Divination

This week's story from the archive features Nate the tiefling having a fairly common drunken night out at a bar he doesn't work at. This one is safe for work, though that part is uncharacteristic for Nate, hah.

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The bar was rowdy, as usual. Voices carried from all sides of the room, conversations incomprehensible over the music blaring from the speakers. At the far end of the bar, Nate was halfway to plastered. It was the tiefling’s favorite bar aside from the one he worked at himself, and he was trying to goad Bill, the bartender, into letting him have an eighth drink while simultaneously having a conversation of sorts with three guys also sitting at the bar.

“Come on, man, gimme another fuckin’ drink! I’m havin’ a good time, it’s been at least 10 minutes, you can give me another. Hey, I tell you what! If you give me another drink, I’ll tell you something about your future. I can do that, you know.”

Bill stared at Nate, amused, before finally relenting. Nate was a regular, so he knew when Nate had truly reached his limits. It was more that when Nate was that many drinks in, he started to get belligerent.

“Alright, fine. What’s in my future this time?”

“You know the deal, Bill. Drink first,” Nate replied, grinning. “I want an adios. If I’m looking into the future, I don’t want to remember it later, you feel me?”

Bill laughed, and a minute later slid the drink coolly across the counter to Nate. “Alright, no more stalling boyo, what’s the word?”

Nate smiled, staring down at the drink, then closed his eyes, the bar vanishing from his sight completely as he re-opened his eyes to see a moment in a different place and a different time.

Indoor wedding. Rain. Full attendance. Bill at the altar, his bride blushing.

“Your wedding’s gonna be great, you bastard,” Nate said. His normally amber eyes were shimmering a mystic blue color, seeming to reflect a far off galaxy. “It’ll rain, but that’s it.”

Bill stopped what he was doing, taken aback. “I didn’t even tell you she said yes. That just happened yesterday.”

Nate said nothing at first, grabbing his drink and downing it in one go. When he finished, his eyes returned to their usual amber, and he smirked. “Doubt my skill again and see what happens, jackass. And you’re not getting a wedding gift from me.”

“Dude, that was awesome,” one of the three other guys said as Bill laughed. Nate vaguely remembered his name being generic. He couldn’t remember. Maybe it was Carl. “Can you do me next?”

“Clearly you weren’t listening, but the deal is drink first, future sight after,” Nate said. He already regretted using his divination around people other than Bill, but he wanted another drink, and this way he didn’t have to pay for it.

When another adios slid in front of him a second later, he resigned himself to doing it again.

A dark room. Sweat. Passion, then sleep. Then, sunlight streaming in through a window.

“Fuckin’ condom’s gonna break next time you’re with your girl,” Nate started, draining his drink before he continued. “Get her the morning after pill, it won’t end well if you don’t.”

“What…? Are you serious, man? Shit, thanks, that’s good to know.”

Nate shook his head, his eyes shifting back to amber. As he looked around the room, everything went blurry and slanted. The alcohol had finally started to hit him. “No...no problem, man, ‘s no big deal.”

He finished his drink, only to find another one sitting right in front of him. After a few seconds of staring, he finally murmured, “There’s another drink there, right? I didn’t order that one though, just....”

“Nah, this guy over here bought it. He wants to hear his fortune too,” Bill said, pointing at the second of the three men.

Nate looked at the man, head reeling. He’d sped past being buzzed and jumped off to the deep end of drunk, bordering on wasted. “Okay, just...gimme a second. That...those drinks...tasty...it‘s a lot all at once.”

When Nate closed his eyes next, he felt the universe spin around him, but he stayed vertical long enough to re-open his eyes, the cosmic blue returning to them once again.

A law office. Signed documents. Tense silence, then a child crying.

“Sooooo, divorce is gon’ go great an’ you get the kid but the fuckin’ kid’ll hate you for it,” Nate slurred, grabbing the bar with one hand to keep himself sturdy as he drank half of the cocktail in front of him. “Also you gotta pay her like, a lotta money, like a TON of money—”

“What do you mean, divorce? Why would we get divorced? We’re happy together!”

Nate couldn’t focus long enough to look at the person whose future he’d just seen, even as his amber eyes shifted back into view. Suddenly, Nate felt belligerent. “Hey man, fuck you, I don’t gedda decide what I see, okay?! You asked me to see a thing, I saw a thing, I told you what I saw—”

“Hey, you still haven’t done me yet,” the third man said.

The tiefling could only hazily see the man, and he turned to look over at the bar, where he saw four unfinished drinks sitting in front of him. Carefully, Nate put his hands in front of him and grabbed at the drinks one at a time. “There...three, right?”

“Yeah, one you started drinking and two you haven’t yet,” Bill said. “You alright? I know you’re a big guy and you can hold your booze, but that’s a lot. If you need me to call you a cab, I’ll do it.”

“Gimme...few,” Nate replied, trying to focus on the third man long enough to see something. Eventually, Nate finally grabbed the man’s arm and held onto it—nearly toppling off of his barstool in the process—before he could finally close his eyes to use his future sight.

The scent of burning rubber. Plastic and metal fragments. Blood, and screaming.

When Nate opened his eyes next, he felt sobriety hit him like a truck, and he exhaled as he let the man’s arm go. “You...You need to walk home tonight. No cars for you. Just...stay off the fuckin’ road, you hear me?”

Before the third man could speak, Nate turned to Bill, who was watching him, worried. “I need that cab now. I’m done for the night.”

As Bill nodded, Nate reached for the drinks in front of him, downed each one of them in turn, then stood and stumbled toward the front door of the bar, still sobered up enough to move consciously, but also aware that the drinks he just downed would catch up very quickly.

Nate woke the next morning hungover in his bed, one arm out of his tank top and the other in the head hole, naked from the waist down with the pair of jeans and boxers he’d worn the night before still wrapped around one knee. When he turned on the TV and managed to stare at it long enough to understand that the news was reporting a car accident not far from his apartment, he slumped back into bed and rubbed his temples. He didn’t remember anything he’d seen the night before, exactly the way his drunk self knew he’d need.