The Super Terrific Bankruptcy Happy Hour!
THE SUPER TERRIFIC BANKRUPTCY HAPPY HOUR!
By: Mason Absher
Welcome…Welcome…Welcome…one and all!
… to the Super Terrific Bankruptcy Happy Hour.
That’s right.
Drinks are half-off.
So is my dignity.
The ice is free because I’m not.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the last time I filed…
Chapter 7…
It’s a chapter unlike any other.
A chapter where you don’t “restructure” or “negotiate.”
You just… wave a white flag made of old credit card statements.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, you’re sure to ask…well…how did I get here?
Well, I’ll tell you.
For me, there were no yachts or mountains of cocaine.
No golden carousels with hydraulic ponies in my rumpus room.
I earned my bankruptcy the old-fashioned American way:
Theatre school.
Freelance invoices.
Bar tabs.
A can’t miss business or two.
And the fatal belief that everything was “gonna work out.”
It started small.
A late payment.
A bounced cheque.
A pawn loan abandoned
And one day you wake up,
You check your bank account
And it just says:
Nope.
I stopped checking it, honestly.
The low point?
There was no single low point.
Every low point was lower than the last.
But here’s the twist.
Once everything collapsed?
I felt… calm.
I felt…weirdly… honest.
No more pretending.
No more “I’m just in between gigs.”
No more “I’m building something!”
Just… me.
And a mountain of debt that legally wasn’t mine anymore.
To celebrate, I decided to host a live game show.
I called it:
The Super Terrific Bankruptcy Happy Hour!
Games include:
“What’s in My Wallet?” (spoiler: nothing)
“Guess That Credit Score!”
and of course…
Duck. Duck. Default.
The food?
Mozzarella sticks.
The kind that burn your mouth and your pride.
Because nothing pairs better with financial ruin than hot dairy and ranch.
And you know what?
I wasn’t alone.
Turns out everyone has been here.
Or somewhere like it.
Friends.
Neighbors.
That one guy who used to sell me essential oils out of his trunk?
He was right.
This is a cleansing.
I’m not saying it’s easy.
The shame still knocks.
The fear still visits.
But the power’s out,
and I’m not answering the door.
I’m broke.
But I’m also… free.
Like a raccoon in a Dollar General parking lot.
Unhinged.
But resourceful.
So if you’re here tonight,
If you’ve ever hit the bottom,
If your dreams are on layaway and your plans declined your invite—
(beat)
Pull up a folding chair.
Grab a mozzarella stick.
And raise a glass.
Because if you can laugh at it?
You’re not ruined.
You’re just…
In a new phase.
To bankruptcy.
To broke
To brilliance.
To mozzarella sticks…
and the stories we never wanted, but well…here they are
The Horse And His Tailor
THE HORSE AND HIS TAILOR
A Strange Fable for the End of the World
By Mason Absher
Once… in a time that wasn’t quite a time…
there lived a tailor.
And this tailor…
had a dream.
Not of riches.
Not of fame.
He wanted to dress a horse.
Not just cover it.
Not blanket or saddle.
But trousers.
Shirts with buttons.
A little vest with a pocket where the horse could put… something. Anything. A leaf, maybe.
People laughed.
Of course they did.
You cannot dress a horse, they said.
They do not care for fashion.
They are beasts. They do not blush. They do not browse.
But the tailor said only:
“Wait.”
And he began to sew.
He started small.
A scarf.
Just a scarf.
Something soft, something the wind could pull at.
The horse blinked.
Snorted.
Tried to eat it.
(Beat.)
But it wore it.
For one full hour.
That… was enough.
The tailor came every day.
With new things.
A sleeve.
A boot.
A belt that served no purpose except to look just slightly dramatic.
And the horse… learned.
It learned how to step into trousers.
How to tolerate buttons.
How to swish with style.
And the tailor smiled.
He never forced.
He waited.
He praised.
He whispered:
“Yes, my beautiful idiot. You are magnificent.”
Years passed.
And one day…
the horse changed clothes.
On its own.
It chose blue.
A crushed velvet vest.
The one with gold thread that shimmered like pond water in moonlight.
And the tailor wept.
Quietly.
Into his thimble.
And then…
at the end of his life,
with no heirs, no shop, no plaque to his name—
he stood beside that splendid, vest-wearing horse
and said, simply:
“Change, change, change your clothes, you lovely horse.”
And the horse did.
And that is the story.
Of a tailor.
A horse.
And a miracle made one button at a time.
The Legend of Ian Downey…or…The Kid Who Stirred Up Chaos and Vanished Again Like a Ghost with Wi-Fi
THE LEGEND OF IAN DOWNEY
The Kid Who Stirred up Chaos and Vanished Again Like a Ghost with Wi-Fi
Everyone knew Ian Downey.
Or at least… thought they did.
He was a myth before he hit puberty.
A local legend.
The kid who once said—dead serious—“I’m Robert Downey Jr.’s third cousin…by marriage”
And the thing is…
no one could disprove it.
He had that face. That smirk. That terrifying confidence.
He could say anything and make you doubt your own memory.
