Welcome to a Nightmare

Elsewhere Part 5: Chapter 30: Shattering a Broken Heart

Elsewhere Series: Part 5

"Hey, Gina..."

"Hey Leroy, what can I get you?" the owner of the bar asks, pushing her bangs out of her face.

"The usual," the former dwarf answers. He's dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, wearing something comfy before having to change into his garbage jumpsuit.

Regina prepares him his usual drink before going to serve a few lunkheads in the corner. A couple of regulars who were obviously alcoholics for drinking so early in the morning. It was an extremely sad scene but the significant number of people who come looking for a drink in the early daylight hours is why she opens the bar so early. As she gives them a round of beer, one of them tries to grab her ass.

"Hey, sweetheart," the guy slurs. "Why not stay awhile?"

"Thanks, but I have a bar to run and dignity to keep," she snaps, completely annoyed. This was obviously a usual occurrence to all the females in the bar, but Regina was especially annoyed. If these guys weren't good paying customers, she'd have them thrown out on their own asses in a second. She wished beyond all measure that she could do this.

She brings the empty glasses to the bar and watches as Ashley continues to scrub some of the tables and clean up the darts area while a guy named Ishmael begins cleaning glassware.

"Ish," she says. "Mind if I go on my break?"

"It's fine," the guy says.

"Just make sure those assholes pay their bill and keep their hands-off Ashley?"

"Sure," he says.

Regina removes her apron and then pops another stick of gum in her mouth as she goes. She walks past the kitchen and then ascends the stairs to the second floor. She opens the door at the top of the stairs with her keys and enters a tiny apartment. There's a saggy bed shoved against the far-left wall, a tiny window across from the doorway overlooking a back alleyway with hideous curtains framing it and a large air-conditioner that hardly ever worked, a crumbling vanity with a cracked mirror, a tiny bathroom with a mildew filled shower, a kitchenette with only one working burner for the stove, and a tiny dresser with another round mirror hanging above it. However, the most interesting accessories are the beer and wine bottles stacked in corners or strewn around the room, and even under her bed. Regina tosses her keys onto a three-legged side table, side-steps the maze of bottles, and goes to put her face in the bed, which sags, creaks, and bounces lamely when she hits it. She buries her face in the pillow and just lays there, trying not to think or do anything. Her arm dangles precariously over a dried-up liquor bottle, with her finger tracing the rim. She stays in this position for what seems like hours, wishing that she would just suffocate already.

Eventually, she turns over and stares up at the ceiling, which had a water damage stain that looked a little bit like Nicholas Cage from a weird angle. She continues to chew her gum, wishing it was any other day but this one. Today was the anniversary of his death. Crunching on the gum to alleviate her stress, the bartended lets the tears fall, dragging slowly down the side of her face and soaking her frizzy ringlets.

Three years to the day that her life was ruined, her true love taken from her. It was true that both her parents had been taken in her first year of community college, both in separate drive-by shootings, but Regina only mourned for her father as she was always Daddy's little girl. Her mother expected so much of her only daughter, pressuring her to be perfect in every single way; dress, speak, act, achieve everything perfectly. Cora Mills expected her daughter to become someone she could be proud of; which ended up ruining Regina's life and making a hollow shell of nothing drowned in alcohol. It was only her father who gave her some form of love and was proud of her no matter what she did.