Shane slouched on the bar stool, bludgeoning her sorrows with drinks featuring toy surprises on their rims. She would get drunk if she kept this pace, but the circuitous, strawberry journey to incoherency was what appealed. It beat introspection, on which she was already punch drunk.
Legally, the bar should have been off limits to her this autumn night, but no one cared to stop a moderately attractive female who was presently unaccompanied. Laws are overlooked to accommodate such patrons.
The bar in which Shane drank to delirium had once been servant quarters, though students long forgotten had had dubbed it The Stable owing to thick wooden support beams every twenty feet on which horses could possibly be tethered. The name stuck and the proprietors nailed a wooden horses head above the door in christening decades earlier.
The bar was allowed to serve alcohol on campus through a bureaucratic loophole in the building's donation. As long as the proprietors never outright insisted it was a bar and offered infrequent, socially redeeming collegiate activities, the school's administration could only grimace and make effete threats at the "college social club." This the administration did as a sort of quarterly sport to appease alumni, most of whom had made liberal use of the premises when they were students. The owners of The Stable kept all of the letters of intent to evict in a glass case next to the bar for the reading enjoyment of the students.
The Stable was the place to waste one's nights if only because the nearest outward signs of civilization were several miles beyond campus in any direction, as the original owner had made certain to buy enough of the surrounding forest to protect his investment and keep the uninvited far from his respite. As cars were verboten for underclassmen, nearly all of who would be carefully scrutinized by bouncers in the bars the next town over, most students reveled in the inebriating inevitability of The Stable.
Drinking exacerbated her misandry. It wasn't quite hatred, as she regarded men as pleasantly as members of her own gender, but this night had renewed her heart's sensation that it was a shattered vacuum tube. Disliking Y-chromosome-bearers wasn't so bad, she mused. It would give her a good excuse to fend off the occasional misguided frat boy, who seemed to think they knew her intimately or, if they didn't, were keen on changing that. While Roselyn insisted men had many attractive qualities -- most of which seemed intent on exploring the moist parts of Roselyn's body -- their stubborn persistence than a girl was incomplete without a man's arm around her was not among them. For this reason and a disinterest in incoherency, Roselyn largely forsook The Stable.
Had anyone asked Shane why she was staring at her steadily blurring reflection in the varnished bar top -- and no one had -- she would have muttered something about her roommate having made it clear that their dorm room could only comfortably fit two and that second spot was currently occupied by a man-child with eyeliner and a monochromatic wardrobe. The sight of Dryden clothed brought Shane to politely disguised giggles, depending on how serious he was about being a "vampire" that particular day. She knew she could not remain composed if she happened upon him with his shirt off. It wasn't that she though he was a bad guy, she just couldn't grasp what Roselyn saw in him and little fancied seeing him in Roselyn.
The point is, she wouldn't have mentioned Eliot unless strapped to a rack and stabbed with steaming pokers, a situation she imaged to be unlikely tonight. There might be a rack, maybe stabbing, and possibly hot pokers, but all three stretched credulity. Certainly no amount of alcohol would make her lips so much as form his name. He was hers, even if he was no more than a clinging memory. Twirling a miniature paper parasol between her fingers, she mused that "coffin liquor" would be an excellent name for a mixed drink as long as nobody knew that it was actually adipocere and nothing any right thinking person would want to imbibe. She didn't actually think it was non-toxic, but it wasn't the sort of thing she would want to test, science be damned. She had read quite a graphic volume on what happened to one's body once the flicker of life was extinguished and had to drink faster to at least make the memory of those photos a little hazier. There are some memories it is simply best not to have and there really ought to be a drink that helped specifically with the process of forgetting. It shouldn't cause too much brain damage and should only target that specific memory. She imagined it would sell quite well, but might cause the collapse of polite society as people genuinely forgot their pains and exes. It should be called "River Lethe," though it would probably just end up being called "Forget Me Not" or "Memory Go Bye Bye Juice."
