A/N: Guys, don't read this. Seriously, it's bad. I wrote this sophomore year of uni, and it's what prompted my professor to tell me to stick to nonfic.
Samantha had always been a good girl. She could count on one hand the number of times she had gotten into trouble: In kindergarten, Mrs. Yuleski gave her a time out for talking during naptime. Tommy Delone had been discretely shooting bits of paper at her, and when she turned around to ask him to please stop, Mrs. Yuleski caught her in the act. Sam was so horrified by the ordeal that she didn’t utter a word for a full year.
Which resulted in the second time Sam got into trouble. Every student in Mr. Patterson’s first grade class was expected to recite William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Clown” by heart. Sam memorized the poem immediately, rehearsing the words over and over again in her head. When Mr. Patterson called Samantha Jane to stand in front of the class for her rendition of the poem, Sam stood there silently, large green eyes blinking.
“Well?” said Mr. Patterson.
Samantha said nothing.
Mr. Patterson sent Samantha home with an F and a note for her mother. Sam promptly started speaking again.
The next (and last) time she got into trouble was eleven years later, when Sam was in the twelfth grade. For the first time in her life, Sam was going to play hooky from school. It was, after all, senior skip day at West Stamford High. Halfway down the Post Road, en route to the beach, Sam made an abrupt U-turn and headed back toward the high school. She received a ticket for making an illegal U-turn and a detention slip for tardiness. As she tearfully walked into detention, plopped into the nearest desk and hid her head in her arms, she vowed never to get into trouble again.
So how was it that Samantha now sat handcuffed to a chair, facing interrogation?
Sam woke up Saturday morning with a throbbing headache and a parched mouth. “I can’t be hung over, can I?” she mumbled as she massaged her aching temples. True, she had gone out for drinks after work, but surely she’d had no more than her usual glass of red wine and a handful of cashews? Sam never over imbibed: she always limited herself to a single glass – and only allowed herself that much because she had read somewhere that red wine was good for the heart.
Blearily rubbing her eyes, Sam tried to recall her Friday night. Normally, Sam and her coworkers went to Pastis on Ninth Avenue, but Sam’s friend James had insisted they branch out and venture over to the Village. Sam, who hated breaking her established routines, reluctantly agreed to go.
James, ever in pursuit of adventure, had led Sam and her coworkers down a number of darkened alleyways until he found what Sam was sure was the darkest, most barren alley in all of Greenwich Village. When Sam saw the sign for Hung Over, which boasted a flickering martini light fixture and a shrunken head hanging by a rope in its window, she knew that James would want to go in.
“How morbid!” he laughed, and dragged Sam in behind him.
The bar was essentially empty, with the exceptions of Sam, James, two of the other guys from the firm, and the bartender. James looked mildly disappointed: the interior of the bar hardly matched the doom and gloom of the hanging shrunken head. For all Sam could tell, this was a perfectly ordinary – if low end – bar. The bar stools were covered with black vinyl that had clearly seen better days and the hardwood floor desperately needed a polish. Despite its worn appearance, Hung Over appeared to be clean, Sam’s number one stipulation.
