Thirsty
A thirsty man walks into a bar. There are no waiters in sight, the shelves are lined with empty bottles and the walls with pictures of previous bartenders. He pulls a wobbly stool up to the rotting bar covered in dust. There are two other men in the bar besides him, each one holding an assault rifle. Sensing his disappointment, they ask what he would do for a cold drink.
“Anything” he replies, his parched throat getting the better of him. They take turns to assure him of their abilities to quench his thirst. The first man, a gangly fellow with three horizontal marks on both cheeks, says he was once a bartender and one of the pictures on the wall is his. The other, a rotund creature with a hungry look in his eyes, admits to never having tended a bar on his own, but he has acquired a chain of mini-bars and once served as a vice-bartender.
The thirsty man’s eyes water with delight as each man promises to restore the bar to its glory days and restock it with drinks from all ends of the earth. Suspicious of their benevolence, he asks why they are so willing to help.
The first man laments the shoddy job the current bartender has done, pointing dramatically at the roof which has more holes than a sieve. The second man says he is an agent of change, a gust of fresh air needed to wipe the bar clear of dust and cobwebs.
Each man promises to restore the bar on one condition. One of them has to shoot at him. He gets to elect which of them takes the shot and his preferred marksman gets to bring the bar up to standard.
His throat now drier than a desert, he agrees. He eyes their weapons warily, his eyes dancing from man to gun. He scratches his head mentally and opts for the lanky man, believing that his physical dimensions render him incapable of inflicting lethal damage. The last thing he sees is the rifleman cocking his gun and pulling the trigger.
He wakes up four years later beneath a blanket of cobwebs, scars running down the length of his torso. As he rises from the pool of caked blood in which he lays, a searing pain lances through his being. He notices the roof of the bar is gone. There is a full moon in the sky. The Eastern and Northern walls have been knocked down and the shelves have been dismantled. A corner of the bar is occupied by the two riflemen who are clutching fistfuls of each other’s shirts. As he inches his way towards them, snatches of their heated dialogue make their way over to him.
The skinny rifleman who seems to have put on several ounces of weight says, “if you hadn’t criticized me so much I would have fixed the bar, I need more time. Governance isn’t easy.” ‘’Even if you had a million years, you wouldn’t change a thing. You are as useless as you look. It is my turn.” his adversary retorts. As he draws closer to the fighting men, both men pull their guns from behind them and shoot simultaneously at him. As the bullets tear through his pockmarked skin and ferry him to the great beyond, he realizes he’s still thirsty.
