INTRAMUSCULAR 2.04 (Patreon)

As promised, the second chapter! I... don't know why writing has been so slow. Sorry, y'all. I guess I'm still figuring some stuff out outside the writing as well. I'll keep aiming for a pick-me-up on the writing front, but wish me luck either way?

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 Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.

-Karl Marx

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I do, in the end, end up going to work. 

Turns out, they actually had another bartender quit- Kristy, some 20-year old who I interacted with maybe twice during her whole tenure. Between that and my oh-so-convenient excuse of a death in the family, and I’ve managed to get away with “only” a thirty-minute breakdown of what, exactly, is wrong with the world, and, more specifically, my role in it.

Jonah’s an asshole. I say that with absolute sincerity. I truly believe that, if he were asked to choose between helping someone or running them over, he might choose the latter, if only because it gets him to work faster. Bald, mid-40s, and wielding a beer-belly and once-fit arms with all the experience of a former football prodigy turned bruiser, the fact that he hired me felt hard to believe at the time, and hasn’t gotten easier. He’s no skinhead, but he’ll happily throw out the occasional slur at asian people, disabled folks, old people, “the blacks”, and anyone who wasn’t born within thirty miles of wherever he decides the “real heart of america is”- the fact that he’s never gotten a dogwhistle tattoo, on purpose or by accident, continues to amaze me. 

But, despite all of his many qualities, Jonah pays… more than nothing, didn’t actually bother to give a shit about what gender I was born as (just so long I don’t bring any rainbow shit or do any of the faggy crap in the bar, ya hear?), and hasn’t fired me. So, like… for heartland-style broke, racist assholes, he’s not the worst of them?

It’s what I got. I never claimed to like my fucking job.

Most of the time, it’s more janitorial than food service, especially during a morning shift. True Blue’s Pub is one of those places that has this near-absolute superpower to magically accumulate every possible sort of grime a bar can accumulate except, usually, spunk. And even then, there’s been notable exceptions to that exception, two that I can recall. Roaches need removing, fly-eggs need clearing, black sludge needs removing, grease needs extracting, and there’s never quite enough bleach and Lysol to go around. Fabuloso would be cheaper- and also holds a name that isn’t quite all-american enough for Jonah.

I make it in at around 7am, three hours before the bar opens. The key, perpetually half-hidden behind an awkward little brick next to the back door, unlocks the mechanism and allows it to squeal open as I go inside. The interior’s about as basic as they come- manager’s “office” to the left of the door, employee bathroom about ten paces down to the right, and then a bend into the final stretch, with a door for the kitchen and a door for the bar. Thank fuck I only have to clean the latter- I’ve had my lunch breaks on-site once or twice, on the occasional that I have the time and no one’s around to tell me not to, and Carlo, for all his big smiles and frantic pace in the kitchen, has a reputation for producing the most toilet-destroying cocktails of meat and vegetable I’ve ever experienced. 

I make it through to the bar proper, sighing as I catch sight of the darkened room. Light leaks in from some of the windows, natural light coming through blurred, hazy glass and making the whole place seem almost underwater. Wavy lights cover tables with chairs stacked atop them, all black wood and sticky floors, with brick walls and dusty light fixtures.

Not over my bar, at least. That part, I’ve made sure to keep as clean as I possibly fucking can. No dust bunnies up above, no gunk in the sinks, and ice-bins as white and sanitary as I’m capable of making them. Rows of bottles, brands mostly turned away from the customer-side, glasses stacked behind me and beneath the counter. Sections for chopped limes (more than a day old and uncovered, if I had to guess- more shit I gotta do before we open), syrups, and bitters.

I hit a light switch, and with a flickering, the lights behind the bar come on, illuminating everything in a warm yellow light of old bulbs.

It’s not home. I don’t have a lot of positive memories here, even beyond the whole “smile for capitalism points so you can afford food” thing. 

But there’s a comfort in the familiar. Even in familiar misery.

I get out the mop bucket, rinse it a few times to get all the grey out, and fill it with light soap. 

