Here we are again
The dead still look the same
Who cares, they're soon forgotten
Nobody loves a corpse that's rotten

- Lemmy

John clutched his eldritch libation, sorrow etched into the furrows of his weary countenance. The enigmatic stranger, shrouded in an otherworldly aura, materialized before him, unsettling him from his melancholic reverie. "Greetings," spoke the stranger in an unsettling tone. John glanced upward, feigning a semblance of cheer. "Salutations." The stranger gestured towards a vacant stool; John acquiesced. "Double whiskey, if you please," the stranger intoned after seating himself.

"What fate guides you to this abyssal haunt?"

"I'd venture a dalliance with fortune and games of chance...," the stranger mused, eyes surveying the dismal confines, "...but chance shall suffice."

"What plagues your thoughts?" inquired the stranger, nonchalant yet possessing an eerie prescience, having just received his chosen elixir. John sighed, granting his psyche a moment to select his reply. He gazed at the stranger, and something about the man's visage, worn and ancient, or perhaps the influence of the libation, prompted John to lower his defenses. The stranger became an entity with whom to confide. Commencing with a hesitant, "Well...," John embarked on recounting that juncture - the precise moment in his existence when the tides shifted. The remorse that had sculpted John's essence. The haunting moment. The stranger required minimal prodding - a sagely nod here, a comforting phrase there.

"And that, essentially, is my chronicle," John concluded, suppressing a tear. "Curious... I... I seldom bare my soul so freely." He emitted a nervous chuckle. The stranger half-smiled. There was a transient metamorphosis in his countenance. He sipped from his second whiskey. Gazing towards a realm beyond sight, he intoned, "Well, John, this might mark your fortuitous eve." He shifted his gaze back to face John. "What if I proffered a resolution? A means to regress... and amend your fateful choice?" "I'd deem you ensnared by delusions," John responded, toying with a playful veneer. The stranger grinned and hesitated, as if contemplating his next course. He delved into a pocket, withdrawing a stygian leather wallet and slid it along the counter to rest before John. "Unveil its secrets." John unfastened it with his unoccupied hand. His mouth turned arid. His heartbeat faltered and then surged, grappling to decipher what lay within. A seething mélange of emotions seized him. Fear, trepidation, and eventually, a fervor as he grappled with the revelation. Abruptly sobered, he stammered, "Ho...w... how might we enact this?"

The alley was a stygian abyss, pain slicing through the darkness. John heard the shattering of his skull, time elongating. His existence post that juncture began unfurling before him like a feverish, aberrantly edited tapestry. Chronological flashes of memories, evoking love and friendships, danced through his mental recesses, recounting chance encounters that had bloomed into felicitous moments. He witnessed their vanishing. He tasted loss. He bore witness to the demise of the person he had metamorphosed into.

John awoke. A rejuvenated John, bereft of many temporal scars.