The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

PENNIES FROM HELL, by Darrell Schweitzer
I met Jim Bowen for the first time in over ten years in a Fifties Revival bar in
Philadelphia. It was the sort of place with posters of James Dean, Marilyn
Monroe, and Elvis on the walls, the waiters in regulation Duck’s Ass hairdos, an
interior decorating style which can only be described as Art Tacko, and of
course, inevitably, a dance-floor. The sign over the entrance said: BOP TILL
YOU DROP.
It wasn’t Jimbo’s style, but there he was. I called him over to my table. He
looked up, didn’t seem to recognize me at first, and then slid off his bar stool,
glass in hand, not stumble-down drunk, but walking, ah, carefully. That, too,
wasn’t his style.
“You’ve changed,” I said.
“Well, I’m forty-three, Chuckie-boy. I can still call you that, I hope, for all
you’re a big-time Novelist now. For me the downhill slide into senility has
already begun. Not much longer and I’ll be decrepit enough to get a job as an
extra in Night of the Return of the Revenge of the Living Dead, Part II.”
I could tell that he was, as we literary types phrase it, in his cups.
“This isn’t like you.”
“At least it’s a grown-up obsession.” He nodded toward his glass.
I glanced at the picture of Roy Rogers and Trigger on the wall behind him.
“So why are you worried about being grown-up all of a sudden?”
“You remember what I used to say, Chuckie-boy? In American society we
remain adolescents until they issue us bifocals. Well, I wear contacts, but the
time has come, as inevitably it must. I think that’s why I come here.” He lifted
his glass and pointed one finger at Jimmy Dean, then at Elvis. “This place is a
mausoleum of lost youth. It reminds us that time is passing.”
“Awfully morbid of you, Jimbo, old buddy.”
“Well, Goddamit, I have every right to be morbid. Sometimes I get to thinking
about Joe Eisenberg—”
“The cartoonist…who died?”
“Yeah. He was after your time. You’d gone off to commit literature by then.”
“I met him in your office once,” I said. “Besides, after I stopped writing for
underground comics, I still read them, at least the ones you published. I loved
Eisenberg’s stuff. As far out as S. Clay Wilson, only he could draw. I
particularly remember the upside-down face series, this guy with his nose
pointing up, and corks with little crucifixes stuck in his nostrils, and the caption: