By William G. Muir
No one ever paid attention at the Last Turn.
The short man who was making his way to the pay phone had started to lose his hair at far too young of an age, it had recently started to go prematurely gray as well. This unfortunate combination had gone a long way to making him appear to be twenty years older than he actually was. The strange limp he had recently acquired wasn't doing anything to dissuade people from thinking he wasn't a vital young man. Not that he was, yet he wasn't as decrepit as his appearance made him out to be. At least not yet anyways.
He reached out his right hand and lifted the receiver from its cradle. Just as quickly as he had taken the phone's receiver into his hands, just before he could lift it up to his ear, he slammed it back down. He then lifted the receiver back into the air and slammed it back down several more times. He then let the receiver drop from his hand and fall to the floor. Before turning to leave he kicked the stool that sat beneath the pay phone.
This outburst failed to turn any heads away from their drinks, or whatever else that held the customer's interest.
Having failed at his attempt to make a phone call, the short bald man made his way over to the bar. After covering the few feet from the out of order pay phone to the bar, the man then climbed up on the stools, that sat at the bend in the bar. He motioned to get the bartenders attention. It was moments like these that he wished he was at least 5'6” or even taller. All his life he had to live in this world that was designed for taller men than himself. It made his life a daily hassle, he just wanted to know one time what it was like to sit on a bar stool without having to climb up it.
Before he could continue to contemplate what life would be like if he was taller and he had full head of long blonde hair, the bar tender placed a glass down in front of him. She then filled it with a single malt scotch whiskey and smiled at him.
It had been a long time since a woman had smiled at him. He took the glass in his hand, tilled it towards her and then lifted it to his lips. But before he took a sip he paused, then put the glass down on the bar.
“Why scotch?” he asked the bartender.
“Pardon me?” the bartender asked in response to his question.
“Why did you pour me this scotch,” he asked again. “I hadn't order anything, yet you poured me a scotch.”
The bartender began to chuckle, she placed her hand to her mouth so that she could regain her composure. “You really are silly, Ben. You always order a scotch.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You come in here every Thursday, sit in that spot, and have a scotch.”
Nothing about this night had seemed right to Ben. Now he was sitting here in this tavern he had never even laid eyes on before. He wasn't even sure if Louisville had a place called the Last Turn. It sure as heck couldn't be a new place, word would have gotten around if it was. And what was he doing on this part of Seventh Street anyways. No one ever had a legitimate business in this neighborhood. It was nothing but strip clubs, adult book stores and sleazy bars. This was not the part of town a respectable gentleman, as himself, should be seen in.
This was the last place he expected to be tonight. He had been spending a quiet evening at home playing World of Warcraft when he received a mysterious call from a familiar voice. His brother Robert had been involved in some sort of ordeal. Ben wasn't sure what all had happened, Robert sounded as if he was several feet away from the phone as he was trying to explain what was going on. The sound of a woman screaming could be heard in the background, along with what sounded like a child crying. It could have also been someone chanting. It wasn't clear enough for him to make out.
What did come across as clear as crystal was the last voice he heard. It sent chills down his spine to think back on that voice. It was so deep, so menacing, so other worldly. Ben could only image that this was what Satan's voice sounded like. Whoever it was on the other end of that call had clear instruction for him. If he ever wished to see his brother alive again, he would have to follow the instruction he found programmed into his GPS.
That was how he ended up outside the Last Turn tavern. He had been following the GPS when his car broke down. Even though this was the sleazier end of the city, it was also the least populated. It had been about two or three miles since he had seen any other establishments, he was beginning to think he was on the outskirts of the city.
He reached into his pocket to get his cell phone. He tried to look up the numbers for a tow truck, but he wasn't getting a signal. He decided he needed to get out of the car, it had to be the metal frame that was blocking any signal. He was sure that was the reason. As Ben stepped out of the car and started searching for a signal, that was when he first notice he was outside the Last Turn.
His phone fell from his hand and was smashed to pieces as it struck the ground.
“That can't...you must have me confused me with someone else. I have never stepped foot in here before tonight.” He said.
The bartender put her hand over his and once again smiled at him. “That is what you say every time you come in here.”
“No!” Ben said forcefully. “No! I have never even heard of this place. I'm not even sure I am still in Louisville.”
