Dave was feeling pretty good. He was also fairly certain that he would never be able to eat anything again and would have to be fed intravenously for the rest of his life. Mentally however, the two shots of Trolam and several other drinks he had left him feeling quite positive and jolly. As he wandered through the bar he found himself chit chatting with many different beings. He couldn't quite remember anything about any of them or the conversations they had, but none of them tried to kill him so he assumed he was doing well.

As he approached a particularly dark corner of the bar he heard a raised voice, that in his current state could be interpreted as in distress, "I said leave me alone you malodorous pervert! Now move!". Upon hearing this Dave decided that, while he was feeling very good, he was still in an unknown bar on an unknown space outpost full of unknown beings and his best course of action would be to walk away. Since this is what he decided to do, it is quite the odd conundrum that this is not in fact what he did. Walking straight up to the table he saw the backs of three beings hovering over a quite beautiful looking being in the corner booth.

Back on Earth society was going through a paradigm shift where assuming peoples gender based on old polarizing criteria was being frowned upon, and he tried his best to be mindful of it, but he assumed that this being was clearly a woman. A woman who was being harangued by a trio of dumb asses. His thoughts remained on one thing, "Walk away, Dave.", as he stepped closer to the being in the middle. "Walk away, Dave!", as he heard some comment about sons being daughters. "Walk AWAY, Dave!!" as he reached out a hand and grabbed the middle one by the shoulder. "WALK AWAY, DAVE!!!!" as he yanked on the shoulder spinning the being around to face him.

"The lady said she wasn't", Dave started before noticing the pure hideousness of the thing in front of him. It had very pale leathery skin that appeared to be constantly secreting, something. Bumps and protusions jutted out everywhere on the face with no symmetry or pattern. Two yellow eyes sat in the center of the head with a large mouth across what would be a human forehead. Many, many slimy tentacles extended from the would be chin. The smell also was about as pleasant as a durian. Dave vurped just a teeny bit before continuing, "wasn't interested. Time for you to go."

The lead offender tilted his head at Dave almost inquisitively and uttered, "And you should not step where you're not wanted". Just now Dave noticed something that he had been struggling with all day but never quite put much thought into. While the translator in his ear was an amazing piece of technology that gave him almost instantaneous translation, nothing rectified the disconnect between the words he was hearing and the motion of other peoples mouths as they were speaking. He, at this moment, realized he was viewing this alien world like one of the classic dubbed samurai movies. As this thought popped into his head he chuckled.

This was probably the worst moment for that. The man-alien-thing was clearly already in a mood to hurt someone against their will. "You think this is a laughing matter red skin?" the being uttered. Once again confusion enveloped Dave, "Red skin?" he said out loud as he looked at a nearby window to see his reflection. He was indeed flushed a bright shade of red. He had no time whether to ponder if it was the trolam causing it or the alien alcohol in general. Hell he wasn't even sure if anything he'd ingested was even ethyl based alcohol at all. For all he knew he was ingesting strange bodily fluids.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Before he could give any reply to the tentacle faced man the woman at the booth stood up, Dave's distraction clearing the way. She looked at Dave and was about to say something when bully number one had apparently reached the end of his short fuse. He reached to his waist and pulled out what looked like a firearm, pointed it at Dave's head and said, "You will never interfere in other people's business again, red skin!", and pulled the trigger.

Dave's head snapped backwards and he felt an odd pop at the base of his neck. The back of head got very warm and his vision swam for a moment. Unlike the last time he got shot in the head he did not lose conciousness. As his head rebounded from snapping back Dave let out a scream. It was not a scream of fear, or pain, but one of those guttural screams of rage. Mister tentacle face took half a step back and his eyes widened measurably. Dave was not quite sure how to read any of these alien faces, but fear was the most likely culprit.

In a very small amount of milliseconds Dave went from drunken light heartedness to an ever consuming anger. This was the second time he'd been shot in the head in the last few months and he had no intention of there being a third. He reached up to his forehead, and once again plucked a throughly flattened projectile from his flesh. What happened next was more out of drunken lack of inhibition as opposed to any rational decision. He dropped the bullet and grabbed the gun that was still pointing at him in his left hand. He pulled the gun hard, clenched his right fist and put all his might into a right hook aimed at the middle bullies face.

There are some who say that the human brain has the ability to jack up it's own frame rate during times of great happiness, sadness, or stress to better allow an event to embed itself into long term memory. Those who claim to have had this happen state that it seemed like everything went into slow motion. Dave was experiencing this right now. As his fist connected with the side of the douchebags face everything slowed to a crawl. He saw his fist appearing to plunge itself an inch or so deep into the face. He heard cracking and felt solid structures under his knuckles giving way. As his punch continued into his follow through he watched as the beings head turned to the right. The face now looking at his compatriot there, but the head continued to turn.

The slow motion continued as the mans head now faced dead backwards. Thoughts now started flying through Dave's mind. First of all being "What the fuck?", followed shortly thereafter by "Maybe his species has necks capable of hyper rotation like owls". The head continued to rotate and finally stopped when it had spun almost two hundred and seventy degrees and was looking at the other bully on its' left. Dave's fist fell to his side as he straightened up, "He's okay. That's got to be perfectly normal", were Dave's last thoughts before time seemed to catch back up with him.

The body of the man who shot him in the forehead crumpled to the floor like a house of cards. Both Dave, and the man's flunkies stared down at the motionless form for several seconds. As he looked up into the eyes of the flunkie on the left all of his fear, anxiety, anger, and trepidation clamped around his stomach like a bear trap. Before the henchman could so much as twitch Dave vomitted forcefully right in his face. The poor bastard had no time to even close his eyes and the mixture of bile, undigested alcohol, and other things started to literally eat away at the surface of his eyes. He clamped his hands over his face and was screaming in pain, "My eyes!!! I can't see!!! AAAARRRRGHHH".

The right henchman stood frozen with his head swiveling between the seemingly dead form of his leader and the writhing and screaming form of his now blinded fellow douchebag. Dave stood immobile for several seconds, mind reeling over the events of the last 30 seconds. Suddenly the woman who Dave had so boldly, if unnecessarily tried to rescue, grabbed him by the arm and began pulling him towards the door. "You need to go to wherever it is you are from quickly before security arrives." She said as she pulled him out of the bar.