A ‘good guy’ on screen was busy hacking away at a corpse with a long kitchen knife. The ‘bad guy,’ as the movie portrayed him, had been dead for at least a dozen stabs. But the protagonist didn’t let up. Then two more baddies broke through the door and attacked, somehow missing all of their forty or fifty pistol shots from only three feet away. “Always love the plot armor,” I said with a sigh.

Then the real action started, and a possessed demon baby tramped into the same room, completely unfazed by the blood and gore it passed over, and bit the protagonist’s leg clean in half. The man on screen yelled and howled, but the baby could not be stopped. It chewed up from the leg right to the man’s pelvic bone. There was so much blood in the scene that the producers had even tinted the camera red with it.

“Damn, that’s gross.” Even for me, a veteran horror movie fan and aspiring nurse, some scenes were just too much. I knew I would see the blood and gore later when I closed my eyes to sleep. It wouldn’t last long, but it would cost me at least an hour of rest. I clicked off the movie—only about forty percent complete—and picked up my phone.

Drinks tonight? Shay’s? I texted. I’d sleep like a baby with a few cheap margaritas in my system.

The group chat was quick to respond, and four of us planned to meet at the bar across the street in twenty minutes.

I quickly hit the bathroom, ran a brush through my hair—it was getting longer than I liked and needed cut—and put on an outfit suitable for going out. Not that anyone had ever accused me of being fashionable, but there was a difference between drinks with friends in public and watching a D-rate horror movie by myself in my apartment. Out of curiosity, I pulled up the streaming app on my phone and checked the movie’s stats: only thirteen thousand views, and the movie had been out for four years. Ouch. The rating was equally dismal. I clicked the single star icon next to the title to add my own disgust and closed the app.

The bar was only a brisk thirty-second walk for me, though everyone else had to drive, but I didn’t mind getting there early for a bonus drink, as I called them. Phone in pocket, I locked my front door and headed for Shay’s.

Unlike almost every business on my block, Shay’s was actually pretty successful. It helped that I gave them a solid chunk of my paycheck every week, but even beyond my friend group, it was typically pretty full on the weekend. On a Wednesday, not so much.

I pulled open the door, and Doug, the bartender, gave me a friendly wave. He started pouring a pint before I even sat down. Maybe those other dingy businesses would be taking in more cash if they had service that good.

Doug slid a pint of the good stuff, Coors Banquet Beer, none of that light shit for me, and flashed a smile. “Got the crew coming tonight?” he asked.

I took a sip and relaxed. Already I felt the horror movie slime evaporating from my mind. “Just Taylor, Chase, and Julia tonight. Small crew. Got anything good on the menu?”

“Shit, I’ve worked here nine years without the menu changing once. You think tonight is different?”

I laughed and pointed to the mozzarella sticks on the chalkboard menu behind the bourbon shelf. “My usual then, good sir.”

Doug shook his head. “Already ringed in the order before you sat down.”

I took another sip of crisp, golden beer. “The word is rang, you moron. You already rang the order in. I don’t even think ringed is a word.”

Doug slapped my shoulder with the sticky bar towel he kept hanging from his belt. “Ringed is absolutely a word. Ever hear of the ringed possum? America’s only native marsupial?”

I grabbed my phone and typed in a quick Google search before showing him the screen. “Its a ringtail possum, they’re from Australia, and I highly doubt you know what a marsupial is.”

Doug threw up his arms in mock defeat. “Alright, alright, you win, Stephanie. First margarita is on me.”

I winked. “Only if you drink one with us.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Doug turned back to the blender as my three friends entered and grabbed stools on either side.

“Already started?” Chase joked. He was probably the only person who spent more time at Shay’s than I did. But it wasn’t always that way. His wife died a few years ago in a freak skiing accident, and the guy had let himself go. Hard. Taylor and Julia, the ‘happy couple’ as we usually called them, were much more reserved. Two margaritas each was their hard limit, and I had never seen either of them ever drink more.

Taylor gave me a slap on the back. “How’s work, Steph?”

“Oh, you know. Work is work. Pays the bills, sort of.”

“Still working on the RN license or whatever?”

“I have to pass the classes first, but I’m almost done. Couple more months.” I slid my empty pint toward the taps, and Doug replaced it with a lime margarita filled to the brim and rimmed with tajin. He grabbed a half-empty bottle of tabasco from under the bar and shot a dash across the top. “Just the way I like it. Thanks, Doug.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“So gross, Stephanie,” Taylor chided. “I don’t know—”

“Yeah, yeah, you want a strawberry margarita on the rocks, no salt, no sugar, no lime, no fun. We get it: you’re a thousand years old. You two will be living in Stephanie’s nursing home before long.” Doug already had the drinks ready and slid them across the worn oak bar with a smile. “One of these days I’m gonna put an extra shot in your margarita just to see you loosen up a bit.”

“Hey, Sunnyside Manor isn’t my nursing home, Douglas. Satan owns that place. He built it with his own two hands eight thousand years ago.” I licked some of the spicy tajin from the rim and let an ounce of the cold margarita slide down my throat. It was good, but in my world, nothing beat an ice cold Coors Banquet. Cold as the fucking Rockies, just as the Lord intended. But even I followed the rules. You drink margaritas on margarita night, after all.

