2019-12-17 - After Club

The lights from the boardwalk flickered in contrast with the store lights along the tourist attraction. A couple of customers sat inside the ice cream parlor; it was winter, the business was slow, and they both looked up when the front door opened. He double-took, she gasped and covered her gaped mouth. Both followed the shape as it passed through. Another pair of eyes, from the kitchen, silently watched the figure pass by the open window that allowed him to view the floor, and the back when the specter passed into the kitchen and then through the door to climb the stairs up to the second-floor loft.
The nighttime manager looked back to the customers, brows risen, and they looked at each other, left their half-eaten confections and left with the courtesy to make it at least seem like it wasn't that that drove them off.
A pleasantry was offered from the kitchen but wasn't returned.

A heavy leather jacket hit the floor, mostly, and portions of the bed before the light in the bathroom turned on. A tight army green tee shirt was next to be discarded, on the floor of the bathroom, bloodstained and worn. The apparition stared at his reflection; if one looks up death glare, they see his face staring back at him, and all he saw were the lacerations and bruising. He took short inventory, before turning a hot shower on, finding more to take stock of with his painful movements.

Arm raised over his head, he fingered the edges of an ugly bruise while steam fingers crept over the edges of the bathtub, already beginning to fog the edges of the mirror into which a reflection of himself scowled. And watched himself putting his hands on the sides of his sink for a second before turning it on and feeding himself a cupped palm of water. While he stared back at the reflection and the reflection stared back, his cheeks bulged back and forth, sloshing the water in his mouth.

Holding back his hair, the apparition leaned down to spit and watched pink liquid swirl the basin and then disappear down the drain. The metaphor wasn't lost on him and made him stare even longer. And when he looked up, his eyes cast over the bruises, he didn't see them anymore. Every mark, every ache, every contusion.

He saw penance.

Widespread fingers smoothed over firm pecs, fingernails brushing over blotches of light, dark chest hair. He paused, his eyes opening wider. Studiously he looked down at the man in the mirror and then down at his own chest.

Blotches?

"Did that bitch pull my fucking hair?"