Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Despite the massive sign, the stairs themselves are rather narrow and small. But what they lack in grandeur, they make up for in steepness and the only thing I’m thinking about is what a bitch it’s gonna be walking back up. It takes nearly ten minutes to reach the bottom, but I am not rewarded with a secret drinking hole, just a long brick ruin of crumbling coke ovens.
I pause, looking around, then start wondering if I should go back up. But off to the left of the coke ovens, there’s a small deer path and when I bend down to take a closer look at the dried mud, I see boot prints that appear recent.
I think this is it.
I’m already here. It doesn’t cost me anything to look around before giving up, so I head into the trail and push through a thick copse of trees. When I look to the left, there it is. A secret bar in the middle of the forest.
The building is made of brick—maybe even the same brick as the coke ovens back at the stairs. They kinda look like cinderblocks, but they are easily a hundred years old. Most of them are covered in vines and all of them are stained with bright green moss.
It’s kinda quaint, actually. Especially with the sign, which is almost exactly like the one at the top of the stairs, only along the length are painted the words ‘Mule Pit’ instead of ‘Your Family Wants You To Work Safely.’
All the windows of the establishment are just holes in the brick, like they haven’t had glass in them in decades. But the sounds from within are muffled, which doesn’t make a lot of sense until I go inside and realize the brick building is just a shell when I’m presented with a set of actual doors made out of steel.
There’s no bouncer to stop anyone from entering, so I just pull the door open. Music blasts out at me—something bluesy and local that I don’t recognize—and when I enter, I find myself on a high balcony looking down into a large room filled with people. Probably hundreds of people.
The stairway leading down from the balcony I’m standing on appears to be two or three stories high. It reminds me of a fire escape in a big city. Industrial, and metal, and rusted. It looks sketchy and old, like it’s been here as long as this old mine, but when I grab the railing, it feels solid. So I start my descent, all the while taking in the room.
It’s not really a room, though. It’s more like a cave. About every eight feet or so there are thick, old, dark brown beams along the walls. Probably railroad ties. Whether they actually hold the place up or are just there for decoration is anyone’s guess. There are old dirty rugs covering the hard-packed earthen floor, but they don’t look shabby or out of place because they are those antique-lookin’ things. Persian or something. People are walking all over them, some dancing on them—which is probably a hazard—and the rugs look like they came with the mine when it was first carved into this hillside.
There’s a stage, and a band playing, and massive bars lining two sides of the room. There’s also a proper dance floor on the other side of the room where people are dancing—like couples. Men and women, like married couples. But it’s obviously more than some local hangout where Ma and Pa go to wind down on a Friday night, because there’s plenty of titties on display as well.
At least twenty half-naked women are serving drinks and there are two cages on either side of the main stage with a girl inside them wearing absolutely nothing. Not even shoes.
There are dozens of small circular tables grouped in front of the cages, and none of them are empty. They are draped in white tablecloths, and each one has a flickering candle in the center. Couples wearing everything from jeans, t-shirts, and cowboy hats to suits and dresses. There’s even one woman wearing a gown. While all the seated customers are leaning in to each other, like they’re all in the middle of a fascinating conversation, this woman is surveying the room like a madam.
Which she might actually be, since it’s highly unlikely that fully nude dancers are legal here either, since there’s no shortage of alcohol. And this kind of explains the clandestine nature of the whole set up.
On the last landing I pause, taking it all in.
What the actual hell? How is this here?
I can’t decide if I’m in a speakeasy, a whorehouse, or a gentlemen’s club, but in any case, it works.
It’s not some seedy little bar with a sagging tin roof, it’s a genuine Château Marmont out in the middle of the West Virginia woods.