{ ᴏɴᴄ ʜᴏɴᴏʀᴀʙʟᴇ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ & ᴀᴍʙᴀꜱꜱᴀᴅᴏʀꜱ' ᴘɪᴄᴋ }
Tate has been the bartender at The Imp's Bottle for years. The dive bar attracts a trickling array of unusual patrons, but due to his social anxiety, Tate avoids conversation and interaction.
...Until a...
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I did hope they'd find peace, but not all the spirits were in the cemetery. One in particular liked to visit the pub on occasion.
When I'd told K that I had on 'good authority' that the basement had been a popular speakeasy during Prohibition, I'd meant it. Very good authority. As in, from the mouth of someone who'd been there.
The last time I'd seen that someone was just a few days before I'd met K.
『▪』
I was mopping the floor when I felt the chill.
The green and gray tiles glared up at me in the dim light. They always looked so angry. Guess I’d be angry, too, if I spent my life being stepped on.
I wrung out the mop and a trail of icy air went down my back. It used to scare the hell out of me, but it was just a mildly unpleasant sensation now. And a cue of sorts. There was a routine: the chill, the flicker, the visitor. I barely batted an eye anymore, in spite of the oddity of the whole thing.
Sure enough, the lights flickered and dimmed a bit more, leaving the bar to look like the set of a low-budget Halloween movie.
I continued mopping. She always approached from the direction of the front door. I’d see her before I heard anything.
The mop traveled back and forth across the floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. My eyes followed it, and suddenly, there were her shoes. High heels, buttons up the sides around her slim ankles, tan stockings, a simple blue dress ending at her knees.
I stopped mopping and glanced up at her face. She was stern but pretty, with thin lips pressed into a line of concentration. A slight crease in her high, regal brow, she looked down at me with steel gray eyes.
“Is my husband here?” she asked. Her voice had the echoing, empty quality it always had, stressing what I already knew about her: she wasn’t really here. This semi-translucent woman that stood before me was a memory. A loop from the past, reliving one of the last times she was here, in this bar.
I stood up straight. “No, ma’am,” I replied, following the script I knew so well.
“Hmm,” she mused. She looked down at her left hand and twirled her wedding ring around her finger. Just like she always did. “Yes, I suppose he would be gone for the evening. Any visitors?”
'Visitors' were cops, as I’d come to understand.
“No, ma’am. All clear.”
“Very good,” she said. She looked back up at me. “We must keep it that way. We can’t have anyone knowing about the speakeasy downstairs. You understand that, don’t you?”
She always asked the same questions. In the same order. I knew them by heart.
