"This is my bar now..."

Short story about something creepy that happened to me a few years ago.This is my first short (not so short) story I've ever written.

Age 23 was a particularly hard year for me. Just like most people, it’s the year where reality starts to set in and you question where you are in your life. For me, i was just getting over an abusive relationship. It ended when the cops were called, and he was removed from my home. I got a restraining order shortly after, and that was the end of that. Because of this event, I was lacking social skills and self esteem because i was isolating myself. It was extremely hard to trust anyone after that, even to this day. At the time, I only had one friend, Nate. On one fall night, I was feeling particularly happy. It was probably the first day that I had smiled in months and really wanted to feel social. I called up Nate and told him to meet me at the Irish pub downtown. I lived close to downtown, and it was such a nice night that I decided that I would walk the 15 mins from my apartment. As I got closer to the bar, I felt like someone was watching me. I turned my head to look across the street, and there was a man just staring at me. He was late 30’s, early 40’s smoking a cigaret. He didn’t look creepy, so I didn’t think anything of it and walked into the bar.

When I entered, I saw Nate sitting at the bar talking with his usually bartender. The bartender was older and we liked him cause he had kind of a cheesy grandpa vibe about him. He wasn’t the best, or quickest bartender, but he would always tell a few inappropriate jokes, serve us our drinks, then proceed to go into the back where he had his TV set up, and stay there until we called for him or he heard other customers. About 2 drinks in, Nate and I start joking and laughing about some show on TV, and I start laughing so hard I’m basically in tears. When Nate and I get together, we get a little raunchy with our humor and sometimes it gets out of hand. He mentioned that he hadn’t had sex in a while and would hook up with pretty much any cute girl or guy that seemed interested that night. At some point during all this shenanigans, I mentioned that I was wearing a new top that day that I got from Goodwill, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. All of a sudden, coming from behind me I hear in a weird Irish accent “Oh, I think that is a beautiful blouse”. I turned around, partially startled, because I didn’t hear anyone come in to the bar behind us and I thought we were alone. It was the man that was outside, having a cigaret earlier. “Ohh…thanks..” I said in a quiet manner. When the bartender hears this man speak, he comes from the back and asks “What can I do for you, sir?” The man ignores the bartenders question, but instead says “this  young lady here is questioning whether or not she likes her blouse. Don’t you agree with me that she’s a beautiful young lady and is  absolutely stunning in that blouse?” The bartender looked confused, looked at me and noticed that I was a little weary about the mans sudden interest in me and says “yep she is a pretty young lady. Now what can I get ya?” “I’ll have what she’s having” says the man. I was drinking kraken and coke, a favorite of mine. When he sees the bartender making his drink, he goes, “Ohhh kraken…. I like you already”. I usually am super paranoid about people and would have had alarm bells ringing in my mind any other time, but I was in my favorite bar, with my best friend and favorite bartender and being in public in all, I felt safe so I ended up making small conversation with this guy. After a few other comments about my appearance and asking what it is that I do for a living, he then finishes his drink and says, “hold on, I’ll be right back. My hotel is right across the street and I really want you guys to meet my cousin.” We gave him a look like “Ok?” and he took off. Nate and I were a little tipsy at this point and almost forgotten that the man said that he was going to come back. After a few minutes we thought that it was best to head back to my apartment and keep drinking there, since we didn’t want to run up a hefty bar tab. As we were paying our bills and getting our coats, the man walks through the door with an extremely beautiful, middle aged woman. She had long, jet black hair, a little too much makeup on, and a short white dress that, well, showed off all her assets. As soon as Nate saw her, he was blown away by her. He had kind of a thing for cougars, and she was right up his alley. Nate whispers to me “do you think I stand a chance?” I laughed and said I would be impressed if he was able to take her home. The man comes rushing up to us saying “Hey?!?! Where are you guys going? I just brought my cousin down and she’s looking to have some fun! I explain to him that we were running up our bar tab and we didn’t have any more money on us to spend so, we were just on our way out. He looks at me with bright eyes and says, “Well, don’t worry about that! I’ve been working on buying this bar from the owner! I can get you all the drinks you want! Just stay and I promise you won’t have to worry about your tab for the rest of the night. After some more convincing, Nate and I agreed. Who would argue free drinks? This also gave Nate a chance to hit it off with this woman and possibly attempt to get her into bed. With Nate distracted, this man saw the opportunity to chat me up, alone. I asked him about what he was saying earlier about buying the bar? I thought it was a little strange because I knew the owner and I talked to him frequently. He never mentioned selling it, and thought it would be weird that he would sell it since it was his family’s business that had been passed down to him, and he shared it with all his brothers and had other family members working for him. I mentioned to this man all of this and told me how the business of the place was slowing down and they wanted new management to come up and fix it up. It seemed plausible, and I honestly believed him. He went on to tell me all the things he wanted to do with the bar to make it nicer and bring in more business. This kept me interested in talking to him for a while, and I looked over to see how Nate was doing. It didn’t look like he was trying hard to take her home, it looked like she was trying hard to take HIM home. When the man noticed me looking over, he said “Oh, she really likes younger men”. For a second I felt kind of happy for Nate. Looked like his wish was going to come true after all. That happiness was then followed by a sinking feeling of dread. It was just a weird gut feeling that I get from time to time. Even though I was very inebriated at this point, I could tell that something was just a little off. Nate is not ugly, but he’s not the most attractive person I’ve ever met. Best way to describe him would be a nerdy hipster. I knew that she was 100x out of his league and that the fact she was flirting as hard as she was with him, was just overall a little odd. The deep gut feeling made me feel slightly more sober. Right as this thought process was happening in my mind, a local police officer came into the bar. I knew him because he was one of the bartender’s friends and he owned a cigar shop next door. Him and I sometimes had conversations and one of the times found of that one of his friends was the officers who arrested my ex the night of our separation. 

