Originally published in 2012; reprinted due to popular demand, in honor of Valentine’s Day, and because I’m lazy.
“No! You never fucking get them!” the Pirate screamed, almost throwing the empty whiskey glass directly at the bartender. He held back, as if some unseen force softly touched his arm and coaxed him to lower it.
The force in question, he would later explain, was actually just a moment of clarity, having dealt with the frustration of reaching this point with the bartender no less than seven times in the last hour. At exactly 11:34 he would reach the point of the argument with the bartender, scream and hurl his glass at the bartender’s face, break the glass and two of the bartender’s teeth and immediately be kicked out of the bar, where he would then activate his personal chrono-manipulator and go back ten minutes to when he was in the bathroom, merge with the version of himself sitting on the toilet and try again.