Rats in the Mattresses and Roaches in the Ceiling

I was literally told to "dumb it down" for this piece. Sorry, but it fricken sucks.. Instead of throwing my brain matter easily like I did for the last, I had to find baby words - which took hours. Hell, I didn't even see if autocorrect screwed me over or not. If you see anything out of place, tell me.

Anyway, this is the last time I don't just type.. I sat there for hours and got nothing done to advance my plans.. While I like how it began adding to a background for my character, it went nowhere fast.. hopefully part 3 will be much better.. Anyway, critics are always welcomed.



Rats in the Mattresses and Roaches in the Ceiling

In this town, runnin' from the 5.0 is about as commonplace as a junky out on the curb, crushing a used needle into his veins. Or rather, they are simply one in the same. And in this business, the girls' gotta learn to run in high heels. I sit here, on my own sullen doorstep, watching history's oldest surviving career work as it does best. Nearly every night, the girls get chased through the streets by the cops looking for a cheap thrill - a free one, rather. It's rather sickening.. the boys in blue are more worried about getting their rocks off for free, rather than cleaning up the streets. It's rather ironic, to see the whores pursued through the streets and then to hear their deafening cries as they are raped. To be perfectly honest, all of us do what we've got to do. I for one, don't do much of anything. I typically meander about the various backroads and alleyways, literally doing.. nothing. These girls allow themselves this torture, not on the condition that they simply loving being whores, but rather they are stuck in the same downward spiral everyone around is. They're hooked on drugs, they've got a baby, they can't afford the sandwich their lazy ass boyfriend can't prepare for himself - or maybe they are fighting for a roof and four walls.

I have a home. Albeit, it is nothing much to look at, nor live in and I'd be a lunatic to delude myself into thinking of it as anything nurturing. It was a one bedroom crap shack, a tiny built in kitchen, dining room combo and a disgusting bathroom with cracked tiling and peeling old wall paper that resembled some old hotel room's cheesy tapestry. It was infested with any manner of bugs, ranging from cockroaches to brown recluse spiders, and for the life of me, I can hear clawing beneath the walls during each night's pained respite. Hell, my god damned mattress was more like sleeping on crumbled pieces of cement stuffed inside of a body back, garnished with a hint of razorblades. The corners were ripped upward and the "fluff" was leaking out of the seams. It's a wonder bed bugs didn't nest there, but hell, maybe it was just too damned uncomfortable for even them. But I am thankful not to be in their shoes.

I stood upon the perch and stepped off onto the street. I wasn't much in the mood to watch the nightly round up of the workin' gals and simply sauntered down a nearby alley. There didn't seem to be any urchins banging rocks together behind the dumpsters, nor asking me for change - or worse, trying to gut me for the whole twenty bucks tucked in my jacket pocket. Maybe tonight would be significantly better than the usual meat grinder. I stuffed my hand into the tattered duster that adorned my shoulders, retrieving a crumpled pack of '100's. My hands gently flipped open the box to behold only a few strands of dried tobacco that slid against the corners of card board. You have got to be fucking kidding me.. I simply dropped the emptied container onto the pavement and continued onward, my foot crushing it beneath the heel.

*****

Tonight, I drank myself into a stupor. I sat amongst the dirty, haggard, and down right disgusting patrons of a bar that reeked of piss and body odor every night and was about as notorious for the smell as it was for bar fights and shootings. It was a dive in every sense of the word - a tiny slice of hell. The stink hole didn't even have a name, or rather no one around could even put a finger on what it was. It had been around since the early seventies, where a man named Earl T. Davis opened his doors for the first time. The old bastard still sat about the bar every night spinning tales of grandeur about the "pub's" glory days, where it would be considered "classy" to have a cocktail there. Bullshit. No sangfroid shithole that serves whiskey and Budweiser alone would have ever been called classy. Needless to say, he has alcohol, and that is more than enough to drown a man's sorrows. Down the hatch, and then blackness.