Twelve Years Ago
It wasn't like you, you were never the bar type. The rowdy crowd, cigarette smoke, annoying whistles as you walk by, it wasn't your scene, but seeing as you just suffered through a breakup of your boyfriend of three years, your lack of alcohol at your apartment, you had to go somewhere to let off steam. You were desperate, vulnerable, and thirsty.
"Don't see you in here much," the bartender said, spinning the shot glass in his hands with the towel before setting it down, his hands leaning against the counter after throwing the towel over his shoulder. "You're new?"
"No," you replied. "Bars aren't really my thing."
You looked up and took in the man's features - shaved head, a beard's shadow haunting his jaw line, a scar going from his left earlobe to his left temple, and his calm blue eyes pierced your eyes as he smiled at you. "Then you must be troubled," he said, continuing the conversation you don't want to have. "But, hey, that's what bars are for, are they not?"
"Just give me your strongest," you told him and he gave you a look of approval.
"Going for the big guns, huh?" he questioned as he set a glass shot in front of you, filling it up with amber liquid you didn't bother catching the name of. "Must be something troubling you hard."
You shrugged as you took the glass in between your fingers and downed the shot in one swallow, allowing the liquid to burn your throat. As you allowed the burning to settle, you placed the glass back onto the counter and motioned for a refill.
The bartender chuckled as he filled you up and left you the whole bottle. "I've got other customers to take care of, but help yourself," he said before walking away.
You downed the second glass and prepared to fill up a third.
"Penny for your thoughts?" It was a low voice, rough, seemed tired and it definitely didn't belong to the bartender.
"How long you got?" you asked as you swallowed the third glass, not bothering to fill up a fourth just yet. You looked over to the man that joined you, a man you've never seen before, and that's saying a lot since you live in a pretty small town.
The smile the man was sending your way made you smile right back and look away. "All night," he answered, reaching over the bar and taking a shot glass of his own. "What'd you got?" Sliding the bottle of whatever away from you, he filled up his own and downed it.
"Boy drama," you confessed as he began filling up his second. "Boyfriend of three years cheats on me, I break up with him, you know how it goes." You took the bottle from him as he downed his second glass.
"That I do," he said, watching as you poured your glass and hand him the bottle. "You deserve better, though."
You scoffed. "Yeah, sure. In a town like this, there's nobody worth looking at." You turned your body towards him, resting your elbow against the counter and leaning on it, your knees bumping into his thigh, but neither of you obviously minded. "Your go."
"Family drama," he said with a shrug. "Brother just ran off to Stanford a few weeks ago and my dad's taking out all the blame on me. He's going on more hunts now than he usually did when my brother was with us and-" He interrupted himself with a cough and turned his head to look at you. A smile spread across his face and he shook his head, looking away from you.
"What?" You smiled, feeling your ears begin to burn up slightly.
"I just met you and now I almost told you everything." He chuckled and downed his fourth glass. "How'd you do it?"
You smirked. "Oh, I slipped a little roofie into your drink when you were distracted." You shrugged. "Same old, same old."
He laughed, a laugh that brought a bigger smile to your face, the kind that made time slow down and your heart speed up. It sounded as if angels were singing for you and only you, now all you needed was the halo above the guy's head and you'd be in love.
You shook the thought from your head. "Y/N," you introduced yourself, holding your hand out and he looked down at it, a smile spreading across his face as he took it into his own, his hand engulfing yours like a pebble being thrown into the water.
"Dean," he said. "Dean Winchester."
"Well, Dean Winchester," you said with a small smile, "how about we take this party elsewhere?"
"It'll be an honor."
Now
You sighed and held a hand into your head. The words on the papers in front of you were blurring together by now, and the constant shrill of the ringing phones nobody decided to answer were getting on your nerves. If it weren't for the picture of you beloved son, Will, you are sure you would've gone crazy by now.
"Hey, Y/N." The familiar voice of one of your friends, Howard Stilts, slid up to you in his office chair. He occupied the cubicle next to your, having pictures of his wife and family aligned on the wall to remind everybody he was taken - Howard's a handsome fellow if you get passed all grease he puts in his black hair, with his dull brown eyes and a small smile that tells everyone he's friendly though, when you get to know him, he can be a real dick sometimes. "How's Will doing?"
"Good," you told him with a small shrug as you continued to look at the blurring words rather than at him. "He's getting a lot better at school now these days since the school started taking in books with braille." You shrugged and finally looked at the man you shared office space with for years, only taking this job when nothing else opened up.
"I'm really sorry about that, by the way," Howard said, a small, apologetic smile plastering his face as he leaned closer to you on one of armrests.
You shrugged again. "What am I gonna do? Can't stop genetics."
"That's one way to think of it," he said as your phone started vibrating, signaling the end of your shift, a temporary release from Hell. "Well, looks like we're off."
"You're getting off at three as well?"
Howard nodded and stood up, you walking with him as he pushed his chair back to the right place in his cubicle. "They cut my time shorter since Nancy's nine months pregnant."
"Oh, is she?" You smiled. "I didn't know."
"Well, in fair honesty, you have a child of your own. I don't expect you to be too concerned about mine." He laughed. "Anyways, I have to go get my paycheck. I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Of course," you said as he veered to the right instead of going straight, sending you a small wave before disappearing into the boss's office.