Sometimes, Ian was my friend.
We’d ride bikes. Talk about movies. Share a soda at the corner store.
Other times?
He was a rogue psychologist with no supervision, too much free time.
He once told me—calm as a monk—
that we were in a cult.
(Beat.)
Not hypothetically.
Not as a game.
He said, “No, it’s real. You just haven’t been initiated yet.”
I didn’t sleep for three nights.
I made a list of everyone I knew who might be a sleeper agent.
I threw out a sandwich my mom made me because it looked too symmetrical.
Ian claimed he could code websites.
What he actually did…
was open WordPad and change the font color.
Then he’d call me over and say,
“See that? HTML, baby.”
I didn’t even know what HTML stood for.
But Ian sounded like he did.
He had the vibe of a guy who hacked the Pentagon when really he was just changing text alignment in Comic Sans.
And yet—
he was magnetic.
The teachers liked him.
The parents thought he was charming.
The girls? Obsessed.
The guys? Also obsessed, but in that weird boy-code way where you have to act like you’re mad at someone just because they’re cooler than you.
Ian Downey was a one-man hurricane.
He’d show up, stir the pot, flip your worldview like a cafeteria tray,
and then disappear again.
He moved away, officially, in seventh grade.
I remember the goodbye being… vague.
No party. No hugs. Just:
“I’m going to California. Maybe. Or it might be South Dakota.”
And like that—poof.
Gone.
But every few years…
He’d reappear.
At a football game.
At the grocery store.
At your cousin’s bonfire.
Like a local cryptid.
You’d blink, and there he was—older, taller, still with that same glint in his eye like he knew something about your childhood you didn’t.
And he’d say something weird.
Something casual but off.
Like:
“Hey, remember the basement? They finally removed the altar.”
And you’d laugh.
But only a little.
He’d stay a weekend.
Cause minor chaos.
Convince someone to dye their hair or break up with their girlfriend.
Then vanish.
No goodbye.
No trace.
Just a vague Facebook status like, “Headed where the clouds don’t ask questions.”
What does that even mean?
I’ve Googled him.
Nothing conclusive.
There’s no “real” trace of Ian Downey.
Just a few blurry photos.
One semi-defunct blog.
And a conspiracy Reddit thread titled “What Happened to That One Kid?”
Sometimes I wonder if he was even real.
Or if he was just a trick the neighborhood played on all of us.
The human embodiment of adolescent confusion.
The boy who could lie to your face… and somehow make you grateful for it.
But I know he was real.
Because I still don’t fully trust sandwiches.
And every time I see a hyperlink, I think…
Is this HTML? Or is this another Downey trick?
Ian, if you’re out there…
I hope you’re well.
I hope you’re even better at document formatting
Geocities 4Lyfe
The Forgotten Wallet
It was the winter of 2014,
and I was a young actor adrift in The Old City.
A city so cold it snapped dreams like kindling.
I lived in a slanted apartment, surviving on black coffee, artistic delusion… and instant rice.
Then came the call.
Mysterious. Vague. Alluring.
An audition. Medical in nature. Acting-adjacent.
Or as we artists call it:
“Please pretend to cough convincingly for no applause, just coin.”
The night before: two rehearsals, back-to-back.
First in a damp rehearsal crypt.
Second delayed—snow, traffic, existential sighs. We started at ten.
I got home at 2:40 a.m.
I showered, laid out my outfit, packed my bag, lined up my boots like soldiers by the door… and slept. Like a fool.
**4 a.m.**– *snooze*
**4:15**– *snooze*
**4:25**– *nothing*
**4:30**– *still nothing*
**4:40**– PANIC
I launched into my clothes, into the wind, into the train—just in time. I collapsed into a seat, exhaled… and reached for my wallet.
Nothing.
Scoured my bag. My coat. My soul.
Still nothing.
My wallet was in the jeans I had thrown across my apartment floor.
The one day I didn’t pick my pants up off the floor! That’s the most of what I regret!
The conductor approached.
“Ticket?” he asked, mustache twitching.
I spilled my shame.
He said, “You ride often?”
I nodded like a desperate pigeon.
He vanished… came back with a voucher.
I filled it out like a confession. Handed it over.
He… tore it up.
No receipt. No lecture. Just mercy, silent and strange.
I arrived downtown, walletless, voicemail ready.
No backup. No answers.
Until… an ad: *Lyft—first ride free.*
Downloaded. Needed a card. Strike one.
Switched to Uber. Same hurdle… until: “Pay with PayPal.”
YES.
Ding. “Your ride is here.”
The Driver, Roger, I think his name was.
A fellow actor. Of course.
We spoke of hustle. Of simulation.
He said, “Curiosity—more important than experience.”
I said,
“Well… I’m still here, aren’t I?”
In the waiting room, paperwork filled.
A grainy video. No interview.
Just “We’ll be in touch.”
I left. Summoned one last Uber.
Fifty dollars poorer, full of something else.
Because I survived.
Not the audition.
Not the job.
But the day.
The wallet-less waltz through The Old City.
And I returned with a story—the richest currency I know.