The Bartender 1941 [OUTDATED]

-Prologue-

[Prologue]

"Samuel!"

My grandmother would always shout. She sat down next to the fire to wait for her only grandson to come racing down the ebony stairs to listen to her scary yet amazing horror stories. Fascinating that a little, naive boy would enjoy these things. Little boys would play with cars, or have incredible imaginations to carry them into Pirate Land, Space, or something. But those are just stereotypes. I was different but I preferred "unique." Like most ghost stories, lots of them are fiction—rarely are non-fiction. It's just that people don't believe it's real. But little me will just listen to everything that grandmother has to offer at the time; one of my all-time favorite stories is one that sent shivers down my spine. It was the one with the dead bartender.

Sometimes I wondered if this story was real. Something about it makes my heart race with excitement. Nothing about it was realistic but it was the thrill and creativity behind it. Most of the things I got from it was that the bartender's resentment and anger refused to let them sink in Hell, resulting in it staying in this world as their own little shelter of despair and cruelty. It feasts on souls that they deemed "undesirable" and "useless" beyond the living. No one knows what qualifies as "undesirable" but many guessed.

As the years went by, I still stuck to my favorite horror genre. Yet as of now, I don't believe in those false claims and tales of demons and ghouls anymore. They were too rich with nonsense in my favor. However, even as an adult, I find compassion within the tale of the dead bartender. But that's what I thought I would hold out the longest... ~~~