1 Minute to Midnight
Part 2: Sofi Ward
Written by Juliet Clare Kelway
The ceiling dazzled with paper cutouts of every color. String lights ran round the bar, creating shadows on curtains that covered street-facing windows. Stickers were stuck to every surface like a veteran guitar player’s case.
A wave of euphoria flowed through Sofi, similar to the sensation that comes with discovering some innate, unspoken part of yourself; one so truly tied to your being that it had been physically painful not to acknowledge. It had been there the whole time crying out, but for fear of unleashing a desire she would not — could not — be able to satiate, she opted to muffle its pleas.
Here, however, she knew she could be free.
The bar attracted people at various stages of self-acceptance, desperate to find a place where that was irrelevant. They could easily relay their stories to one another and let commonalities in experiences play out in predictable ways.
Each had a story of hurt and rejection. Each could tell you of a time the world made it clear to them that they were different. Each knew the painful sting of a cruel comment, aggressions that transcended the micro. But those admissions were never heard in this bar. That’s not why they went.
They went to drink. They went to dance.
Music coming from a retro jukebox pounded in Sofi’s ears as she politely pushed through smiling faces standing close; a mass of bodies whose warmth radiated around them. Tipsy, happy, and safe.
Sofi slipped between two people and secured a spot at the bar. While she waited for the bartender, she looked around at the familiar, mismatched eyes of blues, greens, hazels, and browns. Sofi thought of how this place might scare others; confuse them. How stories were created around Gen-Ms existence; a mixture of lies, fears, and above all, misunderstanding.
“What can I get you?” the bartender said, as she waited patiently with two hands placed on the bar, bent arms propping herself up.
If the bartender was one of the earlier iterations — which began in the ’20s —she couldn’t have been much older than 32. A thought pressed against Sofi’s mind, “when did this woman know?” and “how did she find out?”
It’s such a personal realization. A culmination of interactions and conversations dripping with subtle hints. Or if perhaps, much like Sofi, the bartender realized one afternoon while running away from the other children in her neighborhood, leaving them all in her wake — dust from the excessively dry land, which left grass curled and burnt tan, flowers bent over no longer flaunting their bright colors, billowing up like some impermeable fog.
“Corona, please.”
Sofi watched as the bartender pulled out a Corona from an icebox beneath the bar. With the expert precision that only a seasoned bartender possesses, she held the bottle in between two fingers of one hand and seamlessly popped the cap off in one fluid motion.
“How long have you been open?” Sofi asked, receiving her beer.
The bartender paused with a smile. “About five years. It was this shitty little dive before.” She looked at the wad of cash in Sofi’s hand. “Seven.”
Sofi flicked out some bills, leaned against the bar, and handed them over to the bartender.
“You’re just about the only place that still takes cash.” Sofi said, as the bartender loaded the money into the old register. Sofi sneaked a glance at the tray; it was full of money.
“This your first time?” The bartender nodded her question in Sofi’s direction.
A twinge of sharp pain shot through Sofi’s side. An almost imperceptible noise found the only place in between Sofi’s tightly closed lips that it could escape.
“I didn’t even know a place like this existed until last week.” Sofi followed her answer with a sad half-smile.
The bartender put her hand on top of Sofi’s, gripping it warmly. A feeling of pressure arose in Sofi’s chest, as if two halves of her were trying to fold in on themselves.
Sofi closed the bathroom door. The silence echoed in her ears, a jarring change from the noise moments before. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Sofi’s gaze drifted across stickers slapped on the glass. A mixture of Gen-M bands — some with names that defied meaning, others with names comprised of obscure quotes from Time and Scientific American referencing the wave of hysteria surrounding the gene editing technology CRISPR.
Art thrives under oppression.
Sofi’s eyes met her reflection. Her irises shone in the dim bathroom light. One bright blue, the other a majestic hazel. This heterochromatic “flaw” in Gen-M’s had been explained to Sofi at one point. The manipulation of the human genome causes several unknown effects. You flick a gene on — another switch flicks off.
Sofi never found out how her father had altered her, and if she were to be honest with herself, she didn’t want to know. Growing up, she had been exceptional at sports; the smartest in her class, but also the loneliest. She once expressed this to her father. He simply replied that if humanity was going the way he thought it was, friends would be the least of her worries.
She took the insults on the chin. It took years of burrowing herself deep inside her mind to come to the conclusion that she was who she was, and she liked who she was. That’s all that mattered. But fuck if her childhood wouldn’t have been easier with others like her around.
Sofi’s fine-tuned hearing picked up on an absence of noise. As she leaned closer to the door, a voice cut through the silent bar, full and aggressive —
“Everyone — hands out of your pockets.”
On the edge of the sink was her empty beer bottle. She grabbed it by the neck, held it at the ready, and opened the bathroom door. She was met by a Gen-M on the other side, his eyes wide with fear.
A large man in uniform was roughly handling the bartender. Sofi watched as the bartender, fighting back tears, had a handcuff slapped on one of her wrists. The man tightly pulled her arm around her back, causing her to bend forward. The bartender bit her lip, refusing to give the man the rare satisfaction of having easily subdued a Gen-M.
“It is illegal for Genetically Modified Humans to assemble in groups of more than 20,” the uniformed man said.
Before he could fully turn at the sound of feet pounding against the floor, Sofi leaped forward and swung the beer bottle around with unreasonable force. It connected with the side of the man’s face; shards of glass flicked into his eye. Immediately, the scratches began weeping.
Several pieces of glass sprayed onto Sofi as she closed her eyes and turned her body away. The man in uniform grabbed at his face, releasing the bartender, who fell limply to the ground.
The entire bar was eerily still for a brief moment before anyone realized what had happened. Then, a guttural scream from the uniformed man. Bodies began pushing, desperate to leave.
Sofi wrapped her hand around the bartender’s upper arm and pulled her to the ground with ease. The bartender blinked against the commotion, stunned.
In front of her stood Sofi; on her face fragments of glass reflected the glow of the twinkle lights.
