by Dan Cummings
Chapter 14
Miles watched in bored fascination as the bottom feeders of Hard Luck Haven tweaked and fell about with orgasmic head rushes into trippy stupors. Sitting on a tattered navy couch, his left bling-adorned knuckles thumped in a lethargic rhythm against his thigh, beating against the empty crumpled baggie of Fable in his jeans pocket. Bored, he kept shooting glances through the gaps in the boarded up windows; the cold harsh sky looked so fresh compared to the foul miasma of piss, vomit and mould which saturated every room in this dump.
‘All ten are nodding. I think the stuff is safe,’ Miles murmured to his fellow pharmacist to the homeless and hopeless. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’
Renshaw, a gang-ink-covered black man who looked like he could bench press a small car, looked equally dulled by the limp spasms of the dishevelled losers sharing space on the filthy bare floorboards. He huffed, ‘Looks like Crankenstein finally brought his monster to life.’
A shrill wail burst forth from one of the test subjects, an emaciated, toothless man rocking violently, screaming bloody murder and throwing his hands up to seemingly ward off some invisible attacker. Miles and Renshaw’s expressions didn’t change, not even remotely. Renshaw simply removed his Ray Bans and huffed again, ‘Or maybe he needs to refine the stuff a little more.’
Miles scratched his temple. ‘Nine out of ten is pretty decent. Call the others, see how their product has worked out.’
Renshaw adjusted against the broken springs of the couch and pulled his phone out, then dug his hand into the waistband of his back for something else. The mania continued for the howling and yelping man on the floor, his wasted, needle-tracked arms swinging this way and that like he was swatting at a swarm of pissed off bees. His wild, dilated pupils loomed on Miles and Renshaw like black holes, their impossible gravity sucking them both into a world of endless terror. With a heart-stopping pause, the user gasped, his black buttonhole mouth shaking as he froze, pretending to be a statue, hiding in plain sight from the unseen stalker. The black holes of madness tracked carefully to the left, roving across the water-stained wallpaper, then to the right, peering through the large gaps in the wall into the next room, following the unseen predator creeping around in this squalid flophouse, then, with a fresh wail of inarticulate horror he almost trampled his happy, drooling housemates.
The report of the gunshot was deafening but somehow the screams which preceded it had seemed louder and infinitely more resonant. The hysterical man’s plight was over, the chunk of skull and brain which the bullet had chewed out had taken his pain away. Renshaw returned the smoking semi-automatic to the small of his back, under his long leather coat. The other nine were still a world away from the bleak reality of the moment, doll-eyed and murmuring peacefully.
Miles cocked an eyebrow. ‘That dude acted just like Sticky.’
‘I have half a mind to do the same thing to that poor bitch. Don’t know why Crankenstein is keeping him locked up. Punishment is one thing, but shit, I don’t think there’s even any mind left to punish.’
Miles shrugged. ‘Hurst is whacked. That little hippy got lost somewhere over the rainbow.’ Pushing off the stained couch, his white Nike track shoe set an empty bottle of cheap rotgut rolling. ‘’Sides, ain’t my business. He could put a dog collar on Sticky and walk him round the yard for all I care. Let’s bounce, I’m hungry. Steak?’
Renshaw heard his stomach growl and returned his Ray Bans to the bridge of his nose. ‘Cool.’ The purveyors of poison left the crack den behind and jumped into the black Escalade waiting at the cracked curb, leaving Birch Creek’s blighted district to continue festering away like a mushroom in the darkness of law and decency.
Chapter 15
Neil’s stare was a composite of apprehension and crackling exuberance. The grounds of the old Powell farmhouse had been given some much needed colour. The acres of tangled green grass and the browns and yellows of the year’s seasonal death bed had been livened up with splashes of vivid artificial hues. The bare trees bordering the huge clearing were festooned with blinking white fairy lights and orange and black balloons, and all around like severed heads were the sly and malicious fiery expressions of predatory pumpkins.
