DRUNK IN HELL.
Judas sat up in his chair. Gandhi and Hitler had finished their drinks and were motioning towards the bar. Judas got a frustrated expression on his thin face and walked towards the bar. Hell’s barkeeper was a tall, red daemon who occasionally took on the appearance of Frank Sinatra. This wasn’t one of those times, but the thing was still sharply dressed.
“Same again, Sam,” ‘cause that was its name, “keep the change.” Judas said as he reached into his money pouch and produced thirty pieces of silver. He slid them across the bar and Sam laid out three glasses of a sour red wine. A Springsteen track cut through the screams of the tortured souls and for a moment, the place seemed like it had atmosphere. Judas picked the three glasses up between his outstretched hands and brought them back to the table.
“This claret is piss. Sam’s got all sorts behind there, why the fuck is this all we get?” said Gandhi before taking a large swig and managing to belch and fart at the same time.
“Sam’s a funny guy.” Said Judas, sipping on his own drink and wincing at the acidity. It was always this piss. Someone should fucking say something to Sam. While Judas fumed silently, Hitler took a Windsor Blue cigarette from an old box, tapped the end three times on the table and sparked it with a match. He blew smoke into Gandhi’s face and chuckled to himself, feeling clever.
They all drained their glasses and Sam came over, looking just like Frank Sinatra, to collect the empties. Judas decided that he needed to say something.
“Hey, Sam. What the fuck are you playing at with this shit-cheap wine, huh? My silver’s good at the bar, you know it. Why the hell do you have to sell us short?”
“Remember where you are, J. You guys are smears of shit on the toilet paper of time, man. You don’t get to choose. Maybe if you learn to like the shit, they’ll give you something worse so be grateful.” Sam said.
A couple of minutes later,...
DRUNK IN HELL.
Judas sat up in his chair. Gandhi and Hitler had finished their drinks and were motioning towards the bar. Judas got a frustrated expression on his thin face and walked towards the bar. Hell’s barkeeper was a tall, red daemon who occasionally took on the appearance of Frank Sinatra. This wasn’t one of those times, but the thing was still sharply dressed.
“Same again, Sam,” ‘cause that was its name, “keep the change.” Judas said as he reached into his money pouch and produced thirty pieces of silver. He slid them across the bar and Sam laid out three glasses of a sour red wine. A Springsteen track cut through the screams of the tortured souls and for a moment, the place seemed like it had atmosphere. Judas picked the three glasses up between his outstretched hands and brought them back to the table.
“This claret is piss. Sam’s got all sorts behind there, why the fuck is this all we get?” said Gandhi before taking a large swig and managing to belch and fart at the same time.
“Sam’s a funny guy.” Said Judas, sipping on his own drink and wincing at the acidity. It was always this piss. Someone should fucking say something to Sam. While Judas fumed silently, Hitler took a Windsor Blue cigarette from an old box, tapped the end three times on the table and sparked it with a match. He blew smoke into Gandhi’s face and chuckled to himself, feeling clever.
They all drained their glasses and Sam came over, looking just like Frank Sinatra, to collect the empties. Judas decided that he needed to say something.
“Hey, Sam. What the fuck are you playing at with this shit-cheap wine, huh? My silver’s good at the bar, you know it. Why the hell do you have to sell us short?”
“Remember where you are, J. You guys are smears of shit on the toilet paper of time, man. You don’t get to choose. Maybe if you learn to like the shit, they’ll give you something worse so be grateful.” Sam said.
A couple of minutes later, Sam came back with a jug of the piss-cheap claret and set it down on the table, telling the boys that it was on the house. They allowed themselves to be grateful for that on the sly. Glasses were refilled and drained often and the boys got boisterous. Hitler kept demanding that they go to a titty bar and Gandhi offered to phone up this girl he knew. Pure filth, really tall, blonde, sweet ass. He had a coin out, ready for the payphone at the bar, but Judas piped up and said that it was too early for that kind of antic and they should finish off the wine.
Several glasses later, Judas went to the bar and thanked Sam for the jug of wine. Sam brushed it off and refilled the jug, on the house again. Judas pocketed his thirty pieces of silver. As he carried the large jug back to the table, Judas had a spring in his step. He told the other boys with glee how the second jug was on the house. They took the second jug into a booth so that they could get some privacy from a family of Japanese tourists who were staring at them piercingly. Their story was one of sexual abuse and double parenticide. The boys had to get away from their hollow gaze.
