A series: (1) Kicked Out
Eyes flashing, her head spun around, as though some invisible force was pulling it, smacking it from zero to one-eighty degrees. Her dark, dyed hair was pulled back into a low bun, and her beak nose stretched away from her head, an inbuilt metal detector with a propensity for spotting trouble. With another slap, her head stopped; dark eyes narrowing, she lunged forward, her steps a metre in span and elongating as she moved, swiftly, closing in on her targets. She wasn’t intimidating frame-wise: she was the kind of stick-thin that would never be fashionable, but she walked with aggression, throwing her narrow shoulders into a doorman-esque bounce.
Some of the boys saw her coming and their eyes widened apprehensively as they took a step backwards, but the majority of the group remained jovially jostling, rubbing shoulders and smacking backs, their echoing voices bouncing off the walls opposite. One of them, immune to the impending tornado of a barmaid - which would still be too kind a description - cracked a joke, or something of the sort, causing his peers to burst into raucous laughter which decrescendo-ed into amicable grumblings. The same boy, tall for his age at around 6-foot-2, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, swiftly plucked a half filled pint glass from his friend’s hand and, with a daring gleam in his eye, winked before proceeding to gurgle the contents down his oesophagus. Standing in a circle, his friends roared again, heckling those of their group who remained with glass in hand to finish theirs in a similar manner, no doubt to speed up the process of ordering more.
As he lowered the embossed frosted glass from his mouth, a rush of icy air flushed past Sandy-hair and the remainder of his small victory was pulled by its bottom from his grip. His eyes instinctively widened but he barely had time to register the facts of the event before he felt a sharp pain in either armpit and his feet left the ground. Again, air rushed past his face, though his cheeks were red hot. A few drinks had caused a certain degree of dysfunction to his sense of balance and he grappled with his eyes to stop spinning and focus. Just as the chewing-gum strewn burgundy carpets and half-polished walnut walls began to form in his field of vision, his body spun quickly and his feet abruptly met a solid, grey ground.
With a vibration, the glass-panelled door was thrown shut behind him, just as Sandy-hair lost his balance at his unexpected journey and his weight pushed him forwards towards his toes. Snickers behind him pushed him to jump up, and he self-consciously brushed down his jeans as he flicked his hair and looked around. He was standing on the stone platform outside the double doors of the bar. The smoking area, also known as the rejectees’ corner, stretched around three-quarters of the length of the building. Two older men huddled next to the singular ashtray laid out on the plasticky black table on the far left. They were eyeing him up with amused expressions, refusing to drop their gaze when Sandy-hair made eye contact.
His prolonged confusion made the process of bearing-finding all the harder. The tall, metal-rimmed doors towered before him, and through the half-washed, half-smeared glass he saw a skeletal creature waving a bony finger at him, an expression of rage pulling together their eyebrows. He’d been barred; God knows what for.
