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Good Times Bad Times Bar

Matthew Hoch

    The sun was slowly tucking itself away from the world, making way for the first night of the year that was really crisp. It signaled that fall was changing shifts with winter. Scarves, heavy coats, and the visible breath on exhale would all be a part of everyone’s future.
    I preferred fall; I fancied I looked better in button-down shirts than sweaters. If only worrying about what sweater to wear was my top concern, I’d be living a pretty content life. What sweater to wear didn’t even make my rather long list of concerns.
    I’d been in two serious relationships in my life. One relationship started in and lasted through college; it kept me from having to worry about chasing other desirable women. It was a warm and cozy blanket of mediocrity. I didn’t even like Tess, but she was a thin warm body who would let me penetrate her ladyness on a regular basis. For a kid who thought no woman would have sex with him, I was doing okay.
    Then after a drought that would’ve taken better men than me, Suzy came along. She saw something in me I couldn’t see. She felt right. She was right. I didn’t feel obligated with her the way I did with Tess. The born loser had one. Ha, take that world, I thought at the time. Well, the world answered back. And with vengeance. Righting the niche it had placed for me, Suzy disappeared into the arms of one far more successful, right from under my nose. He had everything I lacked—confidence, success, and a dream house. As one should by thirty-two, right? My heart was still recovering from her ripping it from my chest and evaporating from its exposure to the elements. I guess what she saw in me never materialized. I had kissed a girl, two months ago. It made me miss sweet, warm glossed female lips pressing up against mine. There was no second date, however. I either said the wrong thing over text or didn’t say enough.
    As for my job success; being the perennial junior copywriter at Marshall, Fibers, and Winston, an advertising agency, while I watched young new hires transcend the rungs on the ladder I could never climb was not my idea of award winning. I wasn’t old, but I wanted to have more career success under my belt at thirty-two.
    Yes, I, Mark Holter, was a bit of a wall flower you could say; a tall, thin, blond one, but one nonetheless who was coasting through an otherwise comfortable life that was driving me crazy. I felt like I wanted to go out there and run, but I was stuck in jello. With my life feeling like it was deteriorating, I surrendered to the notion that I should make a change.
    And so, I sought the advice of my friend Steve. He had been struggling with similar things, his own inflicted roadblocks and the struggle against one’s unrelenting antagonist of self doubt, until recently. In fact, his life had completely turned around. His life was now the vision board of what I wanted my life to be. Job success, throngs of women, and what seemed to be like a restored self were all part of his life now. How I envied him for it.
    We were out drinking. He was on his fourth margarita, regaling me with stories of how great life was, when I just simply asked how he did it. He asked me if I had the confidence to walk into a bar by myself, order a drink, and be content there, owning the space around me. Without hesitation, I answered, absolutely not. He told me the perfect bar to go to practice this new art of Zen. It was step one to the new me, he said.
    It was called Good Times, Bad Times Bar. I had never heard of it. There were no reviews on yelp. But, there I was, staring at it as the sun went down. A big, ominous wooden door that was flush with black brick walls stared back at me. There was a small sign with the bar’s name above it.
    Was I really doing this? Was something this small so big to me? After all, it was just walking into a place by myself.
     Jamming my hands into my jean pockets, I paced back and forth in front of the door as if I was picketing. I was looking deep into a pool, wondering the temperature of the water, but not jumping in to find out.
    I bought new clothes from J. Crew for the occasion. I styled my hair, ever so carefully, with this new Crew pomade, brushed my teeth, rinsed with both whitening mouthwash for appearance and Listerine for a minty fresh smell. I made sure my pockets were riddled with Altoids to stay fresh. A dollop of cologne was applied on my neck. I had taken my scarf off, put it back on, and taken it off again. I repeated this step four times before leaving with my scarf on. And now, with my scarf left on the passenger’s seat of my car, I placed my hand on the cold metallic handle attached to the full wooden door. I would’ve paid good money for a truckload of Xanax at that moment.
    I opened the door.
    Dirty-blues rock was blaring over the speakers. The smell of dried beer wafted through the air and into my nostrils. The door closed behind me. There was a loud clunk. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve said it sounded like the door locked behind me.
     I took microscopic steps towards the bar. A turtle would’ve yelled at me to pick up the pace. I moved through a cloud of smoky mist. It reminded me of driving through fog at dusk.
