Dale smashed his beer bottle on the bar, fully intending to stab Stu. “I’m going to fucking stab you, Stu!” he shouted in a slurred voice stupidly revealing his master plan.
Stu, who was lying on the dirty bar floor, already had several considerable welts growing on his head from where Dale’s fists had offered good advice on rapid growth to Stu’s skull. Stu was punch-drunk and delirious, but he recognized what was happening and didn’t want to get stabbed. “I don’t want to get stabbed, Dale, I’m sorry!”
Dale’s sympathies were not so easily stirred. He was so angry, and drunk, and hell, he’d already broken the bottle and spilled beer all over the place, so there was that. If he didn’t follow through and finish what he’d started, what kind of man was he, really? “I’m sorry Stu, but daddy’s going to come down from heaven and whoop my ass if I don’t finish this. You know how it is.”
Stu did, as the ghost of his own father had come down and whooped his ass two years prior. His ability to sympathize, however, was irrelevant as this juncture; taking precedence was his desire to not have a jagged piece of brown glass pierce his skin, for Stu knew well you bled extra good when you’d been drinking, and he assumed that if you bled that good, Stu probably would too. That’s right, Stu was there when you tripped over the steps in that bar in college and cut open your hand when you fell on your appletini glass. Stu watched you fall. He was probably close enough to catch you, but he didn’t. That just wasn’t how Stu rolled, you know? The more Stu thought about this one chance he had to do something good, the more he came to realize that maybe Dale’s anger was justified.
“Make it quick, Dale.”
Dale was very drunk. It took him several tries.