The fact I’d gotten here after smoking some crazy shit from a strange asian dude and being sucked black-hole-style into a door located in my left eyeball should have been a sign. But hell, I thought it was part of the trip. Seriously, inter-dimensional time portal bars just doesn’t exist in the real world.
Except they do. I’ve been there.
The bartender was a tall black man with dreads that were actually tentacles he could control like arms. Dude, you have not lived until you’ve seen a tentacle-headed bartender serving drinks so fast you can barely see them mixing. No one waited for a refill at the Strange Cafe.
There were tables on the ceiling, green fire crackling in every corner, a band that played their own bodies… seriously, the drummer sat on stage with hands that were cymbals and knee caps grown into bongo’s being slapped by ‘hands’ that grew out of his man-boobs. The bass player stretched his toe into an instrument seven feet tall and played it using his johnson. Best damn music I’ve ever heard though. I couldn’t stop dancing.
No. Seriously. I couldn’t stop. I danced until I had blisters on my heels, my legs were in agony and my knees screamed pain. I felt like I’d been stretched and crushed in one of those medieval torture devices, my cheeks sewn into a rigor mortis smile. A nice lady covered in iridescent blue scaling took pity on me and intervened. She started to get amorous but when a questing trunk emerged from her belly button and began fiddling around my back door I suddenly remembered Lucy and begged off because I was a married man.
When I finally stumbled out the front door the sun was high in the sky and I was ready to sleep for a month and tell Lucy about the crazy trip I had. But our campsite was nowhere to be found and nothing looked right. We’d been camping here for years, I knew this area like the back of my hand, but it was like every mole, follicle and line had been rearranged.
The trees were taller than I remembered. The air smelled deliciously clean. I stumbled to the dirt road that led to the campsite but there was no road. I walked to the overlook where we’d spend our evenings watching the sun set and stared in slack jawed amazement. None of the stuff that should have been there was there.
I-70 should have been visible far to the east, but wasn’t. Instead of an interstate there was an uninterrupted expanse of forest. In fact, that was all I could see, forest. Nothing but trees in every direction. There were never this many trees before. The only place on the entire planet forested like this was the Amazon for fucks sake. But there it was stretching before me, undeniable in its vast solidity.
I stumbled back toward the bar thinking this was an elaborate hoax put on by my friends. They’d never let me live this one down. My foot caught on something and I fell to the ground banging my shin. I looked down and saw a signpost. Old and barely legible. I cleared away the forest debris and felt shock sink to my bones.
Stu Jackson rests somewhere in these woods, lost July 2013. Well lived, well loved, well missed. ~2043
July 2013 was the camping trip they were on right now. He continued to the bar, fuming at his friends, they had taken this too far. Ha ha, funny, assholes.
He stumbled up the steps of the cafe and was stopped by a large sign he’d not seen when he came here last night.
Be ye warned, time does not travel the same in all places. One minute at Strange Cafe and a decade may pass at home. Please check the time table for your zone in advance! Strange is not responsible for lost decades or eternities! Enter at your own risk.
Fuck.