The Barkeep by William Lashner

he blow on the back of Justin’s head was so sudden and sharp it barely registered before a thick fog cloaked every sensation. As he found himself inexplicably falling, he had no idea what had happened. The crack of his cheek upon the floor jerked him out of the mist and gave him a pretty good idea.
    “What the hell—”
    Something hard and ferocious kicked into his side, knocking out his breath and the words at the same time, but when a crushing pressure slammed his face into the floor, he knew the answer just the same. He was being mugged, brutally, he was being robbed. Which was a joke, really, because he owned nothing worth caring about and he cared about nothing he owned.
    “Take anything…everything,” he gasped out. “There’s some money…in a drawer…in the kitchen…Take it…Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
    “There is no TV,” came a voice close to his ear. The voice was strange, a little slurry, with every syllable evenly stressed.
    “I don’t…There isn’t one…I don’t have one.”
    “Good.”
    “What?…Why?”
    A slap across the top of his head forced an explosion of air into his ear. Through the ringing, he could just make out the strange voice saying, “Rodney watched too much TV.”
    “Rodney?” said Justin, sucking in breaths as fast as he could manage. “Who’s Rodney?…I don’t know a Rodney.”
    Justin struggled to rise from the floor, but he felt a huge presence, inhuman almost, spidery yet strong, pressing him down. When he fought to raise his cheek off the floor, his head was grabbed by the hair and smashed back down.
    The pain birthed an anger in him, dark, growing exponentially, welling up inside like a huge, fetid bubble. He closed his eyes and tensed the muscles in his arms, in his back, in his legs, tensed each of his muscles as if to somehow explode the attacker off his back, whatever the cost. It was futile, he knew it, the attacker had the weight and the leverage, he knew it, but still, damn it, he wasn’t going to take this. He was going to do something. He was going to kill this bastard, to throw him off his back and stick a foot in his neck and kill him, kill him, kill—
    In the midst of his struggle, he saw words as if writ in Sanskrit within the lids of his closed eyes.
Be not terrified. Be not awed. Know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect.
It was all part of the same thing, this attack, at one with all that had happened and would happen, his mother’s murder, the sex he’d had the night before with Lee, his job as a barkeep, his brother, his father, his face, the floor, it was all part of the same thing, the same illusion. He felt his anger anew, felt it burn like acid, and then he let it flow out of him, pour out of him as from a broken jug. And as the anger flowed away, the tension in his muscles lessened, slowly. The tightness pulling at his bones loosened, slowly. His whole body slowly melted as the floor enveloped him, softly, lovingly, like a pillow. Everything in him eased, his bones were made of Jell-O, the pain in his bodydiminished. Until the pain was focused only on his cheek. And there it blossomed, brightly. Like a flower. Like a gift.
    “What do you want?” said Justin with a new calm.
    “You need to stay away,” said the voice.
    “From where?”
    “What happened to your mother is over,” said his attacker as Justin’s face was pressed hard into the floor, and the flower in his cheek grew wild and lovely. The words were said in those evenly accented syllables, slurred and without inflection, as if they were being read off a paper without being understood. “Your father is where he belongs. If you turn over any dirt, you’ll only be digging your grave. Stay out of it, or else.”
    “Out of what?” said Justin.
    “You want it repeated?”
    “Yes. Please.”
    “You need to stay away,” said the attacker in that same strange voice. “What happened to your mother is over. Your father is where—”
    A knock at the door.