WnW 1.1 Say Nothing

I read the name of the pub for the third time, “Raise Your Spirits”. The neon sign presented a pixie lifting a martini glass twice her size. I leaned against the bike rack in front of the place and swiped aimlessly on my phone, reading tabloid headlines: “Mayor Bell recorded dumping trash in the river! But is the footage real??”

Someone passed by me and entered the pub. For a moment, a dull roar was magnified from inside, like a lion deep inside its den. Nice and welcoming. I slowly let out a sigh. I really didn’t want to go in there. A drop of water plopped onto my screen, warping a grainy photo of urban legend. Looking up, I saw that dark rain clouds were crowding out the remaining evening light. My ultimatum, I supposed. 

“Fake it til you break it,” I muttered and entered the pub.

The interior was dimly lit with coloured lights. Tables and booths were filled with people drinking and talking. Occasionally a loud cheer would erupt from the pub goers. It didn’t matter where it started, the entire place would echo the cheer at a volume that made me flinch. 

I saw Mac sitting at the bar, surrounded by people that all wanted to talk to him. He’d grown out his hair a little, from a buzz to a short wavy length. Somehow he was achieving the impossible feat of looking focused and attentive to every one of his friends while switching between six different conversations. Even though I’d barely seen Mac since high school, that hadn’t changed. Mac could handle an entire room talking to him at once, and would be able to tell you later that he liked the outfit you were wearing that day. He noticed me staring at him from the entrance and gave me a small, private smile. He beckoned me over to the bar.

“Hey, Nick,” Mac beamed at me as I approached. “Glad you could make it!”

I was painfully aware that I had become the focus point for his nearby friends. I sat down beside Mac and another man. I nodded. “Congrats on the job.”

Mac lifted his glass. “Thanks.” He turned to look down the row of seats at the bar, “You will all refer to me from here on out as the Supreme Commander of Swivel Chairs and Staplers.” Laughter rippled down the bar, then was drowned out by a raucous cheer. I glanced up at the screens above the bar. Some sort of video game tournament was being broadcast.

“Hey Nick.” A voice said, a touch too loudly into my ear. The man sitting next to me had said this. His face was flushed and he beamed at me. A waft of whatever he was drinking came to me and my insides sunk a little. Two opposing thoughts clashed together in my head. I want to leave. You have to try.

I mustered a smile. “Hi.”

He kept smiling at me expectantly. But all I could think about was my stomach doing flip flops from the smell of alcohol. He pointed to his own face, “Bradley,” he said hopefully, “from high school.”

“Hi Bradley,” I said weakly.

He was quickly distracted by the conversation on his other side. Mac was engaged as well, nodding and smiling to a story being told to him.

I sat idly, watching the game. I want to leave. The character on the screen sliced the other character clean in half. Very real looking anatomy tumbled out of the severed pieces. Another cheer swept over the crowd. My right ear was given special treatment as Bradley bellowed into it. My head was pounding as he waved over the bartender and got another glass of beer.

The bartender smiled at me. She was wearing pale red lipstick. “And for you?” she asked.

“No, thanks- I mean, just water please.”

“Water?” Bradley said incredulously. “My man! It’s a bachelor party and Mac’s paying! Get a drink or two.” He waved his glass close to my face and the scent of beer filled my head. Overripe fruit, rotting inside my stomach, filling my head with things that weren’t me, times where I wasn’t myself.

I threw on a smile. “Nah man, I’m good.” I want to leave. You have to try.

Bradley’s brow furrowed. “We used to sneak alcohol into school on substitute days. You were a part of that weren’t you?” He was leaning uncomfortably close to me. It was all too much. Loud noises crashed into me like waves. The sickening scent… Bradley once again thrust his drink into view. The froth washed up against the side. “Here, wanna try mine? It’s-” 

I knocked the glass out of his hand.

It felt like the world slowed down as I watched the glass fall and shatter on the floor. There was a brief pause in nearby conversations as people glanced over, a few concerned looks from people who had seen what had happened. The knuckles on my hand stung.

“What the hell?” Bradley said, his cheery demeanour fading.

“S-sorry,” I stammered. “I’ll buy you a new one.” My fists were clenching and unclenching to the beat of my heart.

“If you had that much of an issue with me just say so, man,” Bradley said, shaking his head.

“That’s not why-”

“Really? Are you gonna tell me that you’re a recovering alcoholic at 20? Most people just say they don’t drink. But I guess not you, huh?” He said 

I stood up abruptly.

“Bradley,” Mac interjected. “You’re drunk. Accidents happen.” He gave me a concerned look. The final straw.

“Gonna get some air,” I muttered and quickly walked out the front door.

Taking one step from under the awning and I was hit with a wall of rain. It was summer, so it wasn’t so bad. The cool drops eased a little of the tension from my shoulders, but it also loosened my grip on my emotions. I was close to crying. Why was it so hard?

I heard the roar get louder as somebody opened the pub door.

Turning, I faced Mac. He had his glasses on, making him look more like he had in high school.

“Looks pretty wet over there,” he remarked, testing me with a light joke.

“Yup.”

“I’m glad you came. We haven’t gotten to talk much, with the wedding coming up and my new job.”

Mac was engaged to his highschool crush. I liked Claire. We got along well. I was happy for them both.

I shrugged and looked at the yellow car headlights that snaked across the dark pavement. “It’s fine. It’s important. You should be celebrating. Getting a good job, getting married, it’s… good.” I said, unable to come up with anything else.

He was silent for a bit as we listened to the patter of rain.

“Listen, I don’t wanna-”

“Then don’t,” I said.

His lips pursed. “I’m going to anyway, because I’m your friend. Are you doing okay? Because you don’t seem okay.”

My clothes felt heavy and suffocating on my skin. 

“I’m drowning,” I said simply.

Mac nodded, then a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “It is pretty wet then.”

I huffed out a laugh. 

He got serious again. “What is it? School? Family?”

I waved my arms, directionless. “This? Just this. It’s everywhere and I can’t get out.”

“Then come back inside. The rain will stop.” Mac knew that wasn’t what I meant.

My long wet hair clung to my face. “I’m thinking I’ll go for a walk.”

Mac nodded. “Okay, Nick. I’m here when you want to talk more.”

He paused for a moment before stepping back inside, only once he was gone did I respond, “Except you’re not.”

I set out down the sidewalk, leaving the bar behind.

Most people wouldn’t recommend a night walk in Sillwood’s entertainment district. You would be rolling the dice on your own safety. Violent crime was on the rise, and even the businesses here had connections to the gangs. Luckily the rain meant that people were hurrying along to their next destination. The streets were mostly empty, although most of the clubs had people smoking under the awnings.

Casinos and shops stretched upwards, with their shining neon signs that filled the gaps between them creating a multi-hued ladder to the sky. I crossed puddles that gave me glimpses of a mirror city, stretching deep below the earth. I imagined the reflections were my reality, a city under the water, where my feelings felt normal.

I ended up on a side street with a view of the Sill. It was a cliff in the distance, a dark shadow in the sky. It gave the illusion of being taller than the skyscrapers even though I knew that it was just further away. I couldn’t even see the “wood” part of the name, the forest was obscured by darkness and rain. There were no lights shining into the sky from the part of the city under the Sill. The Old Town lay silent, abandoned.

Turning from the view, I stopped, staring at a window. There were women dancing on the other side, eyes locked with mine as they moved suggestively, beckoning me closer. I blinked. It was a projection onto the glass. Some tech to make the eyes look at mine. A cheap trick meant to prey on lonely individuals, yet I still stood there and watched. My heart ached a little as I stayed there, the rain beginning to lighten until eventually I could hear the beat playing from inside the strip club.

“May as well go in,” a soft voice said beside me.

