[colmatrix]

Any thoughts or criticism? I don't write a lot but it's something I've always wanted to do...this is the first thing I've written in years and I haven't invested much time or effort so feel free to shred me! :0

What a way to wake up on a weekend Eyes glued together, blinding light cascading in past hair and scum. He moved to clear it with his hand and was met with a headache like an avalanche, the slightest movement and he knew he was doomed for pain. Jon Rocco coughed and reached for a bottle of water but grabbed an empty beer filled with cigarette butts and drank. Reality snapped him from his stupor as he gagged and spewed. Rocco had gone out for a few beers with coworkers the previous night, the few turned to dozens after a few hours. He tried remembering how he got home and what he had done the night before. Whatever happened, his damn hands hurt like hell and his head throbbed as if it had been hit with a hammer.

He slunk over to the mirror in the drab bathroom in his stamp-sized apartment. He gasped when he saw how red his face and shirt were, and cringed at how bad his face looked. What the hell happened? Jon was a thug, and everyone that knew him knew that he knew it. Not the kind you see in rap videos, rather the kind you don’t want to see in a dark alley even with a few of your friends. He loomed over six feet tall, with massive shoulders and a head and face that only a mother could love, if only he had one. Jon had always been a bully; he had a father that liked to pound on him after pounding beers. Jon took out his aggression on the weak, the small, the girls even jumped out of his way in school as to not offend Rocco the human Socco. Now he was a twenty-six year old busboy with bills, broken hands and a hangover that would make Banaducci jealous.

He fumbled around his shirt, pants, all kinds of scattered mess and trash surrounding his bed. He kicked a beer bottle and stubbed his toe, cursing and kicking things around. Pissed as all hell, he bent down and peered under his futon and saw it. Not his phone, but a wad of hundreds three inches thick. Jon squealed and couldn’t believe his eyes. He racked his broken brain for any details from the night before, but was met by a giant hazy curtain like the ones on Broadway right before the actors come out and take their final bows. Nothing seemed clear at all after going to Fam’s right after closing down Chilies restaurant, where Jon bussed tables. He remember overhearing that a couple of the waitresses were meeting up at his local dive, and looked forward with great zeal at the night ahead at Fam’s. Why were the hot waitresses at his bar? He barely remembered seeing one of them there. He was jealous of the money the waiters and bartenders made, them being kids and all and Jon being 26. He resented them being more successful than he was at their age, yet he couldn’t help but smile whenever one of the girls paid him any attention. One girl even once called him cute, an event he played over and over in his head, but she was just a customer and he never saw her again. Then there was always Jill, who he had caught out of the corner of his eye staring at him on more than one occasion.


With the stack of cash in his hand he felt strong, but he was no fool. Jon knew that it had to have come from the mysterious stranger, the cause of his bloody clothes and swollen hands. Jon knew that whoever he had encountered the night before packed quite a wallop, and he gripped the wad of cash even tighter. Whatever he did from this point on, he would proceed with caution. He would find out how he got the money but also try to keep it in the process. He had to find his phone.


The Night Before

When Sally Taylor walked into a bar like Fam’s, heads turned. She was a stunning nineteen year old blonde with tight jeans and an even tighter white t-shirt that highlighted her firm young body. She brushed her way past the door guy who was supposed to check her ID, and he watched her leave without so much as a second thought. Wouldn’t have mattered, fakes were easier to buy than beer these days. The bartender pretended not to watch her slink her way over to the bar past the drunks’ playing cards at the dinner tables. She dropped her small green purse and cell phone onto the bar-top and smiled slightly at Hank, the nightly keep.

“Can I please have an apple martini, with some cherries?” she asked, and he tried to keep his eyes above her neck. He fixed the drink and wondered why a girl like her would enter a bar like Fam’s, because the name hardly suited the un-family-friendly atmosphere.

“Hon, if you don’t mind me asking, what is a pretty young girl like yourself doing in a dump like this?” he asked her.

“I’m waiting for my friend, she works down at Chilies and we’re supposed to meet up here for drinks. She should actually be here by now,” she looked to the door hoping her friend Jill would come in.

Sally just graduated as best friends with Jill the year before. While Sally had gone off to school, Jill had gone to work at Chilies and had gotten hooked on the easy cash, fun people, and late nights. This is probably one of MANY nights here at Fam’s for Jill, she thought. Jill had been a bad influence on her in high school, and she usually followed Jill’s lead. It was at Jill’s when she drank her first beer, at Jill’s when she kissed her first boy, and at Jill’s when Jill tried to kill herself. Sally sighed and tried to think of reasons they were ever friends in the first place, as she sipped her free martini. Another perk of being a knock-out gorgeous girl. Jill had always brought out the worse in Sal, and in a way that excited Sal and brought her places she had never been. Places she never wanted to go to again. She sipped and thought that this might be the last time I can hang with my old friend Jill.