Reality had begun to feel thin, as if its edges had been worn down by time. Wendell used to believe he understood what was real and what only pretended to be, but ever since losing most of his memories, the line had blurred almost beyond recognition. Up felt like down. Down felt like up. Time drifted without purpose, no longer something he could trust.
A bar surrounded him. That part still seemed true. He was trapped inside a bar. He did not know how long he had been here. Time had vanished first, then his memories followed, and even his short term recollections flickered like a dying bulb. Only a few facts remained. His name was Wendell, he was the bartender, and for reasons he could not explain, serving someone a second drink made him forget them completely.
Polishing a glass was simple. Breathing in the stale air was easy enough. Thinking was the difficult part. Whenever he tried, a pressure rose behind his eye, dull at first, then sharp and punishing. While wiping the rim of a glass, he felt something attempting to surface. A memory, fragile and important. It came close enough for him to sense its shape.
The pressure surged.
The memory vanished.
A voice broke through the void.
"Can I order a drink? Hey, can I order another drink?"
Wendell blinked and felt himself return to the present. His reply came out harsher than he intended. "You have had enough."
The man leaning on the counter flinched, confusion distorting his expression. He had only been served once, so the refusal made no sense. He attempted to slam his hand down in frustration, but the motion faltered strangely, as if a part of his arm had failed to reach reality in time. His face shifted for a moment too, parts of it thinning or disappearing as though the world had forgotten to hold them in place. He staggered backward and collapsed, striking the floor with a hollow and final thud.
Wendell returned to his glass. He resumed polishing and hummed quietly. The sound steadied him, even when the room did not.
A dark stain spread across the floor near the fallen man, but it was not coming from his body. It dripped from above in slow, rhythmic taps. Wendell looked up. The hanging light fixture swayed gently on its chain, flickering with an unsettling rhythm that made his stomach tighten. It felt as though the entire room had lost its alignment.
Before he could study it further, the small bell at the door rang. A scream followed.
He turned toward the doorway, moving slowly against an invisible weight. His gaze passed over the abandoned drink, now filled with something murky and dark instead of what he recalled serving. A woman stood in the entrance, staring in horror. Her face stirred something inside him. Recognition. A memory rising.
He chased it.
The pressure crushed it instantly.
"What was I thinking about," he wondered, then let the thought collapse.
"Oh well," he said softly.
The woman fled into the wasteland beyond the door. A thought surfaced. Should he follow her? Something about her reached into a part of him he no longer trusted, but he could not step outside. The bar's boundary held him like an unbreakable rule.
Outside, makeshift shelters and abandoned streets stretched across a ruined district. Wendell had grown used to unruly patrons, but the elegant woman did not belong to this dead place. Her face pulled at him, familiar but unreachable. He returned to his task and polished the glass again.
Light caught the surface in strange, bending patterns. Reflections formed within it, offering brief glimpses of collapsed buildings and a distant sun that changed brightness without reason. Each time he tried to focus, the pressure scattered the images like dust.
The door creaked open again.
A young man entered. He wore a long and tattered shirt that swayed around his knees. A faint chill slipped into the room with him and raised goosebumps along Wendell's arms. The man's presence felt weighty and oddly familiar.
Wendell found himself hoping this one might be different.
The man sat at the closest stool and set a small briefcase beside him. He did not order. He simply waited. After a while he spoke. "Would you like to take a seat?" Wendell looked at him without understanding. The man continued. "If not, would you mind if a friend joined me? She is nice."
Wendell nodded. Unusual things always happened here. He continued polishing.
An hour passed. Then another. The woman from before returned at last. She hesitated at the threshold but walked inside without the earlier panic. She sat beside the young man. They ordered drinks, finished them in suspenseful silence, paid, and left.
Paid.
No one ever paid.
"How strange," Wendell murmured.
He collected their glasses and began to clean them. As he polished, the reflections deepened, revealing faint scenes. The young man traveling through empty lands. Narrow escapes from threats Wendell could not clearly see. The images warped. Something warm slid down his chin. He wiped it away and stared at the smear on his fingers.
Blood.
"I should clean this," he said.
He reached for a fresh rag. A sudden clatter struck the floor. The briefcase had fallen.
Wendell stared down at it.
Had the man not taken it with him?
Perhaps he should chase after him. Surely he had only stepped out moments ago. The thought faded the moment a gust of dry wind pushed the door open again.
He moved to close it and stumbled on the briefcase once more.
A briefcase.
Why was there a briefcase on the floor?
He had forgotten his earlier discovery.
He lifted it. Shook it gently. No sound came from inside. He unlatched the clasps.
Air rushed outward with violent force. Dust spiraled from every corner. Bottles rattled and fell. Glass shattered across the floor. A swirling pull formed inside the open case, tightening as light shimmered through it. Faces and scenes flickered in the vortex, memories that might have belonged to him or to no one at all.
Wendell braced himself against a support beam as the pull grew stronger. The scar running down his body throbbed sharply. Stretching from his eye all the way down his unfortunate body. The vortex expanded, its spiraling reflections forming countless shifting windows, each revealing something impossible.
He looked into them, and as he did everything fell dark.
Dread hollowed him out.
His grip slipped.
The vortex grasped his entire being.
He was pulled into the spiraling light and vanished. His thoughts dissolved with him.
Silence returned.
Moments later, the young man stepped through the door once again. Calm and steady, he crossed the ruined bar, lifted the one unbroken glass that remained half filled with dark liquid, and took a slow drink.
He closed the briefcase with quiet indifference. The clasps clicked shut.
He walked out of the bar.
This time he did not pay his tab.