A Night At The Club

The fluorescent light above my head flickered a few times as I walked into the room. It didn’t make much difference, since the light provided was so poor I could barely see a few feet in front of me.

I was able to make out a man crouched over the sink, kneading his temples with his forefinger and thumb as if in the throes of a powerful headache. There was someone on the floor, lying face down in a pool of vomit. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, only that he stank like shit. I stepped over him and pushed the stall door open with my knuckles.

As I unzipped and began unloading into the bowl, I looked around at the writing on the wall. “Call me” begged one message scrawled in permanent marker, with a number attached to it. It had no date, and no name. I wondered if whoever wrote it was looking for love or a simple phone call from another human being willing to talk to them. I would never find out, I knew; I was not going to call them tonight.
Another patron had carved a rather simple poem into the stall wall. Judgeing by how he had managed to rhyme the word “shit” with itself on two seperate occasions, I assumed he wasn’t a poet I had ever read about in high school. Hell, this guy probably still was in high school.

Three shakes and I was dry. I zipped up and flushed, only to find that the toilet was currently out of order. I looked around for a moment in concern, only to notice a sodden “do not use” sign on the floor of the stall. It was stuck to the bottom of my foot, and I had to scrape it along the bowl of the toilet to get it off.

I exited the stall, and walked over to the sink. The man with the headache was still there.

“Hey,” he said, “got any good stuff?”

I was unsure what he meant. It must have shown on my face, because he followed that up, a bit more intently, with:

“Cocaine, man! My shit is awful, man. Real bad. I could take it all right now and not feel a thing. You got anything?”

I shrugged.

“Ah, fuck,” he said, and took a small plastic bag out of his coat pocket. It was filled with white powder. I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what it was.

He held the bag on the rim of the sink and tapped it gently to pour out a line of it on the grungy porcelain. He stared at it for a moment, then opened up his wallet. A look of dismay crossed his face, and he began patting down all his pockets.

“Shit,” he said, “do you have a dollar? Or a straw? Or something?”

He was clearly at his wit’s end, and I wasn’t about to start a fight. I wordlessly opened my wallet, and pulled out a five, tossing it his way.

“Thanks, pal,” he said, rolling it up into a thin tube. He bent over, and put it to his nose.

The silencer, coupled with the music downstairs, blocked out most of the noise. I didn’t even remove the piece from my coat, which now had a small hole in it. Less powder burn that way. Harder for the cops to tell how far I was, and establish a crime scene.

He attempted to scream, but I had punctured at least one of his lungs. All he could manage was a wet sucking sound while grabbing his chest. He scrabbled at the rim of the sink, but slid to his knees after a few seconds, and fell to the ground. He clawed at the ground for a few moments, but I could tell he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Tony Vasquez,” I said. He looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot and afraid. A gurgling whisper rushed out of his throat, along with an amount of blood.
“1985. A man and a woman, just outside New York City. You shot the man, and stabbed the woman. Am I right?”

Even through his shock, I could see the confusion and anger on his face. It filled me with grim satisfaction.

“1987. A mother and her child, in an apartment in Massachusetts. Mother was beaten with a pipe, and the kid was strangled. Right?”

He was fading fast, but he was registering what I was saying. I could tell I didn’t have much time left, so I decided to speed things up.

“There were more. Lots more. Too many to recite to you, I think.”

He clawed at the ground again, and I was able to make out a word that burbled its way out his lungs and into my ears.

“… w… who?”

I shrugged.

“Does it matter?”

It apparently did not, as his eyes closed, and did not re-open. I kicked him in the chest once. Twice. He didn’t react.

The music was still blaring on the dance floor downstairs. I sighed. He wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of the others. The others at least saw it coming, and put up a bit of a fight.

Oh well, I thought, they can’t all be winners.

I pushed the bathroom door open with my elbow.

“Keep the five,” I shouted over my shoulder, but it was drowned out by the bass thumping one floor down. As I left, I waved to the bouncer, who gave me a short nod.

“Stay safe,” he said, “don’t drive home drunk.”

I nodded, smiled, and kept on walking.

What a lovely night.