It’s not his stop, but he gets off anyway. Gravity has become a sideways force, and it pulls him forward. He trickles out like a slow leak, spilling into dark and unfamiliar streets. Alone when it shouldn’t matter, but somehow, it does.
Streetlamps brighten the occasional corner, but only seconds are needed to pass from darkness to darkness again. Then he sees it: a thin blade of light slicing through a tiny window. At first, he thinks someone left it on by mistake, but a closer look reveals it’s not a mistake. It’s a gathering place of sorts. Maybe the only one. Certainly the only one open. And a quiet hope of companionship begins to stir, just from knowing he’s not alone.
But knowing isn’t enough.
To get a feel for the place, he peeks through the tiny window. But what he sees doesn’t ease his isolation—it deepens it. A pitiable mix of patrons line the bar, each one sitting apart from the others. Their mouths move only to accept the next draw, then the next.
Still, he goes in. Sits with them. Becomes one of them. Aware—but not fully—that he’s been sitting there all along.
Without conversation, his beer disappears at a startling pace. After a few, he stands to leave. Everyone seems to be somewhere else, and it’s time he went somewhere else too. He settles his tab and heads for the exit but stops before getting there. Music. Rhythms older than his memory, yet somehow familiar. It wasn’t playing when he walked… or was it? He can’t remember.
He resumes his departure but stops again when a man squeezes his arm at the elbow—an unexpected gesture that lands like a ripple through still water.
“We don’t get many strangers,” the man says. “Takes us a while, but we’re glad you came.” He pauses, puts on his glasses. Scans the room, slips them off. “It always takes us a while,” he says again, but slower this time, which gives the sentence a forlorn slant it didn’t have before. “But we’re glad you came.”
Glad I came? He mouths the words, a silent test of their shape. Then he looks back at the bar—but something has shifted. The lights seem brighter. Someone nods in his direction; someone else tips his mug. He can hear talking in low tones, almost whispers. He offers a confused smile and makes his way outside, then turns toward the tiny window. He’s not sure which version he’ll see, but stops before finding out.
Maybe it matters. Maybe it doesn’t. He looks for a hotel instead.
The clerk is younger, but not by much. He asks if he knows anything about the bar down the street. He doesn’t name it—doesn’t know the name—but that detail isn’t needed.
“They called it A Bar In Time,” the clerk says with the precision of a seasoned tour guide. “Shut down years ago, but you’d never know it. Looks the same. You can still see inside through a tiny window.”
Questions crowd his mind, but he’s not ready for the answers, so he leaves them there. Whoever they are, they’re glad he came. He’s glad too. Not for the beer. Not for the company. Just for the knowing. Turns out, that’s more than enough.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Across The Margin, Back Channels, Flash Boulevard, and Roi Fainéant. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “A Bar in Time”:
Author Foster Trecost grabbed us with a strong opening hook incorporating the three elements of any good opening: setting, character, conflict. The setting description is evocative. Even though we don’t know the main character’s name, we don’t need it. He’s sort of an Everyman, and he could be us. The conflict is evident in his desire for a goal that has eluded him previously.
The author sprinkles in a bit magic realism to give it an unexpected twist. Then he caps the story by bringing it around to where it began, adding a nicely resonant touch. The result is a complete and satisfying story in only 552 words.