Lot 079 : The Woman At The Bar

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer, and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King, with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

B

Ah,

you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

At the exact right time, my friend.

Drawn once again to the quiet hum of forgotten things.

Well,

you know as I do.

The shop has already chosen what you'll receive tonight.

Come closer.

Here, in this drawer, among the relics no one dares ask for.

A disc.

Plain.

Shabby.

A white DVD, scuffed and worn as if someone tried to erase it with their bare hands.

And yet across its face, this curious mark.

Not a title, not a name.

Just scribbles.

A frantic hand pressing too hard, dragging lines like a warning.

It was found abandoned in the back room of a closed-down bar.

So sit and listen to the story of a man,

a drink,

and a conversation he was never meant to have.

This is the tale of the woman.

at the bar.

Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk.

These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium.

We go by the Obsidian Covenant.

Recent initiates include Justin Bowman, Jonathan Kirkpatrick,

Kim Virtue,

Rachel the Living Dead Doll,

Lynx Rain,

Kaylee Walker,

Fiston Fatties,

Coven,

and

Bob.

We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order.

Go to theObsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament.

Now,

where were we?

Oh, yes.

Welcome to the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings

and Odd Goings On.

There's something special about the woman at the bar.

I still remember the first time she came in.

I was tired.

It had been a long shift.

I'd chosen to start serving at this particular establishment because it had a reputation for being slow.

Had is the operative word here.

At one point in time, I could assemble a drink and have a man, maybe late 50s, early 60s,

sit at the bar and look down wistfully,

spouting off his regrets about a wasted life.

I would get to listen.

It was background noise.

Therapeutic.

Honest background noise in a world full of characters and bullshit.

But, lo and behold, this particular haunt I picked started becoming all the rage for young people.

Who needs them, right?

All full of life, vigor, and energy.

Smiles and excitement about the future.

Wanting to party, wanting to flirt, wearing layer upon layer of forced personas.

Hey, hey, hey, Jeep.

Says the guy, curling two fingers while dressed up in clothes daddy bought.

We uh want a round for this whole group, yeah?

He says, forcing his voice down two octaves while doing his best imitation of an alpha male.

Thank you, my man.

Just off a bender of binge-watching hours of charisma on command videos, I'd want to say, but wouldn't.

And of course, the people surrounding this man, all wearing masks of their own, fake cheers, fake gratitude, and pretty girls penny-pinching through college, more than happy to get a free drink off the schmuck before getting the fuck out of Dodge.

And God, I was sick of it.

But as is the case with life, the the places I did want to be were out of range.

Unattainable.

The dive bars filled with the seedy, miserable, philosophical crowd I craved were just too far away from the shitty apartment I lived in to justify working at.

An honest environment would have cost me too much in gas prices, unfortunately.

Enough that my non-existent paycheck would have gone towards breaking even at the absolute best.

She came in while I was making a rum and coke for someone.

A double.

I wasn't one to project favorable feelings onto a stranger.

I was thrown to find, as I saw her enter the bar, that I didn't immediately hate her.

She looked like an absolute stranger to the establishment.

Yet I got no sense that she saw herself as above it.

It felt like she was a human being.

Someone who needed to be here for some reason, but was unequipped for it.

Like she felt silly.

Like she found the music to be too loud, too overwhelming.

I watched her take awkward steps through the chaos of the floor, ever so slowly weaving past people unable to move because they lacked spatial awareness and because she couldn't muster up the words, excuse me, for some reason.

She was too kind.

Too polite.

And then

she was right in front of me.

She looked up instinctively, as if expecting a menu, and then down at the counter as if she was expecting a QR code.

And then she just sort of shuffled closer, with an energy like she was afraid of interrupting something, even though I was looking right at her, doing literally nothing else, fully prepared to take her order.

So,

I don't drink.

You don't drink?

Not really.

I'm bad with,

like, knowing what to get.

Well, let's keep it simple, I guess.

Do you want a beer?

More partial to a cocktail, maybe?

Ooh, cocktail.

I love cocktails.

No, so you do drink.

Well, I drink, but not like in a fancy or informed way.

Usually I just get what the other person's drinking, but the other person isn't here yet, so

I guess I'll get whatever tastes most like juice.

I failed to suppress a laugh.

Hearing those words from a fully grown adult was something else.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Are you gonna look down on me for not being all bougie about my drinks?

Well, I guess what I meant to say was:

I want something hoppy.

Aged 24 years from Ireland with a bit of a kick, maybe a sour.

