Brdn_Nkd

I walk into the bar and see the left over remnants of hundreds of people's auras, color floating aimlessly everywhere, and then it fades to reveal my normal haunt filled with its regular patrons drinking their normal drinks. As I stroll toward a bar stool the colors come crashing back in and I see they're attacking me. I can hear their whispered anger and hatred and I throw my arms out to brush them away and I blink and look again to see everyone in the bar staring at me as my hands wave frantically in front of my face.

"Fuck"

Grabbing an empty barstool I sit and am immediately accosted by a battery of smells; beer, booze, stale popcorn, staler piss, puke, bile, putrescence. The bartender coughs at me and I pull my hand away from my face where it had been squeezing my nostrils shut.

"What can I get you?"

"Scotch rocks and an ashtray."

The bartender seems to storm away his foot steps crashing in my ears, the jukebox is screaming out some country song and it feels as though my head will explode and then there's a hand on my shoulder.

"You ok Brian?"

Sheepishly withdrawing my hands from the side of my head I turn to lock eyes with the voice. I recognize the voice as belonging to Jessica but when I turn I am eye to eye with an insect, its maw opening and closing and thousands of eyes staring at me.

"Brian?"

Jessica's voice again and when I draw my hands away from my eyes she's standing in front of me, no sign of an alien or insect or anything unusual. The bartender sets my drink on the bar behind me and I turn grabbing the amber liquid and slamming the whole drink in a gulp and them I'm dying. Dying, dying, as the poison in the drink grabs a hold of my throat and closes it. Dying, dying, as the poison rushes to my heart and causes my chest to tighten and constrict. Dying, not dying after all. I pull my hands away from my throat and I can breathe again. My eyes water from nearly choking myself and I can feel where my hands had been wrapped around my neck.

"Can I get another scotch?"

"Brian, you ok?"

"Yeah Jessica, just a little tired tonight. How are you?"

"Not too bad, just a few days til Christmas, got all your shopping done?"

My second scotch arrives behind me and I turn and take a drink, tentatively, waiting to taste the poison. And oh god, there it is. That bittersweet taste and the burn in my chest and my throat's closing and I can feel my eyes bulging and the noise comes crashing back in as the color fills the room rushing at me to hit me and punish me.

And I open my eyes again and I'm looking at the ceiling of the bar and Jessica's standing over me with a concerned look on her face. Jessica kneels beside me and brushes my hair off my forehead.

"You ok? I think we should take you to a doctor. You just had some kind of seizure or something."

"Jessica, it wasn't a seizure, that's what they want you to believe though."

Jessica helps me to my feet and I sit in the barstool again and this time the smells are there in the background of everything. Jessica has some sweet perfume on that almost covers them but they're there. Worse than the smells are the thousands of little bugs crawling all over my skin, I'm covered in them and it itches. I try not to scratch but they're biting and clawing their way over my flesh, feeding on it.

Jessica and the bartender are staring at me and I slowly drop my hands, stopping the scratching that I'd felt just moments before.

"I called an ambulance. You need to see someone."

Fucking bartender, doesn't he know they're coming? An ambulance will do nothing more than carry my dead body away and why the fuck is he screaming?

"Why are you screaming at me?!"

Jessica startles me, placing her hand on my chest and I feel her presence calming me even as I feel it building all around me.

"Just talk to me while we wait for the ambulance. Tell me what you want for Christmas."

Jessica's pincher is holding my sweater and her eyes stare at me as all around me the world exposes itself for the lurid disgusting place that it is. The smell of death and decay rushes into my nostrils as the colors assault me again and all around me is an incredible noise as the cacophony of life crashes into my ears and I know that this eternal suffering will continue unabated as the bugs, including Jessica, begin to gnaw on my flesh again.

I can no longer see and so I blindly thrash grabbing anything I can find to throw at the colors and I try to stomp the bugs and I throw up as the odor of life becomes too much to bear and then I'm thrown to the ground where I'll be consumed.

My life flashes before my eyes, trite and cliché I know but it does. I see the happier Christmases in my life, my childhood, my marriage and divorce, my first fuck, my first kill, my first.

I know I have to end it before I go insane and I find new strength to throw them off me and I pull the guns from beneath my coat and begin firing. It has to end; it has to end here and now. All I want for Christmas is for it to end.