The Center of Hell

The Center of Hell
By Sara Spring

Dear Editor,

The bar at Mc Quinty’s has always been dimly lit, and these days when I hear a sound that I don’t know I get uneasy and shift in my wooden chair. During the day the front door rarely opens letting light into the hovel exposing all of us cowering from the outside. This is our safe haven in which the troubles out there can not touch us. In essence, McQuinty’s offers us the ability to be a secret society of rejects; people who do not have jobs and none of us ask where money comes from to pay for drinks. It isn’t an especially rough crowd, just a bit gritty. That is, until she came along with her bright smile, young skin and round supple breasts. Her nails were clean and slightly long but well trimmed. Her hair was long and black with a luster that looked soft and smelled clean. She had long thin legs and arms, and her eyes glittered with youth and innocence. She made me hungry deep within the folds of my fat old flesh. I’d watch her through my whiskey haze when she wasn’t aware. My dirty blue jeans clinging to my fat thighs and my thin flannel pulling at the seams of my arms, I had been comfortable with my lack of looks but she made me want to make an effort. A girl of that class would never want a man like me.
She was a talker and, boy, could she keep up a conversation. There was little interaction needed from the partner but she was so pretty it really never mattered. At times, her voice would become a little irritating and her conversation would repeat itself until I’d get sick of it. But if anyone ever mentioned this to her, her pretty little face would screw itself up in to a devastated look of hurt and you’d regret pointing it out almost immediately. She wouldn’t talk to you after that and not even cast scornful looks your direction. It was as if you had become a part of the wall and not something to be interacted with.

She’d basically started to cause a ruckus in our little secret society and some of the men were not going to stand for it very much longer. It wasn’t that we didn’t like the little lady; we just wanted things to go back to what they were before she came in. When we didn’t have to judge ourselves or monitor our chastisements. A pretty woman can be a lot like a mother, you always want to please them and you always know better.

Someone in the bar knew Jim and we all knew that he liked to eat little girls like her. He’d scare her off in no time, but what we didn’t know was what she was made of and her determinations to stay right were she was as in some ways it was pride and in others she had found a sense of home with the rest of us. Now, I cannot write what he ended up doing to her as the thought to this day makes my insides tremble with grief. The level that man took the situation to was entirely incomprehensible to me, she was a flower in our soiled bed of rot and he plucked her out of the ground, smashed her and threw her limp body into a dump to be picked over by the seagulls and homeless only to be taken in by a garbage man to the hospital days later.
I know who asked him to come by the bar on that day and I know what they promised him. It was a promise that wasn’t theirs to make. We all knew what was going to happen, and we all had our reasons for ignoring her cries while it was happening. To this day I deeply regret what happened to her. When I see her now, she is not the same, her eyes are dull and she is lifeless. Her smile has disappeared and she doesn’t talk. I hear her sometimes in the parking lot sobbing in her car but I do no more than keep walking. I cannot imagine what her life must be like now Jim has taken it from her. She has probably become just like us, rotten.

To the girl at McQuinty’s: I am so very sorry that I did not help you when I had the chance. I do not need to ask for your forgiveness, as I am not worthy of it. I just beg that you will recover soon and that the glitter of life in your eyes will return and that your easy smile will come back to you. You will never see me again as my conscience is getting the better of me these days. I’m an old man and I have seen enough. Perhaps tonight you will give me one your sweet pecks on the cheek as you do, and that will be enough for me.

Sincerely,
The Ashamed
1953-2010


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