The Best View in the Bar by J.D. Strange

The Best View in the Bar by J.D. Strange

The moon shone down on the city like a spotlight in a darkened theater.

Shadows danced and demons lurked in every corner of The Plaza.

I was looking for something simple – The best view in the bar.

I walked towards the joint. Forgotten women wore big biker boots and smoked endless cigarettes while looking the customers up and down through the beaded curtains with an ancient unsatisfied hunger. Their eyes whipped side to side like predators catching the movement of quarry. They danced to vintage heavy metal from the late 80s, Judas Priest Broke the Law before Guns N Roses welcomed visitors to The Jungle.

There’d been a new infestation in the bar unimaginatively named Blood Suckers Agogo. The dancers here weren’t looking for money, no, they were looking for blood, lots of blood.

Inside the place was all blacks, reds, mirrors, and smoke. The stage ran the length of the bar, and either side, red velvet booths. In one corner stood a flotation tank, a transparent block with a plastic dummy who looked vaguely human staring out at the dancers. You can romanticize bloodsuckers all you like, but to me, they will always be repulsive parasites feeding from the decent and vulnerable sectors of society.

But, man, they sure knew how to dress a joint.   

Here in the Plaza most of the customers were grifters, criminals, sexually repressed monsters who crept out into the night like phantoms before vanishing to their pits before dawn. Sure, the odd incel broke up the criminal lineup the same way a sorbet cleanses the pallet before chowing down on the goose liver pate, but these were mainly grifters on the run.     

I slid in and took a booth in the far corner looking over the stage. The best view in the bar. Six of them onstage. One had a vampire bat tattooed across her chest and neck, and lower down on the abdomen – the numbers 666 branded in black ink on her white flesh. Another wore thigh -high boots and held a black whip, limp, in her mitt. She mockingly licked it as she looked directly at me. She mouthed the words,

I LOVE YOU.

Sometimes everything is in the unsaid, the diffidence that falters.   

The dancers weren’t interested in me. They didn’t love me. They weren’t interested in me, or you, or anybody. They weren’t interested in the nationality of the clientele, nor their share portfolio. They cared not for your troubles, your shame, the way your mother smothered you nor the way your father ignored you. The dancers weren’t particularly interested in dancing neither. They weren’t interested in much at all. The Johns meant less than zero. Much less. We were all bottom feeders. A lovesick art student from Copenhagen burning through his twenties sucking on the last embers of a trust fund tasted just as good as a Japanese billionaire on the skids. This, and only, this, was the truth.

“Found anything you like?”

Her voice snapped me out of it. I had company. I guess she had been north of thirty when she’d first been bitten, but that might have been a couple of centuries ago. She wore an eye-patch, I guessed for effect, rather than necessity. Her good eye was sharp and wise, felt like she was looking deep into my soul with it.

Tasting it.

Tenderizing it.

Tempting it.  

“You can choose any lady, and have her take you home,” she said.  

“I know the drill, sister,” I told her and glanced off into the distance.   

“We don’t practice the barbaric form of blood-letting that our ancestors did,” she said with a voice deep and slow like she’s pulling every syllable from a stagnant pool, and holding it before her one good eye, “we leave that kind of practice to flying foxes, leaches, and entertainment lawyers.”

“You were reading my mind?”

“Well, yes, we do have that ability,” she smiled. “But don’t let that scare you away.”

“Not scared, just cautious.”

“Really. How so?”

“I come from a long line of hunters,” I told her. “My mother and father were killed by your type, and before them, their mothers and fathers. Do not try to trick me.”

She opened up her palm, “there’s nothing in my hand, or up my sleeve, mister,” that smile again. “Why don’t you relax and have a drink?”   

I ordered a Bloody Mary for the hell of it, and thought about my next move.

The drink arrived and I took a long hard hit.

Strange how the room begins to spin. It spins some more. The ceiling opens up and grabs me by the throat. Then a cold darkness. A pair of hands holds my body and sweeps it somewhere else. I am still fully aware of the music. A B-side from a long forgotten White Snake record.              

I wake up in that plastic block, naked, looking out at the dancers as they shuffle along the stage. The woman on the stage mouths the words I LOVE YOU.

Unvoiced, I spell the words SAVE ME.

I came from a long line of hunters, but now, I watch as the undead prey on the bizarre.

I kind of like it this way; it is, after all, the best view in the bar.  

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright J.D. Strange 2024