slick n' dirty | story blog from dr. menlo

Curlicue wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the mirror behind me. “Haven’t seen one of those circus mirrors in a while.” he said. He tilted his head left and right, not taking his eyes off his reflection. “Weird,” he said. “It makes one illusion and then keeps it?”

“Uh . . . ” Oh what the hell. “Gotta be honest here, buddy. That’s not a trick mirror. Your cranium suffered some kind of . . . malady.”

His eyes widened. He ran off to the bathroom.
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When I got back up from ducking under the counter, I saw the military guys pick up their rifles and run out – typical, while me and everyone left put our eye on the light in the upper corner of the wall closest to my bar. Usually that light shone blue – only when the hull was breached and there was serious danger of depressurization did it go red.

We watched.

We held our breaths.
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Of all the bars in the universe, mine was closest to the edge of unmapped space. Berynek’s – in cold blue neon hung over the door. It was an expansive space, being a former starship hangar, but you couldn’t see how big it was when you first walked in. First there was the velvet anteroom. Then there was the dive.

Hi, I’m Berynek. Welcome to my saloon.

Of course, when I started it was just a one-man outfit and I only operated the dive part. Who visited the last bar at the edge of the known universe? A combination of the most courageous humans and those most in need of social or mental lubrication. Being so far off the center of things lent a certain ‘wild west’ atmosphere. I did not shy away from this image. My place beat out a bar in Dutch Harbor, Alaska for being the toughest drinking hole in existence according to Space Pod, inching out the Aleutian island spot’s twenty year record. Dutch Harbor wasn’t the wild west anymore. It was bedside service and satin slippers.

It was on one of these slow days in the early days when I was wiping down the counter and she walked in. Fackin’ black-haired beauties. With long legs and no-fat curves.

She came right up to the bar and ordered a Venusian smoothie. I would have to chisel the small talk out of her, it seemed. Boy, was I lonely. A goddess is not what I needed. A fat chick always does in a pinch. But a goddess is what sat in front of me then. Hamada hamada.
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