The bitterness of loss reached its peak. He felt every drop of rain running down his skin as his hands reluctantly leveled the soaked soil over the grave of his very young wife and two children, buried under the crown of an old oak tree. The plague irrevocably claimed their lives, as well as the lives of thousands of other residents of nearby settlements in eastern France.

Thirty-three-year-old Louis Morel was left alone. Everything, he once had, now lies in the ground before his bowed knees. Continuous tears fell to the ground and were lost in rain puddles. His artisan hands, covered with calluses, were hidden under a layer of black soil that had penetrated under his nails and covered his fingers and palms.

Heartbroken, Louis ignored the heavy rain and continued to kneel in front of the graves of Mona, Antoine and Mathilde. His soiled shirt and pants were wet to the skin and the drops hitting his body flew off with splashes.

It seemed like just recently he was rocking his beloved son and daughter to sleep, telling them stories before bed. There were still memories of how Antoine and Mathilde tried to help their mother make pies, getting dirty in flour so much that their faces were completely covered with it. He returned after work and was greeted warmly by Mona. Every morning he woke up and the first thing he saw in front of him was Mona. He fell asleep late at night and the last thing he saw before closing his eyes was Mona. She always remained an exemplary housewife and caring mother. But the main thing is that he saw in her something that he did not find in any other woman – a mutual attraction that was so strong that two hearts and two souls always seemed like something indivisible. He and his wife were like two magnets that were constantly attracted, regardless of distance and time. But now the attraction has broken. All that remains of it is the second magnet, which will no longer be able to attract anything as strongly as those three lost magnets.

Louis spent almost two hours at the grave before his tears stopped flowing. The rain had already stopped by that time. The sky still retained its gloomy appearance, which was given to it by thick gray clouds.

He rose from his knees, turned around and, barely moving his feet, began to move away from the grave, leaving the shovel lying nearby, with which he forced himself to dig a hole. He will never forget these terrible moments. He will remember every handful of that earth that had to be thrown aside forever.

Not noticing the deep puddles on the path, Louis walked straight through them. In the same way, he did not notice the carriages passing by. All the skin on his face was pretty red from prolonged crying. He walked along the edge of the road like a zombie. Zombified by thoughts of grief. And so he moved for more than an hour. He reached the junction at the edge of the forest. His village was located behind the forest, which was surrounded by a right path that led to the village, and a left path that led to a town. The route did not occupy his mind. Louis didn’t ask questions about which way was more convenient, faster or safer. Behind the forest there was his village. He did not turn away, but continued to move straight through the forest. The last time he walked this route was when he was twelve and he and his friends were playing hide and seek after a trip to either pick berries or mushrooms. Since then, he returned to these places only for firewood, without crossing the forest lengthwise and crosswise, but reaching only its central part, where the most mature and even tree trunks were located.

He passed by an old elm tree and, gradually crossing the edge of the forest, plunged into its very thickets, where the sunlight was little noticeable even on the clearest days. The soil in the forest was strewn with fallen leaves, which would soon disappear completely, after which the trees would reveal their cold autumn trunks and branches.

Louis walked forward without moving his eyes. Soon his attention was attracted by a strange light. The glow became brighter as Louis moved deeper into the forest. After a while several more lights appeared.

What could shine so brightly in the deep forest? This question, albeit not immediately, nevertheless reached the surface of Louis’s half-dead consciousness. His legs remained just as sluggish, but they moved a little faster, and his arms hung motionless.

Soon an open and quite spacious place appeared in front of Louis. It was as if someone had deliberately cut down the trees to clear the area.

Just last week it was full of giant pine trees – Louis thought. For the first time in a whole week, he thought about something else other than his seriously ill wife and children.

There was a building in the middle. It was built of wood and had two floors. The walls were hidden under a dull wood shade. The open shutters were red. The first floor was surrounded by a spacious terrace along its entire perimeter, which was filled with chairs and tables. Empty glass bottles lay on some tables, and nearby were the reclined faces of snoring visitors.

Curiosity arose so suddenly and became stronger every second. Louis wondered how the building could appear here that he didn’t even know existed.

He walked to the front. Above the entrance was a sign that said “WELCOME” at the top, and just below in large letters the name of the establishment was visible: “FREE DRINKS FOR YOUR SOULS”. Louis walked up the wooden steps in his heavily mud-covered boots. With an uncertain movement, Louis slowly pushed the right half of the swing doors away from him and took several hesitant, timid steps.