He very well could have passed beyond the city limits. He had been paying close attention to where he was being told to go. While he was studying the GPS he could have very well driven out of the city. The last time he knew for sure that he was still in Louisville was when he was in the heart of downtown. It was hard not to notice the bright lights shining in his car from every angle. But he had left those lights behind several miles back. He was now out where the street were almost as black as the starless night itself.
“Look sweetie, you seem like a nice enough fellow. So tonight I am going cut this bit short. Hopefully. Your name is Ben Lawrence, you come in here every Thursday night. You sit in that spot and I pour you a single malt scotch. Most nights you drink it, your face gets scrunched up and then you sip it out. That is when I ask you is there is a problem. You then tell me your car has broken down and that you need to use my phone. You say it a matter of life and death. When I tell you that the phone doesn't work you leave.”
Ben couldn't believe what he had just heard. He lifted his right hand to his mouth. He just looked hard at the woman, she had just told him things she couldn't have known. “Who are you, and why would you tell me any of this.”
The bartender reached bellow the bar and pulled out a glass. She then picked up a towel and began to polish the inside. “Me? I'm just your friendly bartender. As for why I told you this, you asked me why.”
“So let me get this straight, I come in here every Thursday and I do all that stuff you just said. Yet I had never asked you why before.”
“Honey, you like most people go through life never questioning what is happening around you. That is how you ended up here. That is why you always end up here. On this night you missed something.”
Ben looked down at the glass of scotch that sat on the bar. His left hand was still wrap around the glass. All he could think of was why had he come into this tavern in the first place? He told himself that it was to use the phone. But how could he have known there would have been a pay phone in here. In this age when most people had cell phone, the pay phone had become an endangered species. Even if one was lucky enough to find one the likelihood of it actually working was almost zero.
And good luck trying to get any business to allow you to use their phone. Unless you walked in carrying your own head they would smile at you and in the politest way possible tell you to go fuck yourself.
He had not come in here to use the phone. At least that was not the subconscious reason Ben had walked into the Last Turn.
“I don't drink,” was all that Ben could mumble to himself.
“Pardon me dear,” the bartender put down the glass she had been polishing and picked up another.
“Nothing, it's not important. How much do I owe you for the drink,” he slid down from the bar stool and reached into the pocket of his jacket.
As he pulled out his wallet and was about to open it so he could pay for the drink he never touched, the bartender grabbed his hand. “Look around and tell me what you see?”
Ben looked up, “What are you talking about? If I look around I know what I will see.
“Are you sure?” The bartender asked in an urgent manner.
“Yes, just a bunch of miserable sods trying to drown their sorrows.” Ben tried to pull his arm out of the bartenders grip. This just caused her to dig her black finger nails into his arm deeper. If it wasn't for the sleeve of his jacket, Ben was sure she would have broken the skin.
“Then look.”
This is pointless. Ben knew that there were people in the tavern when he had walked in. He had almost tripped over a guy passed out on the floor when he was making his way to the pay phone. But seeing how he would like to get his arm back sometime tonight, and not have it and his jacket sleeve shredded by the bartenders nails, he decide to indulge her. It was the least you could do for an insane person.
“Fine,” Ben said as he quickly turned his head to scan the barroom and then looked back at the bartender. “Are you hap...”
Not exactly sure what he just saw, Ben once more looked back into the room. This can't be right... All he could do was just stare. He dared not even blink, if he did he was sure what he was witnessing would disappear. “That's not possible.”
“And what is that?'
Ben turned back too look at the bartender. A look of disbelief had now taken over his face. “It's empty. The whole place is empty. That just cannot be.”
“And why is that?”
“There were people in here when I walked in.”
“Really?”
“When I came in here most of these tables were full. Over there, at the pool table, was like this middle aged biker guy and what appeared to a girl way to young for him. She might have still been a teenager. There was even a guy sitting next to me at the bar.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean I am sure about that,” Ben was beginning to feel indignant. He wasn't sure what exactly was going here, but he didn't like it. Not one bit. He couldn't help but feel like he was being made a fool of. “I know what I saw, and what I saw was a barroom full of people.”
The bartender put down her towel, moved the glass of single malt scotch whiskey out of the way and leaned on her elbow. “Is that what you know, or is that what you believe?”
“What do you mean is that what I know or is that what I believe?” At that moment an image from his childhood flashed into his mind. “You make as much sense as the Dungeon Master.” Ben wasn't sure why he thought of the diminutive character from a cartoon he use to watch on Saturday mornings. He just knew that it fit.