You are melding so many unrelated things together right now, it is crazy.

Actually, I'm just a trailblazer and completely ahead of my time.

And then a look in her eyes as if she was beaming the words, yes, I'm aware I'm a dork right at me.

And I am absolutely positively not an uninformed loser.

I finished making her a pina colada and handed it to her.

I hope you enjoy enjoy your drink, ma'am.

A sweet, appreciative curl of her lips as she tapped her card, then turned to leave.

She was back to the hurricane of people swirling across the room.

I watched her body take on an awkward pantomime performance of how the fuck do I find a table through this sea of mayhem.

My eyes stayed with her for longer than I'd like to admit.

And then I realized I was smiling.

And it wasn't as a courtesy or a lie or a way to make someone think I was listening while I was off in maladaptive daydream land.

She sat at an elevated rustic corner table by an antique mirror, the one closest to the bathrooms, a table that could seat a lot of people, but only had her.

The other person joined her eventually.

I caught them talking at odd intervals as I fell back into my miserable shift at my miserable job, fielding the same two repetitive questions from doe-eyed 20-year-olds.

What's it like being a bartender?

And did you always want to get into this line of work?

No, I wanted to say to both questions.

My eyes would continually drift over to that corner table as the hours ticked away.

I felt a pang of jealousy as I saw her hold the hand of the man seated across from her.

A man who looked like he was having a rough go of it.

Wistful at times, borderline miserable at others, and occasionally tinged with nostalgia.

He was all emotion, and she was consoling him, it seemed, hearing his heart's story.

We closed in on midnight and the two of them were still there.

She wasn't saying much of anything, but he was certainly saying all of everything by the looks of it.

Her eyes remained steadfast on him, nodding as she took in his every word.

It was early in my late shift, Tuesday night.

Things were slow, but not too slow.

It was ideal.

Quiet.

I could focus on the white noise of murmured, tired conversations, the clinking of glasses.

It was like a meditation tape, my equivalent of the soothing sounds of the ocean.

I had time to make my drinks with love.

Well, not so much love, but focus.

That's the word.

A man arrived at the counter.

He looked familiar.

It took a second for me to place him.

The gentleman from the other night.

The one who sat across from the bashful woman who caught my eye.

The one that got to hold her hand.

He, on that particular night, anyways, was a basket of complex emotions.

Now, however, there was a certain calmness to him, a groundedness.

He looked peaceful, like his head was finally above water.

You have my permission to surprise me.

If this was her boyfriend or husband, he certainly had an interesting rhythm to his moods.

I grabbed a glass and a muddler and started preparing an old-fashioned for him.

As I did, in betrayal to my usual approach to customer service, I asked him a non-logistical question: And how's your day?

He took a genuine beat to collect his thoughts, eyes raised diagonally at the ceiling, a thoughtful twist at the right corner of his mouth.

Then, a contemplative, repetitive nod as if the words were playing in his head like a metronome.

Do you ever just feel

grateful?

Grateful that everything's finally come together?

It all makes sense now.

And

it's all gonna be alright.

I cannot say I know that feeling, but I'm envious for sure.

Yeah, I guess I'm quite the lucky man.

Oh, you are.

Based on his reaction, I don't think the reference landed for him.

It seemed like he had a wonderful woman in his life, hence, lucky.

He instead seemed to take the message in a much more vague, almost cosmic way.

Those are the things it takes to find your home.

Your people.

I don't think I'll be there anytime soon, good sir.

I gave him the drink, and he made his way back to that same corner table.

For the few remaining times that night that he accidentally slipped into my eyeline as I was loitering on the clock, he was the perfect picture of contentment.

Another busy night in my self-inflicted holding pattern of a career.

Some people say that bartenders are modern-day philosophers.

Those people are stupid.

It's a customer service gig, like any other.

Only difference here is you give people alcohol to leave you alone, but it never, ever works.

This night was particularly stressful.

We were down a person.

I hated when we were down a person.

When we were down a person, my boss would yell.

And then I would wonder why the fuck I didn't just finish college.

And so the domino effect of self-loathing would go.

There were too many people asking for too many drinks.

I almost didn't even notice she was there.

She'd brought a new person this time, arms linked.

Girlfriends out for an evening.

She approached the bar yet again, sheepish as before.

Interestingly, the girl she was with seemed like her polar opposite.

She looked decisive, focused, fake.

A paper tiger.

That was my assessment.

Hey!

Wait, wait, shoot.

