Come On In

The knocking on the door was insistent. Beyond rude.

The door was locked, providing temporary refuge from reality, but it wouldn't last much longer.

Joe appeared to be unconcerned. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a 3/4 empty bottle of whiskey and a look of resignation on his face.

Comes a time in a man's life when enough is enough. The condition of the bar that Joe just left provided stark testimony to that.

If the asshole just kept his fucking mouth shut, Joe would not have had to set him straight. Bragging about his fucking retirement, how he planned and carefully nurtured it over three decades, allowing him to quit working at the age of forty-eight. Talking up his brand new Cadillac like a pimp, displaying pictures of his vacation home like they were playing cards, flashing his cash and buying rounds.

This was Joe's bar, not his - he was a fucking stranger, an interloper. Just passing through. Where the fuck did he come off?

Frank, the bartender, had listened to Joe's story for years. But he was a good listener, quick with the empathy and besides, he liked Joe. He felt Joe was a good guy, a straight shooter who had made some mistakes in life that left him stranded at the end of his life and the end of his rope. No solution. Nowhere to turn.

Working a menial job that mortally wounded his ego every fucking day. Trying to live off that paycheck and a meager social security check. 

Eating shit psychologically and literally. The life he was living was fucking up his mind. The food he could afford was nothing a reputable nutritionist would recommend.

Then again, there's a lot you can do with Spam if you are creative. Joe was very creative.

And he loved Cheez-Its.

As the unlucky stranger spoke, Frank noticed Joe tightening up. Gripping the bar tightly with his left hand, tapping the brass rail audibly with his right foot, but not so hard that others would become alarmed. Frank was wary but had never seen Joe get violent, so he waited. Until it was too late.

The stranger turned to his right, patted Joe on the shoulder, and offered to buy him a double. Obnoxiously, in a loud, showy and abrasive tone of voice.

Joe's left hand came off the bar like lightening and cupped the man's neck. He smashed his forehead on the edge of the bar three times. Blood pooled on the bar, soaking the cardboard coasters. Joe's right hand went to the stranger's chest and knocked him off the barstool.

The stranger was stunned.

Joe kicked him in the ribs and the kidneys - repeatedly; and in the mouth, breaking a few well manicured teeth. He grabbed his rocks glass and bounced it off the stranger's head.

The stranger wasn't moving.

Joe looked at Frank apologetically; Frank's eyes were wide, his mouth was open. Joe nodded, threw three twenties on the bar and walked out the door.

The knocking went beyond insistent. It was intrusive. Joe crept silently to the door, unlocked it, walked back to the table, sat down with his gun in his lap, poured one more shot of whiskey and said mockingly:

"Come on in."