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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MikeJesus on 2024-07-02 19:06:54+00:00.
The first time our paths crossed, it was only for a moment. It was a drunken night of decadence and my mind was far more focused on the visiting Goddess from Sharm El-Sheikh whose sneezes made my heart flutter. I paid little attention to the old man smoking in the corner of the ice-bar.
In the fevered days to come, however, his infirm form wholly consumed me.
As I lay in my sickbed, terrified my life was to end at the ripe age of twenty — I could see him. Whether I was dreaming or residing in my aching, shivering body — I could see him. The torn lab coat, the cracked yellow skin, those piercing blue eyes — they stood vigil by my bed and haunted my dreams.
Mayhaps, those two weeks of sickness were a warning — a pistol shot from the universe urging me to keep my distance. Mayhaps. had I listened to my body, or even quit my job after my injury, I would be a far saner individual today.
But I did no such thing.
Once my sickness calmed, I retained my employment as a drunk and indulged the mystery of the old scientist. With blind fascination, I spit into the faces of the fates and pursued my interest in the mysterious patron. It is through my own folly that I became privy to the terrible tenor of dark science in which Dr. Zima forged his name.
It was back in the innocent year of 2012 that I met the man. After retreating from my studies of life sciences at the Charles’s University I further fled from responsibility and secured employ as a pub crawl guide.
My job, if one could call it that, revolved around the scores of intoxicated youths that would visit Prague through the summers. Each day, six days a week, I would provide the tourists with two hours of free liquor and then take them on an excursion of two overpriced bars and a club.
The bands I ran through the city would usually comprise of men, mainly young British boys to be exact — but every couple of nights an opportunity for romance would present itself. As it would happen, on that faithful eve, I was struck by Cupid’s drunken arrow.
She hailed from Sharm El-Sheikh and had a body which intoxicated on sight. Originally, she had been traveling Europe with her family but had heard many whispers that Prague is a city visited best alone. She had no interest in spending time in the decadent gothic capital in the company of her dotting mother and impatient father, but for my company she had quite the appetite.
It is not easy, however, to hold a conversation with a beautiful woman when a hundred strong horde stands at one’s back. Much of the pleasantries we shared were interrupted by dry heaves from the dark alleys and the screeches of concerned neighbors from high above. The Egyptian often disappeared back into the mass of drunken flesh for which I was responsible for, yet her melodic voice cut through all chants and jeers like a harp through television static.
It was also through her sneezes that I could locate the Goddess. With a soul worthy of marble, the high-pitched expulsions provided the gentlest suggestion of flaw in her perfection. The sneezes made her human. The sneezes only made me oh so more enthralled by her.
The pub crawl would always finish at a multi-story club which was the Meccah of Prague’s tourist traps. On the nights I found myself too exhausted, I would retreat back home through the night buses to sleep. On most nights, I would find my favorite group of drunks and take them somewhere more amicable. On that night, however, I descended to the frigid ice-pub in the basement of the club.
I did whatever I could to transpose my love to another establishment, but she was far too taken by the concept of a bar made of ice. My Goddess relented the change to a quieter locale, yet she would only do so after cooling off in the tourist trap. Having never been to the ice-bar myself, I accepted her terms.
Even though I had shed my name-badge and simmered down my shepherd’s voice to a conversational volume, the drunken horde still recognized me as their leader. As I tried to talk to the Goddess in line for the ice-bar I was constantly interrupted by shoulder grabs and shouts and cheap shots I had no intention of sullying my throat with.
That night, much like many nights prior, the drunken horde disrupted my search for love. Yet it was not the drunken British children that were my undoing on that gelid eve. It is not they who sent me careening down the frozen hallways towards the edge of sanity.
It was the staff of that drunken tower of Babel that sealed my fate.