An authoritative voice yelling over the din of the bar interrupted Shane's contemplation on the naming of alcohol. "Miss, I Said That Someone Sent You A Drink!" Successful bartenders eventually gain the ability to capitalize all of their words when speaking for much the same reason that Galapagos finches have strange beaks. An ill-suited appendage gave one smaller seeds or, in their case, tips.
"Oh! Who?" she yelled back. As this was only the second time she had been in a bar alone, and only the third time she had been in one at all, she wasn't sure what decorum demanded. In television shows, slimy men with green polyester leisure suits and greased hair chatted up women who accepted their drinks. It was the reciprocity principle: drinking alcohol they paid for made them feel entitled to something in return, conversation as the absolute least. She was in no mood to be chatted up, much less so if the drink's sender matched her mental mug shot. She just wanted to be left alone with her daiquiri and the bowl of cocktail peanuts with which she was absently endeavoring to invent a wobbly countertop version of croquet using the translucent pink flamingo that came with her most recent drink.
The bartender shrugged his stout shoulders. "Didn't Say! So, You Want It?!"
"Who sent it?" Shane asked again. She didn't need a name, just an indication of direction. The bartender gave a confused look and made of show of scanning the bar as though he were seeking dry land. There was little that was dry about the faces that looked back.
"Don't See Him Anymore, But It's Paid For." He put a wine glass in front of Shane and turned away to tend to another customer she would not be so inquisitive about a free drink. Shane was a waste of good capitalization and the bartender had guessed she would not be a big tipper. Girls who sipped daiquiris rarely were. He was grateful enough to have had his already oily palm greased for this drink's delivery.
Shane looked at the wine glass cautiously. The liquid within was the light purple color that reminded her of first kisses. In the center floated a star shaped seedpod smelling of licorice. She swished it around in her glass as she had read of connoisseurs doing to bring out the odor. Having done this for half a minute, she took a strong sniff. It exuded a weapon's grade concentration of a grandmother's kitchen after making cinnamon rolls. Shane was mostly ignorant of alcohol, but she couldn't manage to detect any odor of it in this beverage. She, despite her inexperience with most in the realm of intoxication, found this to be a good sign of palatability. The scent of alcohol too often produced the queasy feeling of a doctor's waiting room and it had never been the sort of thing she wished to reproduce socially.
Looking again to make certain someone was not eagerly awaiting her first mouthful to swoop in for the kill, Shane sipped. It was pensive and experimental, as she was suddenly conscious that other patrons at the bar were leering and tittering at her application the scientific method to getting sloshed. A miniature bear trap of spice seized her tongue only to be disarmed by honey's lacquer. A larger mouthful radiated the warmth of glowing poker. Perhaps this is why people get drunk, she reflected, having never actually achieved that desired state despite suffering a hangover the next day no matter how little she drank. She swallowed the remainder of the glass in two nearly involuntary gulps and licked her lips to make sure none was missed. She even chewed the seedpod, suddenly ravenous.
The din of conversation around her muted as through the world was filtering through the bottom of her glass. The bar seemed to palpitate with her heart, a fuzzy orange glow waxing with her ever exhalation. She really should do this more often, she thought giddily. She could hardly remember why she was here anymore. Probably she had just wandered in here looking to use the bathroom and got lost. Yes, that sounded right. She had the feeling that she might get lost a lot. Silly girl.
The room felt warm, but not actually hot. She was floating, embryonic, in the space around her head. She didn't want to be wearing clothes anymore and didn't understand why she was in the first place. "Clothes" seemed such a funny word, syllables invented to annoy someone with a speech impediment. Like "chrysanthemum." She just wanted to rise to the ceiling, unfettered, and be carried around by the current of the people walking like the last balloon after the party ends.
The feel of the floor rushing to meet her head and the emerald gleam of the light fixture above were the last sensations she remembered before the first knife enter her ribcage.
From the campus blotter of The Phoenix:
- Marijuana smoke was reported in Oya dormitory.
- Criminal mischief in Shango Hall - bulletin board partially ripped down.
- Noise complaint concerning female screaming in the vicinity of The Stable - two cited for indecent conduct.
- Theft of skis from open vehicle parked in Main lot.
- Individual warned for littering in the SUB lot.
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
