Bartender

Flash Fiction

She tapped her silk cut cigarette against the ashtray and let the remains fall to their death. Her colleagues sat in a circle around her, hastily awaiting her next response. She turned to look at them all with a knowing grin.

“We all know why we are here. We are here because I want revenge, and you lot are just the people to make that possible,” she said.

She rubbed at her eyes which caused her mascara to smudge. Her plum mouth remained slightly agape with a hint of seduction. Her hips slightly tilted, she gave herself a shot of an unknown substance. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and returned to the projector.

“What we know so far is that my father was killed between the alleyway and the main road,” Harriet said pointedly.

The high tower blocks of New York loomed over her with a heaviness that only her memory of her father's murder could rival. The musty green carpets are sticky with old gum and dust bunnies. Harriet’s vision became increasingly blurry, a white noise visual covered her peripheral vision.

The dirty carpet had transformed to lava. Harriet hopped up onto the only unoccupied chair in the room.

“Lava! Save yourselves! We mustn’t fall into it!”

Dawn was breaking, and there was lava quickly rising, melting the chairs and Harriet’s colleagues.

“Sambuca! Kahlua, no!”

An opera began as her colleagues exploded, sending shards of glass flying in different directions.

“Merlot, my sweet Merlot…,” she cried.

Suddenly, Harriet began to become crazed, laughing and pulling at her skin until it snapped back with an audible ping. She hopped to the window, yelping in pain from the blistering heat. Opening a window, she saw her father lay still on top of clouds. His eyes opened, and he started to grow larger and larger until he had covered the entire city.

“Oh daddy, I miss you! I’ll get the scum that killed you!”

She stretched out of the window, trying to touch her father once more, but she went too far and started to fall. In mere seconds, she had braced herself for incoming doom but instead of dying; she found herself sitting in a chair. She could not move her hands or her arms, and in her hazed vision, she could see blocks of bright orange.

“Harriet Jacobs, you are charged with the murder of your father, Mr Keith Valkyrie, how do you plead?”

Harriet felt her mouth shift, and her teeth began to move. Her silk tongue tapped her teeth in rhythm.

“Guilty.”