Drinking the Devil Under the Table
Nobody saw the stranger arrive at the Crossroads Pub. They were all drinking and laughing and arguing in the small, stuffy space, and then he was just there, a short, fair-haired, slight man in their midst.
The air felt thick with the smell of sweaty bodies and alcohol. The stranger’s full lips turned up in a smirk as he surveyed the crowd. He clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention.
“Dreadfully boring night here, isn’t it, lads?” The patrons stared at him through bleary, bloodshot eyes.
“Let’s have a friendly contest, shall we? I’ll drink every last one of you under the table. Twenty dollars for each one of you I leave in the dust.”
It must be said that nobody came to the Crossroads looking for contests. Few of the townspeople had easy, happy lives; they needed little incentive to drink themselves insensible. Nobody seemed particularly excited by the stranger’s challenge.
“What’s wrong, eh? I thought I heard there were real men here. Heard wrong, did I?” That got the patrons scowling and muttering.
“If it will make all of you less frightened, I’ll allow your lovely barmaid to choose the beverage.” He gestured towards the bar.
Luci the bartender had shining platinum hair and a stunning face: full lips, violet eyes, and high cheekbones. The face of an angel, the bar patrons often said. The angel looked rather cross at the moment; she did not appear pleased about this obnoxious stranger in her pub.
“This gets out of hand, I’ll toss the entire lot of you out,” she said.
“You needn’t worry, my dear. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. The rest of these fellows will be unconscious and thus incapable of giving you trouble.”
“There’s plenty of us and only the one of you,” said a sunburnt farmer, his chin up.
“Your powers of observation are stunning, sir. Now to choose a beverage. And it must be a real beer, not some kitten piss that wouldn’t get a baby tipsy.”
The Crossroads Pub brewed beers that were the envy of the entire countryside. They could be light and hoppy, or dark and rich like chocolate and bourbon. They were divine. And potent.
“So then. What would you suggest, dear lady?” the stranger asked Luci. She shot him a pinch-mouthed look and then shrugged.
“The Brimstone and Treacle Imperial Stout. It’s our strongest one.”
“Mmm. I love the sound of it already! Two pints, if you please.”
Luci pulled two glasses of a stout so heavy and dark that no light passed through it.
“Perfect! Who wants to lose first?” The stranger grinned at the crowd.
The first man to take the stranger on was a tall, thick-bodied fellow who should have been able to win easily. He crashed to the floor like a felled oak after the third pint.
“Pathetic! Is that the best this sad little town can do?” The stranger’s words weren’t even slurred.
A dockworker took the challenge next. He downed four pints before expelling a great jet of blackish-brown vomit across the pub floor. Although that floor had had much nastier things spilled on it, patrons reeled back at the sight.
The stranger laughed. “Disqualified! It’s cheating if you empty your stomach. Next?”
The patrons became bolder, slapping down their money next to the stranger’s lone twenty-dollar bill. Surely the fellow couldn’t hold out much longer.
But hold out, he did. Other patrons collapsed and had to be dragged out while he remained standing and perfectly composed. The few who were left accused him of spiking their drinks somehow, or doctoring his.
“How could I? Your dear barmaid has been pouring them the entire time.”
“It’s a trick,” someone said.
“Don’t be such a baby,” the stranger shot back.
“Baby? I’ll show you who’s a baby.” The town constable had been drinking all through the stranger’s odd contest. It took barely a pint and a half to send him slumping to the floor, where he snored like a walrus.
When the last customer had been hauled out and the Crossroads was blessedly quiet, the stranger pushed his pile of money over the counter to Luci.
“How much longer do I have to do this?” he moaned.
Luci shrugged as she counted the cash. “Until I’m not angry anymore.”
“But it’s been decades.”
“Hardly a long time to me.”
“I should be at peace now. I should be six feet under with the rest of my family in death’s sweet embrace.”
“I don’t see how that’s my problem,” Luci said. “You’re the one who tried to take advantage of me.”
She was, of course, correct. He remembered the awful, disastrous night that he’d spotted her at the Crossroads all those years ago. He’d bought her pint after pint, hoping to get her drunk enough that she might be amenable to going home with him — or too insensible to protest if he simply spirited her away to a secluded place.
But she remained crystal clear and focused no matter how much beer he plied her with. He, on the other hand, began to feel as if the walls were swaying and the floor itself was dropping out from under him. When he gave up on Luci and attempted to call it an evening, the world went dark and silent.
When the light woke him, he was on a cold floor. Luci bent over him, beautiful and venomous.
“I own you.” Her voice was warm, smooth, and terrifying. “You can’t move. You only leave here when I summon you.”
And so it had been from that day forth.
“Poor you,” Luci said now. She grinned and held up an opaque brown bottle. “Would a pint of my private brew make you feel better?”
He’d had a goblet of Luci’s private brew once. The first few swallows made him feel incredible, as if he’d bedded a beautiful woman and emerged from the sweaty tangle to find that a wealthy relative had died and left him a fortune. Perhaps Luci had taken pity on him at last.
But then the world began to tumble and lurch around him. And he’d woken up feeling as if tiny razors were slicing him to ribbons from the inside. The agony took days to subside. Perhaps the drink wasn’t meant for mortals, Luci said.
“Heavens, no,” he replied.
Luci winked. “Heaven’s got nothing to do with this.”
The stranger, who already knew that, buried his head in his hands.
