An oversized coffin stands erect, next to the stage, near the dressing room door. A skeleton rests inside, upright with crossed arms. Cobwebs cover the tableau. The coffin floats in fog and strobe lights. The DJ is a little too generous with the fog, as DJs often are.
A hipster customer sits at the rack with a hard-line part, pint of IPA and a hard-on protruding from skinny jeans. A sexy nurse approaches. She unzips her uniform.
"That coffin is pretty cool," he says.
She says nothing—only smiles with ruby lips and winged eyes.
A bald guy in a grey XXXL t-shirt at the rack debates him.
"It’s creepy," he says. "Reminds me I’m closer to death." He chugs a stout and leans forward on the rack.
The chipmunk-faced owner chats with Bux at a corner table, in the back of the club.
"You probably love the coffin as much as I do," he says.
"I think you should keep it up year-round," she says. "Chicken-foot the broke jerks to stay out."
"I knew you’d like it. It stays until New Year’s."
Chipmunk’s girlfriend struts over, with her perfect rhinoplasty stuck up high. Everyone calls her "Princess," but she calls herself "Rio."
Bux takes the intrusion as a cue to go on stage, since the club is empty and nobody’s paying attention to the rotation of strippers. It’s late enough to where everyone is so drunk, no one remembers who is supposed to go on stage—not even the DJ.
Bux twirls her devil tail and circles the pole, kicks her leg and twists her hips—a lusty Lucifer. The two-person audience is as horny as her headband. She dances to Siouxsie and the Banshees’ "Halloween" and Bauhaus’s "Bela Lugosi’s Dead." The sexy nurse follows. She dances to Alice Cooper’s "Feed My Frankenstein" and Bobby Boris Pickett’s "Monster Mash." Then, it’s the sexy cat, the sexy cheerleader, the sexy nun, the sexy cop, et al.—all clanking heels to the music on the checkered tile.
Bux returns to the stage, climbs the pole and catches a glimpse of the owner arguing with Princess. He slides her an envelope. She ignores it and purses her lips. They’re fighting in a quiet tone.
"I’m going back to L.A. tomorrow," Princess says.
"Fine, go," the owner says. "You’ll be back, just like the last two times."
A frat party howls to the bar. Button-down shirts glow in the blacklight. Princess tracks them to calculate who’s paying the tab, so she knows who to hustle next. "I’m going back to Keanu and there’s nothing you can do to stop me," Princess says, then advances to mingle with the frat party.
The owner slams a shot of vodka and sips a coke back. He storms over to the frat party.
"Princess, you’re needed in the office," the owner says. "Now."
She apologizes to the party and follows the owner. They move the squabble to the office. Moments later, Princess runs out of the club. The owner crosses his arms next to the skeleton in the coffin. Then, he throws coins into its rib cage.
"This thing is cursed! Someone take it out of here," he says.
The local metalhead who’s filling in as a DJ hops to the owner.
"Did I hear you correctly, boss?"
"Get this accursed garbage out of my club!"
Bux stumbles down the stairs of the stage. The sexy nun tumbles over and falls on her face. Blood streams from her nose. She screams. Bux fetches a towel from the bar. The sexy nurse helps the sexy nun scramble to her feet. The frat boys cheer them on, assuming it’s a catfight. The owner shakes his head. "See? Cursed!"
It’s last call, anyway, so the bar closes. The frat boys scatter. The owner slams a couple of shots of vodka at the bar, while the bartender cleans up. The sexy nun leaves first, in full costume. The sexy cat, the sexy cop, the sexy cheerleader, the sexy nurse, et al. change into their street clothes before leaving the club. The last two to go—while the owner sulks and the bartender closes out—are the local metalhead DJ and Bux. They’re neighbors, so they lug the over-sized coffin down the barren street to the apartment building two blocks away.
The coffin fits against the wall, where the bed should be. Metal DJ tosses a sleeping bag and pillow out of the way and sets down the wooden box. Bux cracks open a beer with a lighter for Metal DJ and another for herself. They blast Manowar and Slayer in the tiny apartment. They trash talk their coworkers. They decide they’re long lost siblings and make a pact to look out for each other, before platonically passing out, together, in the coffin.
Jaime Dunkle mixes the profound and the profane in her prose, with an altruism that stems from her tenure as an award-winning journalist. Her stories range from fiction to personal narrative and often blur between the two. ’Stripped’ is her forthcoming book that was chosen as a semifinalist on the YesYesBooks Open Reading For Fiction contest in 2019. For more info, go to JaimeDunkle.com. No creepers allowed.
