The Solé was a sleek, modern bar with dim lighting and plush velvet booths, the walls lined with shelves of expensive liquor and booze. Behind the bar, a skilled barkeep was creating tantalizing concoctions, not known in any place across the country.

"Good evening, Madame. May I offer you a drink?"

A man in a finely tailored suit politely sat beside her. She shifted on her tall bar stool.

"Would you still do if I said no?" She replied, half-turning to his lithe silhouette.

"Only one way to know," he smoothly countered.

The woman turned her attention to him wholly.

"Well, then. I say no. What will you do?" She asked him, her sapphire eyes sparkling.

"I'd say," he leaned in until their noses were almost touching, "that the beautiful Madame would be glad to know more about her charming counterpart."

The music changed to a slow-paced waltz, with the dim lighting changing to a more bluish hue.

"Dance with me?"

And so it began, another chance for the man to seduce his dame, which always got taken. They never failed. The men always took the women, and for him, there was nothing to do about it. He always saw the lights, heard the cheerful music intertwined with those sad melodious tones which made you drown in melancholy, but he was never a part of it. Well he was, technically, but never an active part of the Solé. The dancing couples always seemed like a painful reminder of the life he could never achieve; the artificial lighting never quite shone on him the way it shone on those lucky folk; the air they breathed wasn't made of the same matter as for him - nothing ever was the same, and he only got to watch everything from the sidelines...

But then something happened.

Everyone looked at the large up-to-the-ceiling windows.

Blood shone through them.

And in an instant, as if nothing had ever happened, all of the dancing couples vanished from the dance floor, as if removed in a game.

Leaving behind only him.

The mixologist.

The barkeep.