The day started with a crack of thunder. The noise woke Nik, who had fallen asleep on his squashy, crimson armchair with an unlit cigarette in his hand. Nik sighed when he noticed that the chair was wet from the leaking window and that the water stains on the ceiling had crept further from the corners.
Since graduating high school six years ago, Nik had lived in the same room in The Maitland, where he fell asleep each night listening to his clock radio and smoking a cigarette. Since the age of twenty-one, he had been working at The "Platinum Time" Bar as a bartender, watching the regular drunks waste their days away. He preferred observing the tourists, with their backwards baseball caps and hideous sandals, who had, for some reason, decided to visit this god-forsaken town.
Heading to work early was the only option, as falling asleep again was unlikely to happen. Nik pulled on his black jeans, T-shirt and boots and grabbed his leather jacket from the floor. He paused as he glimpsed his pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. He had been trying to quit for years, but it seemed hopeless. Anyway, he supposed that there were worse vices than smoking. With that, he snatched the whole pack.
As he left the building, Nik briefly noted the police cars pulling into the parking deck. He shook his head, unsurprised. He reckoned that God had abandoned the town, just as He had abandoned him. As he headed to the bar, he nodded at Lamar, the old, retired cop, and waved to Matt, the mailman. Being a bartender, he knew everyone and their secrets because drunks talk. The nice thing was that he knew everyone’s skeletons but no one knew his. He could talk to people for ages without revealing anything.
At work, Nik spent the rest of the day making drinks and chatting with the patrons. It seemed that the mystery of Mr. Evans’ death was all that anyone wanted to talk about. He was sure that no one actually cared about the man, they were just caught up in the shock. Most people here seemed downright apathetic to the suffering of others. Coughing, Nik made his way home in the early morning of the next day. He fell asleep, in his bed this time, watching the sky change from black to coral, as the sun rose.
