Open 24 Hours: The Anthology

Prologue

It is an odd place to say the least. It is a place full of wonders and nightmares: a place where time is measured by the cup or how many cigarettes you have left. All the beauty and villainy that life has to offer can be seen here. All that one needs to do is open your mind and heart to this place and you too can experience its ethereal qualities.

It has many signs, many names. The image that sums up such vivid memories is that of a buzzing neon sign near the front door as you enter. Open 24 Hours.

Contained within these pages are numerous short stories. Each story has a life of its own. Each character is fictional, but all of them have a sound enough root in reality, being inspired by the many archetypes that come here. These stories are explorations into the darker side of self and others. They deal with the faces we show and those we hide from others.

If you frequent such an establishment, you too, may see someone just like some of the characters in these stories. If you find yourself identifying all too well with these characters, I have just this to say: Congratulations, and I’m sorry.

My fascination with the 24-hour diner began in my teens and has dominated most of my adult life. Everyone here has a story to tell. Those few that don’t have stories are busy making the stories that other people will tell. Before Reality TV there was the 24-hour diner. Here, the walls have eyes and the tables have ears.

It was in a 24-hour diner that I decided to start writing these stories. I must warn you that there is only a loose chronological order. I tried to evoke a sense of time and the fact that multiple things happen at different places within the diner at the same time. Some stories intertwine, as do the lives of the patrons and workers of a 24-hour diner. Typically, the shorter the story, the less time a character spends there. But it is not necessarily true of them all. Sometimes people have more to say. Sometimes people just take care of their needs and get the hell out.

Each story is written in the language of the character. If you see something that is crude or offensive, it’s because that person chooses to use crude or offensive language. I chose to write about them in this manner in hopes of revealing more about them than what is just seen or heard. Real people talk the way that real people talk. I’m not writing this way to be deliberately offensive.

If something written in these pages does offend you, you obviously don’t have the heart to become a regular at this type of place. Again, congratulations, and I’m sorry.

With all that being said, I hope you enjoy at least some of what is written. Perhaps it will inspire a little courage to walk up to a total stranger and say, Hi! My name is _____. I know you.

If you ever bump into me there, know that my table is always open to those with open minds. Sit. Eat. Drink. Tell your tales, because these are the tales that I offer all of you: the Children of the 24-hour Goddess.

The Dude

He’s here with his boy, his bro, his dude. Not that He’s gay or anything. Fuck no! He loves the cunt!

He wrenches his head to the side to peep out dat azz. His mind reels at all the possibilities of that shitty stinkhole wrapped around his cock.

Damn bitch, he says, elbowing his dude.

Ever since his mom left him when he was six, it became his dad’s job to program him with the singular mindset. That singular mindset would be that women are nothing more than a life support system for a cunt. That’s right, cunt! There’s nothing rosy or romantic about that orifice. Ugly folds of generally useless flesh spilling out of a gaping hole used to piss. There is nothing romantic about that at all.

The cunt’s only purpose is to receive his squat little mushroom-headed knob. To him, his cock is the center of his universe. His own personal warm little security blanket, or binky as it was called back in the days when his mom left him. Every cunt represents the mother that left him, and he was damned sure going to make sure that every life support system for a cunt feels all the pain and inadequacies he felt growing up.

After he’s done using a cunt, his junk a seething, literally white-hot mass inside a latex sheath, he ties off the end and twirls it in circles. He calls it, Taking the kids for a ride.

He then takes the used condom and flushes it down the toilet. He’s a fucking hero, you know? He’s saving the world from stupid, shitfaced, ungrateful little bastards like his mom always told him he was.

Here and now, he’s looking for another cunt to use. He needs to be the hero every couple of days, ‘cause if he doesn’t, his life has no meaning. Besides, if he has too many of those white microscopic stupid, shitfaced, ungrateful little bastards swimming in his nutsack, he gets really cranky.

The Narcissist

Half of the men in this particular 24-hour diner would consider her one hot piece of ass. Seventeen years old. She has a tight little body. Perky breasts peeking out of a powder-blue, baby doll wife beater with the word PRINCESS sequined to strategically accentuate them just so.

