If there was one thing everyone knew about Mossmyn was that it was always raining. Some days it only drizzled. Others it poured in sheets. The puddles never dried and neither did the laundry. The elders told tall tails of sunshine the way people in other places spun stories of rainbows with pots of gold.
If there was a second thing people knew about the moldy little town, it was that the Leaky Bucket Tavern sat just at the edge of the wharf at the top of a water-sogged hill, overlooking both stormy sea and ever-flooding city center.
The Leaky Bucket was not the kind of place you took someone you liked on a date. Maybe someone you hoped to scare off, but not someone whose opinion you respected or who you hoped would respect you back.
The Leaky Bucket was not somewhere you went to dry off after a hard day's work on the wharf. It was not the kind of place you went to dry off after a long day slogging through the mud and the rain around town. It was not a good place to dry off.
The Leaky Bucket was not a place to relax with good food or refreshing drinks. The highest compliment anyone had ever given anything coming out of the Bucket's kitchen was that the food was hot (and that had honestly been an exaggeration) and the drink contained alcohol (an understatement, to be certain).
It was not even the kind of place to get out of the rain. Not with any consistency anyway. At any given time, half the tavern's floor was covered in bowls, cups, and buckets (ideally of the more whole, less hole-y variety) set under leaks in the roof. Most days, the other half of the room was filled with patrons who chose to ignore the steady drip of water falling from leaking roof to damp foreheads.
No one was sure when the tavern had taken the name Leaky Bucket. Had it been picked ironically when the tavern was young, or had patrons begun calling it that more and more as the roof gave out until the owners gave in and changed it officially? Perhaps the owner knew, but if they did, they never said.
One would not be faulted for wondering how the Leaky Bucket still had customers. Perhaps it was a misplaced sense of loyalty from an older generation toward this local establishment fueled by a nostalgia for a simpler time. Perhaps it was stemmed from a twisted sense of pride, some idea that only the really tough could stick it out.
Perhaps it was the alcohol.
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One Word Prompts 2021
Short StoryA series of short stories based on the Inktober one word prompts from 2021. Each story is completely independent unless otherwise noted. If you only have a few minutes and just want to read my favorites, I recommend Crystal and Raven, Roof, or Spark...
