Carl's not mine, but I'm borrowing him for this story.

Bloody Mary

by SpunSilk

I mixed the drink with graceful, practiced movements. Worcestershire sauce for the flavor, black pepper and cayenne pepper for the burn, tomato juice for the color, vodka for the magic. Then a stalk of celery, lemon wedge, and olives for the presentation, and set it on her tray with a flourish. "One Bloody Mary extraordinaire for my favorite waitress!" She gave me an amused glance and set off for her table.

The guy hunched at the bar had watched the exchange with blood-shot eyes, and eventually grunted "You know, that's not… at all what blood looks like…"

I grinned. "A fact which, I'm sure, improves its sales."

He returned his attention to the rocks in his bourbon, and I wiped the bar. A quiet night this late. Just one customer at the bar itself, and few tables occupied in the lounge. This fellow had come in a few hours ago and had eased into a series of bourbons on the rocks like a guy slipping into a warm bath. He hadn't said more than two words to me since about three glasses ago. I studied him, always anxious to put my Psychology 101 training to work, from the night classes I was taking at the local Community College. He seemed to have a lot on his mind. He looked pretty pathetic; his used-to-be-white suit coat hanging on the back of his bar seat had seen better days, and a crumbled straw hat perched on the back of his head, in-spite of the late Fall temperatures outside.

"So," I started, conversationally. "You know what blood looks like." He gave one curt, silent nod, staring blindly into the wood in front of him, like my voice was dis-embodied to him. Possibly it was, he had had a lot of bourbon. "You a surgeon, then?" I asked pleasantly. He snorted to himself and shook his head sadly.

That would usually commend a response, but none came. "What are you, then?" I prompted.

"What am I?" he repeated quietly – asking himself, rather than anyone else. "I'm… I'm…" he seemed to search for the right word. He looked almost shell-shocked for a moment, then it passed. "I'm… tired. Tired… of it all." He fell silent again. He held the cold glass up against his temple.

I polished the highball glasses. A good bartender knows when to talk, and when to hold his tongue. But a comment like that last one was a red flag in anybody's book. A lot of these old guys will come into a bar and just need to talk themselves out. It's a service we bartenders provide, to get them talking, you know. I've seen it many times – that a man will often clear out his own thoughts, in his own head, only once he has heard them spoken out loud.

I ventured, "My experience is that what ever is bothering you is not that important – tomorrow, I mean. When you wake up after a good sleep, it will all seem less dramatic than it does tonight."

He afforded me a bitter glance. "That your experience, eh?"

"It is."

"Dandy for you," he said simply, and fell silent once more. It was clear he wanted to converse only with his glass.

A few minutes passed as I skillfully loaded the rack with dinner glassware. He was once again staring, un-seeing in to the bar on front of him, but I could see the gears were churning in his head. Between sips, he was absent-mindedly rubbing his right forearm, like it pained him. I tried again. "Where you hale from, Stranger?"

"From L.A."

"Long way from home."

"Long way," he agreed distractedly, "but that doesn't help. You just end up bringing your memories right along with you." He took a pull from his drink.

More silence. Slow Jazz played in the background over the stereo system and filled in the gaps between the conversation. I felt for this guy for some reason. I hadn't seen somebody need catharsis this bad in a long time. He was drinking himself numb.

"Is it a woman, Buddy?"

"What? Oh. No." he answered, then corrected himself, "Well… yeah. Well… sorta."

Sorta? I suppressed a smile. Sorta a woman? What would that mean? I started my therapy-talk, "Well then, can I use my best line? …about how she's not worth it… all the heartache, I mean. You know – how 'there are plenty more where she came from' and all that–"

"Oh, it was worth it," he responded slowly, his expression going strangely cold. "… if viewed dispassionately." His eyes blazed, not focused on anything in the bar, for just a bit – so much so that I took a step backward in surprise. Blazed with… what was it? Satisfaction? Victory? The sudden shift in his demeanor startled me. With that the one comment, he grew, visibly, from a shrunken, shell of a man to… well, to a fighter. I'd even say warrior. A real force to be reckoned with. Laser-clear focus. A man capable of doing anything. Anything he deemed necessary. I have to be honest; it startled me a bit. But then he took a deep breath, shifted in his seat, and shrank again to the sad shell of a man he had been before. "But I am afraid you're probably right, about the 'plenty more where she came from' " he said, resigned.

This time I was the one who fell silent.

The waitress returned. "Three Chardonnays, one sherry." My hands moved mechanically to fill the order. My brain spun on this odd customer. I prepped the drinks distractedly, and she left again with a full tray.

He looked straight at me suddenly. "I've got some fatherly advice for you, friend. Don't believe anything they tell you. About how the world works." He wagged his finger at me, "They don't know."

"And you do know how it works?"

"Well–" He faltered just briefly, then scowled. "No, I don't know either. But it's not simple like they say."

I said nothing, and wiped down the beer taps.