It was quiet and deserted inside. Besides Louis there was another person in the room. He was busy mopping the floor, turning chairs upside down onto tables. Noticing how another visitor was inside, the stranger looked up from the mop and addressed the guest:

– Good evening.

Louis looked around for a while. The stranger stood without moving or making a voice. His eyes looked patiently at Louis, who was silent for a long time, but soon said:

– Good… evening.

The stranger looked about forty years old. He was of average height, with broad shoulders, bright light blue eyes and very short hair. Every last hair on his head was gray, which was very rare for a forty-year-old man. But this did not at all give him an old look.

He turned to Louis:

– Please – the stranger pointed with his hand to the far end of the room, where the bar counter was located.

Without understanding anything and without going into details, Louis blindly followed the guy in an apron. He was wearing a black vest under his apron and a white shirt underneath. The stranger took off his apron and only then walked behind the bar counter.

– What do you want?

Louis remained silent. His eyes looked somewhere ahead, as if made of glass.

– You can sit down – the guy said, pointing to one of the chairs in front of the counter.

Louis landed slowly and then noticed how much he had stained the floor, which had been washed to a shine.

Having read this in the client’s eyes, the stranger hastened to reassure him:

– Don’t worry about it. Nowadays you shouldn’t worry much about cleanliness. Moreover, you are not the only one who leaves stains on my floor. So…

Louis blinked and interrupted the bartender in a slightly animated tone:

– What do you mean?

– Excuse me?

Louis looked at the bartender suspiciously.

– You said that I shouldn’t be worried about cleanliness. What do you mean?

– Well-uh-uh… – the bartender looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. – It’s just… – he searched for words for a while, after which he abruptly continued, looking away somewhere to the side – it’s dirty outside, so there’s no point in paying attention to the dirt when you can’t do without it.

Then the bartender perked up and repeated the question:

– So what would you like to drink?

– I… I don’t have any money with me.

– Is this your first time with us?

– Yes – Louis answered in a timid voice.

– Then for the first time at the expense of the establishment.

Thoughts of losing his family rushed into his head again. He answered in a depressed tone:

– Let’s have something stronger.

– One minute – the bartender said cheerfully and with a satisfied smile, raising his index finger.

The bartender began moving bottles from the shelves behind him to his work area. He placed a small glass in front of him, into which he began to pour a bunch of different drinks in different proportions.

While the bartender worked his magic on the drink, Louis looked around. Suspicion was not erased from his face and at the same time his intrigued mind was in no way freed from surprise at the picture that appeared in the seemingly deep forest. He didn’t understand anything. More recently this place was completely covered with trees.

– How long has your establishment been open? – Louis asked.

The bartender looked at him with a grin and replied:

– You are asking the wrong question.

– Which one should I ask?

– You should not be interested in “WHEN?” we opened, but for “WHO?”

At the end he gently swirled the liquid around the transparent walls of the glass, stirring the ingredients a little and placed the transparent vessel in front of Louis, saying in a cheerful voice:

– Here you go.

Louis still looked at everything that was happening with suspicion. And the most suspicious thing was the liquid that rested at the bottom of the glass in front of him and was a mixture of who knows what. He examined the contents of the glass. It contained a cocktail of a light golden hue. With some hesitation, he took a small sip, which was very difficult. Louis coughed and asked:

– What is the name of this drink?

Actively wiping the glasses with a towel until they shine, the bartender replied:

– “Hell of a ride”.

Louis confirmed the bartender’s words:

– The taste is truly hellish.

The bartender laughed.

– This is the strongest thing I can do. As you asked.

Still coughing, Louis suddenly remembered:

– Oh, sorry. How should I contact you?

– Call me Albert, Louis.

Louis looked at the bartender in surprise.

– How do you know my name?

– It just suits you very well.

Ignoring this, Louis continued asking:

– Tell me, Albert, is it always so empty here?

– I wouldn’t say it’s empty here. After all, there are at least two people here. Whether a room is empty or full does not depend on the number of its inhabitants, but rather on how alive they look. Sometimes there is much more life in one person than in a whole crowd.

Louis looked into the glass with a blank look and, having prepared himself, took another sip, after which he once again felt this incredibly daring, burning taste.

– What’s on the second floor? – Louis asked with a grimaced face from the bitterness in his mouth.

– There are rooms there. Our establishment is both a bar and a hotel.

– So that means… all the visitors are probably in their rooms now.

Albert smiled and shrugged. He continued to wipe the glasses endlessly.

Louis continued to take sips until he had drained his glass.

– Excuse me, Albert?

– Yes?