“I would have thought Yoda would have been a more apt comparison. But Dungeon Master will work just as well.”'
“Why is that?”
“Haven't you figured it out yet?”
“Figured what out?”
“It is my job to help people like you see the truth.”
“What truth?”
“About the world they live in.”
With that the bartender walked into the backroom.
Ben looked around the room one more time. He was sure there had been people in it before. How could he have been so wrong? There had been a man sitting right next to him. He could recall every last detail of the man as if he was currently looking at him. He was a rather large man, one who hadn't missed a meal in some time. It was kind of hard to tell when someone is sitting, but Ben was sure he was a tall man as well. Something that he always envied and despised in other men. The man also had what appeared to be a full thick head of hair. Somewhat odd in a man who was well into his middle age.
As Ben scanned the room his eye did not detect one living soul in the room. How could this be?
There was one thing he knew for certain, he wasn't going to remain in this tavern one second longer. What had the bartender told him, that every time he came into the Last Turn he ended up storming out. As far as he was concerned it was past time for him to exit this place. He was sure that the bartender had drugged him in someway or hypnotized him. She had done something to mess with his mind. He wasn't going to stick around and let her take further advantage of him.
In one quick fluid motion he made it from the bar to the door. It was almost as if someone had blinked at the right moment and missed seeing him move. None of this was registering in his mind. Strange things were happening in the Last Turn and Ben no longer wanted to be part of them. The sooner he was through this door and out of here the better.
There was a gas station not too far from here. It was probably closed by now, but the pumps stayed open for customers that paid with plastic. He was sure that someone would have a cell they would let him use.
He grabbed for the handle of the door but it was not there. He knew that he saw it. His vision had been focused on it while he was walking over from the bar. But when he reached out to take hold of the handle, so he could open the door, it was not there. All he felt was air. Ben looked down just to prove to himself he had not gone crazy. And there it was. Once more he tried to take it in his grip, but all he got was a handful of air, just like before.
Whatever. He wanted out and there was nothing in this tavern that was going to stop him. He would tear this place down with his bare hands if he had to. He was getting out of the Last Turn and that's all there was to it.
If the door handle wasn't going to cooperate with him, then he would have to push the door open some other way. He placed the palm of his hands against the door and began to push against it. It just stayed in place. Their was no give in it what so ever. He pushed even hard, but it would not budge. Finally he dipped his right shoulder and put all his weight into it. Nothing!
Maybe I need to pull on the door to open it. How do I do that if I cannot grab hold of the handle? Ben began searching the door for some kind of handhold. If he could just get some purchase, just maybe he could pull the door open with some brute force. He examined the door, he even looked along the edge of the door in hopes that he could find some space to fit his fingers into.
As he started to feel along the edge of the door he discovered something extremely important. There was no door. At least not standing in front of him anyways. The door he had come in, and he sure this was it because he hadn't seen any others, wasn't there. Sure it looked like it was there, but it wasn't. He knew this because there was no seam between where the door should have been and where the wall began.
What was there appeared to be a door that had been painted onto the wall. As he pulled his hands away they were covered in red paint.
* * * *
It just didn't make sense! No matter how many times he thought about it he just couldn't wrap his mind around it. He just didn't understand why there were so many different kind of glasses for alcoholic beverages? And why is it that only a portion of the vessel was ever used? It just seemed like a waste of material.
The size and shape of drinking glasses wasn't really a big deal to Ben. It was just a needed diversion. He just needed to wrap his mind around something that could be answered. He may not know what the answer to the question was, but he was sure there was someone, an aficionado, somewhere who did. Just knowing that somebody had the answer was reassuring to him.
There seemed to be no answers for the other question he was trying to block out. At least there was no answers that he was aware. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't find them. He had sat starring at the glass of scotch that had been poured for him with out him ordering it. He thought if he could just figure out why scotch, than maybe more clues would make themselves known. Just maybe he could figure out what the hell was going on here!
As he sat pondering the whys off glassware, Ben failed to notice the bartender returned from the backroom. If he had been paying attention he would have noticed her carrying out what looked like an answering machine. Even if he hadn't been looking at the glass of scotch in front of him, his mind would never have registered the bartenders movements. His brain was to busy trying to find an indirect way to figure out what was happening to him.
He never saw the bartender lay the answering machine down on the bar next to him.