    It was pretty barren in there. When I looked to my left, all I saw were empty tables. Empty, except one. I had never seen such a girl in my life. I felt a frisson of excitement the second I saw her and then quickly looked down to make sure she didn’t see me looking at her. She looked as if she had escaped a cartoon with her lusciously large red lips, sparkling blue eyes, like fresh water pools, and smooth auburn hair perfectly drooped over her right shoulder. She was wearing a red dress with a slit as high as possible without exposing her world. Why was she alone drinking a martini? As my eyes darted up again to revel in this most exquisite site, I got to see her seductively take her green olive in between her lips and slowly pull it into her mouth as if to torment my new found overwhelming desire for her. Before I grew too tumescent, I decide to take a seat at the bar.
    The bar wasn’t very long at all. Four empty bar stools. Wooden legs with a black circular cushion. They were comfortable enough as I parked myself there. I rested my hands on the cool granite counter top of the bar. Breathe in and breathe out. I stared ahead at the shelves stocked with spirits.
    A cough broke my mini-meditation. I looked to my right to see a lot more empty wooden tables. Scattered about the sea of emptiness were four men. There was an intimidating man, what I imagined people would describe as a human brick house, dressed in all black. His eyes stared with laser sharp focus on my every movement. Next to him was a man in all green. This man in green was wearing a fleece blanket around his shoulders and was sipping a hot tea. He looked like the picture of comfort. One table over there was a man in all yellow who looked beaten down and scared. On the table in front of him was a dove. It looked dead. The man in yellow had breadcrumbs and water and seemed to be frantically trying to nurse this poor bird back to life. Off to the side, was a man in light blue; an oddly youthful spirit emanated from him. His head was down, buried into some portable gaming device. I politely smiled and nodded at the man in black and quickly looked away.
    Where was this bartender? Looking around more, I saw a closed door. What distinguished it from the rest of the black walls was the slit of light permeating from underneath. What was back there?
    A few pictures on the wall could’ve spruced this place up.
    I had to pick my jaw up from the floor as I watched the bartender approach. He looked exactly like me; replete with my slouch, blond hair, green eyes, big teeth, average lips, and defeated look in his eyes. He was wearing the exact outfit I had just purchased from J. Crew. My muscles tightened; I couldn’t move.
    “Hi,” he said with a sulk. “What will you be drinking tonight?” He had my voice!
    I couldn’t tell if I was breathing too fast or not at all. Was I hallucinating here? All I knew was my heart was trying its darndest to beat through my rib cage and land on the bar. My lips and brain tried to work together to form words. “Beer,” was all that came out. After a long silence, it was followed by, “You seem to not notice our resemblance. Um, where, how, who, where are you from?”
    “From here. I guess we do look an awful lot alike. Are we alike? Do we just seem alike?”
    I tried to respond, but was too dumbfounded to manufacture words. Odd little noises were all that came out.
    He handed me my beer and then looked to the man in black who nodded with approval. As the bartender smiled and straightened his posture, I noticed both the man in green and black sit up sternly. He quickly fell back into his, my, patented slouch.
    The melodious sound of the vixen’s heels clicking against the hard wooden floors filled my ears as she approached the bar. The aromatic flavors of her perfume cut through any dried beer smell that lingered. The bartender cowered. It was embarrassing to watch. He looked how I felt. Is that how I looked? He refreshed her drink. I watched her blue eyes study him. She almost blushed as he placed a new olive, for her to tease me with, atop her drink. Did she like him? As she turned to return to her lonely seat, her eyes met mine. The split second felt like a lifetime. With one smirk she told me she knew I wanted her and would never get her. Back to her seat she went. Behind her she left a trail of perfume that led to everything I could ever want and more.
    The bartender snuck a few glances at this mysterious woman. Swiftly, the man in black came over to the bar.
    “Stop looking at her. She’s never gonna want you. Are you the kind of guy who gets that girl?” he asked the bartender.
    “I don’t know, maybe, she could, you’re right, probably not.”
    “Of course not. I’m just looking out for you, bud. You feel better now, right?”
