There's a Triumphant Power in the Heavens

The rain had been insistent. Not the brightest of men, he figured that there must have been some kind of war going on in the heavens? Bartender waiting by the front door telling everyone, "I'm here all by myself," was nothin' else but some ol' corporate whore with a cigarette burn in the side of her face. Seemed contrived from the get go, but he made his way inside, saddled up on a bar stool and took a look around anyway.

A wiry, inbred Yankee-hillbilly with a thin mustache was playing with a naked rebel-Indian, who was missing one of his balls, on some kind of Nazi pool table made out of human bones and a tan, felt top of stretched-out skin. Then this big, dopey, fat guy in fresh off the road makes a bee-line for the ladies room. Bartender says, "Looks like he needs a sink bath."

As the night wore on, cigarette-burn's b-cup ballooned up to a double-d. Either somethin' was strange about the booze, or there were two of them switchin' off from behind the bar? The quiet Texan all in black put two pence in the jukebox and selects "Now I don't Want to Fall in Love." I agreed with him completely.

Cigarette-burn sat like a statue and kept leerin' down from the end of the bar at everyone with creepy, narrowed eyes, so nobody was buyin' drinks. Sink-bath sits down next to her and says, "Anything you need, brother, all you gotta do is ask?"

Me and the Texan that likes jukebox music hadn't said nothing' to no one all night, and I wasn't about to start now. He was the only other guy in there with any sense just minding his own business, drinking soda and water and stepping outside once in awhile for a cigarette. Soon as the raven left for good, all kinds of hell broke loose.

It was a quarter to three at the Hanging Tree saloon, future site of a campground Laundromat and salon. The salt and pepper set looked kind of suspicious. Now one of them is missing too.

She had been good, silent company, still all night as well, until she said three, little words that weren't, 'I love you.'

"I don't believe in a demoness," I wrangled up the courage to finally speak.

Unfurling black, feathered wings with talons, "Nor do I," she replied triumphantly. She shook him up slip-slidin' around in the ice of her glass and drank all the whisky down.




©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: weird fiction]