The Night Out

This is story I wrote over the course of multiple days on break times at a previous job I held. It’s a light-hearted story as opposed to the others posted thus far.

When we are kids, the world has mystery. As we grow up that mystery starts to fade, inching further and further from unknown to known. The monster under the bed becomes just the imagination toying with an innocent mind. Those noises of ghosts in the hallway are an old floor settling. Eventually we learn that the mysticism of our ancestors was just their way of explaining a world they didn't really know. What once was deemed to be the work of the gods turned into alchemy and magic, then became science.

Sure, that is a vague and condensed version of events, but you get the point. I didn't major in history, that was just a couple classes I took for fun. To be fair though I never got to graduate anyway. No, my life threw me a curve ball I never saw coming. Remember that mystery I mentioned? It seems I got a second chance at it, and it all oddly enough started on a bar crawl.

I was being my typical loner self-one night hopping from bars, as one does, trying to get lucky. I happened to take a wrong turn and stepped into what I thought was a regular bar. I only managed to get in because someone else happened to be walking in and held the door for me. Looking back, I guess he thought I was a regular. The poor fella got chewed out for that one and almost lost his membership.

So here I am walking up to a bar, not noticing all the similarly dressed men and women around me. Almost sounds like a bad joke, eh? Anyway, so I make it to the bar and the man is dressed like one of those bartenders from an old cowboy movie. I ask him for a tall boy and he asks for coin first. What the fuck? Coin. Is this the Middle Ages? So, I pull out my card and say start a tab and I get the weirdest of looks. Then he says, "We don't take that here, I think you may be in the wrong place friend."

So here I am buzzed and wondering who the hell doesn't take visa currently. That's when he motions for a doorman I didn't see at first. As the bouncer is making his way over, another man a few chairs down came up and spots me, "I've got his drink Sal," he tells the bartender. To me he asks, "first time in here?" I tell him “Yeah, just bar crawling it and thought I'd give it a whirl."

He gives me this look, and it's hard to make out because he was wearing a get up that made him look exactly like a detective from an old noir film. It was at this exact moment I realized everyone was. Everyone but me, the bartender, and the door man, but he was just in all black attire. Then he asks me if I knew how I got in here and I tell him the front door. I smirked hard that that one, but his look never faltered.

He was looking right threw me and I could tell it, but he wasn't the only one. The entire bar was staying me down from the moment I stepped in, I was just too gone already to care. I've started sobering up at this point because stuff is just weird. Is this some sort of convention and they are private? Or a club? My chain of thought is broken as the man speaks again, "do you want a job?" I'm taken aback and not sure I heard him right and reply with "wha?" He rolls his eyes a bit and asks again "Do you want a job? We have a recent vacancy unfortunately and need to fill it fast. Lady luck seems to be on someone's side here and I'm curious to see who it is."

Every beer I drank till this point could've been water for the sobriety I instantly got. Why is this man offering me a job? While my head is racing to try and be logical and ask questions my mouth gets the first go and I manage to say, "sure." "Follow me," he says and starts briskly walking into the back rooms. I quickly gulp down the last of the beer shoot off behind him, "where are we going?" He doesn't answer and I just keep following behind him. He's moving fast through a surprising long corridor with branching hallways. Each door decorated exotically and differently, and some of the rooms looked just as exuberant on the inside. "This is the Meeting Rooms. Every hallway comes to this one spot, from all over the world. We need to go see the chief before we can make you official."

To say had a lot of questions is a bit of an understatement. For the first bit what he said didn't make any sense at all but before I could even try to ask a question we were apparently there. The outside of this office, I swear to God(s), gotta cover my basis there, looked like a 1960s police chief office. He sat me down on a wooden freaking bench. After he walked in, right from the start I could tell the case of me becoming whatever-the-heck-this-is wasn't going well for him. The guy was pleading his case thoroughly though. The chief was making it very clear that bringing an outsider into the Meeting Rooms was a terrible idea. What stopped her, yes, the chief is a her, was when he told her I just walked in. I mean it went from loud as hell to dead silence. Then she quietly said "what?" Before whipping the door open and pulling me in. Not metaphorically, she physically pulled me in.

"How did you walk in?" She asked me, with that demeanor of a high-school principal. "Honestly ma'am I just walked in behind another patron." She then proceeded to tell me that pretty much is impossible. They have some kind of barrier to prevent nonmembers with some sort or badge or something. That I shouldn't have even been able to see it. Apparently, this construct of buildings is alive or something. So, for me to have seen it and been granted access means that the building, buildings(?), wanted me to. Essentially, I was called. She hypotheses that it was because one of their members recent perished on an assignment and the entity wanted a replacement as soon as possible. While all of that seemed logical, it only seems logical in looney land, but for some unknown reason I shook my head as if I was saying "yeah that makes sense." As the chief was winding down her rant I heard the man, whose name I learned then was Pritchard, mumble "lady luck made her choice,” as he ignited a cigarette.

​ “So that's how I started my gig here. I know that's a lot to take in but man what a trip to start out with.” The disgruntled and slightly annoyed desk clerk tilted her head, so her glasses were below her line of sight, "sir. I'm just trying to get your information for the forms."