A dark murder town comes into focus. Ruined grey roads and dying woods in moonlight. Sins of its crooked demon inhabitants are everywhere. Peddlers and streetwalkers on corners, hooting gangs of roaming teens, police sirens howling to the sky.
The greed, lust, hatred, cover the earth and fill the air, floating about scattered degenerate crowds like thunderclouds of blood waiting to spill rotting guts over the world.
I know the seat of evil here, an unholy temple where scum worship the lowest highs of dark pleasure. A distant memory speaks of the place. A bar and brothel where any imaginable vice is no further than the length of a few dollar bills. I feel her presence there as surely as I feel anything, a broken angel in a dungeon.
Little memories trickle as I move off the paved streets, down cobblestone roads and dirt trails, wondering what is real and what is false. Suddenly my body takes me ten feet into the brush. A withering old tree split in two by time, hunched and all but forgotten. I reach into the base of it by some instinct, a hollow between exposed roots.
Old leaves and debris give way to a damp stash wrapped in a plastic bag. Just matches and... a wad of cash. I must be dreaming. I count a few hundred dollars and wonder if the universe was answering my prayers, or if I had hidden it there and forgotten. When? Why? The faces on the bills give no answer, but only look slightly pleased, or consternated- I can’t tell which.
In minutes, the questions melt away. I approach the looming bar-brothel. With every step it grows and I seem to shrink. A three-story charcoal-painted fortress the size of a small mansion, with robust, unusual architecture, like a far-eastern temple imposed on a massive cabin, with a flat top. Decks jut from each side, over and under one another. Some decks have roofs, others are open to the sky. Each is full of people with bottles and cigarettes in hand, sending swirls of stale smoke, bawdy talk, and raucous laughter into the chill night air.
I know it’s constructed from the shattered dreams of innocent souls beyond count. The town’s caustic atmosphere seems to emanate from this place, surrounded by so many depraved lunatics, psychopaths, murderers, gluttonous junkies of every type.
I enter the den of thieves and liars, stealing a black ballcap on the way, pulling my hair into it. I hope it and the low light will be enough to disguise me in the bustle and shadows of inhuman filth.
On the outside, people seem happy and alive. Their eyes are black with raging upper drugs, many dancing or swaying in drunken stupors. Others chat about unspeakable sins with no care of being overheard. I feel they will tear me apart if they sense my fear. My stomach flutters and my heart pumps with hot blood. I push my fear back down and swallow it. So hot, the air, all the drinking, sweating bodies. I struggle not to shake, not to vomit in the clouds of drug smoke. But I have to be able to speak. Can’t pass out here. The crowds turn to visions of fire and brimstone, souls tortured eternally. I try and keep my eyes low.
Large figures bump into me and scowl. A few loose hands grab at me and beckon, but I pull away and move on. I won’t let them pull me down. I’m invisible, I tell myself, though I know I’m not. I’m just another faceless fool.
I search all the way to the top floor, growing in doubt and terror. For all I know someone here could recognize me. I might have come from this place myself. What if she’s not here? The appalling sights turn my head over and over. Hookers, pimps, dealers, selling from Hell’s laundry list. Will I find her? I shudder, starting to lose myself, suddenly stumbling into a giant of a woman wearing trenchcoat and sunglasses. She pushes me on my ass and only a few mocking laughs notice. “Watch it,” she warns and lumbers off.
Then he catches my eye. The monster stands there in front of a door, eyes darting around, at once like a seeking tiger and a hungry rat. A hustler peddling cargo. I approach him and everything around me stretches into infinity. He eyes me cautiously.
I drop an eye beneath my hat. “Matty.”
He crosses his arms and the moment feels like a claw twisting through my gut. He laughs with a nasty grin. His thick lips split open, a scar running across, big yellow teeth rotting with black around, surrounded by a wiry beard. His gold tooth shimmers.
“Just out of work? Or the nut-house?” he asks.
I look down. I’m wearing scrubs under a sweater. The sleeves are rolled up and betray scarred arms.
“What’s the difference?” I go.
He cackles.
“Here for my girl?” He glows sinisterly with all the pride of showcasing a prize animal.
“Y-yeah.” His girl. “How much?”
