Welcome Back, Mr. Ellis
A super short story
He went into CVS for aspirin and a bottle of water.
That was all.
It was hot out. Traffic belched its horn at the light. A bus wheezed at the curb. His headache was building behind his left eye. Throbbing like bolts of lightning.
The door open.
He took two steps in and stopped.
No fluorescent lights. No music from the ceiling. No candy racks. The air had gone soft and smoky. A trumpet worked in the corner somewhere. Men in dark suits leaned under low lamps. Women in beads and short hair circled little tables. Glass clinked. Somebody laughed.
A bar ran along the pharmacy counter.
The shelves behind it held bottles with neat old labels. Tonics. Bitters. Laudanum. A chalkboard drink list.
A man at the far end wore a fedora with the brim turned down. He looked up for a beat then back down at his glass.
“You’re late,” he said.
Evan looked back at the door. The red EXIT sign was gone. So was the sidewalk. There was only a velvet curtain where the entrance should’ve been.
“What? Nah,” Evan said. “Wrong place that’s all.”
The man in the fedora took a glass from the bartender and slid it down the bar. It stopped in front of an empty stool.
“Lemon gin fizz,” he said. “Sit down, have a drink.”
Evan didn’t move.
The bartender had sleeves rolled to the elbow and a face that seemed tired. He said, “Doing this the hard way again?”
“Again?”
The man in the fedora smiled a little. “That’s right.”
Evan backed up, found the curtain, shoved through it hard, and fell out into heat and car noise and the hiss of bus pulling away.
He was back on the sidewalk.
Same horn at the light. Same kid on a skateboard clipping the curb. Same headache, a little tighter now.
He turned and looked at the store window.
CVS.
Red letters. Posters for allergy meds. A cardboard display of discount shampoo just inside.
Evan stood there a second. Then he laughed once, sharp and dry, because that was weird and probably just all in head, he thought.
He went in again.
Smoke. Trumpet. Bar.
The man in the fedora didn’t bother looking surprised.
“You always think to run. Why?” he said.
Evan stared at him now.
The same glass waited on the same stool. Tiny bubbles racing up through pale liquid. A curl of lemon peel hooked over the rim.
“What is this?” Evan asked.
“A loop,” the bartender said.
The fedora man lifted one shoulder. “A very small one. Embarrassing, really.”
Evan looked at the room. Nobody seemed interested in him. They drank. Talked low. Laughed into their hands. At the piano, a woman in silver swung her heel with the beat and watched the room in the mirror behind the bar.
“This is a joke,” Evan said.
“Wouldn’t kill you to have a better by now,” the fedora man said.
Evan walked to the bar this time, but he stayed standing.
“Who are you? Where is this?”
The man touched the brim of his hat. “Oh, Even.”
“I’m leaving.”
“You tried that.”
Evan turned and shoved through the curtain again.
Bus hiss. Horn. Heat.
Back outside.
“For fuck sakes,” he said to no one. Evan put his hands on his knees and breathed. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
11:14.
The voicemail notification sat there like it had before. Same missed call from Nora. Same battery at nineteen percent.
He went back in angry now.
Speakeasy.
This time he crossed straight to the bar and slapped both hands on it.
“Enough.”
The bartender looked at his hands then up at Evan.
The fedora man pushed the drink closer. “This stops when you finish the moment.”
“What moment? You’re crazy. This is crazy”
“C’mon Evan.”
“I came in for aspirin.”
“No,” the man said. “You came in because your life is a dead end. A cul du sac of what ifs.”
Evan waited.
The man nodded at the glass. “Drink it.”
“That’s your answer?”
“The first part.”
Evan looked at the drink. Looked at the room. The singer in silver had started on something slow. He could feel the loop in his bones now, the way a song gets under your skin from hearing it 500 trillion times.
He picked up the glass.
It was cold. Real cold.
He drank.
Lemon first. Then sugar. Then the gin, clean and mean. He set the glass down.
Nothing happened.
He laughed again. “This has gotta be a dream or something. The headache,” he said to his reflection in the mirror.
The man in the fedora reached into his coat and took out an envelope. Cream paper, no writing on it. He set it on the bar between them.
“There,” he said.
Evan didn’t touch it. “What’s this?”
“What you came for.”
“I came for?”
Evan looked at the envelope. “If I take it?”
“You go back.”
“And if I open it?”
“Not here.”
“Why?”
The man studied him a moment.
“Because,” he said, “you won’t like how little it surprises you.”
Evan took the envelope.
The room seemed to shift, just a fraction. The trumpet hit a note and it held. The bartender took the empty glass away.
The man in the fedora removed his hat and set it on the bar.
“Take that too,” he said.
“I’m not wearing that.”
“You did.”
Evan stared at him. “What?”
The man smiled, relieved his role was over. “That’s as much help as you get.”
Evan grabbed the fedora by the brim, tucked the envelope into his back pocket, and headed out.
Fluorescent lights.
Cold air.
A woman in scrubs choosing cough drops. A teen restocking gum. The shampoo display. CVS, bright and dumb and open late.
Evan stood there with the fedora in one hand, breathing hard.
He was back.
The headache was gone.
At the register, the cashier looked up from her scanner. She was maybe twenty, bored, chewing mint gum.
“Sir?”
Evan walked over because that was the normal thing to do and normal felt good right now.
The cashier held up a laminated card from a little display by the counter. “This fell down when you came in.”
He glanced at it.
Black-and-white photo. Same corner. Same storefront before the chain signs and sale posters. Men in shirtsleeves out front. A hand-painted sign in the window: PHARMACY.
And behind the counter, one hand on a cash register, hat tipped back on his head, was Evan.
Or a man with Evan’s face, a little older around the mouth, wearing the fedora.
At the bottom of the card was a caption:
Grand reopening, 1933. New owner Charles V. Ellis.
The cashier looked from the card to Evan, then to the hat in his hand.
“Huh,” she said under breath, “That’s weird.”
Evan slid a thumb under the flap of the envelope.
Inside was a receipt.
Today’s date.
And at the top, above the red CVS logo, one line in black print:
Welcome back, Mr. Ellis.
This has been another Super Short Story where Substackers give me three random words and I write their story.
Thanks to Jason Odell for providing the words: CVS, Lemon gin fizz, Fedora. Be sure to give him a follow.