– Can I drink anything else like that? And I would bring the money later. My house is not far from here.

– Well, – the bartender drawled, – I never refuse a client such a request. In the end, we cannot foresee everything, especially when we will need money. Sometimes completely unexpected things happen in life.

– Exactly – Louis answered quite affirmatively. But he said this in some kind of healthy voice. At these moments, a kind of serenity and malicious resentment towards the whole world simultaneously settled in his soul. Moreover, the second feeling gradually faded away. He suddenly almost forgot about his dead children and wife. But then he remembered them again. He remembered, but for some reason he did not feel bitter grief, as if everything had happened too long ago to grieve about it. And it didn’t look like intoxication. He had never experienced such a feeling that all the bad things suddenly stopped tormenting his soul. And this is strange, because Louis has never been known for his callousness in his life.

Even if you drink a barrel of wine, the effect will be much weaker than one glass of this… “Hell ride” – Louis thought.

He drank three more glasses of the alcoholic potion. The first was called “Flight to the Stars”, the second was “On the Path to Ecstasy” and the third was “Living Blood”.

– Apparently, you’ve come a long way – Albert said politely after the fourth glass had lost the last drop of its contents.

Louis nodded jerkily several times, as if something was preventing him from uttering at least one w… wo… sound.

– Let’s pass. You need rest. I’ll show you a room.

The bartender politely led Louis to the stairs and took him to a free room on the second floor.

2. WELCOME

Louis was awakened by some noise coming from below. He woke up and his first thoughts were related to his family. The day began with soul-crushing sorrow. He wanted to shed tears again, but something prevented him.

He left his room and went down the stairs to the first floor.

The bar was full of customers. There were no free tables. Louis looked around and wondered how such a crowd could fit into the establishment. There was nowhere for the apple to fall. From their appearance, he understood that the visitors were not from these places. It was hard to believe that they were from neighboring villages or nearby cities. Most of them were dressed somehow atypically for the current times, and many spoke in unfamiliar languages and strange dialects, and often used long-outdated words. Then it turned out that most of them were not French at all and their native language was different, hence the strong accent. It also looked interesting that among the visitors there were both representatives of the working classes – blacksmiths, grocers, fishermen, carpenters, butchers and other commoners, and people from the upper classes – nobles, merchants, close aristocratic families and even those who looked like patricians of the distant past.

Now it was the completely different establishment. It didn’t seem to Louis to be as nice and calm a place as it had looked yesterday. There was an atmosphere in the bar that he did not like at all. He wanted to get out of this place as quickly as possible, and if he returned, it would be solely to repay the debt to the bartender. This place made him feel intense discomfort, so much so that he even forgot about the loss. How could such different people gather in one place, and even sit with each other at the same table and have a heart-to-heart conversation over a glass? Rich with rich, poor with poor. It has always been this way, and what Louis’s eyes saw, any normal person would consider unnatural and wrong. This is against the established norms of society. But in some incomprehensible way, these people still coexist quite harmoniously within the same room and, it seems, neither one nor the other is in any hurry to leave the building or at least somehow protect themselves from representatives of another class.

In the village where Louis lives, there are no rich people and they are not treated with respect. Every village resident imagined a wealthy person as the result of doing business in which there is no place for decency and justice, but only selfishness and greed.

Be that as it may, he decided that he should return home as soon as possible.

– Um… – Louis drawled, walking up to the counter, squeezing between two customers – Albert?

– Yes?

– Thank you for yesterday. If you don’t mind, I’ll go home and drop off the money this evening.

– Oh, sure.

It was noisy around. Everyone was talking about something. At a table in a corner four people took turns playing elimination backgammon. A couple of tables gathered those who were puzzled by the search for answers to the questions of the universe, the existence of a certain balance regarding karma for misdeeds, how human freedom is expressed, where the line between the forbidden and the permitted lies, and other philosophical topics. Among the rest were those who washed down their grief with the cheapest alcohol; someone was reading something diligently; at the foot of the stairs a couple of moderately sober and very brave clients suddenly had the epiphany that it was time to sort things out, but not with idle chatter, but exclusively in a fist fight with an admixture of squint under the influence of a liter of bourbon. There were also those who threw dice, after which the loser drank one hundred grams from a personal bottle that stood near the glass and the winner was the one who had more contents left in the bottle.

Throughout the bar there was a real aroma of cognac, wine, vodka, whiskey, beer, absinthe, rum and much more that the visitors were rapidly pouring into themselves. This place looked like a bottomless kingdom of alcohol.