Neil, Sam and Matt hung on the fringes of the party, propped up against a tree, beer in one hand, one of Matt’s stolen baseball bats in the other. Sam did feel a bit better with the Slugger in his grip, and with the black cap, shoulder-length curly black wig and his face painted in a vertical divide of deep red and blue he ironically felt it much easier to maintain some anonymity. His only real nagging concern was that the Baseball Furies, for all their awesome and scary dress code, got their asses kicked by the Warriors. Should those cat-killing scum crash the party he had no issue with calling it an early night. Sitting in his room, playing video games and staving off a chronic marijuana addiction, he now realised, was infinitely more favourable to potentially lying in a hospital bed.
Matt’s head twisted this way and that, scrutinizing the army of monstrous teenage partiers. ‘This would be a lot easier if we knew what the hell Lindsey and Deb are dressed as.’ He pinched his Furies jersey. ‘Plus, they’re going to be looking for Trump, Khaleesi and her liberated Mexican slave.’
Neil glanced at Matt’s crimson face, black eye sockets and black lips. ‘Well, they might recognise you. Besides the make-up you don’t look much different. All you ever wear is baseball jerseys and your cap. You didn’t even need your wig.’
Matt gave him a two-second stare then sipped his beer. ‘You might have something there.’
‘You want to check the barn?’ Neil asked. The three of them glanced over to the bass-throbbing structure. Inside the old barn, amidst the ancient bales of hay, ghouls, bearded gnomes, pirates and Mexican wrestlers danced and drank, some dabbed MDMA on their gums and some took the old-fashioned pill form as the Grim Reaper DJ spun ScHoolboy Q’s Hell Of A Night to waves of alternating colour.
Matt thought of the barn as a stone being lifted up, Staubach and company scuttling around like woodlice. ‘Let’s finish these beers first, give the girls a chance. They might not be here yet.’
Seniors in ghostly white bedsheets floated around the perimeter of the party and between the trees, smoke pouring out through the cut eyeholes and out from beneath their legs. They were walking smoke-houses, allowing participants to climb under the sheet with the stoned ghosts to get some serious fogged-out highs. One of the bulkier ghosts expelled a coughing passenger in a great pall, a silver painted cardboard robot who waved smoke away, clearing its throat and taking unsure steps.
‘That’s Fred.’ Sam pointed the tip of his bat towards the low-tech mechanical blockhead. ‘He’s in the school band. Maybe he knows if Lindsey and Deb are here.’
Neil was about to walk over when Matt casually halted him with a backhand to the chest, scooped something from the soil and picked his shot. With astonishing accuracy, he curled the small pebble twenty yards, watching it clip the side of the robot’s silver cubic head. The orange headlight eyes scanned about in confusion, but through the letterbox mouth slit, Fred’s faded peepers noticed the culprits standing under a tree, waving him over. The cautious bot ambled over to the strangers then shifted his position to allow some of the fairy lights to reveal who the sinister trio were. Recognition dawned on him and he cleared his throat. ‘Who are you guys dressed as?’
‘You never seen The Warriors?’ Sam and Matt asked in unison.
Clearly, Fred hadn’t. ‘Baseball movie?’
‘Something like that,’ Matt dismissed.
‘Hey, you got Lindsey’s number, or at least know if she’s here?’ Neil tried to sound casual but ended up sounding like a narc.
The only thing which was convincingly futuristic on Fred’s costume was his iPhone, which now rested in his palm. ‘I haven’t seen her, but I know she’s coming. She posted a pic on Instagram before. She looks cool.’
Neil felt a minor tremor of jealousy pass through him. Does Fred have a thing
for her? He checked the pic, Lindsey dressed up as some creepy but still undeniably hot Victorian era doll with cracks on her porcelain-painted face. Next to her was Deb, showing her best facsimile of a cheery smile in what looked to be an unfinished costume, grey donkey ears attached to her head and her face painted grey.
Matt gently prodded Sam in the groin with his bat. ‘Maybe you should take a run at Deb. She looks like she enjoys dress-up as much as you do.’
