I’m sitting at my neighborhood pub, drinking a “pickle Schlitz” and eating Zapp’s “Voodoo Heat” potato chips. The Offspring is playing over the sound system and on the TV is some movie where a girl is killing people and chopping them up. She’s taking all the pieces and sewing them together to make a friend.
I avert my eyes. I don’t want to see the rest.
Outside lightning is striking and thunder is making terrific booms. Various phones are making that high pitched keening that warns of severe weather.
Across the well used and seasoned wood, across from my little portable keyboard where I’m typing this into a word processor on my phone, there is a stack of coasters next to two packets of something called “Beer Clean.” Directly across from me is the large metal door to a large walk-in refrigerator where all the beer is, and on the silvery surface are probably 300 odd beer caps. I don’t know if they’re magnetically attached or glued. To the left of them is a collection of stickers. They’re beer related but the light is too dim, and they’re too far away from me, to read what they say — except for one: MONON.
Next to the industrial sized refrigerator door is the line of taps, ten of them, all with different handles. Above them are more stickers, and to each side are eyes. Giant googly eyes.
Hanging from the ceiling above the corner of the beer taps is a plastic human foot, severed, with painted blood and a section of bone projecting from the ankle. It’s affixed to the ceiling by a thick chain with a manacle — it looks like whoever it belonged to chewed off his own foot to get away.
Below that, facing away from me, toward the other section of the L-shaped bar, is a head in a jar. It kind of looks like a Howdy Doody mask and the liquid surrounding it is slightly red, as if blood had eked out of the head and tainted the supposed formaldehyde.
Directly behind me, hanging from the ceiling, is what looks like a full-sized human who’d been caught by a giant spider and wrapped in webbing, like real spiders do to flies. I don’t remember if there’s a giant plastic spider up there or not. I don’t want to turn around to look —
I was just interrupted by a tornado warning. We’ve been told to go into a shelter immediately. No one is doing so. No one cares. No one believes it.
We’re all too used to false alarms. Someone just went outside to check. Another person says there is a tornado by one of the local groceries stores.
I’m going to pay my tab and go home where I have a basement.
20 minutes later, tornado sirens still going off. I have gathered all three cats into the basement with me, and they are freaked out. Except for the oldest and smartest one, who is stoic about it all.
An hour later, and everything supposed to have been over and done with, the tornado sirens keep going off again. I have let the cats back upstairs, but now they want to come back down into the basement because it’s more interesting down here.
When I started this blog post I thought it was going to be a boring one. Strange how things turned out. As far as the storm is concerned, it’s past, and I now have a really nice sunset.
