by rodentgirl

We all knew her. She was a regular. I see her around couple nights a week. Usually, a beer. But tonight was just straight whiskey on the rocks. I nudged my buddy in the side. I did it harder than I should have because a welp of confusion sprung from her lips. 

“I’m gonna kill you.” She gritted through her teeth. 

“Hey, look over there.” I raised my glass in her direction. 

She turned, furrowing her brows, then back to face me, looking unamused, she goes, “What? It’s just that girl, Phoebe.” 

“Ya, but she’s having fucking whiskey on the rocks.” Together we pause and turn to look at her nonchalantly. As we turn, the bartender places a shot of pure vodka beside her. She grabs it and tilts her head back, swallowing it quick with no chaser. She coughs slightly, masking a laugh. 

“I can hardly feel anything at all.” She says in a relaxed tone. 

The bartender raises one eyebrow slightly while drying a glass. How cliche 

“Oh ya, how come? Is it the alcohol, or is there something weighing on ya?” Moving closer to her for better hearing. He leans on the bar, inviting her to respond to his question. She opens her mouth, maybe from the pressure of avoiding an awkward situation or just because she wants to share. 

“I had this really fucked up dream last night, and I can’t tell if it’s some sort of sign. Like some sort of warning foreshadowing my doomed future.” Her face took the same shape as it had when the conversation started. It remained neutral. I could not decipher how she was feeling,mher expression enigmatic. Was she upset by this? Did she find it funny in some sort of sick, masochistic way? 

She looks down as her mouth lifts up at the corners. From a smirk, she goes, “I have a recurring dream where I’m drowning and screaming underwater, and all I can see are people who I think are my friends. Their faces are blurry. Plus, it’s a dream, so it could be fucking anyone. It could of fucking been the entire cast of Jackass. Anyways, they are all waving at me, shouting my name. Then, it just stops and I wake up. That’s normally how it goes, but this time, it ended differently.”
She pauses, letting this all settle in the bartender’s mind, allowing space for questions and comments before she continues. He looked interested but remained silent. With this, continuing, 

“The dream somehow skipped a transition scene and went straight to me waking up in my childhood bed, which dream I didn’t think was weird, so I checked my phone and saw a million notifications, one of which a text message from Meghan Thee Stallion, which said: 

“Your nudes got leaked. Check Twitter.” I remember panicking because I didn’t know if the nudes were good or really awful. As soon as I opened the dream Twitter, my ass was in my face. Then I saw that it was retweeted by my mean English teacher from highschool, captioned, “Is this what moon song’s about?”  She stopped and looked at the bartender. This time, questions and commentary are not optional. Taking interest back into drying the glass, the bartender goes, 

“So what do you think it’s foreshadowing? Do you think it’s your subconscious feeling like you have no privacy or are vulnerable?” With this, she looked at him with a somewhat smug face and said bluntly, 

“I think it really made me realize that real life is worse.”  Without waiting for a response, she laughed, picked up a drink that didn’t belong to her, tilted her head back, took a large chug and walked out.

Categories: february 28, 2023, tunes