You know which election I’m talking about, right? Not this last one, of course, because nobody was at a bar this past election, and I don’t even know if the bar is there anymore. So it was the election before last. Yeah, that one.
First of all, the fact that you become the de facto designated driver when you’re on antibiotics and can’t drink alcohol is a rule of the universe I would like to amend. It sucks. I usually end up a glorified roadie most nights anyway because I have a truck but being sober and obligated is just insulting. But there I was, reluctantly and excruciatingly lucid as everyone around me proceeded to get ploughed. Ploughed because they were anxious about the increasingly close results coming in, ploughed because we were finally going to have a woman for president, ploughed because they were anarchists who wanted to drunkenly orate and scoff at the people who actually voted. And me, sober as a judge against my consent, sipping on a stupid soda water while the band played protorock. In my opinion, not that anyone asked me, the thing was practically in the bag, defeat was unimaginable, and you were sweating and shaking and practically deep throating that microphone and I didn’t give a flying fuck about anything else. My dad always told me never to sit with my back to the door. That, dad warned, was how Wild Bill Hickock got shot in the head playing poker, but I couldn’t see the band otherwise and you were doing that thing where you were singing “Be-Bop-A-Lula” at me in a way that should’ve caught the goddamn floor on fire. So I didn’t feel the cold wind nudging my back from the open door. The cold November night blew in around a man standing silhouetted in the doorframe, a grizzled old metalhead with a chest-length gray beard. He looked like a messenger from fucking Odin himself, he could’ve had a raven on each shoulder and a wizard staff for all I knew. For a long moment he stood in the doorway, swirling leaves blowing in around his boots, rockabilly pheromones wafting out, before he intoned, “It’s over”.
A wine glass shattered, crushed by a sudden grip. A woman screamed.
Lindsey A Pharr (she/her) is a Mississippi native living in the woods outside of Marshall, North Carolina. You can find her on Twitter @lindsey_a_pharr and in her cabin, teaching herself hide tanning from YouTube videos