Did I never actually get your name the last time we talked?

It's Brian.

Which means I never gave you my name either.

Nope.

I'm Monica, and I'm sorry, I'm usually much better about that.

That meaning polite.

Enough to ask someone's name.

I returned her greeting.

She gave me one of the firmest handshakes I'd ever received.

Okay, so we know each other's names now, which is good.

This

is Sabrina.

And Sabrina, this is Brian.

Okay, great, good.

Now that we're all friends, Brian, I'd love it if you could make the same drink that you made last time, if you

remember what it was.

You mean the one where you asked me to make you juice?

Yes, the very same.

I watched them from behind the counter later.

They were at that same distant table.

Of course they were.

I wanted to judge them.

I really, really did.

The shift had been a headache and fancying myself as better than the unwashed masses was exactly what the doctor was ordering.

I wanted so badly to assume that Sabrina was the shallow friend to Monica, a person who actually seemed somewhat kind, somewhat genuine.

But as Monica held Sabrina's hand over the table, looking at her as if she was the only person that existed in our wretched cosmos, and Sabrina in turn spoke spoke openly as she cycled through ugly laughs, ugly crying, ugly reminiscing, emotional whiplash that I couldn't quite keep up with.

All I saw was a person shedding any semblance of a front, peeling off layers of emotional makeup, becoming completely raw to the person they were in front of.

Laying it all out there, frankly, for Monica to receive with quiet nods and gentle affirmations.

Their conversation went on for hours.

Their drinks, the piña coladas I made, were still in front of them, chipped away at with only the lightest of sips over the course of their conversation.

Glasses half full or half empty, I guess, depending on how you look at things.

Three weeks passed before I saw Monica again.

The thought of her would cross my mind every now and then.

The strange want to actually talk to her.

With how much my life was dimmed by forced transactional conversations, it was a foreign feeling.

Finally, on a night where I arrived late for work, I saw her, seated in the corner, a barely touched drink in front of her, hand gently resting on the man beside her as he poured his heart out to her.

Completely different guy from the last guy.

And at this point, I was convinced, as I watched the man emote as if he'd just come from a Brené Brown TED Talk, that she was some sort of modern new age therapist.

55-minute sessions, pfft.

What about three to five hours at a bar?

That'll really help us curb your existential dread.

Her imaginary words, not mine.

I caught some conflicting feelings in myself as I looked on.

Despite how awkward she could be, there was some sort of bizarre charisma or allure there.

The charisma of someone being completely themselves.

It made me nervous, though it was hard to put a finger on why.

Nevertheless, the hours passed.

Work was work, and as I finished exhausting my reservoirs of nods and smiles in exchange for compliments, platitudes, and the occasional openly rude customer, my eyes flitted over to her table.

To Monica, saying goodbye to her new client or friend or lover, whoever it was.

A long hug, then a very deep glance into the stranger's eyes.

An intense glance, a loving glance.

And then they parted.

Huh.

So maybe scratch therapist.

Or alternatively, a very, very new age therapist.

Curse you, pangs of jealousy.

I'm 35 now.

I should be beyond feelings at this point.

She approached the bar.

Hey.

Brian.

How are you?

Would it be uncool of me to say I'm tired?

Why would that be uncool?

Because you're a bartender, so I'm tired probably describes your entire evening.

Oh, well, I mean, if I were off the clock, then I'd say, absolutely, you're being uncool, you jerk.

But since I'm working, no, not at all.

Do you have any traumatic stories you wanted to share?

War memories?

Tales about the one that got away?

Oh, war stories for days.

No.

Hey.

Hi.

You're probably wondering what I'm doing at the corner of the bar, right?

Yes, I am, actually.

I'm helping people.

Are you a therapist?

I suppose that's one way to look at it, yeah?

I think I'm a bit confused.

I find people who are like me.

People who

maybe feel like they don't belong.

Outsiders.

Folks who are tired of pretending that they're okay living in an uncaring world.

And I connect with them.

And I build friendships with them.

Meaningful connections.

How do you know if someone's an outsider?

It's all in the eyes.

She told me that I was welcome to sit with her on one of my days off.

We could go to another pub if I didn't want to spend my off hours where I worked.

Strange as the proposition was, I went for it.

At this point, I'd sussed her out as being a truthful, open, and vulnerable person.

Someone who seemed at times confused about it all.

Confused in an endearing way, a way that felt different, special.

A way that made me want to know more.

But sometimes when a story leans into places like that,

places where the air is thick with talk and memory, the scent follows.