An hour later, I’ve cleaned out the floor as best I can, taking it from sticky to… just before sticky, at least. The tables lose their dust, lose some of their ingrained goop, shine their age-old stains. The bartop, especially, takes some fucking work- but at the end, I’ve managed to bring it as close to sparkling as I can bring it.

The bottles get restocked. The cooler, mostly lukewarm, are refilled with beers, all four brands we carry, only two of which come in glass. Fresh lemons, which I don’t think the night shift are going to replace; syrups from the fridge, some of them that I made a better part of a week ago, and which I spend another hour replacing; glasses cleaned in the machine, and bins I bring back more wiped down and sanitized.

Before I know it, it’s time.

I finish putting down the last of the chairs, take in a long, slow breath, and head for the front door.

I already know who I’ll see before it opens, but I’m still somehow disappointed by the sight.

“Don’t you have work to do or something?”

The man grunts, shoulder-checking me as he makes his way in through the door. It’s not hard, not enough to start a fight over (he learned that lesson) but it’s still infuriating in its own right, as are the two other assholes who walk in behind him.

Construction workers in a town with no construction. Or maybe mill workers with no mill. It’s always hard to keep straight the excuses, honestly. 

Hollow Springs is not a dying town, but is not, and likely has never been, a thriving one. The mill shit down over thirty years ago and somehow, still, people complain about it like it was yesterday. Everyone’s got a story about how “back in the old days” things were better, that gas was cheaper, that you used to be able to afford groceries, that people didn’t complain like the young folk nowadays, weren’t afraid of a “hard day’s work”.

I’ve given up trying to point out how much they piss and moan too. It’s not their fault that alcohol makes people stupid, though I withhold no blame for their continued consumption of it. At this point, it’s a lot easier to just nod my head and agree at the stuff I agree with and ignore the rest, at least until it gets too nasty. Then people get cut off.

Jonah doesn’t like it, but Jonah can fuck off. He can get someone else to take the morning shifts in a business built on tips + minimum wage. Shit did used to be cheaper, even accounting for inflation- that’s what you get when a bunch of gross rich people pay a bunch of other gross rich people to keep making each other richer.

I almost giggle at the thought. It’s kind of refreshing, going back to a more familiar existential dread. There’s a comfort in familiarity, even if it’s familiar misery.

I go back behind the bar, grab six of the glass bottles from the fridge, and bring them to the table that Chuck and his friends have commandeered.

If the other two have names, I haven’t bothered to learn them. They’re Chuck and his friends, and every day, at around 10am, these three assholes wander into the bar, drink the better part of a pack of beers, complain about whatever game is on, and then leave, to do fuck knows what. I’ve seen them come back in on the rare occasion that I do a double-shift and stay till closing, and drink a good three times that much, but fuck knows why they can’t just do this at home. Jonah marks up the beers by a dollar each, easy- they could buy this same shit at a gas station and get shitfaced at 10am somewhere else.

But, when they yell at me to turn the tv on, I do. I set their beers on the table, collect their crumpled fivers, and keep the change (little as it is) as a tip.

Usually, anyways. This time, I’m confronted with something new.

A fresh, clean, crisp twenty-dollar bill.

I raise an eyebrow at Chuck, who’s smiling like the cat that caught the canary, his two friends chortling.

“What’sa matter? Ain’t ever seen that much not in singles?”

I blink, try to track the meaning of-

Is he just calling me poor, or calling me a stripper?

“Just never seen one around you, Chuck,” I tell him honestly, setting the beers down and picking it up. “I’d tell you that making forgery’s bad for business, and likely to get you a federal charge, but this looks too good to be your handiwork.”

“Fuck you too, bitch,” he grumbles. “That there’s real workin-man money. Got a new gig in town paying buku bucks at a proper job, for real men.”

I can’t help it- I snort. “Congratulations, Chuck.”

He seems ready to hear me say something else- but I don’t.

Chuck’s not an asshole, he’s a piece of shit. He’s genuinely not a good person, and he’s never done me a solid turn, and I don’t like him- but if he’s getting paid to do a real job, then… good for him? Maybe it means he’ll spend more at the bar, maybe not- it doesn’t really matter all that much. It certainly isn’t something I’m going to insult him over. 