    The man in yellow sat up triumphantly and quickly called out, “You never know, there really isn’t any reason she wouldn’t...” he was stopped by the man in black’s glare. They locked eyes. The man in green started fumbling with his blanket, almost losing it. “I don’t know, maybe not,” the man in yellow said as he slumped his shoulders down and rested his head on the table. When he spoke his dove seemed to flap its wings before once again returning to its cadaverous appearance with his silence. Now that everything seemed to return to status quo, the blanket was once again comfortably wrapped around the man in green’s body.
    As my eyes darted around as to not watch this miserable scene, I noticed what appeared to be movement from under the doorway at the back of the bar. Was someone back there?
    The man in green quickly approached the bar, blanket and all, with a stride that made him look as if he was floating. He spoke in a calm, soothing voice. He should’ve narrated books on tape. “Don’t be too upset with him,” he said with a nod to the man in black. “You will find a girl. One a little less than her, but you will like her enough,” the words fell from his mouth like butter.
    “But, why not her? Why am I not the kind of guy who could get her?” he asked. The bartender really wanted to know. The desperation in his eyes made me feel for him. I did feel for him. I too did not feel like the kind of guy who could leave with a girl like that. Every movement she made caused me to hate myself more and more for not being the kind of guy who could have her.
    “You see, the possibility still exists. She didn’t reject you, did she? Hope springs eternal. She hasn’t rejected you, so there is a chance that it could all work out in the future, as long as you don’t ruin it by trying. Your better days are ahead of you,” a comforting nod followed this pep talk. It would’ve made for an incredibly de-motivating cat poster.
    The bartender hung his head, but somehow a smile broke open his mouth. “You’re right, I guess. Thanks. Yeah, I bet if I said the right thing I would be having wine with her right now. Maybe eventually even kiss her,” the bartender said as if he had actually achieved this.
    “That’s right. Hold onto the feeling. Just keep it there in your mind,” the man in green responded. And with that he returned to his seat.
    I was appalled. What was getting at my insides wasn’t just watching this pathetic scene, but it was how much the man in green’s advice resonated with me. How many times did I not do something only to have the fantasy of potential live on in my head? Walter Mitty and his secret lives had nothing on me. Every night before bed, I had a Mad Men like fantasy where I was running the ad agency, being swooned over. I knew it was all possible because I hadn’t been explicitly told no. My beneficent self was protecting me. That seemed to be what the man in green was doing for the bartender.
    Maybe it was the few sips of beer I had, I was an extreme light weight after all, but I felt compelled to act. “Why do you let him hold you back like that? Who is he to you?” I demanded to know.
    “He’s just looking out for me. I’ve been safe for this long listening to him. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?” the bartender responded.
    “But it is broken. I heard a saying that always stuck with me: if you want big rewards, you have to take big risks.” Had I lived by this saying? Oh, absolutely not. I really hoped he didn’t ask me where I heard that. I would be mortified to admit it was from some Freddie Prince, Jr. teen movie. I remembered that line and how amazing Jessica Biel looked in her underwear. Teenage dreaming was in full effect after that movie. “Let’s say she rejects you. You are in the exact same place you are now, correct?”
    “But then I’ll feel worse about myself.”
    Damn it. That was sound logic. Wait, no. No it’s not, I thought. I defiantly looked at the vixen—oh my God, oh my God, she’s looking at me. Logically, I looked up at the ceiling. Fooled her. Phew.
    The bartender gave me a sardonic smile, “Not so different, I see. You talk a good game, but you seem to practice the other side.”
    He was right. I hated him for being right. I hated myself for him being right. I chugged my beer in anger. Like a man would. Then I paused and coughed because I drank it too fast. Burped. Recomposed myself and stared into the bartender’s eyes. “Have you ever tried?”
    I appreciated the thought he gave my question. “Maybe once...well, not really. I’ve tried with others, but someone like her? I guess I would have to say, no.”
    If he had asked me, that would’ve been my answer, too. “For me. Tonight. Give it a try,” I said because the world wasn’t big enough for two massive pussies that looked like me, let alone this bar.
    The bartender stood up straight. He started walking over to the vixen who was playing oblivious to all this. The man in yellow smiled and stood up. The man in yellow’s dove flapped its wings, showing signs of life.
    “You were stronger when you had the possibility,” the man in green shouted at the man in yellow; the blanket once again falling from his shoulders. He turned to me and pleaded, “Why would you want this? I thought you were happy?”