As you walked closer to the door, a foot or two away, you were stopped abruptly by somebody calling your name, the familiar voice of Juliet Kry, the boss. You turned to watch her walk up to you quickly, her brown hair pulled into a tight bun, her bland green eyes hiding behind a pair of cheap reading glasses, and her nose pointing straight out. The stack of papers in her hands did not go unnoticed by you. She sighed in relief as she caught you before you left, and you resisted the urge to roll your eyes.
"Hey, Juliet," you said with a small smile. "I was just heading out to go pick up Will. Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Howard's waiting in my office," she stated, "so I have to make this quick. Since Howard's leaving earlier than usual, I'm gonna need you to stay late and type this out." She pushed the stack of papers into your arms, a stack that's larger than encyclopedia.
"This is going to take hours," you stated.
She just smiled at you. "Will has a good babysitter, correct?" She rested an arm on your back as she guided you back into Hell, away from the gates of your freedom. "This report is vital to the company, could bring us up another year in the stocks." She smiled, though she wasn't looking at you, you were glaring her down. "And that could be absolutely amazing for us, terrible for our competition."
"Juliet, I-"
"Look, you're not the first person I went to," she said, stopping and turning to look at you, her hands resting on your shoulders as she kept you at arm's length, her green eyes piercing your eyes, "but literally everybody I asked was too busy or too tired and, now, I know I'm a kind boss and laid back. I mean, if I see you dozing off on the job, I'll just continue to walk by, pretend that I didn't notice because who knows what you were doing up so late last night. But, I am not taking a no from you, and that's an order. Now, I don't want to seem like the strict kind of boss, like the kind of boss that doesn't give you an option - I totally am giving you an option - it's just, the option is either do this, or get fired."
You looked at her and nodded, biting the inside of your cheek to keep disappointment from crossing your features. "When should I get this done by?"
Juliet shrugged and smiled. "Oh, I say sometime around twelve o'clock tomorrow morning."
"That's nine hours," you told her and she smiled at you, nodding. "This is going to take me more than nine hours."
"Not if you work super hard," she said, patting you on the shoulder and walking off deeper into the office building, leaving you with a dumbfounded expression.
You sighed, and followed her into the elevator.
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
The whole floor was nearly empty now. With only a few lights on, the dark nearly engulfed you. The other people who also got stuck doing this job was spread throughout the room. At around seven, when you were halfway done with the papers, Juliet stopped by only to give you another stack, leaving before you could refuse.
You had called your babysitter, a teenager that goes by the name of Sidney O'Hugh, telling her that you'll be later than expected. She had said that it was okay, seeing as it was not a school day, and you were so relieved to hear that she could stay until you got home safely.
As you started the first piece of paperwork, you found yourself liking Howard a little less, but that was hours ago.
It was now almost midnight, 11:46, to be exact, and the only people left are Justin Hirst, a man in his early forties that gives you a look when he thinks you're not looking, Kylie Grenna, a woman around the age either 24 or 26, and Mason Porx, a man you never take notice in because he's just too stalker-like to be around.
All three people in the room had no interest in you - except Justin - and the same for you, not liking Justin because of the fact that he keeps your creep-o-meter high whenever he's around. Actually, nobody in this room likes each other.
Mason was the reason Justin got a divorce, and Kylie slept with both Justin and Mason, only to break it off with them for a bus driver. You had nothing to do with any of them - you liked it like that - yet, they still seemed not to like you.
You typed away, bringing your nose back down to your computer screen just as the light above your head began flickering away, on, off, on, off, until you pressed the save button just in case the same happened to your computer.
Right after it saved, however, all the lights in the room completely shut off, along with the computers, the street lights outside the large windows your only provided light to see what's happening around you.
"What the hell?" you heard Kylie shout in frustration as she banged on her keyboard. "All my work! Gone!"
"Mine too!" Justin yelled.
"Same." Mason said calmly.
You kept your mouth shut, silently proud of yourself for saving.
And then the lights went back on as if nothing ever happened, you standing up a little to look over your desk to see Kylie and Mason furiously trying to turn their computers back on. You sat back down, wiping a hand down your face as you calmly turned your computer on until the realization hit you.
Justin's missing.
"Where'd Justin go?" you asked, standing up. "Wasn't he just here?"
You had both Kylie and Mason's attention now, their constant attempts to try and bring back their unsaved work completely forgotten as they looked towards where Justin sat, his cubicle now empty, his computer still off.
Kylie was the first one to fully stand up and walk over to the cubicle where Justin once was, looking under the desk and even in the cubicles surrounding his. "He's not here. Where'd he go?"
You walked over and joined her just in time to see a few drops of red drip onto her hand as she went to turn on her computer. Your eyes went to the ceiling and the sight there made your heart begin to jump out of your chest, your skin pale, and you stumbled backwards, your foot getting caught on a leg of a chair and falling backwards.
Kylie followed your gaze, a scream escaping her throat as Mason looked up as well, him being just as speechless as you right now.
Justin was attached to the ceiling, as if he had been super glued to the tiles, a cut in his throat and a dead look in his eyes. Though, he was definitely dead, the only thing you can think about is how he's possibly defying gravity.
"Call the cops," Mason ordered, you following command by scrambling to your feet and picking up the phone of the cubicle you were closest to, though there was not even a sound when you picked it up.
"Nothing," you said, constantly clicking down on the receiver to see if you could get the noise on the other end. Finally, you placed the phone back down, giving up.
Mason pulled his phone out and raised it in the air, smiling as he looked at the screen. "I got a bar," he said as he dialed the familiar three-digit number.
There was an answer, but none of you could say anything before the lights went out again.
story discontinued