The ice-pub was popular, but small. The purveyors of the multi-story club were fully aware of the novelty a bar made of ice would provide in the blistering summer heat. They were also well versed in the foley of drunken crowds in a confined space. For this reason, the attendance of the ice-pub was limited to twenty drunks in ten-minute intervals.
Though the line, much like all lines comprised of the intoxicated, had little order — I could see at least forty persons stood before us. There was no rush. I considered myself safe in the presumption that me and my Goddess would spend twenty minutes waiting, then ten minutes shivering and then we would be on our merry way to warmer pastures.
Just as the door closed on the first batch of drunken adventurers, however, I was swept up in a change of plans. At the back of the first artic expedition stood two women from the isles of Britain. Though both were drunk, one was deemed to be too much of a vomit risk to grace the frozen floors. In one swift motion the bouncer liberated the woman of her ice-pub jacket and, when searching for a replacement, he picked me out of the crowd.
The bouncer and I had never spoken. He knew not a word of English or the local tongue. Though the towering man was not metropolitan in his tongue, he spoke fluently the only languages which his trade requires. With his mountainous stature and scarred face and poorly healed prison tattoos the man spoke the twin-tongues of violence and intimidation.
I put up the faintest bit of protest when he shoved my arms into the arctic coat, yet I did not allow my body to resist. The shores of the Vltava are filled with bloody faces that have made that mistake.
Just before the door behind me shut, I could hear the Goddess behind me sneeze. I did not take her sternutation as a sign from the universe that I should change my course. I took it as a sign that she would still be waiting for me when I left my frozen prison.
Even with twenty drunks, the ice-pub was far too crowded. The few ice-chairs available had melted past the point of furniture and served only as vague shapes to lean on. The frozen bar was staffed by two figures dressed in hazmat suits who lacked any capacity for quick motion. The drunks busied themselves touching the walls and suckling at the beer bong made of ice but I did my best to just focus on the large digital clock at the center of the pub.
Ten minutes and counting. I thought I could bare the time apart from my Goddess in relative peace but within the first two minutes of my frigid adventure a terrible noise bounced across the icy halls.
The second British woman, the one that didn’t seem like a vomit risk — she was screaming. She wanted to know where her friend was and, more importantly, she wanted out of the pub. I expected the staff to let her out, but instead they simply turned up the music to keep up a good mood.
She calmed down, for a couple minutes at least. Occasionally she would bang on the door and demand to be let out, yet for most of her stay at the ice-pub she sulked. When there were but two minutes left on the clock, however, her hectic energy returned.
In tones that couldn’t even be drowned out by early 2000s hits the woman started to scream again. When her calls for freedom yielded no results, she started to tear at the jacket she was given.
The clothing was tough, and clearly designed for more inhospitable corners of our globe — yet she was tougher. Just before the doors of the ice-pub opened, she ripped through the jacket. After she forced her way through the door all she left behind was a pile of thermal stuffing and fake broken nails.
My Goddess was in the next batch of people destined to enter the ice-pub so I did not bother exiting the frigid hall. Just before she entered, however, her phone rang and she ducked out. With a knowing glance, the towering bouncer shut the doors to the ice-pub once more.
Above me, the digital clock once again started to count down ten minutes. I tried, once more, to bear my cold and uncomfortable environs by keeping track of time. This time, however, there was something much more distracting in the pub than a screaming tourist.
Not far from the ice-bar there sat a small set of steps leading down to what I presumed to be some sort of a maintenance room. From that door, wearing a lab coat that would soon become very familiar to me, emerged an old, feeble man.
He seemed to have been summoned by the British woman’s outburst, for he seemed quite interested in the pile of stuffing she had left behind. Quickly, however, his attention changed. As the strange old scientist puffed away at his hand rolled cigarette, he kept his piercing blue eyes trained purely on me.
I am no stranger to offbeat old men hanging out in the back of pubs, I do work in Prague after all — yet there was something different about the man in the lab coat. With his sickly yellow skin and matted hair, the man looked horribly unwell — yet it w…
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