    I didn’t know how to answer, so I shrugged my shoulders. It was a confusing question. The bartender was doing it! It felt like I was doing it! It was a rush for sure. My gaze got pulled when I heard a scuffling. The man in black was physically beating the man in yellow. I could hear his fist connect with the bones in the poor man’s jaw. Blood spouted from his mouth and onto the floor of the bar.
    The man in green was crying, his hands shielding his eyes, “No, no, no. It didn’t have to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
    The bartender’s body language shifted with the defeat of the man in yellow. The dove’s wings stopped flapping. The slouch had come back. He still said something that made her laugh. Could I make her laugh? I heard him ask her if he could buy her a drink, which I thought was an odd question coming from a bartender. Her eyes were quizzical as she looked at him. Her mouth started to open, forming the answer. As her breath started to push the words from her mouth, a gun shot rang out in the bar.
     The bullet landed in the back of the bartender’s head with a thud. The back of his head, once blond, was filled with red blood. His head dove into the table with a horrifying crash. The bar was silent. I slowly turned to see the man in black holstering a gun. Why did Steve want me to come here? I could barely breathe. All my strength was going to not screaming, not crying, and not peeing myself.
    The man in black walked over and roughly grabbed the carcass. The vixen didn’t seem all that upset. She just moved tables and smiled at the man in black. He dragged the body to the door in the back of the bar, opened it and threw the once barkeep into it. I took this opportunity to dart towards the front door and pushed it with all my might. It didn’t open. I just flew back. It had locked! Frantically, I started kicking the door. It was strong and impervious to my foot. Converse shoes had no added strength to them. The man in green, trying to reposition his blanket over his shoulders, came over and put a hand on my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I stared at him, breathing like I just emerged from a deep ocean, and locked my jaw.
    “I know it scares you. It was unpleasant. But you know it had to be done. It’s all for your protection,” he assured me and went back to his seat.
    My protection?
    I looked around. It all looked like when I had first come in. The man in green had successfully adorned himself in his blanket, the man in black stared at me, and the man in yellow, with his now bruised face, tried desperately to give water to his lifeless dove.
    I guided myself back to my seat at the bar. I sat and sunk my head into my crossed arms. The youthful spirit in blue sat next to me. He nudged me and smiled. How was he so happy? Did he not see what had just transpired?
    “What?” I said, agitated.
    He smiled his youthful smile up at me and handed me a gameboy. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Now that his head wasn’t buried in a game and I was up close, I could see that he looked like a stretched out version of me as a child. I noticed he was missing one of his front teeth when he smiled. It was the last of my baby teeth to fall out to make room for my adult sized choppers.
    “I thought maybe playing some Dr. Mario would cheer you up,” he told me.
    That was my favorite video game as a kid. I would take my gameboy everywhere with me just so I could escape into the game. This was all getting a little too surreal. “Why would you think that?” I hesitated, but asked him.
    “It’s my favorite game. It helps me when I’m scared. Maybe it would help you. One time on a cross country trip with my parents there was a tornado a few miles away. We could see it from our car on the highway. We were in Colorado, I think. My mom was screaming at my dad to drive. I got scared and started playing Dr. Mario. It made me feel better. I forgot about everything,” he told me.
    No. Way. I. Can’t. Believe. It.
    The memory he just described flashed in my head. I stared at him in disbelief. That was my memory. Why did he have it? I lightly grasped the gameboy and pulled it towards me. It had a blue crayon mark on its right side just like my old gameboy. This was indeed my gameboy. I leaned forward, and almost in a whisper inquired further, “I have a few questions for you. Do you have a dog? If so, what is their name? Where do you live? Are your parents married?”
    “I have a golden retriever named Garlic. She’s the best. Always grabs her leash with her mouth and leads you home when she’s done with her walk. I live in Clifton, New Jersey. 65 Garden Ave. And yeah, my parents are married,” he responded without any thought.
    All things checked out accept one. My parents were divorced. By age eleven my idyllic family life was ripped apart. My innocence ended when I watched my father walk away down our driveway while my mom cried, asking me why it was so hard to be loved; I still don’t know. It all went south after we moved from Garden Ave. We moved when I was ten.
    Wait, when I was ten. Holy shit, I thought. All things checked out if I were just taking a census of my first ten years. He was just smiling at me. Optimistically stupid as I remembered being as a kid. I slowly sat up and treated him as if he was some alien life form. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening here.
    “How old are you?” I asked him.
    “Ten.” What an annoyingly peppy response. He was so proud of his answer.
    “How did you get into the bar?”
    “Oh, I don’t drink. I’m not allowed to.”
    My head was spinning. My brain was looking at a Magic Eye puzzle. I was taking into account all the weird occurrences. Everything that had happened was replaying. Puzzle pieces were starting to connect, but the picture on the box was still fuzzy.
    The mysterious back door opened. Another bartender emerged. He was identical to the last one, identical to me. The door shut before I could get a look at what it contained. The new bartender saddled over to me and smiled.
    “What drink can I get for you?” he asked. He glanced quickly at the vixen. “She’s a hottie, huh? You should see the movie playing in my head,” he winked at me, “not gonna lose it this time,” he pointed to the back of his head where the bullet submerged itself into the previous bartender.
    I could feel my stomach expand and contract from extreme breath. I turned to the youthful ten year old, “Do you know or hang out with those guys?” I pointed to the man in yellow, the man in green, and the man in black.
    He looked at them, “I’ve known the guy in yellow the longest, but he’s different now. Don’t really know the other two all that well. They kind of work for me, keep me safe, but I don’t hang out with them. That’s okay, right? It’s okay?”
    “Yeah, it’s okay,” I said, not knowing what I was saying. He smiled really wide, reveling in the comfort of validation. He needed validation something fierce. It was a sobering moment to see it in action, to see how I so craved validation for my own existence demonstrated right there in front of me.
    I nodded appreciation for his answer then got up like a sheriff in an old western movie. I walked over to the man in black, filled with both rage and fear.
    “What do you need me to help you with?” he asked me, almost like an obedient servant, as I approached. That stopped me in my tracks. Help me? How was he helping me?
    I looked at the faces of the other three men. They all shared extremely close physical characteristics with each other and me. It was as if I was stretched out and molded into other body types.
     All of a sudden it clicked. Everyone in this bar was me.
    “What are you?” I asked the man in black.
    “I’m nothing,” he told me.
    “If you’re nothing, how can you help me?”
    “Because nothing is safer than something.”
    The man in green smiled and added, “With something, there is something to lose. Staying with nothing, you know what you’re getting. That’s how we became friends.” He gave the man in black a warm smile.
    The man in yellow started to cry. I looked to him.
    “Do you not agree with them?” I asked.
    “I never have. They only keep me around because everyone needs a light at the end of the tunnel.” Holding his poor, dying dove in his cupped hands he said, “Please, don’t leave me.”
    “Having a light at the end of the tunnel is better than reaching it,” the man in green declared, tugging his blanket tight.
    “Don’t worry, Mark, you won’t reach it, but we’ll keep it there,” the man in black assured me.
    With that, everyone in the bar looked at the vixen.
    “I just want you to feel safe, Mark. I don’t want you to doubt your doubt. I want you to feel as at ease as possible,” the man in green told me.
    This sunk in. It made sense to me in a weird way. It was eerily how I lived my life. “And how do you do that?”
    “I try to help you not extend yourself. Keep hope alive. Keep you out of questionable situations where you might not like the answers. I just want you to feel safe.” He then added, “I want to keep you happy by living in the potential instead of living in the failure. Why go out when you can stay in with your favorite television show. You know what that’ll be like, and you’ll enjoy it.”
    And that is what I would do. Over and over again. I hated myself for it.
    The man in black nodded, “You see the greatest threat to safety is feeling you can achieve something to only realize you can’t. Why not just cut out the middle man. That’s why you brought me in. I hope I’ve served you well.”
    The man in yellow looked up at me with sullen eyes, “I’m really sorry Mark. I really hoped it’d be different.”
    I looked across the room at the vixen. She was more than just a girl. She was desire, she was risk and therefore she was unattainable. I bowed my head. They had been doing their jobs. I may have been incredibly unhappy as of late, but I couldn’t argue that I felt safe. I felt too safe and secure. I let the risks play out in my head where I could write the ending; they weren’t risks at all. The youthful man in blue didn’t hang out with the man in green or black because they were just forming when I was ten. All things I thought about to make me feel happy were nostalgic memories. My ten year old self was still running the show. My current thirty-two-year-old-self was nowhere to be seen. I was still just a kid who wanted to be told he was doing okay and playing it safe as not to upset anyone.
