Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

The Bar At The Center Of The World

The day before my friend had turned to glass and shattered into a thousand tiny shining pieces. I had tried to pick up these pieces, to hold him in my hands, but they moved and drifted, and fell through the crevices in between floorboards and into the ground far below, and I could not even gather a single sliver of his light filled corpse to remember him by. I imagined these shards of glass had transformed into seeds as they descended into soft dirt, and were in the infant stages of trees, to soon become towering willows breaking through unsuspecting city sidewalks.

It was a selfish and useless thought, trees and shards of glass are the same when it comes to a friend who used to talk, and move from one place to another, and love certain people, and hate certain people, as most people who are not yet dead tend to do.

It is a very strange thing for your friend to turn into glass and shatter into a thousand tiny shining pieces, and I desperately needed some time to think.

I could not think.

I was lying on my mattress in my small apartment. I had no bed frame and I had never bothered to buy furniture besides a single chair that was rarely used. I never sat down, I either walked around my apartment or laid in bed. Only my friend had ever used that chair, and now the chair would never be used again. It was a small memorial to my friend, but I wished that it wasn't here, that it was somewhere else, but not only somewhere else, but broken into hundreds of splintering pieces, and that every instance of that chair’s existence had been erased from my mind and from the memory of everyone who had ever seen it.

I had a nearly empty fifth next to my bed that I was nursing slowly because I did not want to walk to the store, and slight beams of broken moonlight were leaking through the window in between the slits of my shades, and I could not think.

There were people above and below me, and they were walking around, sometimes talking, sometimes watching television, sometimes doing other things, and they were preventing me from thinking. My thoughts would leak through my ceiling and floor and faintly whisper to these nameless people who lived in my apartment, and they would know my thoughts intimately and discuss my thoughts with each other.

I could not have that.

I took a small sip from the liquor next to my bed. I did not want to go to the liquor store near my apartment, the clerk there knew me well. He might talk to me. I could not have a conversation. My thoughts were already so jumbled and twisted, and a conversation would destroy whatever small order I had been able to construct for them. I continued to nurse the fifth until it was early in the morning and everyone in the building was asleep besides myself.

I still could not think.

My thoughts would escape from my skull and worm their way into the inhabitants dreaming slumber. They would dream of my thoughts, stealing my thoughts from me as they slept, and leave me empty, without anything of my own inside.

The fifth was finally empty.

I could not think. I could not go to the liquor store, so I went to the bar at the center of the world where I could be completely alone. The bar at the center of the world was always empty. I was its only patron, or perhaps others came to this bar, but we always found a way to miss each other. There were no booths, only barstools, and the entire place was covered in mirrors, so that everywhere I looked I saw myself reflected endlessly.

There was a constant quiet song playing in the background. It sounded like a hundred tiny voices humming and breathing rhythmically, but it could have just as easily been the sound of the ocean.

 There was a timer implanted into the far wall of the bar. It was counting down from a very large number. I liked to imagine that it was counting down the days before the world would be eaten. I liked to imagine the world would be eaten by a giant worm that was curled around the bar at the center of the world, slumbering. That the worm was a pure black so intense that you couldn't even see it as you looked at it. That the worm would awake as soon as the timer went to zero and then the worm would eat the world, and everything in the world, and there would be nothing left. But I didn't know what the timer was for, it could have been counting down anything at all.

I wasn't a very good bartender. I didn't know how to mix nice cocktails. I didn't know how to use a shaker. I didn't know how to perform, or flourish, or make engaging conversation as bartenders are expected to do. So, when I went behind the bar, I simply returned with a fifth of whiskey and a few beers and didn't create anything unique for myself to drink.

I should have been able to think, but my own reflection looking back at me was too much, and prevented any cohesive thought from forming, so I closed my eyes as I drank. I thought for a while as I sat on a barstool, then I laid down on the floor and thought some more. Finally, I was satisfied with my thinking and decided to leave.

I had come to a decision. I would have a funeral for my friend. I would place that chair inside a coffin and it would act as my friend's corpse. I would hire many actors for the funeral. I would hire someone to play my friend's mother, my friend's father, my friend's ex-girlfriend who never quite got over her love for him.

The mother, with tremoring hands, would hold her tear drenched paper, her prepared speech, as she stood next to the coffin. She would get through half of it, something I had written about how kind of a child he was, or how he never hurt anyone, or how he always told the truth, then she would break down, weeping, unable to finish. She would fling herself onto the chair, for this was an open casket, hugging the chair, refusing to believe that he was gone, and people would have to awkwardly pull her from the chair, and she, with shaking shoulders, would shuffle away.

The father would speak with forced formality, talking of unspecific things about his son, vague sayings which could be applied to any person newly deceased, but his red eyes would betray his deep loss, betray his desire to express his true sorrow with words, something that he could not bring himself to do. His back would be too straight, and he would turn away from time to time, so nobody would see the single tears which he shed.

The ex-girlfriend would read a profound poem that I had written. This poem is the only thing I could write to express my feelings, she would say. And after she had read that poem all of us would sob, even the audience, even the father, loud uncontrolled wails, so profound was that poem.

Then I would speak. My speech would be succinct and powerful, there would be no tears shed for my speech, only a deep understanding felt by all who witnessed it. Then all of us would pay our respects, look at his corpse, look at the chair, maybe throw a flower into the wooden vessel. Some of the children, terrified of death, would refuse to look. As they approached, they would turn away and close their eyes.

The parents would whisper to them the importance of this moment, the importance of looking at the corpse, but eventually most would give up and, in embarrassment, lead their trembling child away.

Then the casket would be closed over the chair, and it would be lowered into the ground, and dirt would be thrown over it, and packed tight, and a tombstone would be erected holding my friend's name engraved in its rock surface.

Yes

It will be a beautiful

And perfect funeral

For my

Dead

Friend

END