This story contains mature themes and situations. I guess this is where I say no one under 18 admitted without parent or gaurdian. If you are under 18 hit the back button , thanx. All rights retained by the author, that's me.
Mys...
Kelly moved easily through the languid early afternoon pedestrian traffic. The school year was still on so the usual traffic of hip kids was fairly reduced. Regardless, the trendily downtrodden neighborhood always seemed to sport any number of high school kids skipping class, college students sipping coffee and trying to look self important, and the inevitable tourists.
Mostly she just didn't think about people like them. When she did, she could feel hate filled bile welling up in the back of her throat, choking and taunting her. She caught sight of a group of foreign tourists yammering as they scanned over and haggled for trinkets and trash that a bum had spread out over a blanket along the edge of the wide sidewalk. There was no doubt in Kel's mind that most of the things on the blanket were stolen.
Kelly chose a good stoop from which to watch the fun. The tourists flaunted cameras and openly reached for their wallets. The bum was going to have a field day ripping them off and Kelly was going to sit back and relish every moment of the action. It beat staying at home and watching natural disasters on "Funniest Home Videos".
A hooded gutter punk approached from down the street, stopping next to her.
"Got a smoke?"
"That you, Dev?" Kel asked, recognizing the voice. A lopsided, malnourished grin appeared beneath the hood of the dirty sweatshirt. Definitely Devon.
Kel fished into the breast pocket of the sports coat that she wore against the brisk weather, removing a pack of smokes. She pulled two cigarettes from the pack, handing one to the punk. He shook a ratty green haired thanks and joined her in watching the bum work a fairly old scam.
"Thought you had forgotten your old friends," his voice croaked hoarsely after a minute or
two. He took the material of the sports coat between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed
them together. The wry lopsided smile expanded. "Nice material, boyfriend's?"
Kel jumped up, the bleached white hairs on the back of her neck bristling with anger. "Yeah, St. Fucking Francis, runs a fucking mission, maybe you should check him out, ya' stinking fuck." The bile boiled within her, threatening to burst completely from the feeble emotional dam she had constructed over years. She winged the half pack of cigarettes at the smug, pungent smelling creature on the steps.
Devon was surprisingly quick. The pack bounced off an upraised palm and he laughed out sickly. "You'll never change yuh' slut."
The tourists turned from the bum to watch this little bit of local color unfold. They hoped to see a firey argument between some of the real street folk, those so different from them. They recieved no such satisfaction. A young woman with spiky white hair in a cheap, worn plaid sportscoat raised her fingers in a reversed peace sign violently at a junky looking punk. She caught them looking and repeated the gesture at them, then stormed off around the corner. Each was disappointed, left with one less exciting story to retell to friends after their holiday.
******************
Kelly barely made it down the three steps leading to "The Beginings". Even after walking three and a half blocks, her knees were still unstable, shaking with anger and violence. She laid her hand on the well worn brass fixture of the familiar bar as she replayed her run-in with Devon for the fifth time. This time instead of flipping him off, she rammed her knee straight into his dirty face. She could almost feel the crunching of his nose, the splintering of fragile bone followed by hot blood running out onto her knee and down her calf.
She grinned wildly to herself.
It took a moment to adjust to the dimness of the bar's interior. At night, the dim light fixtures would provide plenty of light in the low, tin ceilinged confines. During the day, however, they were only passable with the aid of light coming through the nicotine-yellowed front window. The light came into the basement level bar at an angle, reflecting amber off the time-polished, cigarette-marked wood floor, creating a permanent feeling of a faded old film.
The crowded evening hours would be comforting in the long, but somewhat close quarters. People would line up from front to back at the antique bar, waving money to get the bartender's attention. In back they would be playing pool or darts while talking loudly over the juke box. Invariably the music would be raucous Irish drinking dirges. She had learned almost all of them by heart over the years.
Daylight dimmed any of the jovial night charm the bar held. It revealed the damaged interior, the bar's fairly shabby self. In testament the juke box stood silent at the far end of the bar, near the bathrooms. Things were just quiet. Vicky and five old men provided none of the cheer and enthusiasm the locals would add later. Wait - four. Four old men and him.