When I saw him walk in I was actually kind of relieved. Like if for some reason my gut feeling was correct, we would at least have a trustworthy police officer in the room to take care of business. The man who I was talking to went back to talking about the bar and then asked me if I was interested in becoming a bartender, because he was planning to fire all the old employees. At first I was a little shocked, because I didn’t want all those people who have worked there for years to loose their jobs, but I also was little desperate for money at the time because almost all of my money was going towards student loans. I told him that I would have to work on my social skills a little bit, but said I was interested. I knew the bar very well and liked the fact that I could walk to it if need be to save money on gas. He wanted to know my contact information so he could schedule an interview at some point over the next few weeks. I wrote down my number and email address and gave it to him. Once I handed it to him, I again had a slight sinking feeling. I brushed it off cause I thought that there was no way he could make something like this all up. The man then asked if I wanted to go on the back deck with him for a cigaret. I agreed and went outside to sit down at one of the small tables. After a while he mentions something about gypsies. He said that his Irish relatives were gypsies and asked if he could do a palm reading for me. I said yes, and gave him my hand. I then saw the police offer walk out to the back to enjoy one of his cigars. He saw the man holding my hand and me looking a little confused by the whole situation. His intuition kicked in slightly and went inside without finishing his cigar to talk to Nate. “Hey, I think your friend might be in trouble”. When Nate heard this, he kind of broke out of his trance and felt bad for leaving me alone with the creepy guy while he talked to his cougar. I will admit that I felt a little weird during his palm reading, he was very touchy and even kissed my hand 2 times. And nothing he said even remotely matched anything going on in my life. It was at that moment that I felt like this guy wasn’t a 100% honest dude. My bad feeling came back and I wanted to get off this deck to get away from being alone with him. I excused myself into the bathroom, but instead went back inside and sat next to Nate. As soon as I sat down, the cougar got up and went outside to talk to the man. Nate asked me if I was alright, and what our police officer friend said about how I might be in trouble. I said that I was fine, but I was getting a weird feeling and felt like we should leave. Nate actually agreed saying that stuff with the cougar was just weird. She was saying extremely vulgar and sexual things to him, that even made him slightly uncomfortable. Nate may have been horny, but he’s not stupid. He said it was starting to feel like a weird trap or something, confirming my feeling from earlier. As we finished up the last sips of our drinks, the pair came back into the bar from the deck. The man whispered to me that the cougar was taking Nate home and was wondering if I would like to come back with him. I immediately said no and got a little worried. “I have to go home” I said. “What if I drove you home” he said in a darker tone. I said no again and that we really have to leave. I saw his face completely change. He was, for the most part, upbeat all night, but in just seconds, the whole vibe changed. "What if I bought you another drink?” he then said. “Trust me, I don’t need anymore…” I said in a shaky voice. I could tell that his frustration was growing and then yells at the bartender, “HEY YOU! GET HER ANOTHER SHOT OF KRAKEN!” I screamed at the bartender “NO! I’m not going to drink it, I’m done drinking I’m on my way out.” The man continues to scream “GET HER ANOTHER DRINK!” The bartender then yells back to the man “She says she’s done! if she says she’s done she’s done!.” As this man was yelling at the bartender, I noticed that his Irish accent went away and he was just screaming “THIS IS MY BAR NOW, I TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO” As this argument started to get heated and the man was distracted, Nate came over, grabbed my arm and we RAN! We ran the whole way back to my apartment without stopping to catch our breath. I had no idea what to think or feel, but all I know is that if he did own that bar now, we were never going to be going back. 

