His Hour Has Not Yet Come

There was once a man who turned water into wine, a tale of biblical proportions lost to time and memory. Instead, what they got was an idiot who turned wine into water. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

In a beaten-up bar known as The Big Bucket, Mortimer, or Tim as he was known, stood in front of the rowdy patrons like a deer in headlights, his eyes on the verge of bursting with red veins. They jitter, neither open nor closed, a bit like the valves in his heart that teetered dangerously close to cardiac arrest.

The crowd cheered, but the bar was dead silent. Tim’s ears deceived him; the excitement only audible in his head. He couldn’t make out any faces, except for the blurry, erratic movements the bargoers were making. Raising cups? Clapping hands? His brain paused, then handed in its resignation notice. He had no clue why he was there or why his organs were on strike. More confused than dying, even death hesitated to take him, not sure of what to put as his cause of death.

But the actual silence in the space morphed into a hum. Then ringing. And before he knew it, two jackhammers drilled into both of his ears. His trembling hand reached out to his head, but felt nothing. The tinnitus and migraine were still there, but not his sense of touch.

As his fingers opened and closed in a rhythm, failing to awaken the nerves sleeping within, voices crept into his mind. Faint as they were, they pushed the ringing aside, murmuring a muffled tune that got louder and louder. The humming gained personality. Whispers gave way to war cries.

“Drink! Drink! Drink!”

Memories of an unpleasant youth flooded into his mind, fresh from his rehired brain, post-resignation. With more and more wires reconnecting, his focus sharpened. The present came into view. The figures in front of him formed shapes. He knew none of them by name, only some by face.

These were all Eunuch Johnson’s men, armed to the teeth. Rifles, pistols, it didn’t matter whether they were stolen or homemade. There were enough guns in the bar to make it an armory. Fortunately, these men were happy. Unfortunately, trigger-happy, too.

As the realization kicked in, the gnawing numbness in his skin released him from its grip. One by one, his senses came back for him. Weak and rusty, but they were where they belonged.

The incessant chanting of the gangsters around him drew Tim’s attention to his right hand, wrapped around the handle of his mug. His sight fell on the surface of the lukewarm liquid within. Bubbly. Black. Beer? Were his eyes betraying him, or did he order something different that his wallet couldn’t handle? It didn’t matter. His tab was there for a reason.

Like clockwork, he tilted his head, raised his mug, and the unknown liquid streamed into his throat, burning everything it touched. The crowd held its collective breath. They wanted to see if the rumors were real. If miracles really could happen.

Tim’s sense of taste regretted coming back. Whatever little vigor his barely functioning taste buds had was instantly murdered by the viscous nectar swishing and stirring around his tongue. But in their death throes, they sent an important message to his brain. A memory. He remembered what he put into his mouth. He remembered a little too late.

Moments earlier, he dared every single person in the room to deposit a bit of their drinks into his cup. From wine to whiskey, spirit to spit, every single fluid imaginable came together to form a blasphemous concoction. Someone may or may not have pissed into his cup. This uncertainty led to a rebellion in his liver.

But Eunuch Johnson’s men weren’t here to watch the drunken antics of a middle-aged guy. What went into his mouth was irrelevant. It was what came out.

Looking down into his empty mug, pristine, clear liquid flowed from his slightly open mouth. The drunken audience went bonkers. Bargoers became baboons. He really could turn wine into water.

He was real.

But even after witnessing a miracle before their very eyes, some remain unconvinced. Tim sensed a shred of disbelief among the few nonbelievers in the audience. Maybe they were too tipsy, unable to tell fact from fiction. Or maybe, he was so drunk, he just wanted an excuse to rile up the crowd even more.

After waiting for their euphoria to subside, he addressed the room. “Some of you think this is fake!” Tim’s voice cracked at the very end. “But I assure you, this is pure, 100% distilled water.”

His left hand reached into his dustcoat, squirming like a worm. And when it came out, a lighter could be seen by all who were present before him. A tiny lick of flame danced for the crowd as he flicked the metal casing open.

“If you still think this cup is full of liquor,” he sneered as he paced around the room. “Then my hand will burn. But if this is water, then…” A sinister smile flashed. “Nothing happens.”

Anticipation filled The Big Bucket. Hearts pounded and paused at the same time. All eyes locked hypnotically onto the miracle man’s every move. But just as the colorless beverage seesawed dangerously near the rim of his mug—

Bang.

A fresh new hole appeared on Tim’s forehead, sending him straight to the wooden floor. Behind where he once stood was the bar’s owner, Lucy, smoke drifting out of the long rifle in her arms.

Dumbstruck, one of the gangsters cut the tension in the air with a question.

“Why’d you kill him? We were getting to the good part!”

“You were going to burn the entire place down!” The petite lady roared back at the men, causing them to boo and aww in unison. “Shut your traps! Or I’ll tell the boss to pay up for you lot!”

And just like that, business went on as normal in The Big Bucket. The usual morning hubbub played out like it always had. Happy hour for bars and pubs in town ran in the morning when most of the gangsters were not at work. But that morning, the hollering and hooting following bouts of drinking did not last long, however.

