Free Kingdom by Anderson O'Donnell

the eyes are a window to the soul,” Sarah was whispering in his ear, confiding in him information she apparently felt too important to say any louder, before slumping back against the bed, as if the effort to make such a profound statement had consumed every last ounce of physical strength she had left. She lit a cigarette and took a drag, exhaling as she stared at the ceiling, through the ceiling, toward nothing.
    “I gotta hit the head,” Dylan shouted over the music, swinging his legs over the side of the giant bed. This was true; he really did have to take a piss. But he was also so restless he just couldn’t sit there on the bed, making small talk, killing time until he could bring one of the girls back to his apartment and fuck her. That was the game: You bring me to the VIP lounge at an exclusive club and provide the coke, I’ll let you fuck me any way you want. And so many nights, that was just how it happened. But right now Dylan had to move—his mind was a mess of memories and emotions he wanted to keep at bay but suppression through chemicals and flesh was extracting a heavy price; he just needed to move and so he was off the bed and heading down the stairs from the VIP area back toward the main dance floor. There was probably a private bathroom somewhere but he really couldn’t give a fuck so he just keep moving, circumventing the dance floor, watching impossibly young kids grind up against one another, the earlier lounge vibe dead, the sound system now blasting out angry rappers spitting verse after verse after verse over cold impersonal beats, clusters of young women—early to mid-20s, bachelorette party perhaps—raising their glasses, sing–screaming along with the words of the song: “Fuck a bitch/they ain’t shit/lick on these nuts and suck the dick,” laughing, bracing themselves against the bar, against their friends, against strangers, their drinks spilling all over the floor but no worries someone would clean it up later because hey—life takes Visa.
    And then the dance floor was behind him, falling away as Dylan kept moving, down a flight of stairs and into the area of the club where suddenly every attempt at ambiance or vibe or décor was abandoned and the place was just another club in another city: dim lights with empty kegs stacked in the corner, Mexican busboys running in and out of the kitchen, hauling large crates filled with clean glasses as girls lined up to use the bathroom. A couple of dealers were hanging around, and Dylan nodded to the ones he knew, or at least thought he recognized, before pushing the door to the men’s room open.
    This particular bathroom smelled like only the bathrooms of clubs just before last call are capable of smelling: a mixture of piss, vomit, and stalebeer, with a hint of industrial strength antiseptic which, rather than concealing the smell, just made everything worse.
    The floor was slippery, the cracks between the individual tiles transformed into miniature canals of gray water. Dylan navigated the empty bathroom carefully, stepping over pools of liquids he couldn’t identify as he made his way to a urinal. As he began to piss, he stared straight ahead, a series of advertisements rotating across three 9-inch-by-9-inch digital screens positioned at eye level on the three walls ringing the urinal. Dylan tried to look down into the urinal but there were pubic hairs and loogies and pink chunks of something unidentifiable ringing the pale blue urinal cake, which looked as though someone had taken a bite out of it. A wave of nausea passed over him and he tried shutting his eyes but that only made the feeling worse, so he stared straight ahead at the advertisements, which seemed to change every few seconds until everything was a single blur of color, light, pixels, products.
    Stepping away from the urinal as he zipped his fly, he heard giggling in the hallway outside the bathroom and then the door was opening and Sarah and Brandi slipped inside. Dylan