Lenky Belief in Bars (fiction)

Part 3: Lenky Belief in Bars

“ Oliver!” Alesia half sobbed, half screamed into the phone, “ Oliver!”

“ What is it?” He answered sleepily, looking at the alarm, “ Jesus, Alesia, it’s one in the morning!”

“ Oliver! Arthur’s missing again!” Alesia crouched down against the pedestal that held the phone and video.

“ Is that all? Jesus, Alesia he goes missing every damn month!” Oliver sat up in bed and glanced over at Lacey in the bed next to him. This was too much.

“ But...” She wiped her tears on the back of her silk sleeve.

“ But what? Damnnit, Alesia! I’ll wake the baby!” Lacey woke then, eyeing him questioningly from the pillow.

“ But, Oliver,” Her voice tightened, “He took Katrina with him.”

He bolted out of bed, “ Shit.”

I was winding along at 60 miles an hour, following Smoke’s lazy lights. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere in reality, finally pulling into a nearly full car park in a building not far from our house. I parked the speeder across from his, and no one noticed when I crept out, keeping my distance from Smoke. He and a few other people started running up the stairs, and I followed, though I was a lenky bit tired after all the adrenaline.

“ How art thou all? This nochy is right horrorshow!” A fat british boy took the stage, me crashing into the door after the others. It was a dance club with a bar, decorated in the most filthy lurid colors I’d ever seen. All those not dancing on the ahzny electric orange floor were siting in hot pink chairs shaped like lips surrounding. The bar and stage were painted a horrible midnight blue, reminding me only of spilled ink. I walked to the bar, watching Smoke slip backstage out of the corner of my eye.

“ What’ll you have?” The bartender smiled at me with one platinum tooth winking from his mouth.

“ Like what’ve you got?” I got all oogly that he might try to slip me something.

“ How old are you?” He started wiping some of the glasses shaped like fruit, an apple and orange made of pink synthetic glass.

“ Fifteen,” close enough, I answered.

“ Here then,” He pulled a blue bottle out of a drawer and poured out a green banana glass to the top. It looked like milk, and I took a sip, it tasting no different. I gave him three quarters and pulled away to sit in a pair of lips.

Smoke came on the stage, holding a guitar shaped and painted like a plastic bank card. A pretty boy in a dress sat next to me, and Smoke began to play, his chords swirling around me. Then I passed out.