She was already at the bar when he walked in. A Tuesday. The kind of slow afternoon where the air holds its breath. The pub was quiet, polished wood and soft light, a couple of scattered conversations drifting in and out like ghosts. No crowd, no noise, just a room waiting for something to happen.
He ordered a bourbon. The glass was warm, the liquid burnt. He turned his head and there she was. Sitting two stools down, looking at him with eyes that didn’t blink. He smiled. She smiled back.
“Buy me a drink,” she said. Not a question. A fact. He waved the bartender over, ordered wine.
Then she leaned in, close enough for him to smell the citrus on her skin, and said, “Let’s do some acid.”
Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The tab hit his tongue before he had time to think. Why not. Nothing else to do on a Tuesday afternoon except watch the walls rot. The bourbon buzz folded into something sharper. The air cracked.
The room changed. Colors ran off the wallpaper like wet paint. Ceiling fans moved too slow, each rotation dragging out forever. He caught the bartender’s face in the mirror, rubbery, sagging, eyes like black oil. He laughed. Couldn’t stop.
She was sunshine. Not metaphor sunshine. Actual light leaking out of her skin, spilling into the room. He couldn’t tell if anyone else saw it. Nobody reacted. Maybe the whole bar was blind. Maybe she had only come for him.
They walked outside, and the city had dissolved. Sidewalks rippled like water, traffic lights bled into the asphalt, cars swam past like slow silver fish. Storefronts bent at impossible angles. Signs spoke in glyphs he almost understood. She took his hand and suddenly it all made sense.
Wine somewhere along the way. Red first, staining their lips. Then white, crisp, electric. Everything humming. The night stretched out like elastic. Hours meant nothing. Minutes folded in on themselves.
They stumbled into a park. Grass wet, blades glowing neon green. She pulled him down and they rolled in it, laughing like kids. Clothes came off because why wouldn’t they. Naked skin against the earth, damp and alive, every nerve ending sparking like exposed wire.
The sky cracked open. Stars poured out. Millions, billions, too close, too sharp. They weren’t looking at the stars, the stars were looking at them. Watching. Waiting. She whispered something, too soft to catch, and the sky answered back in Morse code flickers.
He thought he understood. For a second, he swore he did. Then it slipped away.
Time disappeared. Maybe hours. Maybe lifetimes. Wine bottles empty, grass crushed flat beneath them, the smell of earth heavy in the air. She was warmth and light and chaos, pulling him past edges he didn’t know existed. They didn’t talk much. They didn’t have to. The silence between them was louder than words.
Morning came. The sun rose cold, gray, unforgiving. He blinked, sat up, tasted dirt on his lips. She was gone. No clothes, no glass, no footprints. Nothing but crushed grass and the echo of her laughter.
He waited. A day. A week. Went back to the same bar, same stool, same bourbon. She never returned.
Maybe she was real. Maybe she was just the drug. Maybe she was both. Didn’t matter. For one night, he had seen the edges of reality with her. The world had melted, rebuilt itself, and whispered its secrets.
And then she dissolved, like light slipping back into the sky.
Thanks for reading. I’m still testing the edges of voice and form, seeing what breaks and what holds. Some of this is memory, some invention, some truth so sharp it bleeds. You decide which is which.
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
