Willowland
an excerpt

I stood behind the bar on that Wednesday whipping the counter up. Some stupid ass kid had knocked over his beer. I’m not sure why I even sell imported beer, or why people drink it. I’m a whiskey man my self.
But back to what happened on Wednesday. It was about two. Javen was sitting in his normal booth with his boyfriend. Everybody likes Javen, and it’s hard not too. Not only is he the oldest one out of all of them (as I myself am the oldest resadent of Willowland), but he is intelligent, kind and totally terrifying if you piss him off. But he generally has a cool temper. Kevin was eating a basket of fries. He told me I needed to add more salt last time and this time he told me I’d added too much. I can’t stand Kevin but maybe he was right. He was one of the few people who would eat my food. And he was the only mortal I let stay in my bar. But that’s because he’s Javen’s…plaything.
Gertrude was sitting at the far end of the bar on her cell phone talking to her husband about a VCR or some other nonsense. I like Gertrude. She is the most human of all us. She still has problems after living for three hundred years. Most of us have your shit together after a century or so. But I guess that seeing your children and your grandchildren die and so on would kind of mess you up for the rest of your life. No matter how long it is.
The Book Club was sitting at table four. They’ve been there since yesterday reading Jane Austen and pointing out spelling errors or reading it back to each other. They’re an odd bunch. Among them they have two vampires, a wizard and Davy Jones. No one knows quite how Davy became immortal but he has told us that Pirates of the Caribbean is a load of crap and doesn’t do the story justice by a long shot.
So I was behind the bar whipping up and a woman came in. And let me tell you she was beautiful. And after living for as long as I have you think that less. Her hair looked like flames from far away and the closer she got I realized that is was. Thin strips of flame where curling down her back. Her eyes where black and fierce. She didn’t appear to be wearing much but was still covered. I fumbled for a moment. She was astounding. And the closer she came the more beautiful she was.