuing a previous conversation we recently shared. I can only assume that my failed poker-face revealed how caught off guard I truly felt by such a bizarre inquiry. Determined not to let him see that he rattled me with this odd question, I reached for a quip and responded without missing a beat.

“So, what—you’re walking around in this storm selling pillows and mattresses or somethin’?” I replied with a shrug and a look that said, ‘so where are we taking this, my friend? I’m down for weird banter.’  The stranger studied me for a moment, then let out a light chuckle.

   Matt returned with the stranger’s glass of wine then excused himself to finish his back-room duties. The stranger took his glass and turned towards me and raised his glass.

 “Cheers, my friend. May we live to learn. And may we die without uncertainty.”

He gave a grin that suggested we shared an unquestionable understanding of his bizarre toast. I merely looked at him, then turned my head upwards pretending I was addressing God himself.

“To what he said!” I said aloud, then we clinked glasses.

    Another crack of thunder tore across the weeping sky, but it was the noise from the back room that seized my attention: boxes of glasses crashing to the floor, followed by the sickening thud of a body hitting the ground.

 The stranger and I reacted in opposite ways.

“Did you hear that?”, I asked the stranger as I leapt from my stool and hurried towards the opened back-room door without stopping to think. Halfway there, I glanced back, expecting the stranger to be close behind me. He had not moved. He remained on his stool, watching me with his wine glass raised and that same stupid fuckin’ grin fixed across his face, as though I had merely excused myself for the restroom. His complete indifference unsettled me more than the crash. And at that same moment, thunder blasted out throughout the heavens like an anguished roar of a god.

   Ignoring the unsettling scene of the stranger behind me, I cautiously approached the backroom door.

 “Matt! Matt! Are you ok?,” I yelled towards the suddenly quiet room.

  The fluorescent lights flickered off and on making it difficult to fix my eyes on anything. I slowly walked inside while constantly looking down towards my stepping area to ensure I wouldn’t trip over anything that would have resulted in me seeing a therapist for years to come.

“Hey, Matt! You ok? Sounded like you took a….”

  My voice trailed off when the flickering fluorescent lights revealed a body sprawled across the floor. Each pulse of darkness erased it; each flicker of light brought it back. He was there, then gone. There. Gone.

   Then… he was just there. While approaching closer to him, I noticed the lights had stopped flickering which offered a brutal unmistakable view of, which to this day, I still find it particularly challenging to properly explain this visual insanity.

  The body was face down, its position showing no sign that he had tried to break his fall. He looked broken and unresponsive.

I turned my attention back towards the entrance to see if the stranger had finally decided to help. The brief feeling of relief quickly faded when I saw him. Yes, he was there. But he just stood there, blankly staring at me while I was standing in the middle of a horrific accident.

“How’s… your… sleep… been?”, he asked again, but slower and with each word heavily emphasized.

He took a single step inside and leaned against the wall.

The bastard was still holding his glass of merlot.

My entire body was frozen in time while I stared at the stranger in disbelief, and unfathomable confusion. I stared until his image finally blurred and my eyes began to sting.

It wasn’t long before I blinked, which by doing so, released imprisoned tears held back by years of pride, stubbornness, fear, and of course…uncertainty. An overwhelming flood of emotions traveled through me leaving me motionless.

He slowly pointed my attention back to the body.

I looked at the faced down corpse and suddenly knew what I was experiencing. I wiped the tears from my eyes and turned Matt, the bartender, over to see his face.

But it wasn’t Matt.

Oddly, I wasn’t too surprised. One would think that if you were to see your own corpse lying on the floor, you'd scream a scream of despair and madness.

This, however, was not the case.

“How’s your sleep been?”, the stranger asked. Again.

His voice was distant, yet nearby enough to follow.

This time, his question was asked with an expected answer.

In a daze, I stumbled along and made my way out of the room. I watched the stranger make his way towards the front door to leave. Instead of buttoning up his raincoat to walk out into the storm, he began taking it off as if he had been waiting to shed off the unnecessary weight.

“I’m ready to wake up!”, I called out to him. “I’m ready!”

He looked at me with that peaceful, stupid grin. Then, his grin quickly faded away, and a dark, horrifying expression flooded his face. He suddenly screamed with a mouth that opened too wide beyond any reasoning.

“WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” he yelled, staring directly at me through pupil-less eyes as black as opal. The sky tore open in one final burst of lightning. And for the first time, I looked directly into the broad flashes and saw very familiar images swirling around them.

My memories flashed across the sky in a violent rush—old and new, painful and pleasant. They flickered all around me like camera flashes taken by own mental paparazzi. They were aggressive, and yet achingly beautiful.

I opened my eyes without realizing they were ever closed. A piercing light shone directly into my right eye, washing out everything around me. Nearby sounds of beeps and other noises gradually resolved into familiar sounds in which my brain began to slowly stitch the loose pieces of reality into a much clearer horrific understanding.

“Hey buddy, thought we lost you”, the voice said.

The EMT moved his bright light back and forth between my eyes, checking to see if I was able to follow the movement of the light.

“Ok, that’s great”, he said while turning off his mini mag lite.

He looked at me with a crooked, stupid grin on his face and let out a sigh of relief.

“You’re awake,” he said.

The EMT and his uniform were both soaked. As he reached over to adjust my oxygen mask ensuring my comfort, I noticed the Hello-Kitty band wrapped around his wrist.

He noticed my eyes showing attention to his wristband.

He looked at the band then towards me. His expression was as only a loving parent can offer.

“My daughter gave it to me today,” he said softly.

I gave a slight nod accompanied with a weak smile.

The siren of the ambulance screamed into the night leaving behind the scene of a heavily damaged car that had crashed into a traffic signal and slid onto the sidewalk hitting the only poor sap walking in the rain with an umbrella. The wreckage was brutal, and several lives were changed forever.

“I’m awake.,” I said to myself as a tear trickled down the side of my bruised face.

“I… am… awake.”