–It was never clear where or how these patrons ended up going. The “how” was eventually taken care of first by a busboy, then a cop, then a coroner, then a bunch of people in green scrubs saying, “what the fuck?” quickly before they had their throats ripped out.

See, for us it was so dark on the floor that no one ever really noticed the 8 year old with the glass of brown liquor, the trail of dark blood leading from the booth, to the bar, to the pinball machine, to the change machine, back to the pinball machine. There were other more malicious things to worry about, like the fucking black handprints all over the highball glasses. Black and murky like asphalt, smell like a science classroom on dissection day.

In fact, blood was normal, fists shredded to the bone and beyond were not. Manual tooth extractions were not. Instrument free dentistry was not. Not for me at least. Our policy was usually, “just let them scrap it out and pick up the loose change once they’re done”. But these weren’t typical brawls, blacks would lose an arm and keep fighting, reds would rip off someone’s lower jaw, throw up thick syrupy shit and get right back to their shitty rail and water.

Like I never said, apathy and routine took hold.

We never changed many lightbulbs, and it always smelled like that. Like so many old ladies, we had gotten used to our musk. We didn’t give a fuck and the regulars didn’t either.

The first inclination I had that anything was off the tracks was under the bar, changing a half expired keg for another less expired one. We never could sell much beer, real alcoholics didn’t have time for it, they only bought it when they were too broke to afford anything else. Herpes, a “busboy” was down there. I hadn’t seen Herpes in about 3 months. That was typical too, they would get their money for the night and run off to blow it all on bad junk, buying it with a needle in their arm in some other shitty bar’s bathroom. Saved me the clean up. I figured the same happened to Herpes, apparently it didn’t. When he stood up, groaning, I thought it was the junk and told him to fuck off, find a hotel room and never come back.

He was pissed, and I was armed. It didn’t take much time or thinking or bullets. His blood didn’t look right though. It was too brown, too thick, and his eyes, they weren’t the watery desperate eyes of a smackhead. That’s probably why i wasted him, that look in his eyes suggested that nothing good was going to come from my little intervention. The back of his head ended up all over a bunch of spare tin, and I went back up and closed the door.

When I came back, I was asked repeatedly about “that shot”, but no one gave an inch of piss about the other one, the one for Herpes.
–“This place is completely fucked”, he told me over the phone. Fucking Prick. Big fucking surprise I thought, the only reason I ever speak to this guy is when something, someplace or someone is completely fucked. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

I got there and did a line off the dashboard, and then put my fist through the driver’s side window. I opened the door from the outside and wandered over to what was left of what had to be the shittiest bar in the shittiest town in the world. He stood there all dramatic lighting a cigarette, inhaling slowly and exhaling as he turned to look at me. All I wanted to do was break his fucking neck, but instead i just focused on the blood that was running off of my hand, I felt it cling to my knuckles until the last second when it dropped and patted the asphalt. It was bliss.

He gestured with his faggoty American Spirit and said, “some of them are still moving”. I looked. They were. Some of them looked like the falling action in a shitty horror movie about construction site disasters. All twisted limbs with steel and glass stuck through them. Some of them just looked sad, crying. “WHO FUCKING CARES!” I screamed at him, feeling the blood vessels pop in my eyes. He just shrugged.

I went to the car, grabbed my gun, a mutant Pakistani Desert Eagle, drilled, rebuilt and fucked with by God-knows-who-for-crack. I’ve shot planes out the sky. I cocked it and walked up to the different faces, ignored the watery ones who asked me to “please stop” and put one in each. I heard Prick say something similar, but he knew why I was there and he knew he wasn’t going to stop me. Only I can do that.

I came back, wiped off their “blood”, licked some of it off my hands and ran the rest through my hair to keep it back. Their blood isn’t contagious, the shit is motor oil, brown, useless, stagnant, delicious. Its their saliva that gets you. Of course there could be traces of it in their oil, I could have swallowed some of it, I could have been turning right then and there, but I didn’t quite give a fuck.

“Nice job”, he said, flicking his cigarette. Fucking Prick.

I huffed ether in my car and waited for the next shit storm to come.