A SHOT GLASS

A Tale of the Hatchback Woman by Dan Jire

Regarding your future inquiry, Mr. Brenner:

I am willing to sell you a shot glass.

You will know that I am not offering you just any run-of-the-mill shot glass.

I’ve never used eBay before. The listing you will find is a favor from a contact who knew how to list such an item. I was told that the price would deter other bidders.

While I fear divulging too much about my experience, I was told you would understand. You see, like all the tales you’ve heard before, this one began with a chance encounter with the woman driving the red hatchback.

I cannot tell you the license plate number. I can tell you the rear right fender had rust damage. You already know the car looks entirely unspectacular.

I will save you any trouble finding me, as I have traveled outside my normal stomping grounds to send you this letter. The postmark required effort, and even I do not know where the final stamp came from, nor will you find my fingerprints.

I was warned about you, but also informed that you are the only person who might offer me a fair market price. But first, I know I must convince you of the shot glass’s unique ability.

The typical May weather rained on my plans, so I ended up in downtown Richmond at the bars with some old friends. This time of year, most of the VCU children have gone home to mommy and daddy; otherwise, I tend to drink elsewhere.

I’d managed to leave my wallet in my automobile (no hints, Mr. Brenner, although I’m sure you’ll search Memorial Day weekend security cameras if you have as much access to them as I am told you do). So, I stepped out of the bar, rather sober, as I could not start my tab without my card. It was still early evening, but traffic was heavy all the same. As I waited to cross the street between two parked cars, I saw her.

She was hunched over her steering wheel, looking right at me as if she were ready to pull out of her space, but the engine was off. I gave her a smile, polite, non-threatening, I hoped. But traffic wouldn’t let up, and I could feel her regarding me as I waited. As soon as I could, I darted over to my car and retrieved my wallet.

She watched me the whole time. She had the guilty look of a getaway driver, but her interest in me was a bit confusing. She is a rather attractive female. She was bushy-haired, blonde, thick, curly, and had an expression of concern behind the raindrops on her windshield, like that Peter Gabriel album cover.

When I reached the other sidewalk, she rolled down her passenger window and called me back.

I leaned down to meet her eyes. Perhaps more gray than blue, but sharp like solid ice. Her skin was tan in a splotchy way, perhaps from a life without sunblock. Little crow’s feet and smile lines. Her lips were not painted, and as far as I could tell, her beauty was natural. Even in the poor lighting conditions brought on by rain, passing headlights, and that awful chemical white glow of downtown’s street lamps.

I remember feeling lucky and nervous to be spoken to.

She said to me, “Are you going in for a drink?”

I blurted something about being with others.

“I don’t drink anymore,” she said to my surprise. I asked her to repeat it, and when she did, she reached across her passenger seat with a shot glass in her hand.

I don’t know why I took it.

Then, like something out of a movie, a loud truck galloped over the cobblestone. I looked up, and her window was closed. She waved nicely at me, and I thought she must’ve been an alcoholic, and this was her way of quitting.

I am told similar encounters have occurred all over the area. And perhaps this looks as if I have copied someone else’s story, but I have not. This is mine.

I shared the story with my friends and kept the shot glass as we drank and conversed, and if you can believe it, I almost left without it.

“Don’t forget your shot glass, (my name withheld for privacy),” said my dearest friend.

I went home and washed it. Then decided to take a shot of tequila to honor the strange encounter. That’s when its magic revealed itself to me.

I am well aware that every object the woman in the red hatchback gives a person does something spectacular and different. My friend said a guy he knew knew a guy who had a spoon that could bend objects caught in its reflection. But that sounds like something out of The Matrix. Perhaps there is no spoon?

You must know. I’m told you catalog all these things, and so my shot glass would make a fine addition to your collection.

I am willing to part with it for money that will change my life. I’ve always wanted the kind of bump one gets from winning a small part of the lottery. Just enough to pay off loans and get a nice treat. I’m not asking to be rich, but to be made comfortable.

So, what does it do?

I’m glad you asked.

It gives me the ability to see three steps ahead. Not like visions of the future, but calculated knowledge: that car is going to turn left at the four-way stop. Then it will find parking in an alley. The driver will step out into a puddle and curse.

