A Bad Night for a Lonely Man

                                       Bad Night for a Lonely Man

         It was a dark night.  The trees stood ominously tall and curled around the trail like wretched fingers, grasping at the highest point.  They cast away the black, starless sky and held the forest world within their embrace.  Usually, on a night like tonight the woods would be littered with soft noises drifting from creature to creature.  Their sounds almost forming a harmony through the darkness, as if all were formed together as an entity.  Not tonight.
         
      It was silent, save for the heavy footfalls of a clumsy wandering man.  He was a short man with a full round stomach- probably warming his stored food so he could eat for later.  His skin was unwashed, greasy, and foul.  In the nether regions of this withered body one could probably assume rashes were formed.  He was bald, with the exception of a few lazy gray hairs that could barely stand any better than he could.  Yellowing teeth followed by a wretched breath of whiskey and vomit, a combination that wanders hand-in-hand with a man like this.  The whiskey was strong on his breath this night, most likely keeping any dangerous predators at bay.  Through his drunken stupor he had managed to walk into nearly every tree along the trail.  Many would probably wonder why this man wandered the woods that night- if anybody were to wonder about him at all.
         
      The fact is, nobody would.
         
      His wife left him months before for another man.  His best friend, actually.  That tied into the fact he also had no friends.  She wanted a baby that his failing body could not give, so she leapt on the first male that could grant her that wish- his old friend, probably faring much better than he was on that special night.  He was alone, and he was drunk.  Smelly too.
         
      Whatever job he had, was lost; due to what I’m sure you could have guessed- he was drunk.  So here he was on that quiet night where the forest seemed to be watching him in amusement.  Drunk, alone, and smelling like a foul rotting ghoul born in a sewer; there he was.  This man had only one mission on that fateful night, and one mission only; to find a bar and waste away.  As if there were anything left to waste.
         
      His ability to remain on the trail was nothing short of remarkable.  The swollen creature slumbered through and through until the dim-lit windows of a crumbling establishment barely provided candlelight in the far distance.  His glazed eyes lit up so bright, and his fat gut welled up with hope; something he had not felt in what seemed like ages.  There was an intense excitement that brewed deep in his greasy underbelly, unable to wait to shove liquor down his thick gullet. 
         
      The excitement quickly dissipated as he realized there was still a distance to walk.  There was nothing that was going to stop him.  Not even aliens.  Aliens?  Crazy..
         
      He finally reached his sanctuary, and as soon as his thick sweaty hand gripped the warm doorknob he was stepping inside. 
         
      The first scent that would scorch any normal, moderate human being would be the burning scent of alcohol.  Not just the kind of smell as if a few drinks were spilled and never cleaned.  It was more the type of scent as if an alcoholic swallowed you whole, and sloshed you around in a pool of moonshine for a few days and then dipped you down into a spittoon.  Full of what?  You guessed it.
         
      Tequila.
         
        It was a gut-wrenching smell that made this fat bastard’s nose flutter in delight.  His eyes glazed over even more in warm thirst for a good bottle of old brown whiskey. 
         
      The bartender was a surly old fellow, with a thick mustache woven neatly above a sweaty lip.  His eyes had a striking quality to them, as if he’d been a shirtless boxer back in the day and still had a little fight left him in.  That, or just pure insanity; they say there is a thin line. 

“Gimm’le a one.  Whiskers.  Gimme ah whiskers.”  The fat man’s words were slobbered out like a Saint Bernard trying to speak English.

“Ah, a whiskey chap!  ‘ere you are lad.  Right up!”  The bartender’s cultural diversity could be considered a little disconcerting.  Also the fact he understood what was said at all.
         
      He slapped a glass down on the table and surprisingly did not break it, and poured the liquor straight in.  After a hungry, slobbering fuck-fest of confusion; the glass was empty back on the bar.  There looked to be a little foul saliva pooled at the bottom of the glass as well.  Disgusting.
         
      He lost his wife, don’t judge him.
         
      The bartender wasn’t fazed in the least bit.  He stood there with his hands on his hips and a wise smile on his face.  The edges of his thick black mustache curved up and inwards.  It surely accentuated his smile.
         
      Two men sat down one end of the bar, side by side.  In old western fashion, they would sometimes glance or stare over at the new patron.  It wouldn’t be unusual for anybody to stare at this epitome of “What Not to Do When Your Wife Leaves You’; but it was unusual for these two gentlemen. 
         
      Then another man walked in from the back.  He was tall and stout in size.  He wore a dusty old cowboy hat on his head which looked to have bullet holes adorned all around the lip.  The foul cowboy had a thick black beard crusted with old food and dust, which surrounded a rotten toothy mouth and thick blubbery lips.  He slammed a heavy fist down on the table beside him. 