 About 2 weeks later, Nate and I had the guts to check out to see what was happening with the bar. We go inside, and to our relief we saw the original owner. We asked him about why he was selling the bar to the strange man. He then looked at us really confused and said “Ummm what? I’m not selling the bar? Never even thought about it. Where did you hear that from?” My heart sank. I told him all about the strange man and how he offered me a job as a bartender and how things got weird and we ended up running out of the bar. The owners memory came back a little when he remembered his bartender telling him about how the guy tried to scam him out of paying for his drinks saying that he was his new boss. After the fight that Noah and I witnessed, the guy and the woman stormed out, saying that he would get the money from his car and never came back. Never paid for their drinks or ours that they “bought for us”. When the bartender told the owner what happened, he tried to contact the hotel across the street to find out some information on these people, since that’s where they had mentioned they were staying. The hotel management said that the duo tried to pull a similar stunt with them. The strange man went up to the front desk, said that there were pain killers that he found in a drawer and said that his kids could have taken them and could have gotten very hurt. He said it was the hotels fault and they demanded a free room. Of course, the claim was ridiculous and they didn’t get a free room. They didn’t even have a child with them. They paid the hotel and left. 

About a month later, I got a strange email from a name I didn’t recognize. When I started to read it, it said something along the lines of “Hello beautiful, I never did forget you”. I thought it was some spam message or a weird prank so I brushed it off. A couple days later I get another email from the same address. This time, it was not so innocent. The email had very specific details about me and what they wanted to do to me. I freaked out. I had no idea who it could be who was emailing this to me. I then remembered that I gave the strange man my number and email address so he could contact me for my “interview”. I immediately started shaking. That weird con artist man had my information, and he obviously has not forgotten that night. More weeks pass and I didn't get anymore strange emails, until one night, I got a phone call. I answered and said “Hello?” I didn’t hear anyone so I said “Hello??” again. All of a sudden I heard really weird breathing and moans. I had no idea what I was listening to at first, but then it became obvious that whoever was on the other line was masterbating. I was completely disgusted and said “HEY F**K YOU FREAK” they then said… “I wish I could f**k you… Danielle”. I hung up immediately. They knew my name… only thing I could think of was that the emails and the weird phone call came from him. I called the police to tell them what happened and if they could help me in any way. They said that they couldn’t prove a connection and if it kept happening and had proof, they can write a report”. I felt a little discouraged after that and tried to brush the whole thing off, just hoping he would forget about me and leave me alone. 

Months go by without incident. This whole encounter didn’t help the trust issues I had from my past relationships, but I tried to not let it get to me and move on with my life. About 7 months go by I rarely think about the man anymore. I was on my computer looking at some crime times, and what I saw completely took my breath away. There was a mugshot of the strange man! We was arrested for the rape and robbery of a woman 2 cities over from where I lived. I cried. I couldn’t believe it… Nate and I escaped that night from something that could have been horrible. I’m so thankful for that not being me, but sad that some other woman fell or this mans trap. At least I knew for sure that he would never contact me again. 

Author's Note

First short story!