That’s a bad example. It’s hard to explain something that makes you know things you didn’t know a moment before.

I looked at my door, and the shot glass made me realize the bell would ring in three days when I wasn’t there. It would be a person I did not know, and they would look in through my window, disappointed that the curtains were drawn, and then they would sit out in their car and wait for me to arrive.

I’d used the shot glass before, so I didn’t doubt it. Three days later, I’m waiting around the corner to see the events transpire. Then I took a shot and knew the person who stayed all night waiting for me to return would call a man named Alan Tuel. And that’s when I learned your name, Mr. Benner—they would mention your interest might exceed their own.

A day or two later, Alan Tuel found me as I had yet to take any precautions. He told me he wanted to help me. That he wanted me to destroy what the lady gave me. He even warned me about you. I played dumb until he left me alone. He hasn’t contacted me again and won’t unless I reach out to him.

Because here’s the thing: Once I know what will happen, I can alter it. Take a shot and see how I’ve adjusted the future . . . three new steps ahead.

If you do track me down, please do not ransack my abode. I keep the shot glass alone in the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet. But I hope you will honor what others have said and inquire via the eBay listing.

I apologize if washing the glass ruined its collectability, but I can assure you its ability is real.

After all, I know what happens after I send this letter.

All the Best,

An Admirer of the Lady

____________________________________________

Dear Alan Tuel,

I’ve enclosed a copy of a letter that I mailed, via much subterfuge, to a Mr. Howard Brenner, whom you are aware of as a resident with much aplomb in the town of Ashland. I hope you will read it before you continue this letter.

Yes, we have met, and yes, I lied about my encounter with the Lady. She did not give me a shot glass, though you will find it in the package I mailed you.

I am no longer at the address where you tracked me down months ago, and I am sending you this shot glass as a request for you not to come looking for me. The shot glass does what I said it can do. So, if used properly, you could track me down. I’m aware of that.

Go ahead, look back up a couple of paragraphs. I correctly typed: She DID NOT give me a shot glass.

No, rather, after our meeting and your concern that I would be pursued by such people, I took it upon myself to use the object that the Lady actually gave me. Then wrote Mr. Brenner that letter you’re supposed to read before this one. I waited eleven days. It took eleven days for a letter to travel from the City of Richmond to the Town of Ashland? More than likely, it took Mr. Brenner several days to read—or rather, believe my story.

He must have believed everything in my letter. He had to have. It’s the only way it would have worked.

For eleven days, I went to my medicine cabinet and opened it. Ten straight days of nothing. On the eleventh day, a shot glass as ordinary as Mr. Brenner believed it must have been had appeared. It had not been there before.

If my letter to Brenner worked, the shot glass would allow me to see three steps into the future. I shouldn’t have been shocked when it did. In that moment, I was elated. Except you have to take another shot and figure out the next three steps, and then the next. And then you are drunk. Water doesn’t work with it—I suppose that is also something Mr. Brenner believed. He believed only hard liquor would suffice.

I have moved and used the shot glass a few more times to properly conceal my identity and travels. I even managed to purchase a winning scratcher, much to the annoyance of the clerk, who I requested to give me the sixteenth ticket on the roll. It was only fifty bucks.

But I find the shot glass’s power to be limited. After all, it came from Mr. Brenner’s imagination and not the Lady’s.

No, the actual object she gave me has a far greater power, which you may have deduced by now.

I believe in your sincerity, Mr. Tuel, when you said you help people with objects and the dangers they can cause. I realize now that the object the Lady gave me is a dangerous rabbit hole. Believe me, I’ve abused the power of the object and learned a valuable lesson, and I will not do so again.

As long as a person believes what I tell them, that thing will come into existence. I know you understand why I must hide this object away and not even mention it by name. The power of belief is easily manipulated. If you can imagine I’m telling the truth, it becomes real.

I hope you will believe me to be a good person.

You may receive more letters from me. I believe I have the greatest object of them all, but there may be others yet that could surpass it. As with the included shot glass, I will send you any that may aid you. The Lady may or may not know herself the threat she presents. Do any of us?

All the Best,

The Former Kyle S.

THE END?