May 13th, my birthday, had always passed quietly. Even when I was a kid, the whole day consisted of a small cake, a mild supply of presents from my parents, and a wish as I blew out the candles. No parties…no real partying at all. And now that I was a college student, with finals in the next few days, my birthday had dwindled down to my parent's annual phone call and non-stop studying.

I never minded though. I couldn't miss what I never had.

Unfortunately, my friends hardly understood that.

Every year, they pleaded with me to go to a bar with them. Up until my twenty-first birthday I had the obvious excuse of "I can't get in. I'm too young."

But this year, as all the friends knew, was different. And it was as though they'd planned the whole crazy idea in all the years previous...which I'm pretty sure they had.

At around eleven 'o clock at night, Pete came at me from behind and blindfolded me at the computer. I protested, but within fifteen minutes, he was shouting "Have fun!" from the sidewalk of our residence hall while Tucker and Andrew, his partners in crime, sped off down the road, as I sat blinded, clueless and nervous in the back seat.

"We're going to a bar aren't we?"

"Relax, Clark. Seriously."

"I don't want to go to a bar, guys. Did I not make that clear?"

"Calm down. We're just…uh…picking up you're ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, man," Tucker admitted, before bursting into a quiet laughter that I could still hear.

I sighed in disappointment. Not only was I being dragged out to a place where I was sure I would stick out like a sore thumb, but I was pretty much guaranteed to not even get a chocolatey reward for succumbing to the ridiculous club adventure. Damn…and ice cream cake had sounded REALLY good…

"Here it is! Dude, you're gonna love it here. It might sound a little intimidating at first, but TRUST ME – it's so f'ing worth it. Some of the best nights of my life were made here," Andrew said in a voice that didn't help my nerves feel any better.

As soon as I got out of the car, the blindfold came off and I was standing on the sidewalk of Main St. in downtown Metropolis. Directly in front of me was a massive, silvery colored building that seemed very modern and retro. Lots of neon beer signs in the two big display windows on the either side of the double doors, and hanging over it all was a large, glowing purple sign:

The Pulse

Coincidentally, mine began to quicken the closer we got to the entrance. I wasn't even inside yet and already I knew The Pulse was full of everything I wasn't.

As soon as the large bouncer outside let us in, my mind was thrust into a state of what I can only describe as wild insanity. The walls curved and dipped around, adding to the modern/retro feel. People hovered around the large bar to the left which held hundreds of oddly colored liquids and sly bartenders. Disco balls were glowing, the song "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor" by Artic Monkeys was pumping…I felt like a kid who had never played with a toy, walking into a toy store for the first time.

"It's this great!" Andrew shouted over the bass and mumbling of other conversations.

"Um…yeah!" I answered, although my eyebrows were screwed into a questionable, distasteful look.

"This is just the beginning, dude! Wait until the live music starts!" Tucker promised as he already began to head bang to the beat of the drums through the speakers.

"Oh yeah! What do we do until then!" I really hoped they hadn't bought me a hooker or something. Just the loud music and crazy atmosphere was enough to put me into a very uncomfortable place.

"Dance with chicks! What else!"

I sighed, trying to pretend like the butterflies in my stomach didn't exist when Andrew winked at a table of girls a few feet away from us. All of them had very short skirts and very sexy smiles.

"Look, I think I'm just gonna sit down for a while and scope the place out from there or something!" I informed my friends, who didn't seem to listen or care about what I'd said.

"Um? Oh, yeah. Uh, the owner hooked you up with a booth near the front of the stage, right there! We mentioned it was gonna be your birthday last time we were here!" Tucker said with a sneaky grin.

I knew that grin meant there was something he wasn't telling me, but before I could even ask what it was, he and Andrew were off with their new girl friends onto the dance floor. Feeling too much like an antelope in a cage full of female cheetahs, I hustled off to the booth Tucker had pointed out.

'That's right…don't look at their faces…no eye contact…' I felt the stares of a thousand hungry beasts before I finally reached my refuge of a small, but private-ish booth off to the side of the dance floor.

There I stayed for what felt like hours. I rolled a small, metallic-looking centerpiece from the table in my hands for a few minutes, ordered a small drink of nothing too strong and then rolled the empty glass in my hands for a while. Bored. Tired. Uncomfortable.

I wanted nothing more than to go home, and probably would have done so if it wasn't for one thing.

A voice. A voice in the back of my mind…encouraging me to stay…

I don't remember why I listened to it. Maybe because I realized I was now a twenty-one-year-old guy with hardly any experience with girls or night clubs and that shame won out. Maybe because I didn't really have anything to lose. Maybe it was some kind of psychic, foreseeing ability that I didn't know I'd had.

Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to get me to stay. And it was what allowed the first domino to fall and start the rest of my entire life.