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View Full Version : A man walks into a bar....



bellelapine
06-12-2008, 10:13 AM
His head felt like lead as he leaned heavily on the bar, easing himself into the wood backed barstool. Judging by the
heaviness of his eyes and the pain beginning in the back of his skull, he would say it was one hell of a bender. He smiled wearily
at the bartender, who bore an uncanny resemblance to his children's lit professor. He was taken aback further, by the presence of
a familiar scar over the man's upper lip. If this man wasn't his children's lit professor, he was missing a chance at being an indentical twin.
"Jack and coke." he whispered hoarsely when he was finally able to shake the cotton feeling from his tongue.
The bartender smiled turning around to reach for the bottle of amber whiskey on the back shelf. "What brings you here now Michael?"
Michael lifted his head staring at the bartender in shock. "How do you know my name?" he asked the stiffness of his tongue trying to return.
"Your name tag." the bartender said easily as he set the bottle of Jack on the slick wooden countertop. He nodded to Michael's chest, before
grabbing a pint glass and tossing some ice into it.
"Oh...this." Michael looked down at his clothing surprised to see a name tag from Taco Bell. "I haven't been there since I was...seventeen."
He blinked at it curiously before the sound of crying tore his attention away from the oddities before him. His jaw dropped as he noticed his sister
in the corner talking to a man in a white lab coat. Tears were streaming down her face as she nodded and swallowed.
A wave of protectiveness washed over Michael as he slipped from the stool staggering towards her. As he moved closer he could catch
fragments of their conversation.
"I understand,"she said half choking on sobs. "I'll tell our mother. Michael was always the wild one....I'm not sure if we'll be able to
do what you recommend for a few days. The family will want to meet to make the decision."
"I'll be happy to speak with them. I'm afraid he'll never come out of the coma, the damage was simply too far gone. I'm sorry." The man in the white
coat said as he looks over at Michael without seeing him.
"Joanie?" Michael croaks, surprised to find the cotton back in his mouth.
Joanie looks over at him, her eyes brimming with tears. "How could you Michael?"
A fuzzy shadow pours in over the man in white and his Joanie...his baby sister, pulling them from his view. No one in the bar speaks or seems
to have noticed the disappearance. Michael looks around and begins to notice something far more sinister than he had ever contemplated.
Everyone in the bar is someone he has known in his short thirty years. There speaking with the bartender, who is his children's lit teacher, is the first
girl he ever kissed still looking exactly as she did that warm summer night fifteen years ago.
His best friend from high school, Eric, dead two years now from a roadside bomb in Iraq. Eric, here and alive, looking like he did on his wedding day.
All of the people he'd loved and cherished were here...yet...where was here?
Michael sank to the ground as realization began to sink in. The bar....last night the party. Joanie had tried to take his keys but he wouldn't let her. He
remembers the bright lights the sound of screaming...
"Oh my god what have I done?" he wails covering his face with his hands. A familiar voice reaches his ears even as he finds himself curling into himself.
He looks up in time to see the doctor with his mother, standing so close to him that he could reach out and touch her. Michael tries to lift his hands to her but
finds chains have bound him. He tries to call out but the cotton has taken over his throat and mouth.
"Mom!" his mind shrieks. "I'm here! I'm HERE!"
The ashen vision of his mother, looking far older than she had ever looked in life, turns to the doctor. She brushes her fingers over Michael's face as she whispers the
last words he would ever hear. "Please don't let him suffer."