Astigmatic landscapes in low exposure. The air smells of oak. There are lazy sounds of glassware being moved about.
— Having that contraption here certainly makes me feel a fair bit safer.. — said a skinny lad.
One look at his eyes was enough to tell he was well and truly pissed.
— Inherited it, — the barman muttered without looking up.
He meant the smoothbore, double-barrelled shotgun, as though copied from a half-remembered Soviet cartoon. It hung above the bar, exactly between two amateur still lifes.
There were only four people in the bar besides the staff. Two friends whose noisy conversation and distinctive swearing suggested they’d lost their jobs, the loves of their lives and their wallets, all in one day. They’d stopped ordering ages ago and were watching for a chance to slip away. In a corner, beneath those damned paintings, a wrinkled little man of venerable age was snoring. He’d knocked back two and a half glasses of fuel and abandoned the light in favour of darkness for the next three hundred minutes or so.
And the skinny one, hoping to get a conversation out of absolutely anyone.
Each of them must have had their own chain of cause and effect that had brought them to this place.
The world isn’t black and white. It isn’t even grey.
The measured sounds were interrupted by the unexpectedly loud opening of the door. A female specimen entered. Few though they were, the eyes in the room groped her from head to toe.
Brown boots trying to pass for cowboy boots, black leggings beneath an equally black fur coat made from some insanely fluffy animal — all thoroughly smeared with mud. And her eyes.. it’s hard to form an opinion from a single glance. You have to look closer.
— Rum for the lady! On me! — the skinny one broke the spell. The eyes returned to their original positions, and the lady slowly made her way to the bar.
She hung up her coat and sat down, leaving one stool between them.
— Call me Psy. — The skinny one held out his hand, waiting for a handshake.
The girl merely took a hurried swallow of the rum that had just arrived.
— You can’t live without guilt, can you? — she asked in a frail voice.
— That’s utopia, — Psy concluded, withdrawing his hand.
The girl was staring nowhere. Her heartbeat was uneven, her hands shook, and her lipstick had been applied crookedly and in a hurry.
— What are you here for?
— The same thing you are.
Psy looked at her closely. In the shadow of the bar lamp, her outline lost its sharpness. Her figure seemed slightly blurred, like a badly taken photograph. He narrowed his eyes but still couldn’t work out what was wrong with her.
— You look like you’ve run away from somewhere, — he muttered, feeling his drunken cheer begin to give way to unease.
— I ran away. — Her voice had grown steady, but somehow empty. — Just not to the right place.
She rose abruptly, taking the unfinished glass of rum from the bar. Looking at her reflection in the cloudy liquid, she suddenly smiled — unnaturally, with effort.
— Know what’s worse than feeling guilty? — she said, still staring into the glass.
— What? — Psy felt the air in the room thicken, pressing on his chest.
The girl looked up. Her eyes — colourless, empty, like two mirrors — reflected something that couldn’t possibly be here. Images trembled in her pupils like old film: corridors, darkness, human silhouettes distorted as though someone had moulded them from wax and thrown them into a fire.
— Knowing it’s justified.
The sound of shattering glass made Psy flinch. The girl had dropped her glass, but paid it no attention. She sat down again, turning slowly towards the barman.
— You’re here too, aren’t you? — she asked, addressing either the barman or someone behind him.
Psy wanted to say something, but couldn’t. His voice seemed stuck in his throat. He turned towards the other customers, but the two friends at the next table had vanished. Only two empty chairs remained. The man in the corner… had he even been there?
— What the hell… — Psy whispered, feeling his blood run cold.
The girl turned sharply towards him. Her face twisted: her eyes darkened, her lips split into a mad grin, and her skin turned pale, almost white.
Psy recoiled, his stool scraping the floor. The air in the bar grew suffocating and heavy, as though the whole world around him had breathed out at once. The girl kept looking at him. Her eyes were no longer mirrors — now they looked like two holes in the void, with a dull light seeping through.
— You’ve been here before, — she said softly, as if from far away. — You’ve just forgotten.
— What…? — Psy breathed, feeling his thoughts tangle and his memory stretch. He tried to remember how he’d come to the bar, but the past slipped away like water through his fingers.
— We all forget, — she continued. Her voice now sounded like an echo, as though layered over itself. — This place doesn’t exist. It’s… something we make ourselves. Every time.
She stood up. Her movements became jerky, unnatural, as though the body she was moving wasn’t hers. The barman stood motionless as a doll, his face frozen in an impassive grimace. The paintings on the walls began to blur, their colours running downwards, exposing nothing but blackness.
— You don’t understand, do you? — The girl stepped closer. Her shadow stretched out, flooding the space around them. — You’re not here, Psy.
His heart hammered, and a painful realisation flared in his head. He tried to remember… something important. But the memories came in scraps rather than clear pictures: sirens, screams, blood on his hands. The bar was disappearing. Everything turned grey, as though reality were dissolving into the air.
— It’s your fault, — she whispered, leaning towards him. Her face was blurred now, as though its outlines were being deliberately concealed. — You came here to remember.
Suddenly the double-barrelled shotgun was in his hands. It was heavy and cold. Psy looked at the weapon, then at the girl standing before him.
— I… what have I done? — He could feel his voice shaking.
— Everything you could, — she answered. — You found them all. Every last one.
And then he understood: the bar, the people, her empty eyes — all of it was part of a single nightmare he’d made himself. The weapon in his hands, the smell of rum, the shadows on the walls — it was all familiar. Far too familiar.
The bar door slammed, and silence swallowed everything. Shadows closed in on him from all sides. At the last moment he heard her voice, cold and calm:
— Now you can start again. Or forget.
Waking up to the usual alarm was vile. Nausea rose in his throat, accompanied by a splitting headache. The stench of bodily existence reigned, and the room’s temperature was distinctly — February.