Let me check the back.

Could be nothing.

Or someone might have left a glass out.

Unfinished.

Wait here.

I won't be long.

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this happened before, so they turn to two two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Crucciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

Why, hello there.

You've reached the antiquarium.

If you wish to leave a message, please do so at the town and have a great day.

Good morning, my favorite shopkeeper.

I hope this phone call finds you well.

I just wanted to thank you for those darling little gargoyles I picked up the other day.

Although, when I picked one up, no, no, Stanford, I told you, not Bob.

You can eat that one.

Good boy.

I don't think you quite anticipated that I knew how to train these little love bugs.

And I just wanted to let you know: Grotask, get down from there.

Good.

I'll just be expecting to see your friends again someday.

Thanks again.

Bye.

End of messages.

Back now?

Nothing there, of course.

But for a moment, the shop almost felt like a bar, didn't it?

That quiet hum, like glasses waiting to be filled, and stories waiting to be told.

Whether you want to hear them or not.

Strange how certain places find their way into others.

But don't mind that.

Let's return.

The bar is still open.

The night's still young.

And there's more yet to see.

At this point, I'd sussed her out as being a truthful, open, and vulnerable person.

Someone who seemed at times confused about it all.

Confused, in an endearing way, a way that felt different, special.

A way that made me want to know more.

On a night we both agreed upon, I met her at a different joint in the other side of town.

I sat across from her, curiously skeptical about how all of this would go.

And then hours passed, and within them, I opened up.

Truly.

It's sort of hard not to spill it all when someone gives you their absolutely undivided attention.

With perfect eye contact and affirmations pulled out of the book of Mr.

Rogers, she sat there, statuesque, as I whittled off details about my childhood, my confusion about life, feelings of aimlessness, shame at how fucking judgmental I could be, and everything more.

All of my misplaced anger, my vitriol.

There were no real horror stories in my past, it turns out, nor any major present-day ailments that were bringing me misery.

Putting up walls and scrutinizing strangers were just my coping mechanisms for being over-socialized and in my head about it all.

At the end of the night, she gave me the same look of endearment she gave to the other man as a sort of peace, a camaraderie came over me.

You're all right.

It's the world that's stealing your joy from you.

It seemed as if the words held more weight for her than they did for me,

as her hand gently cradled my cheek.

But I nonetheless obliged with a sort of silent agreement, an internal nod.

I felt warm about it all.

She gave me the tightest hug imaginable before leaving and whispered in my ear as she did, I know a way things can be better.

If you're interested, find me again.

I hadn't seen her at the bar for quite some time.

And I have to admit, it made me antsy.

It was hard to have someone marry Poppins waltz their way into your life, be utterly emotionally naked with no reservations, allow you to do the same, and then disappear right after teasing some cosmic secret about the answer to all of life's problems.

During this period of lack, I found myself softening in my role as liquid therapist a bit.

People's idiosyncrasies, their faking-it personas, their buried miseries, posturing, need to party, flirt, fight, mentions of beta, sigma, alpha, omega, ability to lie to themselves, desire to run away from themselves, from everything, actually.

I understood it.

I sympathized with it.

We're all just trying.

I mean, I was still a judgmental piece of shit 85% of the time, but hey, that remaining 15%,

we can call that an improvement.

I was at the tail end of the kind of slow shift that made you curse yourself forever hating the busy ones.

I closed up shop, and there she was

in the doorway as I was leaving.

I didn't have it in me to pretend I wasn't enthused to see her.

Instead, I ran up to her and hugged her.

I missed you.

I hope you've been well.

You said that things could be better.

I want to know how.

Of course.

Let me show you.

Do you want to come over?

It's funny.

There's a certain connotation that comes with being invited to a sort of stranger's place at closing time.

Yet I was absolutely sure Monica's head and intentions were in a completely different space from the rest of the waking and drinking world.

We sat on her sofa together.

She gave me a tender look.

I I made something to help explain everything you're feeling.

I hope it'll be helpful.

I exhaled slowly, then nodded.

She got up and popped a shabby, plain white DVD marked with Sharpie scribbles into the player.

She returned to the couch as the video started on her TV.

We are not our bodies.

Instinctively, we all know this.

It was Monica's voice, speaking over footage of the cosmos, galaxies, and stars.

We look closely at this world, as the delicate, sensitive souls that we are.

