A visible smoke filled the air, wrapping itself around a thin, graceful neck, smothering until it entered her being through flaring nostrils and an open mouth. Darya wiped the sweaty droplets off her upper lip as she poured the rose-tinted liquid in its glass, topping it with a thin lime slice. "Your cosmopolitan," she laid it firmly on its coaster and pushed it towards the customer. No response, and she was back at the end of the bar, cleaning dirty glasses littered with lipstick stains and fingerprint smudges. Darya had long considered Embers Bar & Grill was like a half glass of beer: never sure if it was halfway full or halfway empty, but positive that it was only filled with the cheap stuff.
Everything around her was cheap; the cheap, shitty alcohol she served, the cheap, shitty glasses she served them in, and most importantly, the cheap, shitty people she served them to. Darya tossed her rag on the bar with irritation and narrowed her eyes on the cocktail glass on her fist, because goddamn lipstick stain won't come off it. Cheap.
She didn't hear the front door open or slam close like it did every time someone came in, but there, at the end of the bar, was a brand new customer. Darya assumed the woman was new, because never in her eight months of working had she ever seen someone like that. Not even remotely like that, she would've remembered quite clearly. The woman (the sweaty, dirty, underwear clad woman) wasn't perched on the maroon vinyl seat at the bar that was bursting with stuffing. She stood solitude, arms at her sides but slightly floating out like there was a breeze going through her, ripped strands of her see-through gown tickling her bare legs. Darya gawked unashamedly.
What the fuck. Did nobody fucking care about the mental patient in the bar? What the—
Something burst in her mind, so sudden, like a firecracker being released onto the surface of her brain and suddenly exploding into dozens of pieces, scattering around in her head and ricocheting off the walls of her skull. The shot glass fell from her hand and onto the wooden floorboards, emitting a crack that sounded too much alike to how her mind felt.