“Well.  Whatter’ we ‘ave here!?”  His voice was so squeaky; you would have thought a mouse was screaming across the room.
         
      Everybody stared in quiet at this commotion.  They followed the gaze of this giant to the object of attraction.  All eyes were now on the fat lonely man that had just walked in, quietly mumbling to himself while he waited for another drink, one in which the bartender had no intention in pouring.  Another thundering boom echoed through the bar, and the quiet settled in just with the dust.

“I say... I say... What….  Do we have ‘ere?”  His voice was thick now.  Heavy words resonated from the dirty wooden walls, so sullen.  There was a quiet that followed.  This irritated the giant even more.
         
      The sober eye would have seen it, if the person were far away enough to react at least.  The next noise sounded when wood splintered everywhere across the fat man’s back.  He was thrown from his stool and onto the floor in a puddle of god knows what.  He landed hard on his face with a loud smack.  The giant grabbed his belt and let out a heavy, belly full of laughter.  The chair he threw across the room hit home perfectly at the lonely man’s back.  Down to the floor he went. 
         
      It took a good five minutes for him to get back on his feet.  Each time he would get up onto his hands, and then his feet.  He would lift his enormous ass high above everything else into the air, and then his feet would slide across the slick floor and he’d be back on his face in an instant.  Again, and again; until he was finally on those poor feet.  He swayed gently, like a large pendulum or a rocking baby and pointed to the giant with a stubby finger.

“Hou—H—You ain’t gimma regrets.  That hou ain’t.”  He was nodding his head in a matter-of-fact way, and his eyes were closed. 
         
      The giant was in his face in an instant.  That thick beard nearly brushing the sweat from the fat man’s cheeks.  Heavy hot breaths bore down into the twisted features of the short man, but he took no notice. 
A quiet, piercing thunder sounded.  “The fuck did you just say?”  The giant’s thick rubbery lips misted saliva all over the short man’s round face. 
         
      Slowly those closed eyes opened and looked up into the ones staring fearlessly down at him.  Inhale.  Exhale.  He did that for a few minutes and parted his lips to begin what would probably be a speech.  They didn’t normally work for him, since he gave one to his ex-wife and ex-friend, and ex-boss all before the ties were cut.  Probably wouldn’t work then either. 
         
      Before he could start he noticed something in the eyes of this beast standing before him.  This lumbering monster of a man let out steamy breaths in anticipation of whatever retaliation was cooking in the mind of the fat one- but the fat one noticed something. 

“Your eyes...”  His words were coherent for a change.  A soft whisper that carried the tone of sober realization, and for a moment drew in the fact this man probably wasn’t always a blubbering pathetic idiot.
         
      The entire bar shook violently and the commotion drew up with such velocity, it couldn’t be comprehended.  In his drunken gaze, everything moved slowly; but it was all too much of a blur to make out.  He could feel the floor beneath him rattling with pure intensity.  All through the room he could hear the piercing shrieks and watch the flailing forms in his hazy vision.  In a second he fell back into another stool and landed on the floor.  He leaned his heavy head back against whatever surface rest behind him and squinted hard.  He was beginning to see.
         
      The boards on the walls were beginning to give way and crumble to the rumbling floor.  They revealed a slimy obsidian surface that captured the light and didn’t reflect.  They were blacker than the night sky on the darkest night, like a bottomless pit.  The floor held this exact texture and it was beyond his mind why he could see anything else at all; why not everything was pitch black as if a light had been turned out. 
         
      Then he could see them.  The human flesh was peeling from their hulking, twisted features like melted cheese.  The creatures were an ancient form of which he had never seen and would never see again.  Their screams filled the room and bounced from wall to wall endlessly in torment, gripping his mind in its clutches.  He started to scream as well just to try and match theirs but it was no use.  His voice was howled out by the wind of their roars as if he were yelling into a tornado. 
         
        Their long claws were covered in red, along with their jagged crooked teeth.  He squinted harder and tried hard to make out exactly what they looked like, but he could only draw in their outlines.  Then he felt it.
         
        A sensation settled deep down in his stomach.  Like a dull ache from eating too much. This slowly became a searing pain.  He looked down.
         
        He watched the claws tear through his stomach time and time again; spilling is innards out onto the slick black floor below.  They seemed to float upon an ocean of undulating darkness that pulled him deeper into its belly.  He screamed again, but it was drowned out in the whirling of the commotion these ancient beasts provoked.  It was like a screeching wind was rustling through the room in an infinite loop. 
         
        They were ripping him apart. 
         
        His arms, his legs; torn from his body, leaving jagged bits of bone protruding from the torn soft flesh.  He felt like he was melting backwards into the floor and slowly he fell backwards.  The claws clutched around his throat and just before they pierced into the kill-zone; he watched an empty bottle of whiskey roll slowly across the floor to his right. 
         
        And then it was dark.