“Are you sure you know what you saw, or do you believe what you saw?” The bartender's unexpected question cause Ben to jump.
The right hand of the befuddled Ben made a quick jerking motion causing him to tip over the glass of scotch. “Aren't those the same things?”
Embarrassed by his blundering, Ben pulled out his handkerchief and start to clean up the spilled scotch. But his polyester handkerchief just ended up pushing the liquid in front of it. With practiced ease the bartender grabbed a hold of her bar towel and cleaned the spill. As a defeated Ben shoved his handkerchief back into his pocket, the bartender continued on.
“People see all kind of things, and often times they will see what it is they wish to see. But what people don't know is that they can be made to see things that are just not there. All it takes are a few simple words and their perception can be altered. The brain is such a funny tool, once it perceives this altered perception it will do whatever it takes to protect it. The mind doesn't like to admit when it is wrong. So did you see it, or did you believe you saw it?”
“What does any of this have to do with me?” This game was really grinding on Ben gears. He just wished whatever the bartender wanted to tell him, that she would tell. Just get to the point will you!
“The point is,” the bartender began, as if she had just heard the words that he was shouting in his head, “you continue going through your life seeing things that are not there. You have constructed a world were some of the details get through, others do not. And for all those details you have filtered out, you create new ones to take there place.”
“What are you trying to say?” Ben said as anger was beginning to creep into his voice.
“What I am saying, is that you fail to see the most obvious details of life. Especially when they are right in front of your nose.” With that the bartender grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the shelf behind her and started to pour the whiskey on the bar right next to him.
Without even thinking, Ben started to reach into his pocket for his handkerchief. But before his hand even slid into his pocket he stopped. What he saw shocked him. The whiskey did not splatter everywhere. Instead it was poured into a whiskey glass that materialized as the liquid filled it.
The way that the glass had just appeared, as if from out of thin air, caused Ben to pause. How? That single word kept repeating itself over and over again. Just when Ben thought this evening couldn't get any stranger, something like this happens. This had come straight out of left field, leaving Ben more confused than he had been just minutes before.
The glass then lifted up off the bar and made an arcing motion, as if someone was tossing it backwards. It came to a sudden halt at the apex of the arc,the glass then tilted forward, the whiskey slid towards the lip of the tumbler. But before the liquid could spill out, it hit some sort of barrier. It was then that Ben realized that the man he though he had imagined sitting next to him suddenly reappeared.
Ben slid off the bar stool he was sitting on and landed hard on his back. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs.
This is a dream... this all a dream...none of this is real. That was the only explanation that made any sense, logically. All the things he thought he was experiencing tonight were just images playing in his subconscious. The phone call, his car breaking down, this tavern that appeared out of nowhere with it's customers that popped in and out of existence. All of this was his mind sleeping off the effects of sleeping pills. What was happening to him right now was what Ebeneezer Scrooge claimed Jacob Marley to be.
Don't panic...everything is going to be all right...I will wake here soon...
“You are partially right Ben, some of this is not real.” The bartender said as she leaned over the bar so she could look Ben in the eye. “You must figure out which parts.”
Ben got back up to his feet and returned to the bar stool he had been sitting on. “What do you mean which parts?”
“All I can tell you is that not everything that has happened to you tonight was real. Some of it you created in your own head. You need to figure out which ones are real, and then you can leave.”
The bartender walked around the bar into the barroom. She made her way to one of the wooden support columns and started ringing the bell that was a fixed to it. She turned back to Ben, looked him square in the eyes and said, “You better figure it out soon, because it is LAST CALL!.”
* * * *
If only Ben could get a signal, then maybe he could call somebody with some sanity. Though with the luck he was having tonight they might not believe what he had to say. They may just accuse him of falling off the wagon again. Ben circled the barroom trying to get a signal; but he wasn't having any luck.
“What are you doing there, sweetie.”
The bartender had finished pouring the final round of the night and had turned her attention back to Ben. It was at this point that he wished that not only she, but the tavern itself would just disappear. Just like the customers had done earlier. Or at least they appeared to have all vanished. But by some strange force they all managed to pop back into existence. Back to the very spots they had been in before.
There was no way to explain it. There was no logical way that these people could be there one minute, be gone the next and then materialize as if they part of a David Copperfield show. And there was the door, he knew that it existed, how else had he walked into the tavern. Yet when he wanted to leave this place it was no longer there. All that was left in its place was a painted on door, as if done by Wile E. Coyote.
