A View From The Third Floor

The pub is in a state of organized chaos. Tables scrape across the floor. Chairs are lined up in crooked rows facing the television. Karl passes out plates of tapas and bowls of popcorn with the grim determination of a kraken preparing for battle. “Last call before the show starts,” Hugo announces from his stool. “No one asked you,” Medusa replies. Behind the bar, Sprinkles finishes the last…

The Pub Reopens Larry is the first to walk in to the pub. The wood gleams. All the surfaces have been waxed and polished to a healthy….brown. Everything still looks the same, just–newer. Larry goes back outside and starts hauling in all the karaoke equipment he’d rescued from the floor. Medusa is looking rather lovely. Her alabaster skin has a healthy glow. Larry stops with a woofer in one hand…

It’s a little after dinnertime at the pub when Hugo walks in with a camera and hits record. “Sprinkles, give us yer best one-liner, mate.” Sprinkles is behind the bar, barely looks up from wiping down yet another spill and says, “First call to last, flat on ya ass.” Hugo chuckles, “Gilly, got a watery one-liner for the folks at home?” Gillberta straightens and lifts her chin. Her Ramones tee…

The glen outside Sprinkles Mystic Pub is insanely serene. Summer is looming with the great existential question of “To dehydrate or to not severely dehydrate the Earth…”. The bees are buzzing, the birds are tweeting, and the squirrels are squirreling. The brook is…well, babbling incoherently, because that’s what brooks do. The still is shining in the sun, the copper burnished in a most peculiar…

The Monthly Rapport by Elandro J. Gobiline I walked into Sprinkles Mystic Pub expecting there to be…more. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting, to be honest. Just…more. I sat at the middle table for a better vantage point and was immediately advised to move. One patron leant forward and advised me in a low tone, “I wouldn’t sit there for long. Marge might take offense.” I joined the…

Somewhere between 2010 and 2019 something went horribly, terribly…sideways, and we were here for it. The musical strains of Something Just Like This by The Chainsmokers and Coldplay float through the glen behind Sprinkles Mystic Pub. Two confused squirrels sit in the Y of a tree trunk, contemplating their snack choices. A badger stops at his reflection in the copper still, obviously thinking…

All of the tables are pushed together in the middle of the pub floor. All of the regulars, including Hugo, are passing around a rather large photo album. Pictures of the pub during the noughties. Rufus barks a laugh, “And we were a little naughty!” Medusa rolls her eyes, “Someone has to say it, might as well have been you.” Larry snorts, “Do you kiss Rena with that mouth?” The book slides to…

Another night…another decade in the glen behind Sprinkles Mystic Pub. The still has donned a block colored, button down shirt and a ten gallon cowboy hat for no apparent reason. It refuses to elaborate. The woodland creatures are all doing the Watermelon Crawl. A squirrel shows off a barbecue stain on a white tee shirt from the dumpster behind Deirdre’s Desire Den like it’s a badge of…

The glen behind Sprinkles Mystic Pub has grown…hair. The branches of the trees have shaped themselves into long, waving clumps of super-high hair without the aid of AquaNet. A honey badger lazes in the sunshine with a Billy Idol snarl on its tiny face. The still has jelly bracelets in all the colors wrapped around its belly. No regerts. The jukebox crackles— “Dearly beloved…” Marge is…

It is full night in the glen behind Sprinkles Mystic Pub—and it is far out in the best possible way. The moon shines across every reflective surface, lighting up the grass, the insects, and even the animals tucked away in their hiding spots. One raccoon is bravely doing the Bump with a honey badger. The badger looks…not best pleased. The babbling brook glimmers like it invented disco and is…

Medusa’s calf-high boots shine beneath a corduroy miniskirt, topped with a smart button-down and overlaid with a riot of pastel colors on her sweater vest. Her snakes have coiled themselves into a striking afro, each one perfectly placed. Larry has gone “All American.” His jeans are so tight he might gain religion just wearing them. He stands at the rear window, shoveling paisley-shaped…

The glen behind the pub is now covered in white sugar-sand, soft and bright like the beaches of Pensacola. A cooler sits half-buried near a gingham beach blanket, an oversized bingo card spread across it as though someone had been in the middle of calling numbers and simply wandered off. A picnic basket nearby is veritably bursting with foodstuffs, its lid refusing to close under the weight of…

The 1930s rolled over Sprinkles Mystic Pub like a black-and-white fever dream. The quiet glen behind the pub virtually sings like something that came out of the Mouse house. Everything has gone monochrome. The trees bend just enough for sunbeams to become spotlights, highlighting a squirrel playfully chasing a butterfly. That is until another barrels into it from the side and knocks it off the…

The small glen around Sprinkles Mystic Pub has taken Theme Night to heart. The greens glow vividly in the bright silvery moonlight. The brook babbles like so much jazz through a grainy speaker. The wafting smell of Shalimar and sweet tobacco floats on the mild breeze. One smart-looking squirrel has taken to wearing a feathered headband around its midsection as it chases a playmate through the…