And we can tell

we don't belong here

footage from earth empty woods empty parks empty cities

our three-dimensional forms holding our souls down

and then a slideshow of images that resembled pages from a high school biology textbook

A diagram of the human body with a line pointing to the chest saying, soul.

Lines coming from the arms, the head, the legs, eyes, ears, all labeled as not soul.

If we stay here long enough, our soul will wither away and die.

Another textbook-style diagram, but of a decomposing body this time.

Even if we appear healthy.

Footage of the ocean now.

We don't know who brought us here or why,

and we don't need to know.

The camera panned up from the water and angled sharply to the night sky, facing the glowing moon.

We just need to go home now.

And then, a new image.

Over the backdrop of a sea of stars, a pitch-black door on the left side of the screen.

On the right, the same high school textbook diagram of the human body standing upright this time.

An arrow pointing to the door.

Step one.

Decide to exit.

Step two.

Find like-minded friends.

Step 3.

Pick the method that brings you the greatest sense of internal comfort.

Step 4.

Exit stage left.

Step 5.

When you're done, don't go into the light.

Let's go together now.

She She held my hand tightly as the video concluded.

I felt disturbed.

I felt unsafe.

I tore my gaze from the TV and turned to her.

Her eyes were serene, peaceful, calm, welcoming.

It's okay now, Brian.

You're okay.

I'm here with you now.

Monica,

what exactly did you mean with that video?

I detached my hand from hers and rose from the sofa.

She stood up as well.

You know what it means.

You know it every time you look out aimlessly from behind the counter.

I backed away.

I'm going to need you to say it explicitly.

We're departing tomorrow.

We'll be leaving from the bar.

You're welcome to join us at the table.

I reached the door.

I have to go, reaching behind me to feel for the doorknob.

One last good look at her.

She wasn't perturbed, sad, offended, confused, or anything.

I'll be seeing you, Brian.

I turned and left.

I worked the evening shift the next day.

I was dead in the eyes, exhausted, not judging a soul, just breathing, just relishing the intake of stale bar air.

When she arrived,

she went straight to the corner table.

Slowly, others poured in.

Some of them I recognized as patrons who had shown up at the bar before.

Folks I was unaware were ever associated with Monica.

They sat with her.

Eyes trained on her.

Soon after, her girlfriend from before, Sabrina, pulled up a seat as well.

The two other men I'd seen her with on different nights took their spots too.

New faces appeared next.

Ones unfamiliar to me.

By the end, there were 12 at the table.

From my distant vantage point,

their conversation seemed muted, soft, hopeful, but with a discordant dash of somberness.

It was hard to focus on my job, to focus on the customers coming up to me.

I'd look over to the corner to catch more gentle speaking, the sharing of thoughts, sentiments, words that looked as though they were coming out as whispers.

I wanted to be a fly on the wall.

I also wanted to be as far away as humanly possible.

Was there something I could say here?

Something that a good Samaritan was supposed to be doing right now?

Over the following 45 minutes, give or take, their words stopped.

They closed their eyes together in a lengthy, silent moment.

It didn't quite seem like a meditation or a prayer.

I'm not sure what it was.

Eventually, they all opened their eyes around the same time.

And then they turned in unison and looked at me with wide smiles.

Their eyes were filled with what seemed like a very disturbing form of love.

An image pressed to my memory forever.

Monica alone got up and walked through the crowd, purposeful this time.

Once again, she was in front of me, on the other side of the counter.

You can still join us.

Where are you going?

You wouldn't believe this, because it's gonna sound really silly, but there's actually a special spot in the middle of the ocean, one that leads all the way up to the stars.

We thought it might be a good idea to check it out together.

She held her hand out for me.

If you want to come,

I wasn't sure what it was.

Loyalty?

A sense of camaraderie?

A fear of letting her down?

But

as much as I was repulsed and terrified by her, I still had to fight the urge to give her my hand.

Eventually, she gleaned my decision through my inaction and retracted her invite.

Thank you for talking to me and spending so much meaningful time with me, Brian.

She returned to the table.

The others rose.

They left behind anything they'd brought with them.

Then, all 12 of them linked arms like they were about to go on a pub crawl together and left.

Their bodies were found in the ocean a week later.

Each of them had worn a weighted metal belt to help them sink.

The cops told me that half of the corpses were found in close proximity to each other.

The other half were scattered about.

I had to assume that the group found clustered together were the ones successfully able to keep their arms length the entire time.

I had the chance to see the photos of the deceased during the identification process.

I did my best to provide the authorities with details on the faces I recognized, times I'd seen them at the bar, rare occasions where I'd spoken with them.