“Hundred a half-hour.” He holds back a yawn. I hold back a trembling fist.
I reach into my pocket and count out the money, hands shaking. “Here.” I give him a deathly glimpse.
He nods and grins, opening a weathered mahogany door for me. As I walk, he suddenly stops me with his arm.
I look into his dark animal eyes, wondering if they pierce straight through me, if they’ll devour me there whole.
“Go easy on the merchandise. You dykes are worse than the pigs,” he says, stuffing the cash in his pocket. “No glass. That’s about the only rule. Got me?” I smell the rot in his mouth.
I push past him and close the door behind.
A long grey-painted hall smattered with old movie and music posters, and graffiti of grotesque, cartoonish bodies and faces fucking each other. Two neon signs glow at the end: “MOVE ALONG” in bold red letters. “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” in hot pink cursive below. My steps echo down the creaking corridor as I approach their electric humming sound and stand face to face with the words.
A dark door to the left. I grasp my chest, each palpitation a heavy punch. I wonder if I’ll open it and die, gunmen waiting on the other side. Madmen with axes.
I twist the handle, open the door with a long creak.
My friend lies on a large bed of quilted sheets with her head hung low. There’s a wood end table next to her with scratched black paint and two shelves underneath full of black latex sticks and other sex toys. The room is dimly lit with a red lamp. She is in tight red panties with loose pink rags over it. Children's toys are scattered around the room. A teddy bear. Baby dolls. Thin flowery dresses and costumes of every type, in her size, on a metal rack made out of steel pipe. She looks up with a forced smile.
I feel the last of my soul fall into me like a weight straight from heaven, see the moon peeking through the window, cold fury coursing through me like ice.
I fling off the hat and run to her.
“Oh my God,” she panics, holding her mouth. “You can’t be here...”
“Shhh-shh! Don’t worry.” I wrap my arms around her. “We don’t have time to mess around. We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t. There’s no way.” Horror twists in her face and voice.
I search around, spy a small window near the top of the wall. I struggle and grunt, pushing a dresser toward it.
I look at her. She just sits, stunned.
“Help me move it!” I plead.
“You don’t think I thought of that...?” She stares at the floor, shakes her head.
Suddenly she runs over to help. She pushes the thousand-pound dresser with me till it’s under the tiny window.
I pull myself up the sill and open the window, searching outside. The back of the building. Voices from all sides. There’s a roof below and woods beyond that.
“This’ll work. Let’s go!” I say, pushing my legs out the window, hanging halfway between inside and outsized
“I can’t do it. I can’t leave. Just go, quick! Please! They’ll kill you!”
“You have to! I told you I’d come for you but we have to go together! If you stay, I stay here with you and die. Don’t stay here alone!... Don’t stay here and die!”
She whimpers.
“Please!”
She shakes her head awake and groans and whines.
She throws sneakers on and runs up the dresser, skittering and reaching for my hand. I grab her tight and pull her through with all my strength. I accidentally let go and fall onto the roof with a crash and clatter. It smashes the wind out of me. I think my lungs pop. She crawls out, landing beside me on her feet.
“Are you okay?”
I pull air back in me, wheezing. “No, yeah. Good enough.”
I crawl to the end of the roof. There’s a small group of people below, a few heads already looking up.
“Gotta go now,” I say, lowering off the edge. “Legs together. Feet down. Bend your knees. Hands beside your head.”
I drop down a story and my bones rattle against a wooden deck, my feet stinging with pain. A handful of shocked faces hold their drinks and watch me with wide eyes as I struggle over the next balcony. My friend lands like a small comet and yipes.
I pull her toward the railing and go over first, another twelve-foot fall into the midst of a larger crowd. A wave of muffled exclamations. My friend follows with another slam.
I heave myself off the last deck into the grass and crumple in front of a few smoking hecklers.
She hops down and plucks a cigarette from one of their mouths.
“Run!” she says, helping me up.
We run off to the forest as fast as we can, thorns slicing clothes and skin as we carve our path away from hell, to some mysterious freedom that lurks beyond those dark woods. I don’t know where we’re going or how we’ll get there. I just know we’ll go far away from this terrible place.
And wherever we’re going, we’re getting there together.