The Killpill

Heavy with sweat from his long walk, Johnny stopped as he reached a bar door. He checked his cell for messages and his pocket for smokes. Empty of one and full of the other, he stepped out of the hot Houston sun into the cool dark bar. He looked around, watching the blackness dissolve into a gray mist as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. No one was sitting at the five or six tables between him and the darkness beyond. He saw what might be the bar and headed toward it.

The place was empty but for two men sitting at the end of the bar. A neon sign came to life as he sat down. “Heller’s” something or other, he saw. It blinked off before he could read the rest. He looked around the room again. There was one wall with nothing on it. No beer signs, no neon, no bad art in cheap frames, nothing. It was just crumbling black plaster over dark red bricks. It looked like the wall had been ripped open and instead of blood, red powder spilled from the crumbling squares and rectangles.

Another wall was completely covered in foot long square mirrors with some kind of abstract pattern running along them. They looked like they were supposed to be arranged in a particular way, but were installed by someone who just didn’t give a fuck. They were probably meant to make the room look bigger, but the odd pattern streaking across the mismatched squares made it seem more like another world than another room.

When Johnny turned his stool back to the bar, the bartender was standing patiently in front of him. “Whiskey, beer back,” Johnny said. The bartender nodded and walked off to get his order. He was a tall guy, not too big, but not too skinny. He was wearing a black cowboy hat and sunglasses which struck Johnny as strange for such a dark bar. He noticed tattoos on the bartender’s neck encircling his throat and disappearing below his collar. They were basically Celtic with some creative embellishments here and there. His arms reflected a variation of the same tattoos as his neck.