My tiny, insignificant crumbs of information were thankfully counterbalanced by insights provided by some of the regulars who'd known them better.

It didn't take long to piece together the identities of the recently departed.

Not just who they were, but their full histories, careers, families, friends, aspirations, anecdotes.

Blanks filled in.

All except for Monica.

As it turns out, if she did have a history, it certainly wasn't one with much depth.

She had no known family.

No friends aside from the ones she left with on her final night, of course.

No information on when she'd actually moved to the area or where she'd come from.

I was the only one who seemed to know anything about her.

As if that wasn't uncomfortable enough of a revelation, the cops decided to keep the hits coming.

They must have been in an oversharing mood.

They let me know that this recent death event wasn't quite as unique as I might have imagined.

In fact, instances of groups walking into the water together, weights worn, arms linked, had been documented as a recurring phenomena over the last half century or so in our quiet town.

The folktales and horror stories about events like this had, of course, existed for far longer in our little slice of the country.

The sort of folk tales I could have imagined a man, maybe late 50s, early 60s, sharing with me on a night where I was tuning him out as a comforting background noise while making a drink.

I took one last good look at Monica's photo before I wrapped up with the authorities.

Out of all of the images, hers was the one that looked the most tranquil, the most at peace.

I'll be seeing you, Brian.

The incident had left me with a sinking but mostly ignorable feeling.

Routine had thankfully proven to be a formidable distraction.

I was behind the counter, same as always, in a moment of time where I was unoccupied.

No immediate task in front of me, nor some lingering item of work that I'd forgotten to do.

I looked out at the bar scene.

Not a miserable look this time, nor an aimless one either.

Just a look.

Out amongst the crowd of youngsters, characters, and fakes, not mutually exclusive titles, mind you, nor titles I used in a derogatory fashion anymore, I saw someone enter the bar.

A new face, unfamiliar, one that had a distinct sort of of urgency to them.

They weren't an imposter like all the others.

They looked like they felt silly.

Like they didn't belong here, but didn't see themselves as above it all.

In the past, I would have found this person to almost be charming.

Now they were just a person.

They took awkward steps through the bar floor.

They were over-polite, and then they were right in front of me.

Uh, pina colada, please.

I suppressed my laugh.

Her eyes lit up with a glint of confusion.

What?

And why are you looking at me like that?

I was just sorry, just a little uncanny.

Uh, kind of a throwback there.

You, uh,

reminded me of someone just now, but that's anyways.

Piña Colada, coming right up.

I went to work.

When I heard her response, all I could do was continue making her drink, operating off of muscle memory alone.

You know, I have to admit, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't join us last time, Ryan.

I mechanically continued the process of blending the drink.

I don't remember telling you my name.

I hope you understand that there's still a lot I need to do here.

Like-minded friends to find, meaningful connections to make, departures to schedule, you know.

My throat caught.

The ritual of making a drink for a customer was the only bit of normalcy I had left in this exchange.

I tried to cling to it.

I tried to drag it out as long as possible, but I had to speak.

Monica?

But when I studied her features, she didn't resemble Monica at all, and I can only assume she knew as much.

You can call me Elizabeth this time, and don't worry, I never, ever want to rush you.

So.

And then

that same knowing, disarming look.

You can join me when you're ready.

I struggled to put the finishing touches on the cocktail when I heard my boss's voice.

Brian, what are you doing?

Hey,

what?

What are you doing?

Making a drink.

I looked ahead.

There was no one at the bar.

For yourself.

I guess, yeah?

He gave me a concerned look.

The kind of look that asks you to say more and share what might be going on.

But I changed the subject.

It was probably best to keep things surface level from now on.

No need to go

deep.

K

H

U

K D

Q G

V V

K

D S

H

W

K H

H

Q G O H V V G D

Thank you for your patronage.

Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however.

Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession.

If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances, maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquariumshop at gmail.com.

A member of our team will be in touch.

Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes

in the space between sleep and dream

during regular business hours, of course, or by appointment, only for you,

our

best customer.

You have a good night now.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings, Lot 079, There's Something Special About the Woman at the Bar.

Written by Moti, featuring Alice Kremelberg as Monica, Jared Rivet as Brian, Melissa Medina as the woman, Jeffrey Allen Sneed as the gentleman.

Additional voices by Trevor Shand and Michael Strowman, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer.

Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand.

Theme music by the Newton Brothers.

Additional music by COAG and Vivek Abishek.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.