"...I thank the lorr-ee-oord each day...for the apocalypse...” The singer might, but the tortured young teen trapped in the barstool near the bar's only working speaker sure as hell didn't. In fact, he would have paid extra for any barstool besides the one he occupied just to get away from that damned song, but the place was packed wall to wall with a wide array of bikers, drunks, bar whores, and people like him - those who tried to drown their sorrows no matter how well those little bastards swam. Ruben turned back to his drink, banging his head lightly against the railing set on top of it in time with the music. The half-nude dancer before him wiggled and jiggled her tired anatomy half-heartedly at him before giving up and dancing over to a more responsive customer. As a teen, Ruben did have all the normal hormones and six months earlier would have done exactly like the hundreds of other poor bastards in this bar did. He would have been among the first to stuff a buck half-into his waistband so the dancer could seductively pull it out with her teeth. But he was "younger" then, and found that now his priorities had changed quite a bit. Now was not the time for sex. Now was the time for sweet death to take him however and whenever it wanted to.

The waitress refilled his "What's-my-name", a quite tasty little candy-flavored concoction which was a bar specialty and the "drink of choice" among those patrons wishing to "Etch-A-Sketch" away any bad memories that plagued them. He downed the mixed drink in one shot - like the countless others he had ordered before it - and closed his eyes, waiting for the rush of alcohol to do its worst. The drumbeats of the techno song which was now playing pounded in his brain and soon melted into the memory of bombs...

His eyesight flashed and the bar disappeared. Great, he thought, the drink's doing the opposite of what I needed. His mind's eye was suddenly filled with the vision of his childhood home... His father dressed in a "Ward Cleaver" suit and tie, his mom dressed in a plain house robe... The sudden and steady "Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!" outside. His father angrily opening up the door to tell whoever was driving by to turn down their radio because "...this is the suburbs, for crissakes!"... The angry flash of light in the corner of his eye as his father opened the door... His mother's scream as she tackled Ruben to the floor and covered his body with hers... The hot burns as the skin of her back erupted and her blood gushed out over his exposed arms before the blast had finished cauterizing the wounds... The steady "Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!" as it receded in the distance, the sudden attack was over before anyone had known it had begun, the sound of the bombs replaced by the roar of the jets which dropped them finally dopplering past his house... Waking up in the makeshift field hospital undergoing painful treatments to remove the radiation from his skin... The news reports about any and all populations with over five thousand residents being bombed in "the worst attack in the history of the US" as World War III had begun and ended in the same day. Luckily (or UN-luckily, depending on which "side" you were on), the rest of the world was in a similar state - all superpowers and third-world countries knocked back to the stone ages in one fell swoop, each nation choosing that moment to strike hard and strike fast, casualties be damned. Worst of all were the years of foster homes that followed until his eighteenth birthday set him free, allowing fate to deliver him...here

Nope, Ruben thought as the drink finally strangled the last bit of consciousness from his brain; I definitely don't thank the 'lorr-ee-oord' for the apocalypse.

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