Chapter 1:

I stare at the crowd of drunken rednecks and cowboys. Someone’s going to start a fight. I can feel it like an itch on the back of my neck. I glance over at Gina who’s still pouring beer out and serving it as it’s demanded. She hasn’t noticed anything of course. I quietly start pulling the bowls of cheap peanuts behind the bar and grabbing the empty beer bottles and glasses. The less ammunition the better.

I walk out from behind the bar and start doing the same to the tables and booths. No one notices my stealthy clean up. I begin to scope out the bar more carefully. Who’s it going to be? The rowdy group of rednecks in the booths? The truckers playing a game of pool? Or the hotheaded boys trying to lay claim (as if they have any) over some of the dancing women?

I shake my head. Can’t be sure. I just know there’s going to be a fight though. I can feel the energy fizzing in the air like pop rocks on my tongue.

I walk back to the bar to deposit the trash I’d picked up and begin to look for Buck. Buck is much bigger than I am, brother to Gina, and co-owner of the bar. If there’s going to be a fight I’d much rather have him in the middle of it rather than me.

I find him in the back with the money log trying to balance their books. “Buck.” I alert him to my presence. There’s been more than one occasion where I’ve startled the man by accident. 

He looks up quickly and catches sight of me, “What’s wrong Mathew?”

I don’t answer that particular question. I don’t really know how I would without explaining that I’m a telepathic alien with a penchant for picking up violent intentions. Instead I just tell him, “Switch with Gina.”

He sets down his pencil and closes the log book. I turn and don’t wait for him as I walk back to the bar. I can hear his lumbering walk behind me though. Buck stands neatly at 6’1 and towers over most people. Very convenient for reaching liquor from the top shelf and for breaking up brawls. Even the most drunken idiot wouldn’t try to pick a fight with him.

In the corner of my eye I see him say something quietly in Gina’s ear causing her to look over at me, but without any words she goes to the back. I do another walk around the bar and pick up some more empty glasses.

“So what’s up?” Buck tries to get information out of me again while I set the glasses in the sink.

I do another survey of the crowd and try to pinpoint the energies I’m feeling, but without much luck. In a place like this just about everybody reads the same and it’s hard to distinguish individuals from the crowd.

“Don’t know yet.” I say honestly.

His eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything. Buck’s not one to subscribe to vague feelings and superstitions, but he knows that I’ve saved plenty of his barstools and tables from being busted to not completely doubt me.

Buck and Gina have been running the bar together for a little over five years since their father passed away from a heart attack. I first met the siblings back in high school. This was right before my father had split. I’d been a junior and Gina a senior. She had been and still is the closest thing I have to a friend. Three years ago I had decided to backtrack and found myself here again despite all the warnings from my father to never return to the same place twice. But I had rationalized that the last place anybody would look for me was in a town I’d already come and gone from. Gina was immediately accepting of my return and had offered me a job here at the bar.

In this tiny truck stop of a town nobody had asked too many questions which was fine by me. Three years later and I’m still here. I know I shouldn’t be. I should’ve fled, continued running like my father taught me to, but a part of me ached to be around people who know me. 

“I’m not paying you shit you lousy cheat!” The hollers of an angry drunk pull me away from my thoughts. The truckers at the pool table.

“The fuck you ain’t! I won fair and square!” Another big man yells in disagreement.

I wince already mentally preparing myself for the violence. There’s a shove and then a cue stick is swung back in retaliation.

“God dammit!” Buck mutters as the fight finally breaks out. He shoves past me and I watch as he attempts to put an end to the ruckus before it has a chance to become a real problem.

His involvement doesn’t deter the men though. I see one of them grab the other cue stick and attempt to stab his opponent with it as if they were having some kind of fencing duel. The other patrons of the bar watch the ongoing drama with rapt attention.

I sigh and calmly go over to the phone and call the cops and paramedics. In the corner of my eye I see Gina peeping out from behind the door frame. I catch her eye and raise an eyebrow and she smirks in reply before strolling out to join me at the bar.

“All’s well?” She asks with a sidelong look at her brother trying to wrestle the cue sticks from the truckers. She pushes back the mess of brown curls that frame her face to get a proper look.