The Center of Hell, by Sara Spring

Dear Editor,

The bar at Mc Quinty’s has always been dimly lit, and these days when I hear a sound that I don’t know I get uneasy and shift in my wooden chair. During the day the front door rarely opens letting light into the hovel exposing all of us cowering from the outside. This is our safe haven in which the troubles out there can not touch us. In essence, McQuinty’s offers us the ability to be a secret society of rejects; people who do not have jobs and none of us ask where money comes from to pay for drinks. It isn’t an especially rough crowd, just a bit gritty. That is, until she came along with her bright smile, young skin and round supple breasts. Her nails were clean and slightly long but well trimmed. Her hair was long and black with a luster that looked soft and smelled clean. She had long thin legs and arms, and her eyes glittered with youth and innocence. She made me hungry deep within the folds of my fat old flesh. I’d watch her through my whiskey haze when she wasn’t aware. My dirty blue jeans clinging to my fat thighs and my thin flannel pulling at the seams of my arms, I had been comfortable with my lack of looks but she made me want to make an effort. A girl of that class would never want a man like me. (read more…)