Free Under the Cypress Moon by Jason Wallace

felt all that close to, definitely nowhere near as close as he felt to T.L. and had once felt to the entire King family.  Of course, Darius seldom came to the bar, and on this night, that was a good thing.  Mark knew that if he saw Mr. King, he might feel inclined to let him have a piece of his mind and then some.
    Just the drive to the Muddy Water seemed like an odd chore.  Mark felt so bewildered and bogged down by all of the recent stress that something so simple made him feel more than queasy.  His hands sweating, his stomach churning, Mark drove further and further, nearing the edge of town, dreading what he might find at the bar.  The town was small, and so was the Muddy Water.  Anyone not familiar with the place might miss it, a little mom and pop tavern near the south edge of town.  The signs weren't big, and neither were the spaces inside, but everyone who went there loved the place.  You had to be a regular to appreciate its quaint atmosphere and possibly, the people inside, some of whom were known to be of a bit rowdier sort and either not people that one would ever want to "mess with" or at least, not respectable company to keep.  The Muddy Water, however, was one of the few bars in town and was owned by a couple that were very close to the King family, thus the reason that Mark ever began to frequent the establishment in the first place.
    Mark pulled up to the bar and noticed that it already seemed a bit crowded for a usual Friday night.  The parking lot was full, and there was hardly a place anywhere on the street, on the east side or the west, for anyone to park.  Finally, Mark squeezed his truck into the one spot that he could find, a block away.  Something really was strange, Mark thought.  There had to be something unusual occurring.  There obviously were many irregular patrons, so that alone, Mark knew, would make for an interesting and possibly, troublesome night.
    As Mark entered, the sight of it all confirmed his suspicions.  The bar was so packed that there was no possibility of strolling through it like there was on other nights.  Elbow to elbow might seem like a good way of describing it, but that would have been an improvement.  There seemed no visible space at all, anywhere. 
    There were far too many unfamiliar faces for Mark's general comfort.  He tried to live by the standard that no one he ever met was a stranger, but this was not a night for such a standard, nor the place, Mark thought.  He didn't feel like getting to know each and every strange face.  Hardly a face anywhere in the bar seemed to belong to anyone over the age of twenty-one.  Quite a few seemed very preppy.  The Muddy Water was, so often, made up of a fairly even mix of white and black patrons, but on this night, the faces seemed predominantly white. 
    Mark could barely see through the heavy and enveloping cloud of smoke that permeated throughout the entirety of the place.  The town had passed a stricter public smoking restriction than had the state, requiring smoking in bars and restaurants to be kept to enclosed and designated rooms; however, no one ever enforced the rule in the Muddy Water.  More than one of the regular customers was either a local police officer or a Sheriff's deputy.
    Everywhere that Mark turned, there was a cigarette or even a cigar in his face.  Though Mark smoked, even this was far too much.  It choked him, strangled him with an infusing and effusively overwhelming stench.   The great cloud of it all forced Mark to squint and fight furiously for focus.  Through it all, he finally made out the distant and evasive shape of his best friend, on the other side of a throng of people so intense that there would surely be no way of making it across. 
    "T.L.," Mark shouted, jumping with his hand high in the air, hoping that his friend would see him and hear him.  "T.L.!"
    T.L. could not hear a thing, the music so loud and the great clamor of voices drowning out all else in