Long Story Short (677 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: ubermadness
Rating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Circe <fickle.muse.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-10-29 17:03:51 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The bartender slid yet another shot glass of tequila down the bar. The middle aged man watched it with bleary eyes until it was in front of him, then brought his hand down in what was obviously supposed to be a snappy, fluid motion, designed to stop the glass and pick it up. He misjudged by a fair bit, due in great part to the last six shotglasses that had slid his way, and knocked the drink over. He watched the clear liquid spread over the bar, freed and searching for adventure in the peanut shells and cigarette ash, with a dull lack of interest.
"Barkeep! Another drink!"
The bartender rolled his eyes. "Rob, in the first place, you've known me for fifteen years. I think you can call me Sam now. And in the second, your less than thrilling hand eye co-ordination is telling me you may have had enough to drink."
With a look that Rob thought of as sly and keenly intelligent, but that came across as drunken owlish blinking, the dishevelled man said "But the last one appears to have disappeared. Therefore, I didn't drink it. Therefore, my level of ineb - ineber - inebb - drunkness is the same as it was when you decided to give me THAT drink, therefore you've already made the decision."
"Oh, for crying out loud." Sam filled another glass and placed it in front of Rob. "Now drink it, and go home. The bar is empty for a reason, my drunken friend; it's closing time."
Rob peered around, and seemed surprised to find the bar deserted. "Slow night, isn't it?"
"No, Rob. It was a pretty fast night around seven, when you got here. There was a brawl at eight. You started it, if I remember correctly. A hen's night group wandered in at around nine, and they broke three tables before the police took them away. At eleven, the local rugby team came in for their darts night. At midnight, the local rugby team broke the dartboard over the head of the captain. It's now two in the morning, and yes, Rob; it's pretty damned quiet."
Rob stared at Sam. "All that happened tonight?"
"While you've been sitting there, yep."
"I never noticed."
"You never do. Tonight, though, I think it was because you were busy trying to convince the young woman next to you to accompany you home and 'see what a real man has to offer'."
Rob's eyes misted over. "She was a pretty thing, wasn't she? Sassy, too - she played hard to get."
"She was waiting for her girlfriend."
Rob waved this away as immaterial, and stared into his shot glass. "Did I ever tell you about the one that got away, Sam?"
"One?"
"Well, the only important one that got away."
Sam sighed. He put down the glass he was cleaning and leaned on the bar across from Rob, lighting a cigarette with the practised flourish of a years-long smoker. "Well, you may as well tell me. It's not as though I have anywhere else to be."
Rob raised his glass in a small, sardonic toast. "Amen to that," he said. He stared into space for a few moments, collecting his thoughts, and then he began.
"I was a young man, only twenty.. or twenty-one, I forget which. No, wait - this was the year my grandmother died, so I would have been twenty. I think. Unless it was after July - "
Sam interrupted. "Can you just give me the short version?"
Rob looked at Sam in disbelief. "This is the story of a lifetime. It's about love and life and heartbreak. It's about adventure, money, betrayal, birth, death, and everything in between. This, my friend, is a story on an epic scale; and you want me to cut it short?"
"Yes. Just.. give me the end of it."
"The end."
"Yes."
"Well, okay, Sam. If that's what you want."
Rob stared into his glass again. His lips moved silently as he sorted through the draughty warehouse of his mind and gathered the tattered pages of the end of his greatest story.
"Right. Well, after the Egyptian girl put her clothes back on, and we got the elephant out of the living room, we still had to work out what to do with the million dollars. If you'll remember, the million dollars was strapped to the chipmunk. So we did what any couple in love would do; we shot it through the head and used the million to pay off the Mafia. Afterwards, we tried to make it work, but too much had happened. The last I saw of her, she was riding off on the back of Johnny Two-Finger's horse. And that's the end. The story of the one that got away."
Sam blinked. Rob smiled.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you Rob? That's not the real ending of the story, is it?"
Rob slipped unsteadily from the barstool and shrugged into his coat without deigning to answer.
"Rob? Rob! Is that the real story? Who was the Egyptian girl? How did the elephant get there? Why did you have to pay off the Mafia? Rob?"
Rob waved goodnight as he opened the door and braced his shoulders against the cold wind. The last thing he said before he walked home that night was "Long story short, my ass. See you tomorrow, Sam."
User Reviews
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-01-29 11:20:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You know what?
This should have won.
It reminded me a little of the movie "Big Fish", which was awesome.
Submitted by Kopesh (user info) at 2005-01-17 06:24:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
great story...
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 11:38:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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