I turned. A woman around my age was shaking off the water from her umbrella. She paused as I met her eyes briefly and she touched her glasses as if to check they were still there.

“They don’t bite,” she said. “I have a friend who works here.”

I shook my head, unable to get words past the lump in my throat as I stared at the ground.

“No?”

“Honestly,” I said slowly. “I was thinking about breaking the window.”

She was quiet for a moment. “So a white knight, then? Trust me, they don’t need saving.”

“No. I don’t mean like that…” I trailed off, feeling the night air play across my wet face. 

“Feeling lovesick. Thought you could let off a little steam?”

“No. I’m not. I’m not interested in a relationship.”

“Then what, addiction? You need some money?”

Frustration bubbled up and pushed words out of my mouth, “Do you ever feel like you’re in the wrong place? But I don’t mean a location. I just feel like I could walk anywhere and still feel that I’m still here and I feel trapped. Like it’s not real. And I thought for a moment, maybe, if I broke that window it would make a fucking difference.”

I wiped my eyes and laughed. “And somehow I’m now telling this to a stranger instead of a friend. Sorry.”

“We’re not quite strangers, Nick.”

I looked up in surprise.

She chuckled. “That got you to look at me.” She offered a hand and said, “My name is Kay.”

I shook it, confused.

“Not that I have any answers for you,” Kay said, fixing her brown hair in the window, ducking and dodging the projections so she could see her reflection, “but I’m pretty sure you won’t find it in a strip club.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling embarrassed. The rain had stopped and slivers of moonlight were peering through the clouds.

“Listen, Nick. If you’re having trouble and you need someplace to stay, just ask me, okay? I live alone, there’s a guest suite that no one is using. I won’t ask questions if you don’t want me to.”

“That’s a lot of generosity to offer someone you just met,” I said, suspicious.

Kay walked towards the door of the strip club. “I told you, we aren’t quite strangers.”

I froze. Something had just moved in the alleyway beside the building.

“Did you see that?” I asked, pointing.

Kay turned back to me, eyebrow raised, then leaned over to look into the alley. She looked back at me sympathetically. Over her shoulder, a beam of moonlight lit up the alley for just a moment.

“Don’t go looking for trouble, Nick. Have a good night.”

I heard the door shut. My mind was turning, trying to parse what I’d seen. The alley was a black corridor, tapering off into absolute void. I stepped up to the entrance and felt strange. Electric. Something inside me urged me to go in. Like I was getting deeper and yet closer to the surface of the water at once. It was a feeling that mirrored the opposite to what I’d felt inside the pub. You don’t belong here. Take the plunge.

I took a few tentative steps forward. Car lights glided across the walls of the alley like bright fish in a fish tank, but they didn’t reach the deep end of the alley. I heard splashing. Not like a drain spilling water down from a roof. More like a fish, desperately trying to escape a shallow puddle. Something slapped the pavement loudly. My heart beat quicker. But it only drove me deeper. Because my thoughts out there were crushing me.

Moonlight flared. Two figures struggled at the back of the alley. No. One man struggled. The other… I saw bulbous eyes that reflected light, making them look like two miniature moons placed atop a deformed head. My breathing stopped. The moons adorned a nightmarish face. Teeth like needles and skin, yellowed and saggy, like the skin of an old man, taken to the extreme. Four arms held the struggling man in the air, feet not touching the ground. Four more writhed around them, all stemming from this thing. Hands lined the arms like horrifying plumage. Grasping, gnarled hands. Some of them were missing fingers. Some had too many joints. The hands moved constantly, twisting, snatching, tearing at the man’s clothes. 

I was an intruder in this place, like I had stepped into the precipice of the underworld to watch an unwilling man be dragged down into hell.

The man couldn’t move his head, but his eyes slid over to me. Blood oozed from his head into his mouth. It mixed with his spit and when he parted his lips, strands of red clung to them. He smiled. And then he spoke.

“You just going to watch, or are you going to help me?”