    I felt an extreme loss that I hadn’t gotten to know my thirty-two-year-old-self. I really wondered what he was like. What would be different? What would he do? Would he still need these guys? I had lost a potential good friend.
    A light bulb went off in my head. He wasn’t gone. He was here somewhere. I don’t know why, but right then and there I knew it. I bolted towards the door in the back. I kicked it open. It was an empty room. A clear white floor was surrounded by red brick walls. There were a few low hanging lamps that provided the minimal light that was there. Multiple corpses were off to the right side with dried blood around them, tainting the purity of the white floor. On the bottom of the stack, I noticed a dead body that resembled my friend Steve. It smelled horrible. Discarded relics of people’s past were decaying on this floor. On top of the stack was my bartender, his fresh blood mixing in with the dried. I heard a mumbling on the other side of the room. I ran to it. It was dark on the left side of the room; there were no low hanging lamps. I grabbed my Iphone and switched it on to flashlight mode. As the tiny bulb clicked on, I saw another me, dressed in a slightly darker shade of blue than the youthful man in blue, tied up on a black metal chair and gagged.
    “NO! I DON’T WANT HIM!” the youthful man in blue screeched. His optimism lost to blind rage induced fear. In a crazy tantrum he ran towards me and jumped at my back. He started clawing at me. His hands grabbed my hair and pulled down, “GET AWAY FROM HIM! YOU NEED ME!” he screamed.
    I felt two burley hands from the man in black on my neck. They were coarse and rough. He picked me up and brought me close to his face, “This is for your own good,” his breath smelled like nothing, which was only noticeable for its lack of anything distinguishable. With his throw, I landed back in the bar, defeated. The man in black slammed the door shut. The man in blue grabbed his gameboy and fervently played. The man in green, blanket now on the floor, was restraining, as best as he could, the man in yellow. The dove started to stand and then fell over.
    The vixen was cackling at me from across the bar while I lay prostrate. Her beauty had gone. Her laugh was incendiary, sardonic. It cut right through me. Her eyes turned to a fiery orange and then full black.
    “You are worthless and always will be,” she told me. She was so vociferous in her declaration I couldn’t help but cower. In an instant she returned to her normal state of being gorgeous and took a sip of her drink. She winked at me. I began to cry. All the things I had laid out to keep me safe had ruined my life.
    I rose slowly. I was defeated. All the energy I could muster I would use to exit this bar and live out the rest of my existence safely watching life from a distance. I jammed my hands into my pockets; my eyes glued to the floor as I took my first steps towards the exit. There was a loud thud as the door seemed to unlock itself.
    I stopped after a few steps. I didn’t move. I barely breathed. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. With my retreat towards the door, it seemed everything was back to status quo there in the bar. I deliberately raised my head and stood up straight. I breathed calmly. It was almost as if I was trying to master a relaxation technique. As my eyes stayed transfixed on the exit door, memories seemed to shoot through me. I saw all the pretty eyelashes from girls I let walk away; my safe couch warmed from another night of playing the misanthrope; my co-workers climbing and me at my same desk year after year, content with knowing the function and purpose of what I was doing; and lastly Suzy yelling at me for being indecisive about choosing a restaurant. Such a seemingly innocuous memory of her, but it was the first time I understood her. Then I saw her eyes as they saw me initially, filled with hope and wonder and all the usual accoutrements of budding love. They were excited about what I could be. As I watched them blink, they re-opened with how she saw me when she left, disappointed with what I was.
    The memories ended.
    “There’s a difference between safe and happy,” I said. No one responded. You could hear a pin drop. My breath grew rapid. I realized if I walked out of the bar at that moment, I would cement my fate.
    I walked over to the man in black with an intrepid stride and with one swift motion, my foot connected with his shins. I unloaded. I clenched my fists tightly and began pummeling him. He blocked a few punches and reciprocated. I was too high on adrenaline to feel anything. I outmatched him. I fought with a tenacity birthed from desperation and he gave up. He sat there and took my beating. I could feel his nose break on impact. His blood was getting on my hands. Like a crazed animal, I kept going. I reached in his back pocket and grabbed his gun. I stepped back and pointed it at him. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes, like a child who had done something wrong.