Sam was busy tormenting himself with the haunting scent of weed which was still radiating from pot-bot’s central processor. A sudden uproar of rowdy cheer and contempt went up from the nearby lake. A giant ganja plant had been assisting a giant beer mug to perform a keg stand but now the rookie limbed-pint glass was sputtering beer all over the grass before heckles and friendly abuse. With a sharp intake of breath, Neil saw a large gecko near the water’s edge, waving in his direction. Naturally, geckos and frogs were easily discernible but all Neil noticed on a primitive level was the big bulging 360-degree eyeballs and green skin. He couldn’t deny how much Frogmore’s resurgence had him on eggshells. In his confusion he started to raise his hand to wave back when a guy in a headache-inducing black and white chequered Morphsuit charged past him and over to the gecko, slapping a jock-worthy high-five. Trying to clear his head, he focused on the gentle water, the large lake reflecting an inverted world of bonfires, pulsing lights and the slow drift of smoke-coloured Stratus preparing to gift-wrap the party like a witch’s filthy shawl. He took a gentle breath and held it, trying to remain rooted in the here and now. But then, blindsided by his own traumatised sense of survival, violent jolts of Rawlins Pond flashed in his head.
Frogmore. Ben. Max.
Riding out the waves of building panic, he quickly forced the rising tide back down, below the watermark. His shoulders tight, he crushed the bat in his grip and washed the imagery away.
Fred pointed beyond the throng of wild abandon towards the kegs and tables of spirits next to the barn. ‘Look, there they are.’
Neil perked right up and pushed his sleeping demon aside for the moment, with a soft smile of relief at seeing Lindsey getting drinks for herself and donkey-eared Deb. ‘Nice telescopic eyes there, Fred-o.’ He patted cardboard arm and started to move.
Fred stalled the three of them, ‘Hang on, guys. That ghost let me keep this.’ He showed the smouldering blunt in his other hand. ‘You want a toke first?’
‘I didn’t even know you got high.’ Matt raised an eyebrow.
‘I don’t.’ Fred took a pull which was like a feather to his tonsils, creating a coughing ruckus, and held the joint out.
Neil and Matt checked to see if Sam was on the verge of salivating, or maybe collecting discarded roaches to take home and smoke in secret, but saw that his determination still held fast. ‘Guys, don’t mind me. I’m dealing with it.’
Neil and Matt ignored Sam’s martyrdom, with Neil answering, ‘We’re good.’
Sam smiled awkwardly but graciously for the solidarity.
Fred cleared his throat. ‘I just figured, why not? It’s like Bob Marley’s birthday or something…I would imagine. Staubach and Lloyd are selling the shit like it’s about to rot.’
Sam started some intense surveillance of the masses, his sweaty palm clutching the bat hard enough to develop calluses. Matt kept his cool, flicking a hawk’s gaze here and there.
‘Are they both still here?’ Neil asked soberly.
‘Should be, somewhere,’ Fred answered in his slightly nasal voice.
Neil looked over at Lindsey, enjoying herself and dragging Deb down with her, and was about to head on over without further delay. ‘Thanks, man. Don’t operate any heavy machinery after that.’
Fred’s dulled eyes and sleepy smile nodded up and down inside the robot’s letterbox mouth slit. ‘No doubt.’ He gave a cheery wave and ventured over to a bunch of other band geeks seeded throughout the revellers.
Lindsey had seemingly managed to remind Deb that they were at a party and fun was allowed on weekends, dragging her into the hub of the party, the barn.
‘Damn,’ Neil said nervously, ‘I guess we’re going in.’ Moving at a quick paranoid clip they traversed the dancers and mingling hordes, their cautious flitting eyes scoping every classmate, their wardrobe horrors now achieving new unexpected degrees of authenticity with each mask and façade potentially hiding a pissed-off drug pedalling thug. ‘Shit,’ he muttered over his shoulder, ‘I didn’t even think to ask what Shit Storm and the others are wearing.’
They stopped besides a smattering of partiers guarding a number of kegs and bottles of spirits at the side of the old rustic structure, swapping out their empty bottles for red paper cups of what could either be beer or something a bit stronger. Neil led Matt and a distressed Sam into the frenetic, strobe-lit and decibel-thrashing assault of DJ Death’s demonic shindig. Entering the barn was like hell on earth. Damn near deafening, hot despite the night chill and packed with beasts, although the zips, prosthetics and corny outfits tended to dampen the hellish milieu. Sam was stiffer than petrified wood compared to Neil and Matt, who had blended like chameleons into the party atmosphere through sheer necessity and will.