Ben came to a sudden realization. “Bartender, how come none of the other customers have left?”
“What do you mean?” The bartender asked as if she hadn't expected this question.
“Since I have arrived not one person has come or gone. At least not through that door. Is it because there is no door?” Ben asked.
“The door is not there for you.” The bartender replied. “But as for anyone else, they can come and go as they please.”
“Why can't I leave?” Ben inquired as he made his way back to the bar.
“Because you closed that door when you asked about the scotch.”
“What does the scotch have to do with any of this?”
“As soon as you asked why you set into motion a chain of events.” The bartender motioned to barroom. “You separated yourself from everybody else in here.”
“How is that?” Ben asked. “What do they have to do with any of this?”
“Before tonight you were just like every last one of them. You never stop to question the world around you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You lived in the world, but you never knew what was real. You never questioned any of it.”
“So by questioning...I saw what was real?” Ben had no idea what this meant.
“Without skepticism every person in this place is trapped in there own little world. They have no clue what is real and what isn't. They accept both into their reality.” The bartender reached out and snatched Ben's cell phone from his hand.
A look of shock came over Ben's face. It was soon replaced by a look of indignation. “Hey! Give me back my phone?”
“Is this your phone?” the bartender asked him. “Or did yours break when it fell out of your hands. Which is it.”
“That is clearly my phone,” Ben replied. Look at the wallpaper, that is my companies logo.”
“Then why did you come in here, if your phone was working?” The bartender fixed him with a serious gaze. “Which one is real?”
Ben looked to the phone in the woman's hand. Why had he come in here? He thought it was because his phone didn't work. The reason he walked in here was to call for a tow truck driver. Or so he had thought. But that couldn't be, the bartender had his phone in her hand. So clearly the phone that he thought was broken was fake. But what was he doing here? The phone he tried to use earlier in the night clearly had to be the real one, which meant the one in the bartender's hand was a fake.
His mind kept giving him reasons for why one phone was fake and the other one was real. But as soon as he had decided which one was the fake and which one was real, his mind would come up with new reasons to change that decision. This was like one those riddle about a person who always tells the truth and the person who always lies. He knew there was an answer to this question, but for the life of him he just couldn't figure out what it was.
So he guessed.
“They're both fakes?” Ben asked hesitantly.
“Are you sure?” The bartender asked as she searched his eyes.
Ben gulped and waited several seconds before he answered. Or was it an eternity. Time seemed to have stopped altogether as he stared at the woman standing in front of him. He wondered if tonight hadn't been so odd if he would have found her attractive. Sure she was taller than him, but he was use to dating women taller than him. If he had had the time to concentrate on them, her long red hair and her green eyes could have really lit a fire in him.
He shook those thoughts off. There would be time to admire her beauty, and flirt with the bartender later. Right now he had to answer her question. He had taken a guess, and now it was time to either stand behind it, or to leave it flapping in the wind.
“Yes,” he said with steely determination.
“The bartender gave him a warm smile. “You are correct.” The cell phone that was in her hand vanished.
“I need to ask you another question,” the bartender said. “The right answer could mean you get to leave.”
“Ok.”
“What is the earliest thing you remember about tonight?” The serious look returned to her face.
Something odd happened when he tried to think back to earlier in the evening. Before the strange phone call that sent him out this evening, there was nothing. He couldn't remember one thing that happened before that phone call. Was there something wrong with his memory? It was as if nothing existed before then.
Literally.
Not only could he not remember what had happened earlier in the evening, he couldn't remember any part of the day. Nor could he remember anything that took place the day before. He couldn't remember anything that happened last week or last month.
Whole years were missing. His whole lifetime seemed to have vanished. It was as if someone had erased his mind clean. They had taken every moment he had ever experienced before the phone call. Ben was beginning to wonder if he was real, or part of someone else imagination.
Ben looked into the bartender's eyes. “I don't remember anything before the strange phone I got from my brother.”
“That is what I thought!” The bartender then reached for the answering machine. It was the first time Ben noticed it. “I need you to listen to this.” The bartender pushed play.
“Benjamin... Benjamin... It's your mother...there has been a terrible accident. Robert is in the hospital. The Doctors... oh my baby!” beep “Benjamin...it's your mother again... Robert... Robert... is... dead... beep
“Where did you get that?” Ben asked in a nearly muted tone.
