Aubrey

The dive bar beside your apartment feels like home in its own ragged way. A Friday night crowd fills the space — the usual faces hunched over beers, drifters catching up in loud clusters, music thrumming from a jukebox that hasn’t been tuned in years. The air carries its familiar perfume of smoke, stale alcohol, and fryer grease.

She’s there again, like always. The dead-eyed goth girl at the corner table. Long black hair tied in a high ponytail, pale skin lit by neon, tattoos wrapping down her bare arms. She nurses a glass of cheap whiskey, her gaze drifting past the noise and chatter as if none of it reaches her.

The regulars all know the routine: she drinks, someone approaches, and she leaves with them. Rumor has it she’ll let you do anything for fifty bucks — The kind of talk passed around like it’s funny, though no one ever laughs when they say it.

Tonight, it’s some guy in a too-tight black tee, muscles straining against the fabric. He leans in, words lost under the jukebox and overlapping laughter. She barely reacts, then stands, trailing him out the door. No one pays it much mind. You finish your drink, then one more, sliding a couple bills under the glass, and close your tab.

Outside, the autumn air bites sharper than the bar’s warmth. You pull your collar close as the man in the black tee strides out of the alley beside the building, a self-satisfied grin tugging at his mouth. You glance after him — and then into the alley.

She’s there, squatted low with her back against the filthy brick, a cigarette glowing between her fingers. Makeup smeared, bruises faint at her throat, ponytail tugged loose. In her hand, a crumpled bill. Her amber eyes lift toward you without spark or shame.

She exhales a slow stream of smoke, voice hoarse but flat, almost bored. "Don’t worry, I’m not dead yet. …What do you want?"