The Lost Night

You find yourself in a restaurant of sorts, a big one, but darkish. Inside on the top of a tall building, there is a view of an area which you cant quite make out. Whether the city of New York, countryside or even the plains of Africa! And no matter what, it is still this dark blue in the sky. Not quite night, but not quite day, the dusk, As it remains dark blue, you realize the bar is completely empty except you. You are wearing a posh and dapper suit, almost completely black and white. Around you, you see tables and bars. But it is still completely empty. There is even a stage with a piano, a bass, drums, a sax and other different instruments. As you wait, the instruments start to play by themselves. The smooth jazz that slowly goes past your hearing. As you look around, you realize that there are suits and dresses sitting on the seats. Quite a few. Not quite packed but still completely silent and partially filled. The suits are dresses are sitting at tables, completely straight up and motionless, as if someone was wearing them. But there was no body to inhabit these suits and dresses. As you look around and see the motionless suits with the music playing, you still feel the strange emptiness around the tables with completely folded red napkins. although for some reason, you are the only one with a blue napkin.

Rough day? someone greets you. As you turn around to see the bartender wiping the glass and the bar, you order a drink. After a short period of time, you start drinking. But no matter how much time flies by, the glass never depletes. You have even tried chugging it down but no matter, the glass stays full. You start to realize that even after time passes, you realize that you are caught up in a stillness. as if the time never passed. You look at the bartender and you can never make out his face. You start to get anxious and want to leave. The bartender senses your anxiety and he says, the door is open only inward. I am sorry but that is how it works. You try getting out of your seat and opening the doors, but they won’t budge. No matter how much you turn the knob, you are not even able to bash it down as it is too sturdy and strong. The bartender glances at you, “didn’t you hear what I said? The door only opens inward” he said nonchalantly. And you start to come out of this strange calmness that you had before and start to come back to your senses. You ask where you are and how to get out. The bartender says, “you can’t get out.” You wait to see what happens next. As to where you are, the information isn’t important.

The bartender pours you another drink. A purplish liquid out of a bottle that doesn’t have a label. You ask what it was, and the bartender looks at you with a strange face that you cant quite make out, “you don’t know? it is a special brand. I named it myself. It is known as your last option” As you cant seem to face anything, you sit down and wait. To the point, where hours pass, the drink you ordered is still full and still cold, while the the time of day hasn’t changed and the sky has still the dark blue, dusky look to it. As you start to worry, your eyes seem to gravitate towards the purple liquid. Seeing it there and completely still. The bartender still remains patient.

You get out of the seat for the second time and then you realize that you didn’t get back into the seat. It is not like the time is replaying but like it is frozen and it is starting again with differences in situations. You start looking around for all the different suspended suits and dresses. Realizing that the napkins were never red at all. It was some strange type of illusion. Turns out that all the napkins are completely black except for yours. Completely folded. Yours remains a light blue different from the blue of the sky past the land that you still cannot make out. As your stomach churns, the slight creeping sensation enters your mind. There is still so much to be answered. For some reason, you still remain calm. Then you realize that you are sitting in your city, taking another sip of your drink, the purple liquid still sitting there. As you start to observe, you start to see something in the many dresses and suits. There are small rips unlike what they were like before. Still sitting completely motionless. As you wait longer and longer, you start to lose track of how much time you have spent in this strange space. You still have no idea how you remain so patient with so many hours passing by, the same jazz music, your drink that will never empty, the sky that will never change color. You start to look at the purple liquid as if it is calling out to you. You still have no idea what it is. You start to think a bit more rationally as you start to ask the bartender what is in what he calls ‘your last option.’ “It will be easy to piece it together if you take a sip. My treat”, the bartender replies.

What exactly is this? You try smelling it only to realize that it doesn’t have a smell. As you start to look around, you decide to get out of your chair again. Realizing that every time you get out of your chair, you are back in it. without noticing that something would have changed. The bartender notices and says, “so you figured out how it works?” He said that with a smile that was strangely calming and almost not quite kind and almost sadistic. As if he was just playing with you to see how you would react. And you are back in your chair again. Not a surprise this time as you were expecting it.

There is finally something inside the suits and the dresses. This was a drastic change from the small rips in the suits and the napkins changing colors. The change was, the suits had skeletons in them. You look back at your folded napkin. It had darkened in color. Almost to the dark blue of the sky. You look at your last option and it is no longer purple. It has taken the color of the skeletons’ napkin – a dark inky black. You look around. Still nothing. So you decide to get out of your chair once more to cause another difference. The bartender’s smiles grows just a bit wider. You slowly walk further and further away from the chair, waiting to be automatically reseated. Before it does, it gives you a few minutes to think about what is happening. About where the rest of the world is. What is going on without you? As you feel the sun slowly spinning and rotating around the sun without you. As if you are stuck here. Finally, you are taking a sip of your drink, sitting down, jazz music still playing. And your napkin is slightly pinkish, not quite pinkish, almost to the point of it turning red. The same color as the napkins of the skeletons. It sends a chill down your spine. Look a the bartender, still the same smile.

What is your next move? Are you going to rinse and repeat to see what changes? You look behind and you look in surprise. The skeletons are no longer skeletons. They are people. All people that you have never met before, but normal people nonetheless. One bearded man with a light tan and hazel eyes. A woman wearing a bright red dress almost precisely shaped like a rose with jet black hair and a pale ghostly skin and two blue eyes. This went on and on until you looked at all the people. All of them looked emotionless. Still no one that you can make out as people who you knew in your life. Finally, you decided that there was one last option. Get out of the chair once more. You look back at your last option and still sitting there, still cold. And for some reason, even though you knew it was a bad idea, the thought still tempted you.

You feel something grasping at you. As if it was trying to pull your sight towards something. As you looked, you see the folded napkin that was yours. Unlike all the other black ones, it had become a deep crimson red. Just like it was before. Then you look back at the body and Instead of being completely emotionless and unmoving, completely dead. No longer sitting in the chairs, some lay on the floor, while others were near the windows as if they were trying to break through the glass for the final escape attempt before their demise. Some of them were still sitting in their chairs, completely peaceful, as if they had given up. Then you saw your last option. It really was your last option. Then it got to you. You didn’t have a choice. You had to. As you looked at your napkin, it was darkening even before. Soon it would become black such as the others’.

With one final grab, you chug the drink down. No looking back. You feel like you could taste the death and its emotion. You feel like you can taste the dying breath of all the people who died. You notice that the bartender’s smile had widened to the point that it was not even human anymore. It was insane. You start to feel that you were losing yourself. Then his look became one of strange disbelief and anger as if something was interfering with his plan. You start to hearing something other than the smooth jazz. A voice. It was almost like it was yelling. As it started to get louder, you could make out that it was a feminine voice. It was starting to come back to you. Whatever was happening before, it was strange, you feel memories flooding back. When you close your eyes, the last thing you see was the bartender’s fury at what had happened. Then he started smiling again. Still slightly angered but almost like he was reassuring himself. Don’t worry, theres always going to be another one in lime.