Outsensed

It was merely a chance occurrence by which we happened to be in that place, at a time of the evening where people who would have a claim to life would be more interested in remembering why they should bother to wake up again next morning. The night was one of the more squalid things about the place, where one of the many degenerates who frequented it could get a fix by sniffing the mushrooms that had started growing in the cracks on the wall, if only they bothered. It's not a surprising coincidence that the drunken lout is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

The place was lit by a single light three feet to the left of where it should have been, throwing dull, yellow haze on a chalkboard that held the menu up for inspection, though I doubt many there could read. There was rum, a bit cheaper than you could find anywhere else, even at the liquor store where the old man would give you whatever you wanted from behind his wire mesh cage, as long as it was whisky. There was also 'Gravie' for the hungry here, something that always seemed to change in colour, but never in the stench coming from the stewpot. Meager fare, fit only for a broken, helpless man at the end of his rope. Fortunately, there were enough of them around every night.

The only redemption a place like that could afford is a promise of a story, for someone dogged enough to wait for it. Mine began when a man in a cherry coloured shirt sat down next to me and said,  "Ready for something real yet?" as I rolled my glass on the floor to watch it shatter against the cracked, brown tile.

I don't remember how long we walked through the oddly familiar, narrow side streets and alleys riddled with potholes full of muck. By the time we got to her place I was cursing freely through my cigarette, growling something about the swamp rats who will be born in the muck, become the next president, and run over their childhood to make roads for the needy who never asked for them.

I didn't need help finding my way up, and he was gone by the time the door was opened. I followed her in blindly, my mind losing any excuse for a will in the wake of her scent, knowing I could kill or be killed for her at that moment. I looked away as she finished with me, ashamed and powerless, unable to behold a beauty my spirit was incapable of worshiping.

Next morning, I woke up and she was gone, with the money, just like every other day. I gathered the remains of my shattered existence from the bed, and lay broken in her memory, lighting a cigarette to see a wisp of her body in the smoke. I closed my eyes as I poured myself a drink, shaking from the dull, sweet pain of her nails on my back. I spent the rest of the day looking out the window as it drizzled across the bleak expanse of grey, with my feet against the glass trying to relive her touch. By the time the sunlight faded, I couldn't remember her face.

I stumbled across to a familiar hovel, and begged for some rum to dull a pain I knew I had long forgotten. All I could hope for by that time of the evening was for a bullet, or a way back home. And a man in a cherry coloured shirt sat down next to me and said, "Ready for something real yet?"