Taylor took a drink and made his signature scrunched up face in response. He honestly didn’t like tequila, but again, margarita night was margarita night. No denying the facts. “You gonna look for a new job once you finish your classes?” he asked. Ever the gentleman, he was always genuinely interested in my life. And I liked it that way. It was nice to have someone to talk to who really listened, especially since my parents moved to France for my dad’s work and basically fell off the planet.

“Once I get certified, I’ll apply at the hospital downtown. I’ll need a car though, and I haven’t figured that out yet. Cross that bridge when I get to it, or whatever people say.”

“Big pay raise, right?”

“Huge. Damn twelve an hour to clean up old people shit and make sure Mrs. Jones doesn’t choke on her week-old roast beef that’s been pureed fourteen times feels very much like purgatory. I probably hit someone with my car in a past life. Didn’t kill them, because I still get paid, but I broke some bones. If they ever invent a time machine, I’ll go find that former life bitch and slap her.”

“Taylor has a big show coming up,” Julia chimed in, pulling the conversation’s reins toward her extremely successful husband. “They’re going on tour with a huge band!”

Taylor shook his head. “Not on tour, just joining for a few dates out west. Only six shows, but it should be fun. If you guys can get to California, I’ll have tickets for everyone.”

“Right, tickets from Ann Arbor to California must be cheap,” Chase added. “You streaming it on YouTube again? Last one was killer.”

On top of losing his wife and drinking like a fish, the poor guy had lost his job in the mix. He worked in tech, so no one really understood what it was he did in the first place, but he hadn’t been able to find anything else for a long time. I got him a one-time gig at Sunnyside Manor redesigning their antiquated website, but it hadn’t paid much at all.

“Yeah, I think it’ll be live online through a few platforms. I’ll text you the details once I know,” Taylor replied.

I ordered another round for us, and, right on que, Taylor and Julia had to leave once their second glasses were empty. I watched through the door as their brand new white Tesla rolled down the street and shook my head.

“Got any prospects?” I asked Chase. He was on his fourth… no, fifth margarita.

He shook his head. “You know how it is. Fucking economy in the shitter. Everyone is hiring, but no one pays. All just a scam.”

“I feel it. It took me six months to find Sunnyside, and that’s a shit hole. I saw a sign on the bus yesterday on my way to work. Looked like McCallister Industries downtown was hiring. Might want to try them.”

I waved to Doug and pointed to the Coors tap handle with a smile. I’d had enough margaritas to satisfy the margarita night gods.

“What do they even do?” Chase asked. He finished a huge gulp of frozen margarita and slid his glass forward. “Fuck, I’m spent. Can’t even afford a two dollar margarita these days, but the government has enough money to snap their fingers and send four hundred billion of our money to some foreign war. Damn it all to hell.”

Despite always wanting to be a nurse, I had no idea how to comfort people. Talking about feelings was just never one of my stronger qualities. Like everyone my age, I blamed my parents. “Hey… you want a shot? My treat.” I checked my watch. “Last bus runs in twenty. Let’s take a shot, I’ll walk you to the bus, and maybe you see that hiring billboard. And I have no clue what they do. I just know they make a shit ton of money. You ever see their headquarters? All glass up front, huge sculptures everywhere, and probably eight Ferraris in the parking lot. Crazy.”

As always, Chase wasn’t one to turn down a shot. We downed a few ounces of Detroit’s Finest Bourbon Whiskey which tasted like an old shoe soaked in gasoline, and Doug handed me a bill conspicuously light on drink charges.

I watched as the number eight bus took Chase back to his own dingy apartment before I headed for mine. The complex itself wasn’t terrible, fairly clean and up to date, but the apartments hadn’t been renovated or painted in probably twenty years. Mix in all the smoke and vape from virtually every single tenant, and it made a pretty dreary place to live.

“I’ll get my RN, get a job at the hospital, and start studying for the next position,” I told myself. That was the good thing about nursing: it had a clearly defined progression system. I liked that. I liked rules. I liked having clear, achievable goals. Every job was a test or a class away, and they all came with pay raises. Eventually I would take the physician’s assistant exam and start making real money helping surgeons. Then I’d get a car, move to the suburbs, and finally finish my back piece tattoo that I couldn’t afford.

My key clicked in the lock, and all thoughts of nursing or school or money flew from my head.

The TV was on.

I knew I turned it off.

“What the fuck…”

I slowly shut the door behind me and threw the deadbolt.

“Maybe Doug spiked my drink instead of Taylor’s…”

The screen flickered, and I quickly recognized the scene. It was Deathsaw II: Cutting Floor, the same horrible movie I had been watching before the bar. I pulled up the app on my phone and checked the rating. My single star was there, so I hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing.

“Whatever.”

I grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV, then tossed it back on the couch. Finally, after being in the apartment a full two or three minutes, it dawned on me: someone could be inside with me.

“If you’re robbing my place, I’m poor. So… Yeah. I’m very poor. Uh…” I didn’t know what else to say. Honestly, the idea of someone robbing an apartment like mine was so ridiculous that I wasn’t actually worried. Still, I grabbed a knife from the block in the tiny kitchen just in case, but the apartment was empty. No one hiding under the bed, no one in the shower, and no one somehow stuffed into my oven. I would have checked the washer and dryer as well, but I didn’t have any. They had both shorted out a few months ago during a storm, and the landlord had simply taken them away.

Downing a few pain meds and a glass of water, I stripped down and crawled in bed. I had been right: the booze took off the edge. No images of gore flashed through my mind, and I was asleep before midnight.