I would like to insult him. I think he’s a bad person who makes bad choices and treats people badly. There’s always an implied threat of physicality, when it comes to annoying him and his buddies, and I could do without that, but even with it present, I still would like to make him feel bad.

Just… not about having a job. Or being proud of that fact. Even if he’s doing it in his usual piece-of-shit style.

I shrug. “That’s it. Congrats.”

“Well… yeah. Just bring us some more beers, willya? We’re celebration, and it’s been dry mornings ever since you started slacking off.”

I shrug again. “Sure, coming up. You want a pitcher of something or just more bottles?”

“You know what, fuck it. We’re getting a pitcher, boys!”

They slap the table and whoop, making my head hurt (10am is way too early for this shit), but eventually they’re more entrenched in watching the bar’s shitty little tv rattle on about some football game to pay me any mind. The 20 covers their bottles, and has enough left over for the pitcher, though, annoyingly, less than usual for me… but that’s life sometimes.

And… that’s it.

They drink, and leave. Kitchen doesn’t open for a few more hours, though I’m pretty sure I hear Carlo wander in through the backdoor a few hours into my shift. A few more people come and go, stopping off for a midday drink and bar snacks. I mix three cocktails the whole day, each of them whiskey-based, and otherwise experience a morning where nothing of any note happens.

It’s the most relaxed I’ve felt in days.

Every time that I start to think about my trip to meat-world, there’s something to do. Every time I want to crawl back in bed and die, I look at the tip jar or the clock and calculate my pay for the day. Jonah wanders down from his upstairs apartment once, gives me a look and a few sarcastic comments, but I’ve done my job as well as I usually do (which is better than either of his other bartenders, in my opinion), and he just… wanders over to his office after a while.

I can still feel every inch of my body. I still notice my hands shaking, every now and then. 

But as far as I can tell, there’s no weird meat-cracks in the bar, no videogames in sight, no strange computers talking to me like they’re from a blog about a tv-show during the mid 2010s. I feel almost distressingly human, for the time it takes for the end of my shift to arrive and for my mind to focus on the tasks directly in front of me.

Until I hear the door open, look up… and see no one.

The door swings shut the exact same way it always does when someone walks in, but no one has walked in.

…the last time I experienced that sorta fucked up phenomena, I ended up in the woods in a mold-infested ghost house.

Jonah keeps a baseball bat under the counter. I’ve only had to use it once, but I know right where it is. My hand drifts to it as I pan my eyes across the room, tracking the two tables and (two people) one man at the bar, trying to see-

What was that?

I start doing a headcount, breathing slow and even.

Two tables, both with two people each. It’s around 3pm, and I can hear Carlo fixing up the kitchen in the back, hear the hum of the ceiling fans, see the sunlight dimming outside the window. At the bar, there are two people one guy-

There. It happened again.

I know, intimately, what it looks like when my mind fucks up. This isn’t that.

I grab the bat, putting it in my hand, and turn-

“Hmm. Still doesn’t prove-”

The bat comes up and points directly at the speaker, sitting at the curve at the far end of the bar.

They blink in surprise, cocking their head to one side.

“Well. I suppose that cinches it, now don’t it?”

There is a person there, on the phone, staring at me. 

I cannot see a single other thing about them.

I know that they are a person. I know they have a head, eyes, hands, ears, a phone, a voice, a mouth, a body. But I can’t see those things. I know that they’re there, but my eyes can’t seem to find them, can’t seem to settle on them to properly acknowledge them. Trying is like seeing one of those weird swimmers in your eye- look too closely and the jelly of it moves, sending the creature sliding away.

“Sorry for the surprise, dearie. Had to make sure you’re the real deal.”

They close the phone (it’s a fucking flipphone?) and put it on the table, and only then do I notice the part of them that I can actually see.

On the back of their hand is a single, wet, glistening eye, two wet, messy tracts of what looks like syrupy blood or paint crossing it out. It looks half-blind, milky, with redness from the x marking it leaking into the pupil, and it’s looking about, frantically, almost desperately.

“I don’t suppose you could spare me a beer while we chat? I figure we’ve got a decent bit to get through, hmm?”