Cold Decent

I don’t say a word as I walk in the place. I keep my hood drawn, hanging low over my eyes. I don’t want anyone to see my face, all I want is a place to be alone. As I take a seat on a shiny red stool, I try to remember if I locked the car. Not that I care, the thing’s a piece of shit anyway. I give up thinking, and sit hunched over the table, my arms resting heavily on the
wood.

“What would you like?”

I look up, and my hood falls back a bit, allowing me to catch sight of the large, rough looking barman. He doesn’t look like one to mess with, a shaved head and muscles about the size of two of my arms. Oh, that’s right. I’m at a bar.

“The hardest you got,” I speak, but I don’t recognize my own voice, “I don’t want to wake up in the morning.” The words fall out of my mouth automatically, but that’s not something I would say.

The man gives me an odd stare and goes off to fix my drink. He pisses me off. I’m not sure why, but he does. He comes back a second later and places some green shit in front of me. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever drunken, and it tastes even worse.

“What is this shit?” I splutter.

The man glares at me, “What you ordered sir.” He says ‘sir’ as if it kills him, and it makes me want to punch him. I could, and I should, but I don’t. I don’t want trouble, like I said, I just wanna be alone. So I sip the crap and keep quiet.

Minutes pass, or maybe hours, I can’t tell the difference anymore. Someone takes a seat three or four stools down from me at the bar. Two someone’s actually, I notice, turning my head slightly too the right. One of them is a bubbly blonde who looks like she’d have trouble counting to ten and a man. A balding man who’s developed quite a gut, and I half wonder why she’d be with him. But then I know what it is: money, of course.

She sips some colorful looking drink; they’re both laughing. They’re both talking quietly, probably thinking they’re out of earshot, but I hear everything they say as clear as if they were sitting right next too me. Not that I want to, and it’s not like what they have to say interests me, but I still hear them.

“Yea, I’ve written tons of books, all very famous,” the man says smugly. People like him piss me off.

She giggles again, “Wow, impressive.” She pisses me off too, eating up his lies like a dog, “What's your most famous?”

“Headstrong, I’m sure you’ve heard off it,” he says, the title sparks something in my mind, but then he continues, “It’s sold tons of copies, over a million in it’s first week actually.”

Then I remember, “Headstrong”, a piece of crap book if I’ve ever read one. “Over a million copies? What fantasy world are you living in?” I speak loudly intentionally, in the hopes that he might hear me.

And of course he does. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him rise, turning to me, “Did you say something?” He asks stupidly.

I smirk to myself, “Yea, actually. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to recognize that one.” He’s left speechless for a second so I continue, “You mentioned your book I think? ‘Headstrong’, I think it was? If memory serves right, the most it ever got was two stars, if even that. The New York Times called it crap I think, or was that every other major newspaper?”

“Listen asswhole--,” he says, taking a step forward.

I stand as well, “Does this idiot impress you?” I ask blatantly to the blonde, “That what you go for? Liars?”

She looks scornfully at him, and he sputters at a loss for words. “What?” I say, addressing him now, “You wrote a whole book, how can you be at a loss for words now?”

“Who do you think you are?”

I shake my head at his stupidity, “I know who I am, who do you think you are? You write one books that sells about ten copies and you think you have something to brag about? You write one book, if you can call that shit a book, and you think you can sleep with whatever girl you want?”

I dig around in my pocket, then toss a couple of waded up paper bills on the counter, “Thanks for the drink,” I say simply, and turn to leave.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and I hear the ‘author’ from before say, “Hey, I think you forgot something.” I turn around, finding the man’s arm drawn back tight in a fist, as if he were about to punch me, his faced balled up in a crazed look of concentration. And then he swings, only he comes up with nothing but air.

I’d crouched down seconds before he’d try to hit me, now I get up calmly. His arm is still extended, as if he’s too shocked to move. I grab his arm with both my hands, and speak coldly, “That was a pretty good line, sounds like something that would come out of your crap book,” effortlessly, I pull him off the ground, swinging him over my shoulder. I flip him through the air, bringing him down on a wooden table nearby, smashing it to splinters, “but next time, try and back it up,” I say to his motionless body.

“What the hell do you think your doing?” The barman shrieks from his place behind the bar. Now I’m really getting pissed off. First some guy tries to sucker punch me, now this guy with a crappy dead-end job is messing with me.

I turn to leave once more, only to be stopped again. He grabs me by the shirt, screaming in my face, “Look at me when I’m talking too you!” Any trace of politeness had left his voice.

I glare him down, “Bad choice,” I place my hands on his chest and push as hard as I can, sending him flying into the glass case of bottles and cups behind the counter. There’s a shattering of glass as he falls to the floor, soon followed by the sound of police sirens. No doubt, they’d been called as soon as I took out the first guy. And to think I didn’t want trouble...