On the approaches to the exit, a mustachioed German with a heavy belly appeared in front of Louis. He smelled strongly of beer, especially when he let out a powerful burp as soon as he opened the door.

No matter how different all the visitors were, they were all united by one thing in common – they drank constantly, and most of them did this until sober reason left their minds for a while, and the next day they were again put to execution.

Louis got out, went down the stairs and walked through the forest in the opposite direction from the front, where the village was located.

He walked a hundred meters when a silhouette began to appear before his eyes. As he approached, he could see the outline of the “FREE DRINKS FOR YOUR SOULS” establishment.

“I didn’t turn anywhere,” Louis thought.

He walked around the building and headed in the same direction again.

Five minutes passed and the same bar appeared in front of him. So he continued to wander through the forest for about half an hour, each time bumping into the bar.

For a moment Louis thought that maybe he was doing something wrong and decided to approach two visitors sitting on the steps of the entrance staircase – bearded and odorous owners of beer bellies. They were still quite sober, or at least they seemed so.

Louis leaned over to two gentlemen dressed in stained shirts that were either dirt or soot and asked:

– Gentlemen, could you help? I left the bar and went straight west twice already, but for some reason I still came back here. Can you tell me which direction I need to go to get to the trail?

The two pot-bellied and clumsy strangers only laughed loudly in response. They almost burst their plump bellies, as if someone had told them a joke.

Louis considered this reaction to his question an insult, but he did not speak about it to their faces. He was from a different culture with them.

He approached a lady of about thirty-five standing at the railing, dressed in a strict crimson dress, as if she was preparing for some kind of masquerade ball.

– Excuse me, madam. Can you help?

– Of course.

– You don’t know how to get to the road, otherwise I…

Louis didn’t have time to finish speaking when the cultured-looking lady answered in a rather harsh manner:

– If you want to make fun of someone, then have a conscience, don’t do it to a woman.

Are you all crazy here, or what? What kind of madhouse!?

Louis hurriedly went inside. Albert will definitely answer his question. He might be the only one here who still has a brain.

He walked up to the bar and called out:

– Albert?

The bartender turned his polite gaze towards him.

– Ah, Louis. Already?

– Albert, tell me why…

Before he could finish speaking, the bartender handed him a piece of paper with some notes. The names of the drinks that Louis drank the day before were indicated there, and opposite each name was the number of days. A line was drawn at the bottom, and under it the final figure was 3 days.

– What is this? – Louis asked in bewilderment.

– This is your credit, Louis – the bartender calmly answered. – You will leave here only when you pay off your loan to the establishment.

– But I said that I’ll just go home and bring everything in by the evening.

– No – Albert said, leaning towards Louis. – I think you didn’t understand quite correctly. Our visitors do not leave the establishment until their debt to the establishment is repaid. The cost of each drink is determined by days. The price of what you drank yesterday is one day per glass. Therefore, after 3 days you will no longer owe the establishment anything and will be able to leave these walls only if you do not want to buy another drink.

– What kind of nonsense is this? – Louis expressed dissatisfaction.

– It would look like nonsense if I told you from the very beginning that you will not be able to leave here and no matter where you go, all roads will still lead back. And so, you have convinced yourself of everything.

After some thought and silence, Louis said in a restrained tone, keeping a stony expression on his face:

– What did you give me yesterday?

– Louis, – Albert, leaning his elbows on the bar counter, began to explain, while the clients sitting on opposite sides of Louis looked at him deadly, – no one is mixing anything with anyone here. There is no place for deception and fraud here. You are sane and you are not sleeping. What happened is an absolute reality and in the next three days you will have to believe in it, whether you want it or not. So welcome to our establishment.

With these words Albert continued to wipe the glasses.

From the feeling that everyone was mocking him here, Louis got angry and ran out of the bar. He ran away as fast as he could, passing fallen leaves and tall tree trunks. And again. Barely noticing how the silhouette of the bar began to emerge before his eyes, he immediately changed direction, but each time his destination remained the same. For the thirteenth time already.

He ran inside, grabbed a glass half filled with beer from a nearby table and threw it straight at the bartender. The glass flew through Albert’s carefree face and crashed into the back shelves, breaking a couple of glass bottles.

Now Louis felt like he was in hell.

Welcome to “FREE DRINKS FOR YOUR SOULS” bar. Who knows, maybe people in this place really sold their souls for a glass of excellent alcohol?

Louis felt enormous powerlessness inside and, in despair, sank to his knees like a stone, covering his face with his palms.