He stared into space and continued. "It's complicated, there are… levels. There are…" he seemed to lose the steam he that had found for a second, and he fell back into his own thoughts. "It's a round, round world…" he started but did not complete the thought. He took another pull in the bourbon.

My beer taps sparkled in the dim light of the bar, but I kept wiping them anyway, giving him space and silence to sort it out.

"I don't know how I recover, afterward, from these things any more." he was saying to himself. "Don't know why I recover." He closed his eyes and rested the cold glass on his temple again. "There's always another one. They just keep… coming."

"Who keeps coming?" I asked, for some reason delighted by this unusual old guy. "The women?"

"No. The monsters."

That caught me off-guard. It must have shown on my face, because he looked up at me, amused. "Yes, son. The monsters." He drank. "It's true. Swamp creatures, zombies, witches, demons," he ticked the list off on his fingers, "Troubled spirits, vengeful ghosts. Death by… vampire…" He cringed a bit. "Things that suck your energy, things that run you through a blender… Gremlins and kobolds and werewolves and killer invisible clouds." His eyes closed. "And …nightmares. Always the nightmares." He glanced up at me and waited for my reaction.

I didn't know what to say. Maybe this guy was a author. "You've imagined all those?"

"Son, I've seen all those. And fought for my miserable life each time."

"That's… ahh… quite a variety…"

"Yeah," he said without enthusiasm, as he turned his attention away from me again. "I'm kind of a magnet." His eyes unfocused and took on a haunted edge. "I've seen too much. Too much… My eyes have looked at things my mind can never again un-see." he spoke quietly to his bourbon. "I carry it with me… everywhere I go."

I didn't answer, but it seems by this point, he didn't need my participation for the conversation to continue.

"Too many victims, too many innocents… Clueless of what they were facing... so clueless." he covered his eyes wearily with both hands. "Who became king and decreed that I should be keeper and protector of human life, eh? Why do I need to carry this?"

I continued to polish, but I kept an eye on him out of my peripheral vision.

"Why can't I just let it lay, leave it alone? Let sleeping dogs lie? What madness compels me to try to set it right each time? Against my own self-interest most times, I might add! What can this compulsion be? I must have a screw loose…" he sighed and returned to gingerly massaging his forearm again.

I tended to agree with that last comment. I started to think he was off his rocker, really off. Like 'he needed professional help' really-off. His crumbled suit, his out-of-season straw hat, why didn't I notice it before? I had never met anybody that was crazy before. Depressed, sure – daily. Explosive, about weekly. Even manic, once. But straight-jacket crazy? Seeing-things-crazy? Never. I was fascinated. "Do you really believe that stuff?"

He gave me a perfunctory glance. "And you don't believe me, of course." He didn't wait for an answer. "No offense taken, I'm used to that by now." He slid back into his own little world, thinking his own disturbed thoughts.

"Well, I'm not going to believe you, I'm afraid..."

He grunted and took a swig of his bourbon. "Yeah." Shooting me an irritated glance, he said, "I used to be like you. I used to believe they were all just good stories for young boys around campfires, that people were basically safe in their homes alone at night. Yadada–yadada. Then my education began. Enjoy your naive peaceful sleep. Enjoy it actively! Maybe you'll be lucky and never need to really wake up."

A thought struck me. "What happened to her? This 'sorta' woman." I asked, not sure I really wanted an honest answer.

"I sent her right back to Hell," he answered matter-of-factly. He drank again, and I stopped wiping glasses, frozen.

"You killed her?" I whispered. My gut hit the basement below us. "You actually killed somebody?" Was this part of his delusions, or had he really murdered someone in the deranged state he was in?

He lifted his face to me, his eyes bored into mine. Now he had that fierce look again. "I did what had to be done. Don't even pretend you can understand. Don't even think about judging me."

"Did you kill her?" I insisted on an answer.

His eyes suddenly looked incredibly old. "Not killed. You can't kill one of these. Not as a human being anyway. 'Disposed of', is better wording." His glass was empty, and he stared silently at the heeltap.

I stood there with my jaw slack. What should I do? Call the Police? Honestly, what would I say to them? What would they say to me?

He stood. "Thanks. For the drink," He pulled a few crumbled bills from his wallet and tossed them on the bar. "If not for the conversation."

"Look, buddy. I hear what you're saying. Why don't you see somebody about all this, huh? I can see you're really down. You need to talk to somebody! I know there are some good… doctors… in town…"

"I do not need to see a Shrink." he grated at me. He pulled the used-to-be-white suit coat from the back of the bar seat and whipped it bitterly onto his back. The breeze of air that passed my face from that action held a whiff of some thing on it. Something I could not recognize, but that put my nerves on edge; not a normal smell, something foul, primordial, it smelled… evil. Can a smell be evil? As he headed out, I saw the back of his suit coat for the first time. It was cut open wildly by three clean cuts, in parallel slashes across its width from shoulder to waist. I opened my mouth to say something – not sure what – but nothing came out. Shock, I guess. Without a word I watched him exit out of the lounge, and head alone into the cold morning darkness.