“That's not important, Ben. What is important that you find the truth.” The bartender replied.
There was no point in denying it, he had been doing so for ten years now. His brother Robert was dead. No, his twin brother Robert was dead.
Listening to his mother's panicked voice. To hear her pain coming through the answering machine all these years later brought with it all the pain he had been avoiding for all these years. He had seen his mother cry when she put her baby boy into the ground. He seen how much it destroyed her, and he just couldn't live with the pain. So he pushed those images aside and replaced them with happier ones.
He found that happiness at the bottom of a bottle. He became a functioning alcoholic. By day he presented himself to the world as if he was a sober man without a care in the world. But every evening after he returned home from work, he would start the drinking. He drank so much that he would pass out some time around 9 pm and sleep until it was time to get up from work.
He drank so much that he had no memories. But inside his head he built his own little subconscious world. One in which he never touched a drop of alcohol. A world where his mother never had to know the pain of losing a child, because his twin brother Robert was still alive. He had created the happy moments that he needed to survive.
Taking a deep breath, Ben looked to the answering machine and then to the bartender. “What do I do now?” He asked solemnly.
“You need to accept what happened tonight.” The bartender said in a caring tone. “ That way you will be able to move on.”
The bartender placed her tiny right hand over his. The barroom of the tavern was gone. In its place was his apartment. His no picking up after himself, dirty dishes left everywhere, food spoiling, air so foul that it could choke you apartment. This was the first time in ten years that he had taken a sober look at his home. He was embarrassed by what he saw.
He was even more embarrassed by what he saw slump over in his easy chair. It was him, but not the well groomed and upstanding businessman that he created for himself to be. No this Ben was an appalling site to see. His hair was unkempt, he hadn't shaved in days and he hadn't bathed in that time either. His body odor was competing with the other stenches in the room for which one was the foulest.
He was wearing what had at one time been a white tank top. But it had so many stains one it by this point someone could have mistaken it for a Hawaiian shirt. The outfit was completed by a pair of boxer shorts he hadn't changed in weeks. And why should he, why should he take any care in his appearance? He had lost his job earlier that month.
The tv was left on, as it was every night. Ben had a habit of falling asleep in front of it these days. And just like all those other nights, the tv was at full blast. The Ben that was passed out in the easy chair could careless about what his neighbors thought about the noise. It was the Ben that was standing over him, watching and waiting to understand, that could hear the pounding on the walls.
He wished there was some way that he could turn the volume down.
That was when he heard it. The voice from mysterious phone call he had received earlier in the night. But the voice didn't come from a phone call, the phone hadn't even rung. The voice he heard was coming from the tv. It turned out that while he slept, a horror movie marathon had begun. The voice from his dream was from a movie about demonic possession.
The sound of a passing truck backfiring had cause Ben to come out of his alcohol fueled slumber. Ben watched on as he got up out of his easy boy chair. He must have taken the dream for being real. His inebriated mind must have constructed the phone call, building on dormant memories of his brother's passing, his mother distress of having lost her son and combined those with the chanting from the movie and the voice of the demon.
Ben watched as the images from earlier in his evening continued to play out. Once he was awake and believed that he had received an urgent phone from brother, he grab his car keys. He stumbled out his door and into his car. The scotch was playing with his mind, it had convinced him that instructions would be waiting for him in his car's GPS. The only problem was that Ben did not own a GPS system. But that didn't stop the scotch from telling his brain that his heater control panel was the GPS. Ben flip on the fan and began following the imaginary screen.
His journey didn't last long. Driving under the influence of scotch saw to that. Ben had managed to pull out his apartments parking structure without slamming into another vehicle, he also avoided pancaking the front end of his car into any of the walls or barriers. He wasn't so lucky when he got to street level. He ran straight thru the mechanical arm that raised and lowered whenever a vehicle would exist.
Coming out of the parking garage he took a wide left turn, causing him to drive up onto the sidewalk. He over corrected his steering, driving into the opposite lane before he was able to get in the correct lane, just missing plowing into an oncoming car.
After Ben watched himself try and drive in a straight line, things became difficult to follow. No longer was he watching things happening in real time. His vision began to become choppy, as if moments of his life had been cut away. His world had begun to slowdown. All the sudden he was seeing things unfold as if he was living inside a disco ball. Everywhere he looked it was as if he was seeing the world through a strobe light effect. Images just keep popping in and out of focus. Things would go blurry, go black and then clear up, only to appear closer than before.
