Support Your Local Liquor Store

There’s a snug, skeletal sort of strip mall mostly filled with payday loans and empty stores supposedly haunted by the retail apparitions of grinning skulls and dancing bones.

In the corner, beyond the dead and decaying movie house but before the masseuse girls from Laos stands an iron barred door – the entrance to my favorite local liquor store.

I’ll buy another fifth of rye until I’m bone dry or as sober and straight as a rail road tie – and then I’ll go back to that dreaded strip mall where the ghosts make cat calls at old witches in shawls and where werewolves are known to creep and crawl.