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“Hard day?” the bartender asked.

“Why?” I snapped my head up.

“You just look a bit out of it,” he said. “Another one?”

I looked down to see an empty glass in front of me. With a single finger, I pushed it forward. He tilted the bottle of whiskey and flooded the glass again.

Out of it. Out of my mind? Out of character, that was for sure. Mentally I ticked off the alarming symptoms. Guilt, something that had never afflicted me before. Irritation and unease. Worry.

“I should kill her,” I muttered.

“Mine, too,” the man sitting next to me said.

“Excuse me?”

“My wife. You can kill ‘er too.” His words were slurred, drunken.

At the other end of the bar the group of people cheered a good pool shot. A woman leaned over the pool table, her breasts hanging like pendulums. Her chest was wrinkled, the epidermis stretched and spotted from years of tanning.

“Oh,” I said.

“Damn bitches. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. Nag, nag, nag. You can’t do anything right with ‘em. Don’t even bother trying, am I right?”

He held his beer bottle up and clinked it hard against my glass. My empty glass. I raised a finger and ordered another. The bartender obliged.

“She kick you out of the house?” the man said, his smiling face disgustingly ruddy.

“No,” I said.

The bar was growing dark, or maybe it was just me. Or the shadow. I blinked and looked around. It had come back, yes. She had distracted me from it, but she was not here now. I felt the numbness of the shadow creep into the edges of my mind.

“Outta my way, Sharon!” One of the drunken men elbowed the woman next to the pool table. Tattoos sleeved both of his thick arms, peeking out from under his stained white tee.

“You can’t get that shot,” she snapped back, moving unhappily back, arms crossed.

“Jus’ gotta get away sometime, I hear you,” the ruddy man next to me said. I breathed in, trying to find air.

“You feelin’ okay?” His beer breath assaulted me. I pushed back my stool from the bar. Everything was dark. I could barely see the edge of the bar in front of me.

“I… I just need to think.”

Glass shattered on the floor next to the pool table. I closed my eyes.

“You dumb fucking bitch!”

A slap. A scream.

Then the bar was gone, and in front of me was the tattooed man, his face snarling. I snapped my fist across his face. The sound of bone snapping. Waves of shadow darkened my vision, made it impossible for me to see anything except in flashes.

My fists. Blood. More blood. Pouring from his nose, his split lip.

Pain, total blackness. My ears ringing.

We were on the ground, me on top of him. The woman was screaming behind me, pulling at my shirt.

“Get off of him! Get off of him!”

The shadow laughing, laughing at me as I swung my fists down over and over again. I did not care about the pain in my knuckles. Gone were the guilt, the uncertainty, the irritation. In their place came pure satisfaction.

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