It was because of this optical trick Ben didn't, until to late, see that he was driving straight towards an oak tree. Not any oak tree, but the oldest one in the county. It had lived for three hundred years and had a trunk as wide as a car. Unlike a car that was design to give on impact, the tree was more rigid and stood it's ground. The effects of the impact were transferred back into Ben's car and the force caused the front end to crumble.
Things went blank. This seemed odd to Ben. He always thought when the time came the last thing he would see was the blackness slowly closing in on him. But that was not what happen. There was the flash of light that pieced the iris of his eyes and had penetrated straight into center of brain. Then everything became blank. All he could see around him was whiteness. Nothing else.
One moment Ben was standing in an eternity of whiteness. Then there came the whooshing sensation. It was as if he had been snatched out of his body by a huge invisible hand and the redeposited outside of it. He found that he was no longer in the car. At least his soul was no longer on the inside of the car. The mangled remains of his car were the first thing that he saw. The next thing that he saw was that his body was still in the car, the motor having smashed through the car's firewall, and now resting against his chest.
As soon as Ben saw his lifeless body trapped in what had once been his pride and joy, a 1965 Ford Mustang, he noticed the way things around him starting to slip away. The invisible hand had him once more, and it was pulling him away from the wreck. He soon found himself back in the Last Turn, starring into the bottom of a glass of scotch.
After several long seconds he reached out and snatched the tumbler into his hand. But before he could lift the glass off the bar and up to his lips a hand came to rest on his forearm. It was the hand of the bartender. When Ben looked up all she was doing was just ever so slightly shaking her head no. Her eyes told him that this wasn't what he wanted to do. Not anymore.
“You have a choice to make,” the bartender told him. “If you drink the scotch then all the progress you made tonight will be forgotten. And you will have to do this all again.”
Ben cocked his head sideways. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“The scotch is the demon that brought you here,” she replied. “If you wish to leave here tonight then you will not drink that. This is the demon you must defeat to move on.”
“How long?” Ben asked.
“How long what?” the bartender asked with a bit of confusion.
“How long have I been doing this? You said earlier that I do this every Thursday.” Ben tried hard not to let the sudden revelation of what had happened to him show. He was trying with all his internal fortitude not to breakdown. But it was difficult, taking all of his concentration.
“I'd say, if I had to guess, a year now.” The bartender's eyes looked up too the left like one does when they are trying to come up with an answer. “Yes one year it has been.”
“A Year,” the answered had been like a pin penetrating a balloon. His spirit had been deflated. His head sunk down, coming to rest on the bar.
“That's nothing,” she said as she pointed out to the crowd in the barroom. “The rest of this lot have been here much longer than you. Not all demons are the same. And not everybody is as strong as you are.”
“So how does this work?” Ben looked up at the bartender. “How do I move on from here.”
“You see the clock over there, the one above the jukebox?”
Ben looked over his left shoulder to get a view of the clock. “”Yes!”
“In three minutes when it strike midnight you will be ready to move on. You will be able to see the door again.”
“That's all?”
“As long as you don't drink that scotch, yes, you will be ready to move.”
Ben bit his lower lip in contemplation. “So I take it that this is the afterlife?”
The bartender smiled at him. “No! An afterlife would imply the end of a journey. It would also imply that you had only one life. This is not the first time you crossed through these doors, and it will not be the last time. Not for quite sometime.”
“So what is on the other side of that door?” Ben asked. “For me?”
“I wouldn't know, I am not allowed pass the threshold.”
Ben looked at her questioningly. “What demon are you fighting?”
The bartender laughed as she refilled a bowl of nuts. “It's not like that. This is my realm, if I leave it...well let's just say I can never set foot outside of this tavern.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it is my job to help those that are ready to find their way to their next destination.”
The image of a painting that hung in his mother's sowing room popped into his head. It was of a figure wearing a black hooded cloak holding out a pale, gaunt looking hand. It was so pale and gaunt that it almost looked like the hand of a skeleton. The hooded figure was holding out its hand to receive the golden coin which was the price of passage across the river Styx.
Was the bartender Charon, the ferryman on the river Styx?
The bartender gave him a knowing smile. “Don't worry, there is no charge for passage.” She then turned and walked away.
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