The bar smelled of rotting wood and regret.
Jay Boron's cheek clung to the sticky countertop, the grain of the wood imprinting itself into his skin like a brand. Somewhere beyond the fog in his skull, a glass shattered. Laughter erupted—sharp, guttural, wrong. It slithered into his ears and coiled there, morphing into the wet, choking coughs of men drowning in their own blood. Tom's cough. Tom's laugh.
"Get up, you dumb oaf!"
A meaty fist slammed down beside Jay's head. He flinched, the barstool screeching like a shell whistling overhead. His eyelids peeled open, crusted with sleep and something darker. The face looming over him was a ruddied moon, pockmarked and sneering. Nikolai. The butcher from the market, reeking of cabbage and cruelty.
"You've been hogging the bar spot since sunrise," Nikolai spat, flecks of spittle glinting in the greasy lamplight. "Some of us actually work for our drink."
Jay's tongue felt like a corpse in his mouth. He tried to speak, but his throat closed—gunpowder, always gunpowder—and instead, he gagged.
"Enough, Nikolai."
The bartender's voice was a whetstone dragged over steel. Old Willem, his beard more salt than pepper these days, polished a glass with the same care he'd once stitched bayonet wounds. His eyes didn't leave the rag circling the rim. "He stays. You want to argue, take it to the street."
Nikolai's lip curled. "Why? Because he's a war hero?" He barked a laugh, gesturing at Jay's trembling hands, the stains on his coat. "Look at him! He's a ghost. A piss-drunk, worthless—"
"He bled for your right to be a fool,"Willem snapped, the glass clinking as he set it down too hard. "Show respect. Or leave."
Respect.
The word clawed up Jay's spine. He'd heard it too many times—from starry-eyed boys buying him ale, from widows pressing poppy flowers into his palm, from politicians who'd never held a rifle. Respect was a coffin, polished and empty.
He lurched upright, the barstool toppling behind him. The room tilted—mud, always mud underfoot—and his hip struck the edge of a table. A woman yelped, clutching her drink. Her eyes widened as she took in his face, his uniform. He knew what she saw: the scar raking his jawline, the hollows beneath his eyes like bullet wounds.
"I… need my damn meds," Jay muttered, more to the shadows than to anyone living. His fingers fumbled at his coat pocket, brushing the cold brass of Tom's pocket watch. Tick. Tick. Tick.The sound had followed him home from the front, lodged in his skull beside the screams.
The vial was nearly empty. Three drops left, swirling with a faint, sickly blue. The apothecary had sworn it would help. *A soldier's remedy,* she'd called it, her knuckles gleaming with rings that looked too much like animal teeth.
He tipped the last of it onto his tongue.
The world dissolved.
—Tom, grinning, tossing him a cigarette. "Keep your head down, yeah?"
—*Mud. So much mud. And the thing in it—the thing with too many joints, skittering over the corpses—
—A voice, colder than winter: "God hears. But will He answer?"
"Not real," Jay slurred, stumbling toward the door. "Not real, not real, not—"
The tincture's burn faded. The bar crashed back into focus.
Nikolai was still laughing.
—you let him die you let him die you—
Jay shouldered through the door, icy wind slapping him awake. The vial slipped from his fingers, shattering on the cobblestones. Blue liquid hissed, etching the snow with veins of smoke.
He didn't look back.
Somewhere in the alley, a stray dog howled. Or maybe it wasn't a dog. Maybe it was the thing from the trenches, its voice syrupy and raw as it whispered:
"Run, little soldier. We remember you."
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