The bar’s doors flung open as a young man charged in, handgun at the ready. His face turned white as all he could see were the barrels of the bar’s patrons aimed down at him.

“I heard a gunshot,” his voice quaked as he slowly raised his arms in surrender. “But I think I got the wrong place…”

“Nope, we got the right place, Bart. We got the right place.” A gravelly voice could be heard behind the man at the door, followed by a hand resting on the young man’s tense shoulder. In between the two men entered a woman, a few heads shorter than the both of them.

The older gentleman raised his palm, giving a friendly gesture to signal to the gangsters that they meant no harm. Their weapons lowered, but not their gazes. Outsiders were few and far between. Anyone who wasn’t a regular or part of Eunuch Johnson’s gang was either a fool or dangerous.

And from how well-maintained the firearms they had on them were, they certainly belonged to the latter.

The glare from the gangsters stung the unfamiliar trio like a swarm of hornets as they made their way to the counter. The uneasy tingle that crawled into their skin was made worse by the apparent body on the floor.

“Ignore him,” Lucy told the three strangers. “You’ve seen more dead people on the streets outside. Just another Monday here in Pitstop.”

But as the older gentleman sidestepped the corpse, his boot brushed against the lighter that fell just out of Tim’s grasp. Its dull shine caught his attention immediately. Picking it up, he marveled at the intricate engravings on the metal. Something this fancy was completely out of place in a dump like this.

“What a waste of a perfectly good lighter,” he muttered as he lit a cigarette with his newfound treasure.

The woman beside him warned, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He shrugged. Life was too short, especially around these parts. Might as well make the most out of it. But when the three of them sat down, the corpse got up. Their hearts froze, unsure of what they were witnessing.

They heard a gunshot. They saw a body. Their minds did the math, but now they were not adding up. But instead of approaching them, Tim ran out of the bar, hands covering his mouth as he fought to keep the puke inside. Relief seeped into their breaths as the older gentleman hid the stolen lighter inside his pocket.

“I told you,” the woman said just as the older man wiped off the cold sweat from his forehead.

“Umm,” the younger man, Bart, tried to get Lucy’s attention as she wiped her glassware. “We’re looking for—”

“Bounties,” Lucy didn’t even need to guess. Pointing above to the half-torn chalkboard on the wall behind her, she gestured. “They’re up there.”

The group mistook that for the menu at first. It didn’t help that the names of the bounties could pass off as specialty cocktails of some kind. The overinflated numbers next to them? Either a scam befitting the likes of Eunuch Johnson, or the result of Pitstop’s currency and its exchange rate that had a mind of its own.

That, and the fact that some of them had a star with the words “Chef’s Recommendation” barely legible just underneath.

But what the strangers found ironic was that most of the bounties belonged to the criminals who ran the town and its neighbors. Eunuch Johnson was up there, clearly overcompensating for something. The rewards from them were more to show off than an actual request to take them down. Among them, one name stood out. A “Chef’s Recommendation.”

“Who’s the Skinwalker?” Asked the older gentleman, only for the proprietress to let out a dismissive laugh.

“Forget it.”

“Then why recommend it?” Bart pressed.

“Damn thing has a taste exclusively for gangsters. Johnson. Dirty Eyes. The Greenbloods. Everyone wants it dead.” Placing the glass down, Lucy leaned forward, looking them dead in the eye. “And if the whole town can’t put it down, why should you?”

The older gentleman smirked. With a clink, he placed a pouch of coins on the counter. Even though money from The Mids wasn’t used in Pitstop, they were still immensely valuable. Regardless, Lucy scoffed.

“You don’t need to give me a single cent. If you’re still so damn insistent on going after that Skinwalker, I’ll take the money from your corpses once it’s done with you. Just do me a favor and die somewhere where I can see you.”

Averting his gaze, Bart suggested, “Sam, I really think this is the wrong place.”

But the older gentleman’s ego got the better of him. Ignoring his colleague, Sam reassured the bar’s owner. “We don’t plan on dying, ma’am.”

“The three other bounty hunters who came here said the same thing before they died, too,” Lucy rubbed into his face, kicking off a staring match between the two that almost ignited the alcohol-rich air in between them.

Ultimately, Sam was the first to concede. “Can’t be helped, then.” He turned to the woman beside him, “Jen, if you will.”

Jen’s index finger shot straight up, causing the cup that Lucy wiped to hover a few inches off the counter. The inexplicable phenomenon widened her eyes in shock. Regaining her composure, she understood the woman accompanying the two men wasn’t just any other bounty hunter.

“Well, I’ll be damned. An Exiled in our little town.” Lucy smiled, grabbing the floating glass before it became obvious to the drunken gangsters. “There’s a forest on the other side of The Well. Skinwalker’s said to go in and out of there.”

“That’s not really help—” Bart said, only to be interjected.

“You remember that drunk on the floor I told you to ignore? The one who ran out to throw up? He lives there. Hell, he planted the whole damn forest.”