SMALL WORLD

"Bob!  Is that you?"

"Holy hell!  Bill!  I didn't recognize you with that rat cage on your face!  What've you been up to?"

"Oh, the usual.  Torture day in and out.  You?"

"The same.  At least I don't have rats gnawing my face off, though."

"Yeah, it sucks, but what're you going to do?  This is Hell, after all.  Speaking of which, I thought you were acquitted of those charges."

"I was, but it seems the decisions of a court of law have no bearing in the afterlife.  It's more of a do-the-crime-do-the-time kind of thing around here."

"Gee, that's too bad.  I always thought you were a dead ringer for the other place."

"Win some, lose some, I guess.  Probably should have bought into that whole Bible deal.  I hear those morons'll forgive anything, so long as you ask for it.  I tried thinking of an act in which you can break all Ten Commandments.  Get this:  you could have sex with your neighbor's wife in front of your parents on the Sabbath while taking the name of the Lord in vain, then kill the gal, steal your neighbor's plasma screen TV, shout, 'Hail Satan,' worship a statue of Ronald McDonald, tell the cops your mom did everything, and all you have to do is apologize to God, and you're good to go.  Sounds pretty damned easy to me."

"I don't even think there's even a catch, but whatever.  You know, I think I did all those things you just said, but not all at once."

"Me, too.  Say, remember the time we raped that little boy, cut off his peter, and made his dad eat it?"

"Didn't you have the syph back then?"

"Oh yeah."

"Heh.  Those were the days.  Doing the mom with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire was also fun.  Wasn't Mario with us that day?"

"Yep."

"I've been in Hell for months and haven't seen him.  You?"

"Nah.  Thing is, just before they gave him the lethal injection, he confessed his sins and asked for forgiveness.  He's in Heaven now."

"After all the things he did?  No way."

"Yes way."

"But he kept a harem of kidnapped children in his barn.  Raped 'em all and killed the ones that didn't please him enough.  He made coats out of their flesh, furniture out of their bones, and drank their blood.  He bronzed their genitals and kept 'em on a knick-knack shelf."

"I know."

"He used to dig up fresh corpses, violate them, carve up their bodies, and leave them on the doorsteps of their loved ones."

"He sure knew how to have a good time."

"He cored out the buttholes of a hundred orphans, just so he'd always have something to hump in his pocket."

"That's Mario, all right."

"He burned down a home for retarded children because he liked the funny way they screamed."

"He was a card."

"And all he had to do was ask for forgiveness?  And God let him into Heaven?"

"It was that easy."

"And we're stuck here?  Forever?"

"You bet.  Speaking of which, I have to get going.  I have an appointment to keep.  I'm having my guts ripped out through my asshole while stiletto heels poke out my eyes, and some midget's going to give me a bunch of papercuts on my johnson.  They're going to roll me in salt after that.  What's on your plate?"

"Well, there's the whole hungry rats thing.  I think they're going to sew may ass shut and feed me Taco Bell while making me watch Jay Leno for hours on end."

"Damn, that's harsh.  I don't know if I could stand Leno for that long."

"Well, I'll see you later, Bill."

"Take it easy, Bob."

THE ELMHURST PUBLIC HOUSE: DAYS GONE PAST

The Elmhurst Public House used to be a lot more fun. Not to say that one can’t have a good time there now, but their drink specials just aren’t what they used to be. In the golden era of drinking at the Public House, every Tuesday and Thursday were $1 personal pitcher days. Domestic only, of course, but still, it was the main attraction to the place back then.



The only drawback was that the personal pitcher was almost impossible to pour from. It was a guarantee that anyone attempting to do so would lose at least a mouthful of beer to the table top; the liquid would just slop down the entire body of the pitcher instead of going into the desired cup. A friend advised that you should just drink from the pitcher itself, at the otherwise inefficient spout, and this seemed to remedy the situation.


Not that it matters. This drink special is gone, and there really isn’t much else to say about the place because of it.


During the day, it serves as a decent restaurant with good mozzarella sticks, but you don’t want to hear about that. No, you’re looking for a good time, in which case you want to show up at night. Don’t go too late, or you’ll never find a place to sit. It’s mostly a college crowd in there, and they love to flood the place. Anytime after nine o’clock, and you’ll be standing, and even that is doubtful.

Even if you do find a seat, you won’t want to get up to go to the bathroom because someone else will take your chair the moment you’re out of sight. The customers here know no mercy, and they don’t honor anyone's space. Yes, your fellow patrons are not your friends (unless you’re accompanied by actual friends, and they will have to struggle to save your seat), and barroom etiquette is rarely observed here.


But the waitresses and bartenders are very good. If you ask for a whiskey on the rocks, easy on the rocks, they will take you at your word. They will not water your drinks down, and the service is fairly prompt if all you want is a drink. (If you want food, it’ll take a bit longer than most would prefer, since there are so many goddam people in there, and they all want food. And don’t order the steak. They overcook their meat. Steak shouldn’t crunch in your mouth.)


There are decent drink specials (not as good as the $1 personal pitchers, but still not bad), and every once in a while they have a live band. The place is not, however, built for live bands, so you might want to avoid the crowd for those evenings.


The Public House is very accommodating when it comes to reserving tables. In fact, they’ll give you an entire room for your event, where you won’t have to deal with the other asshole customers.


In short, the music is good, the service is good, there is plenty to look at, but beware of your fellow drinkers. They are beasts, and they don’t have a sense of good manners. But forgive them; they’re in college, they know not what they do.



The Elmhurst Public House

683 W. St. Charles Rd.
Elmhurst, IL 60126