Whispers in the Night by Brandon Massey

didn’t mean my retreat had escaped his notice, though.
    â€œSlow down and think on it a minute. We’re the only ones who know, Lou. We’re the only ones who know we’re in hell. Ain’t you given a thought to what that means?”
    â€œAll I’m thinking about is getting the fuck out of here, wherever ‘here’ is. I ain’t had much time to consider indulging every depraved little fucking fantasy my subconscious has to offer me.”
    â€œWell,” Carter said as he drew his pistol and studiously perforated the scalps of the two denim-and-flannel fuckers, “maybe you should.”
    Felt like something in the left side of my chest ripped in two when I seen that. I couldn’t breathe. A luminous shade of red rose into the blackness of the night sky as I reeled. I saw the heavens turn the color of turbid blood, like a backlit canopy of black sackcloth with hell’s inferno glowing behind it. I looked for Carter as my knees gave way. Actually made eye contact with him for a brief moment before I started to slide. My last thought as the ground rose to greet me was that I had to be hallucinating. Couldn’t find no other explanation for his eyes suddenly going missing from a face so moldered that it was sliding off his skull in hunks of gray-black meat that splattered his shoes with black blood and pus.
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    An ass-kicking in a glass. That’s what you got on any night Browder was pouring drinks at Paradise Pub.
    I found myself sitting in my usual seat. The stool at the north end of the bar near the toilets had the seer perched on top of it. Her deck of tarot cards was spread out atop the bar where she sat reading a rummy his fortune. My thoughts turned to Carter, and I didn’t know whether to feel better or worse to find myself remembering more and more with each new moon. The one thing I still couldn’t remember was going home between visits to the pub, and the worst part of that was that I found it didn’t concern me so much.
    I’d lost track of how long I’d been here. A week? A year? Did it even matter anymore? Most nights, I just sat here trying not to wonder how many times I’d relived the same night’s activities. I tried not to wonder what sin I’d committed in order to end up here, or how many of my fellow patrons here sat wrestling with the same question.
    Tonight, for the first time, I got Old Man Solomon talking a little. I tried to take his mind off those damned coffee cups that keep his face so long. Had I known where the conversation would lead us, I might not have pursued it.
    â€œI see your friend has figured things out,” he said quietly after we’d exchanged a few amenities. I felt equal parts offended that he’d called Carter my “friend” and fearful over what he might be alluding to. Carter was changing in ways that made me want to spike his drinks with a little holy water. Whatever he was becoming, he damn sure wasn’t my friend, not no more.
    When I didn’t answer, he told me, “You know what I mean. There’s nothing to be gained by playing dumb, am I right?”
    I watched Carter from my stool where he stood laughing and chatting up some dude in a leather biker jacket. I noticed Carter wasn’t drinking beer tonight. Hadn’t heard him order nothing but cola all night. I wondered what that was about.
    â€œNobody’s playing with you, old man,” I said. Damn Browder had me calling Solomon “old” now.
    â€œHave it your way,” he said, returning his attention to the cup of coffee set before him. “A word to the wise is sufficient, or so it’s said.”
    â€œIf you’ve got something to say to me, then say it,” I told him. I wasn’t about to be baited.
    â€œI’m saying that I know what it is to want someone to stop the world so you can get off. But the devil of it is that once the world stops for you, it’s hell