FIVE
––––––––
One month later.
Present day.
It was dark, and dirty, and loud. Just like every other time he’d pushed through the scarred wooden door, the smell that assaulted him was of alcohol, urine with a hint of blood, and a dollop of body odor. Hell’s Waiting Room, even the devil himself couldn’t come up with better. The scum of the world, the has-beens, and the never-weres mingled in the sound of heavy rock, punctuated with the clatter of pool balls ricocheting, and every curse word known to man.
The game never changed, the music stayed the same, the faces hid different souls, but they all meant the same thing. If you were here, you didn’t belong anywhere. Whether this had been your haunt for a week, or a decade, you still didn’t belong. Not here, not anywhere.
Anything went in
