Ignis fatuus

Christmas Eve, 2004.

“ So why are you here... of all places?”

I take a hard swig from the bottle. Tastes damned good. Especially when it's this cold - near freezing. The room is dark. Surreal. A self-contained, melancholy world. The only window to the outside is a tiny 2' x 2' plate-glass deal above the door. Just beyond the smoked glass I see the wind whip the snow around and around in the night air. A white Christmas it seems... to the delight of children and dreamers everywhere. The snow, as reflected underneath the street lights, is hauntingly beautiful and hypnotic. Tiny tornado mini-gusts, spinning and spinning, as though they waltz. Locked together in a naive, never-ending dance.

“ Well I'm here 'cause I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm not from around here. And well... I fucked up. To make a long story short I'd rather be here.”

He holds up his beer, “ Well merry Christmas then." He takes a long pull and sets his bottle down with a hollow thump. " So what did you do?” His fierce eyes ominously glint at me in the neon half light along with his gold tooth.

I look away. My attention's drawn to the corner of the room. I sullenly eye an old man sitting at the end of the bar next to the ancient Juke Box which whirs and grinds out old rock ballads from the 80's. A guitar solo fills the tiny establishment. The high-pitched scream permeates throughout the atmosphere in a congested cloud along with the thick smoke of the Marlboro Reds I'm chain-smoking. The combination of the music, smoke, and a shaky old ceiling fan which precariously dangles directly above my head create an odd effect: the walls seem to breathe. The whole room is crackling and alive. A stunning contrast to the stillness of the old man as he sits stiff as a statue. He's eerily silent without even a word - or a drink. It's as though this catotonic state can be attributed to the vacancy of his soul as he stares back at me through muffled pits. Beneath rotted lids.

“ Yo. You still here?” A finger snap in front of my face.

“ Yeah. Sorry. What were you saying?” My attention fixes back to the man seated in the stool next to mine.

“ What happened with you and your woman?”

I squint at him beneath my Willy Wonka sunglasses and wipe my nose with my shirt sleeve. I shift in my seat as I take a deep puff from my cigarette.

“ No offense but I'd rather not talk about it.”

I exhale two streams of smoke from my nostrils like a cartoon dragon. I turn away and wave at the bartender. “ Hey another beer over here, Bud light, if you could.”

My gaze returns to the old man in the corner. He seems to be gazing intently at his drink... or perhaps at me, I can't tell. I can't make out his features, even when I peer at him from beneath my glasses. His body is pitched in darkness. The only light upon his face is an unnatural neon blue. A perverted “Rembrandt shadow” that illuminates only half of his face. The other side is almost completely dark except for a small triangle below his eye. His eyes, or the sockets where they should be, are blackened. His grizzled chin is pressed tight against his western-style button-up and his back is hunched. It's an awkward way to sit. I'm reminded of old cowboy flicks and the way corpses of executed criminals are laid out in pine boxes with quarters placed upon their eyes.

As if on queue, as if reading my thoughts word for word, image for image, the man next to me states in a hoarse tone of voice, in a soft, sharp whisper:

“ Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of the night.”

It takes a second for the quote to register. My rusted brain slowly chugs and spurts to life like an old truck left out in a field, forgotten, for many many years. Realization is quickly followed by a sense of apprehension and then a creeping fear. I catiously turn, fully expecting to find the man standing next to me, or behind me, breathing his foul demon breath into my neck, skull-fucking me with his eyes.

Instead, I find an empty stool. My eyes flit to the shadowy corner. I see an empty glass.

And outside the wind and snow eternally waltz.