According to what I’d found online, this place wasn’t recommended to visit by resort guests.
That alone had made it interesting.
Up close, it was worse than I’d expected.
The road into town was poorly maintained, slush and ice packed down into uneven ruts that crunched and dipped under my boots. Streetlights flickered instead of glowed, some of them completely burnt out, leaving stretches of the road swallowed in shadow. The buildings looked tired—paint peeling, signs half-lit or missing letters, windows dark in a way that didn’t feel like sleep so much as abandonment.
I slipped my hands deeper into my pockets as I walked, eyes moving slowly over everything, taking it in.
The resort wasn’t far—close enough that you could almost pretend this place didn’t exist if you stayed on the right side of the property line. All that money, all that curated beauty, all those tourists pouring in to spend—and none of it seemed to reach here.
I’d read about that, too.
How the resort had pulled business away from the town instead of feeding into it. People stayed on the property, ate there, drank there, and entertained themselves there. No reason to come down this way unless you were looking for something… specific.
Or unless you lived here.
A man stood outside a boarded-up storefront across the street, hunched into himself, cigarette burning low between his fingers. He didn’t look at me, didn’t acknowledge me at all.
A car rolled past slowly, music thudding low through the speakers, bass heavy enough to feel in my chest before it faded into the distance. Somewhere farther down, a door slammed. A voice shouted, and another answered.
Yeah.
This place was perfect.
And so I kept walking.
The bar wasn’t hard to find—I’d made sure of that before I left. There weren’t many options in a town like this, and the one I’d picked had come up over and over again in forums and reviews.
Not the kind you’d find on a travel site.
The other kind.
The honest kind.
Gritty and cheap. Cash preferred. The sort of place where people minded their business because they had things they didn’t want minded.
Drug deals.
Backroom arrangements.
People passing through who left little trace.
My kind of starting point.
The building came into view at the end of the street, a dim neon sign buzzing faintly above the door, one letter flickering in and out. There were a few people outside lingering and smoking. No one paid me much attention as I approached.
I was just another body out in the cold.
Just another person looking for something.
I paused for half a second at the door, hand resting on the handle, listening to the muffled noise inside—voices, laughter, something heavy hitting a table, music just a little too loud to be pleasant—then pushed it open and stepped inside.
The door shut behind me with a dull thud, sealing in the almost noxious odor of stale beer, sweat, and something chemical, all mixed together.
My eyes adjusted quickly, sweeping the room without looking like I was. I took in the dim lighting, scattered tables, and worn bar running along the left side. A pool table sat in the back with a cracked felt surface. There was an old jukebox in the corner, half the lights burnt out.
People filled the space in loose clusters. Men with rough edges and grease under their nails, cloaked in jackets that had seen too many winters. A few women scattered through—some alone, some not. Tired faces and sharp eyes. The kind of people who noticed things but chose not to react unless they had to.
