It’s empty of customers. Chairs are overturned and stacked on tables and lights are dimmed, except for one piercing bright light by the bar. Darius, the Djinn, stands in that light polishing a couple of shot glasses. A massive black man, he has thick biceps, linebacker shoulders. He looks like he’s been carved from stone.

He puts the glasses down, picks up a bottle of tequila, and pours a full measure into each. I limp up to the bar, the only sound my shoes against the wooden floor. I pull out a stool and sit. I put both hands on the bar. His eyebrows raise at the bandaged, blood-soaked hand, but he doesn’t say anything.

We lift our glasses in a silent toast. To what, I don’t know. To surviving? To life? To death? To one more day that there’s a chance to make a difference? Or one more day that there’s a chance to destroy it all?

We down our shots in single gulps. The tequila burns on the way down, a warmth in my belly far different than the temperatures I’ve been baking in all week.

“I understand,” Darius says, refilling our glasses, “that you found yourself a bottle.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Blackmoore is a writer of crime and horror whose work has appeared in the magazines Needle, Plots With Guns, Spinetingler, Thrilling Detective, Shots, and Demolition. He has also written essays on LA politics and crime for the website LAVoice.org and the LA Noir true crime blog.