“What’ll it be?” asks the bartender.
Guy looks over the bartender’s shoulder in the mirror and sees the clock behind him ticking backwards. He scans the bottles. “I’ll have the two broken marriages, three fucked-up kids, esophageal bleeding, bankruptcy, white railroad scar from knee to groin from the car crash, the disbarment, three long nights in jail and several hundred hangovers.”
“Right-o,” says the bartender.
Twenty years later, Guy stands up and stumbles out the door. “No joke,” he says when anyone asks him. “I feel like Rip Van Fucking Winkle.”