the bar

Love lasts forever.

I sit in the twilight world as the last straggling suits flit past the bars large glass windows. In the corner are a couple, their arms entangled in a drunken embrace and their heads lolling uncontrollably from side to side. Excluding them, I sit alone in the bar. I call the bartender and order another whiskey.

It’s a scary and irrepressible truth that life hits a new low whilst sitting alone in a bar on a Thursday night. Pondering my own slow entropy, my eyes resume their vacant stare into the distance and I began to float around aimlessly in the mental state reserved only for great thinkers and alcoholics: admittedly the latter, I fall in and out of consciousness for longer than I can recall.

Raising me from my drunken reverie is a delicate hand on my shoulder. Following the wrist, then the forearm, up onto the shoulder and then finally on to the face is a beautiful woman, or as beautiful as portraits of the dead can ever be. There is comforting warmth in her presence. The couple in the corner have each other’s faces in their hands and they stare longingly into each other’s eyes with an evident intoxicated passion.

‘Hello’ I mumble, glancing at her sideways.

She says nothing. She doesn’t even look at me: she is completely ignorant of my ever saying a thing and I’d have gone as far to say she didn’t exist if it wasn’t for the solid and absolute presence of her hand on my shoulder.

I try again.

There was still no response.

Maybe it is the drink, you fool. The bartender hasn’t acknowledged her and neither had the couple, although they were lost at sea as far as I was concerned.

With a growing sensation of discomfort that made my heart spin I made a move to shrug her off with a fraudulent twitch of the shoulder. Her hand gripped my shirt tighter and she spoke, yet her voice resembled that of one at the end of a tin can with string: it sounded a hundred miles away, as if it were dancing with the twilight fairies in the parks and trees of the suburbs.

‘I’m not here to talk. Just to listen. Tell me everything. Tell me about her’.

She looks at me with grey eyes. How she knew, I wasn’t sure, but there are moments in life where accepting what is put in front of you is easier than facing reality.

‘Tell me’ she murmurs.

Laughing, ‘Where do I begin?’, I exclaim.

‘At the start, where all good stories begin’ she smiles.

With a drunken slur and loose mouth I commence my tale.

“She was my dream catcher and I was hers before she even noticed me: with a bag of dog food in one hand and a ready meal in the other I approached with such moronic determination I startled myself. There was a judicious beauty in her gaze as she watched me advance on her and there was a half a smile on her lips; her hand hovered halfway between heart and toothpaste. She smiled. And so it began.”

“Three months later I sat on the floor of her kitchen next to a rumbling washing machine with an empty bottle of red wine between our legs. With gentle affection I kissed her neck and told her everything was alright: those perfect tentative moments as I felt the brush of her cheek on mine and I’d laugh as she sniffed away snot and tears”

She smiled and nodded to herself.

“We’d lie in bed and she’d tell me to talk but I would pretend to fall asleep just to wind her up. Then, when she’d gone off into her dreams, I would lie there and stroke her hair and listen to her breathe. My arm would go dead and it would get cold because she’d take all the cover but I’d lie there for hours just to be with her.”

I feel empty.

“When she ran I’d chase her and tell her I was sorry and when she spoke I told her to be quiet, kissing her forehead instead; those stolen words and the smile we’d share when she looked at me with that self-destructive twinkle in her eye were the reason I lived”.

“In the early hours of a morning long lost in my memory she would teach me to dance and I’d stumble drunkenly around, more content with her hand in mine than any ability I had to sway in time to some music. She would laugh and call me a terrible dancer and I’d smile and agree.”

I stop as the bartender places stools and chairs on tables. The couple from the corner have gone and their two glasses sit empty and abandoned. Outside, the street light flickers.

“We don’t have long” she mutters.

“She would hold my hand tighter and tighter till it hurt and I’d never let go. I knew as I felt her fingers slip away for the last time we were just lying in bed together and she’d fallen asleep like she always  did and we’d be together again in the morning”

“I loved her and that’s all that ever mattered, right until the very end”.

The last words had been hard to iterate without the bubbling emotion of sorrow bursting through my lashes. The hand on my shoulder was gone, and with it, the presence of the young woman. Stuffed in my empty glass of whiskey was a small piece of yellowed paper, pulling it out and unfurling it, it read: “Let the past fall behind, because that’s all it is, memories. Remember the love and take it with you wherever you go. Hold on to it, but be selfless with it: share it and bestow it upon others; be happy. I always loved you and always will.”

Looking up, I called the bartender over.

“How long ago did the young lady I was with leave?” I ask, quietly.

“Young lady, sir? You’ve been alone here all night, pal”

Moving slowly I place a few notes on the bar and leave, nodding and smiling at the bartender, who gave me the same queer look until I was long gone down the street. In my right hand was clutched the note.

I was alone, and yet I had never felt less lonely.

Reviews

[de_maruf]

pori nai
but

well done

[Harry Alston]

pori nai, sorry?

[eglantine]

" float around aimlessly in the mental state reserved only for great thinkers and alcoholics" i love that!

The diction of the protagonist does not match that of a drunk person... and the words seem to roll of his tongue much easier than someone who is in deep mourning.

Great ghost story

[Harry Alston]

Haha, you're right, it's not quite accurate ;) But thank you very much

[Marie]

Very good. It held my interest all the way through. You aptured the atmosphere of a lonely bar well. The ending was not what I would call happy but satisfying.

[Harry Alston]

Thank you very much, I'm glad it held your interest :)