She’s a self-proclaimed narcissist that flutters from table to table giving the many people she knows hugs. These people have all laid claim to her in their own right, in their own ways. Some of them have claimed her sexually. Some feed off of her glamour. Others just want to ‘Hit that," and chances are if they asked, they probably could.

Two weeks ago she was in here with some guy from a local band that just made it big. Tonight she’s here with some pretty boy that brags about being a porn star. Yeah, he’s tagged her too, and he has six hours of footage to prove it.

As she moves from table to table, she makes sure that every available man in the place sees her arsenal of piercings and tattoos. She likes to call particular attention to the tribal butterfly on the small of her back, just inches away from asscheecks that would easily deflect a quarter if one were so inclined. She’s the type of girl that Chuck Palahniuk’s Tyler Durden from Fight Club would refer to as a Sport Fuck.

For only being seventeen, her vagina has seen traffic comparable to historic Route 66. After saying hello to all her friends, she decides to sit down next to you.

For a brief moment, you wonder if she tastes anything like the intoxicating fragrance she is wearing. But on closer inspection, she looks quite ill. Despite skeezing off just about everyone else’s plate, you feel the need to buy her a cheeseburger or something just to put some meat on that skeleton of hers.

She wants to know what you’re reading. You politely tell her that you would rather be alone. You can see tears welling up in her eyes.

Then you are reminded of George Clooney in Dusk ‘Til Dawn, and say I may be a bastard, but I’m not a fucking bastard.

She promptly gets up and stomps back to her table, shouting that you are a prick. Her porn star fuckbuddy flexes his pecks and glares at you.

The Artist

She has such a pure beauty about her. You just can’t put your finger on why, but you can’t help but stare at her. She sits at the bar because it’s too busy elsewhere. She needs her space to draw. And draw she does every night.

Each picture bears the suffering inside of her. Each face tells the story of her loneliness and heartbreak. Every night she dies and is reborn in the crumple-cornered, coffee stained pages of that sketchpad.

If you had a camera or could draw her face as she pours her soul onto these pages, you could easily compile a slideshow of significant length. You can see every bit of joy or pain she is experiencing in that time.

They say that true artists suffer for the sake of their art. To see her at work, you want to tell her that she is a work of art herself: and a masterpiece at that.

When she draws you can almost hear some angelic choir calling out from beyond. Her inner fire seethes from beneath her eyelids, out of those magnificent hazel eyes. Her auburn hair spills down to her shoulder, covering her left cheek, allowing for a provocative glimpse at her stunning profile.

The people of her craft would call her Rubenesque. People from older generations would call her form Great for child-bearing. Whichever the case, she wears it well, though with some self-consciousness. She tends to wear long flowing dresses that cling to her silhouette, forcing the mind to wonder at the sensations that could be felt by caressing each curve of her body.

She had just recently been through a nasty breakup with her boyfriend of seven years. For some time now, they had slowly been growing apart from each other, as it often happens with high school relationships. Now it was time to rediscover herself and her direction in life.

She poured so much of herself into her ex-boyfriend. A lot of her identity had become what she found in that relationship. He was, at one time, her life and sense of self. All of that had changed.

On the sketch book in front of her, the face of a woman begins to form. The woman will soon be holding a child: a child that they had once spoken of having together. For a split second, the face on the page and the face of the Artist could be mirror reflections of each other.

Softness fills the Artist’s eyes as she begins to outline the face of the child. Tears begin to flow. She quickly snaps the sketchpad shut, lest her feeling overwhelm her.

This thing that cannot be, and yet somehow finds a tiny corner in the recesses of her heart: it peels back the pages and forces her to look once again.

Tears should never mar the face of one with such beauty. Your heart aches merely at the sight of it.

Some unseen force, some Muse drives her relentlessly onward. Her pencil becomes a blur on the page. The infant’s body takes shape, followed by its arms and finally the hands. In its tiny fingers is a human heart: her heart.

From the shadows of the scribbling a dagger leaps forth and impales the heart. The lead from her pencil snaps off and