Satan’s Nipple

They called it a city, but that was generous. It was more like a wound—festering under neon lights and the stink of sweat and gasoline. Every alley bled into another. Every street, a scar left by some long-forgotten war. The people here didn’t live. They endured.

I met a guy once who swore the whole place was cursed. Said the devil didn’t need hell when he had real estate. “You ever notice,” he told me, leaning in like he was giving away a secret, “how the city just keeps pulling people back? Even the ones who get out never really leave.”

I’d laughed at the time. Not now.

Now I was standing in the middle of it, feeling the weight of the place press down like a boot on my chest.

They had a name for the worst part of town— the place where the streets bent wrong and the air hummed like a power line about to snap: Satan’s Nipple. Nobody could tell you why. Nobody questioned it either. You don’t ask why a fire burns. You just stay the hell away.

But I had a job to do.

A guy was missing. Last seen deep in the nipple. I should’ve turned around. Should’ve let the city have him. But some people don’t learn. I guess I’m one of them.

So I stepped forward.

And the city swallowed me whole.