“You know, there was this guy in India. He was told to go fuck himself, so he went out to market and bought a huge knob of butter. The guy greased up his entire top half, bent over and shoved his head right up his ass.” It was the best conversation Gandhi could come up with.
“What happened to him? Did he die up there?”
“Nah, he lived another twenty years after that. It was tuberculosis that finally got him. I can’t see how he caught it with his head up his ass. Fate’s a funny thing.”
Hitler threw half a glass of wine down his throat and nodded agreement. Judas stared into space trying to picture how a man could perform such a feat and why he didn’t suffocate. Proud of himself, Gandhi burped loudly and giggled at the rasping sound it made.
A Victorian gentleman in a neighbouring booth had taken exception to Gandhi’s manners and requested that he “pipe down”. Judas had seen him in there a couple of nights before, and the word was he was a disgraced army officer. Gave a load of horrifying orders in Africa that even the colonial powers thought worthy of his imprisonment. Of course, wealth and status saved him from the hangman.
Gandhi had drunk enough to think himself mighty. He called the guy a prick and a phony and a motherfucker. Hitler joined in the jeering with a well-placed “arsehole” and Judas shouted “yeah!” This was boiling over into a fight. It would have been a low-down bar scrap, too, if Sam hadn’t intervened.
“Guys… guys. Guys! Come on, buddy, calm down. Boys, the fuck do you think you’re doing? I thought I was doing you guys a favour and you gotta go and spoil it. The fuck am I gonna do, huh? Play nice. Come on, move over here.” He pointed to a booth at the other end of the room. Judas was muttering to himself as they shuffled over to their new seats. It was embarrassing.
The whole thing was pretty much forgotten after a few more drinks went down. This jug of wine seemed to be bottomless as they pounded down glass after glass, getting more vulgar and restless with every drop. They started to sing some old drinking songs as their wine tasting got out of hand:
“This landlady in Spain
had seven daughters, none of them plain.
She whored them for a sack of grain
and now the priest goes hungry.
The Queen of Denmark sits and shits
and never does go hungry.
This whore Florentine
had a problem drinking wine.
She once stole some from a church
and now the priest goes thirsty.
The Queen of Denmark sits and shits,
and never does go thirsty,”
On it went. Sam made them shut up after some six more verses ‘cause the other customers were starting to get rowdy. Hitler was swaying. The boys were genuinely merry, swearing and burping and talking shit about each others grandmothers. After a few more glasses, they were done. They had to get out of there.
The walk home took all three of the boys in near enough the same direction, so they walked together. Hitler kept stopping to vomit in the street. Judas had to keep an eye out for the cops; they’d peel his kneecaps again if he got caught drunk and disorderly. All the while, Gandhi was slurring as he tried to sing Bohemian Rhapsody without dropping the Windsor Blue he’d tapped from Hitler pre-vomit.
They got home one by one. Judas got in first and immediately took off his robe, hanging it on a hook in the hall. He got a beer from the fridge and fell asleep in the armchair, scratching his balls and watching some terrible game show where a reformed alcoholic interviewed battered wives for prizes. He dreamed something hazy about a synagogue full of crows but he didn’t remember it.
When Hitler got home, he washed his face with cold water and crawled into bed. Still feeling queasy, though, he couldn’t sleep. He stayed up ‘til about four, when the sleeping pills kicked in. If he was anywhere else, the dose would have killed him. As usual, he didn’t dream of anything at all. This always frustrated him.
Gandhi hit the whisky when he made it inside. He drank himself blind and passed out on the living room floor wrapped in the shower curtain which had come loose during an abortive attempt to piss standing up. The morning was going to be a different sort of hell for all of them.
They met up again at around one and made to Sam’s bar for lunch. It had been a good night, they all agreed. That cheap, pissy claret had come good. They welcomed their next drink of it, so Judas was sent to the bar because it was always his round and he always had thirty pieces on him. He caught Sam’s eye and said “same again please, Sam.”
Sam returned with three drinks, took the money from Judas and watched his face drop.
“Aw, man… fucking white cider?!”
AgainstPete