******************
"What are you so happy about?"
Kelly shook her trance off and focused on her friend behind the bar.
"What?"
Vicky leaned over the edge of the bar, tilting her head slightly, smiling such a large smile for her tiny mouth. "You walked in with the biggest shit eatin' grin on your face, what's the
skinny?"
"Oh that." A flash of Devon, blood soaked and battered as she kicked him repeatedly in the ribs. A dry wood snapping as his sternum cracked at about the second or third rib. Again a feeling of sick black pleasure accompanied the images of his hot black blood again, redundant - unless it's meant to be an artistic effect... cooling on her hands and at her feet. "Just thinking about an old friend. Can I get a Guiness?"
Vicky nodded and bounced slightly as she grabbed a clean mug.
"How long has he been here?" Kelly nodded down the bar past the first silent old man.
"Far as I know he hasn't left." As Vicky spoke, she poured the beer slowly from one of the old long handled taps. Midway through she stopped, patiently letting a thick head rise, then topped off the pint. She handed the dark syrupy brown lager to Kelly, who accepted it graciously.
"I unlocked the place this morning and he was asleep on the couch in back. I swear, Jinny is getting way too slack."
Kelly moved down the long, time-worn bar past one of the usual bar fly's. The old man had probably shown up just after the bar had opened that morning. He sat drinking away some kind of pension or social security, seeming to care for nothing, especially not himself. He gave her a time rotted smile of drinking black and smoking yellow teeth. "How're ya tuhday?" he said. The voice slipped and slurred in a sing-song manner over the accumulation of the day's drinks.
"Good...good." She averted her eyes, turning to the mass of bone and red sport biker leather hunched over it's own half empty pint of Guiness.
"Aden." She attempted to rouse the pile. "Fuckin' A..., ADEN!"
The Beginings' low tin ceiling broadcast the shrill imperative to every corner, splitting the early afternoon silence. The four old men looked distractedly away from their own drinks, or Vicky, to her. These men in battered suits and casual wear looked as physically different from Aden as possible, but underneath something about them was Aden.
Ed, the man she had passed on her way up the bar was the last to turn away. His eyes lingered in a slow manner, not lacivious, just beleageured, too tired to return quickly to the glass in front of him without effort.
She had seen him many times before in this very bar. While he may have been as young as fifty he did not look a day under a millenia. His face, worn by the hardships of whatever life had brought him here, was now crowned by apathy. Years of medicating his sorrow with hard alcohol gave him the look of a dried and shriveled fruit.
Vicky had shown Kel an expensive gold watch once while drinking coffee after getting off work. Ed had given it to her as a tip no more than a week previous. She told Kel that she had refused the expensive present. No number of years of faithful service by any bartender should be able to earn something as expensive as this watch obviously cost. He had looked at her with what was probably the last of his conviction. His gravel voice, choked with decades of non filters and hard liquor, grated a soft yet firm rebuke - "I'll be dead within six months, what should I be saving for?"
Indeed, the man now slowly returning his attention to his lunch of bourbon on the rocks was being devoured by a remorseless cancer, an unconcious mutation that would not be sated until both it and it's host were planted six feet under the ground of the old German Jewish cemetary not too far from this place.
The last glimpse of his eyes revealed everything to Kel. Those hollow eyes, empty of purpose. Eyes that knew their fate, and accepted it. No fight. No life. No glint. No spark. Ed was no man, he was a corpse. A dead body sipping bourbon from cheap glassware in a dive bar.
The empty husk sat there sucking the last of it's drink from a few icecubes before requesting another, attempting banter with the young, short haired bartender. Kelly half expected a draft to reveal the body was nothing more than a hollow shell. Blowing gently across the stool, it would scatter the dead and empty bits to the winds, the ashes of a fire long smothered and forgotten. A gentle touch is all it would take and he would be gone.
So gone he might have never existed.
Kelly watched self conciously as the last man looked away then returned her intensity toward Aden. A shudder of horror so strong it was painful wracked her frame, forcing her down onto a stool. She saw the dead eyes again, not in Ed, but set in the deep pain ringed sockets of Aden.