    “You help me? How have you really helped me? When I had the idea of the new way to pitch the Coffee Roasters campaign, I didn’t say anything - I followed the rules; I didn’t want to misspeak. I asked Tim, just to see if I had spoken up what they would’ve thought of my idea. He was the one who spoke up, with my idea. He got promoted. Was that you helping me?” I held a steadfast gaze despite the fact that the gun in my hand was shaking wildly.
    “Yes. Didn’t you want that? I don’t understand. What did I do to upset you, Mark?” he beseeched me to tell him. The gun in my hand was cold and heavy. I’d never held a gun before. “Mark, please, I was just trying to help. Like you wanted. You kept me. Please, give me the gun,” he extended his hand.
    “No,” I said coldly.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked.
    He started sobbing and screaming. He was begging for some sort of mercy. Some sort of future where nothing could live. I closed my eyes, and before I could second guess myself, pulled the trigger. The shot was loud and instantaneous. I heard screams. With my eyes still closed, I pressed the trigger again. And again. And again. And again.
    As I opened my eyes, I saw the man in black lying there motionless. I had shot him multiple times in the chest. There was blood everywhere with his lifeless body sprawled about. Now, he truly was nothing. The man in green was sobbing and holding the man in black’s hand.
    “He was my friend,” he wailed.
     Both the new bartender and the youthful man in blue were staring at me. I turned my focus to the youthful man in blue. He was shaking. As tears started to escape, he played his gameboy.
    “I’m so sorry. But, you know, you know I have to do this,” I told the youthful man in blue.
    “I know. I’m just scared. We had fun together though, right?”
    “We sure did, we sure did,” I gave him his final validation.
    I fired my gun. The bullet ripped through his chest. The gameboy dropped to the floor, shattering into many pieces. He looked up and smiled at me, that youthful innocent smile. His once white toothed smile was now red as blood decorated his enamel. With a loud clunk, he fell to floor.
    I gripped that gun with both my hands. My knuckles were white.
    The man in green crossed his arms and looked down. “I was just trying to keep you calm and safe. It truly was a pleasure serving you; I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted.” He looked at his friend, the man in black, and then back at me, “You won’t be as safe anymore. Just know that.”
    “I know,” I said. I fired. The bullet cracked into him. The piercing sound of his flesh being ripped echoed in the bar. As he fell, his blanket floated off him and landed far away on the floor.
    The man in yellow looked up at me and smiled. “Please, finish it, Mark. It’s okay, I understand.”
    I obliged, fired, and his head plunged forward onto the table. He was at rest. His dove once again showed signs of life.
    I turned towards the new bartender, but he was gone.
    The vixen walked over to me, her heels clicking on the floor as she walked. The sound annoyed me; her smell no longer intoxicated me. “What are you gonna do with me?” she asked.
    I paused. I looked at the martini she was holding. With my thumb and index finger, I plucked the olive from her glass and ate it. “Not a thing,” I told her and walked away.
    I opened the door against the wall and untied the man in the chair who resembled me. It seemed he was to take the place of the youthful man in blue.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    With a smile, he went to tend the bar. I watched him, his posture was different than the others, and he was less affected, more assured. He didn’t seem to search around for approval as the others had. On his way to the bar, he stopped by the broken gameboy. He picked up the Dr. Mario game and the shattered piece of the machine with the blue crayon marking and stowed them away in his pocket.
    I sat back at the bar. Same stool I had been occupying. He poured me a drink and then himself. We got to talking. His way of thinking was different, it was nice. I hadn’t lost the friend I feared I had, I just met him a little later than planned. As we talked, a man in charcoal grey, a man in orange, and a man in red came out and occupied the tables. They each gave me a knowing nod. Then the new bartender told me they had to close up, but to stop by anytime. He extended his hand and I shook it.
    As I left the bar, I saw another man jamming his hands into his pockets and walking with utmost caution up to the Good Times Bad Times Bar. I wondered how he was gonna leave.
    The sun was completely gone. The night was pitch black. I got into my car and put on my seatbelt. Many thoughts ran through my head as I sat there. I felt different. It was new, it was strange, albeit a little scary. The change, for good or bad, I didn’t know. All I knew was the future was going to be different.

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