tooth soup

photo credit: BlakJakDavy

Note: The response to my question of whether to serialise a couple of my longish short stories was an overwhelming yes, so here is the first one. I’ve set up all the parts to automatically post every Friday at midnight, so that it’s not in your face every morning of every day. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and a big thank you to everyone and anyone that reads this for taking the time out, it means a lot to me!

Next to the bar

sat a four-legged bar stool, the kind found in pubs all over the world. A tripod of wood with a hoop nailed at the bottom to hold it together, topped off with a scrap of leather stuffed full of whatever lay about the place that wasn’t as hard as the ground. Perched upon this stool, his arse firmly melded into the pockets of foam that still clung to existence deep within the seat, was a drunk. He also was the kind found in pubs all over the world. Ratty hair presiding over a hook-nose twisted by a rugby tackle to point vaguely towards a pregnant gut, eyelids like mouldy roller-blinds slapping wetly down on bloodshot eyes that sparkled with amber bubbles.

The drunk’s name was Dave McGowan. The stool’s name was Charley Mitchell, or at least it had been, long ago. Unfortunately it was now a bar stool and mainly nameless to the patrons of The Griffin, which was the type of place that a dive ends up at when it hits the concrete. The Griffin had several distinguishing features including, but not limited to, the area’s most varied collection of smashed beer bottles carpeting the avenue leading to it, and a lone flashing pinball machine; its high score held by one Mr. ‘CNT’.

Charley the bar stool hadn’t always been stuck in such a dump. His previous residence had been an old-school pub kept alive on the back of a publican who valued his customers more than his hip pocket. As soon as he kicked the bucket, his kids had swooped in on the land and sold it for residential development without a moment’s pause. So it was that, a couple of weeks and a jolted ride in the back of a removal van later, Charley Mitchell found himself filthier than ever, with the sweaty behind of Dave McGowan worming its way ever further into the folds of his worn leather seat. Stools are used to this and don’t often complain, and if they do it’s usually when the occupant is too far gone to think the abuse is anything but their own neurons yapping back at them. Presently, Dave was at that stage of incoherency. He weaved his beer through the air with his right hand, while expanding on his tales of woe with rude gestures using his left. The crowd at the Griffin wasn’t given to being a particularly tolerant one, and it was nearing the point at which glasses would be set down firmly, and words spoken even more so. Finally, when Dave went on record as having the opinion that all the patron’s women were ‘…desperate for a man of my intellect with which to cleanse themselves of the dullards they must endure daily…’ the trouble that had been brewing whistled and spilled over. Two regulars that had been enduring Dave’s rants all night didn’t take particularly kindly to this latest proclamation, and they set aside their sleeves in order to tell him so.

To be continued next Friday!

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