Neil’s brow twitched — not that one would notice beneath his black face paint and single yellow eye socket — when his searching eyes landed on Lindsey. Leaning against a wooden support beam, she was smiling and talking with another girl from the school band. The girl was so painfully thin that her full body X-Ray skeleton suit might have been ironic. Neil yelled into Matt’s ear, ‘I’m going to go talk to Lindsey. You see where Deb went?’
Matt squinted as he tried to decipher what Neil was saying and having managed to get the gist, he cast another fruitless once-over at the packed masses and shook his head. But he did spot five of the school cheerleaders in full pom-pom flailing uniform and vampire fangs doing some choreographed dance routine before the DJ booth at the back of the barn. Dragging his eyes away, he said, ‘I’m going to try and find her, but if she’s not in here we should just go.’
Neil did his own nervous scout of the surroundings and to his dismay he thought he could make out the tall and lean Lloyd, done up like a lumbering zombie basketball player, conducting some business with DJ Death who was exhaling a bong hit up to the dancers in the barn’s rafters. He looked away quickly for fear of attracting his attention; after all, Neil was nearly the same height as him. Not wanting to alarm Sam, he reported to Matt, ‘Lloyd’s with the DJ. I didn’t see anyone else. I’ll be quick.’ Deep down, Neil knew he was being a fool, but he didn’t want Lindsey to think he stood her up. Maybe Sam was the only rational one right now, but Neil wasn’t going to possibly blow his chance.
*****
Deb had found a slight reprieve from all the nonsense, sitting outside on an old upturned wooden barrel in the shade of the barn, drinking her double vodka and letting the music wash over her. She felt so giddy from the alcoholic buzz that she wasn’t even questioning her decision to continue knocking back the drinks. She might have been adamant in her fight against Lindsey’s party plans but now she accepted that her friend had been right. This felt amazing! She put far too much pressure on herself. She even felt a lot more honest about her peculiar feelings towards Matt. For the life of her she didn’t understand why she was drawn to him, they couldn’t have been more different. Was she really just a victim of that old bad-boy trope? Ew, how basic! But some things can’t be fought. And from what she knew, he wasn’t even bad, not really, just a minor rebel who excelled more in getting drugged up than studying. She felt a cold breeze cool her warm skin, breaking her from her increasingly sluggish thoughts.
‘What’s with the donkey ears?’ a voice greeted off to her left.
Surprised, she looked up, initially startled by the face-painted baseball player, until her fuzzy brain identified him. ‘I felt like a jackass coming here, so…’ Matt smiled. ‘Why aren’t you in that dress, Princess Dragon Nerd?’ she snorted tipsily.
‘Why are you
sitting by yourself?’ Matt looked at the floppy donkey ears, completely unmatched against her jeans and blouse, and slowly came up beside her and leaned into the barn wall. He had instantly noticed how plastered she was, ever the debutante.
She seemed to snort in amusement, her grin sloppy. ‘Some creep in there was trying it on. And the smoke was making me woozy.’
Matt regarded the barn as if expecting to peer through the wood and locate the loose-handed sleaze. ‘Well you shouldn’t be out here alone.’
‘I’m not alone now though, am I?’ Her gaze was swimming with possibility.
The corner of Matt’s mouth curled up slightly. ‘No, I’m here.’ Knocking a cigarette out of the crumpled packet, he hung it from his bottom lip, the flame from his lighter illuminating the coloured divisions of his wily features.
She watched him blow a series of smoke rings. ‘I don’t get why anyone would start smoking these days.’ Her tone was confused and reproachful.
Matt side-eyed her. ‘Won’t all the cool, sophisticated college guys smoke?’ he grinned.
She shook her head mirthfully, moved off the barrel and joined him against the rustic wood of the barn. ‘The bat is a bit much, isn’t it.’
Matt hefted it in his hand. ‘Yeah, about that. I can’t stay. Me and the rest of the nerds are in trouble.’
‘Ever the outlaw,’ she mocked, leaning in a little closer. ‘What did you do, egg someone’s house?’
Matt tried a cordial smile which came off as more of a wince. ‘I wish. Noakes is looking to do us some damage.’
She looked puzzled by the name, trying to identify it. ‘The loser who hangs around the school in his phallus?’
‘Him and his shithead cronies.’ He sighed a torrent of blue smoke. ‘It’s going to be a long school year. On the plus side it’ll take the pressure off SATs.’