14. GARBAGE PAIL

Sitting in a lonely spot behind Saint Helena’s, directly across from the western wall and 8 blocks west of Kings Cross, sits the Garbage Pail.  This is one of the seediest dives in the Zone.  Its floors cannot be seen through the garbage that lies there.  The building was once a shelter mission for the church, but it was heavily damaged during carnival, and the only repairs were to put in a makeshift bar, and some armored glass barriers stolen from a gas station that have been placed around an area designated the stage.  It is a simple room, and the bathroom consists of an outer wall built around a manhole.   The manhole itself has been grated over, with a small hole cut away, and a milk crate with its own hole set on top of it.  The grate over the manhole has been welded in place to keep the Dead Zoners from getting in through the sewer, however they are known to wait below and use makeshift spears to stab up through the grates at anyone sitting there… just for kicks. 

The place is generally packed with the lowest of the low in the Zone.  Most of the booze is stolen, but the bar owner, a low ranked fixer nobody trusts called Cabbage, also keeps a still on the top floor.   The stuff has been known to make you blind, and one unfortunate batch even killed a few people.  No one of any measure of self respect, even for the Zone, would ever be caught dead here.  The only reason it still stands is because it gives the worst element of the Zone someplace to be other than the streets.  Hard core junkies, mental cases, corner gangs so small they are ignored by Hard 8, and the unluckiest of souls congregate here.  Oddly enough, the place does seem to get some bands to play there pretty regularly, though most bands do it just to say they have, at least one hard core neopunk band called DOGTWAT plays their regularly every Friday night.

(The Garbage Pail originally appeared in the Atlas Games Cyberpunk 2020 book Night City Stories pg23.)

Written By Deric Bernier, Images from Circuitry Man

For questions, complaints, criticisms and suggestions, e-mail the author:wisdom000@gmail.com