Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

and my head buzzing from the rush of adrenaline.

Cobb flailed about wildly and gasped for air, moving his mouth like a fish out of water. Blood dribbled from his parted lips, bubbling up as it filled with air and then bursting.

Violet came up from behind me and nudged me aside, then raised a large boulder over her head and slammed it down, crushing the top half of Cobb's face and splattering chunks of gore across the ground like stepping on a ketchup packet.

There were no more bubbles forming on his lips.

"What the fuck was that?" Violet exclaimed. "How is that even possible?"

I clutched at my head, feeling a blinding pain shooting through my brain, vaguely aware of the faint sound of static somewhere at the edge of hearing. I wiped at my face and discovered my nose was bleeding.

"Fuck. Just give me a hand," I managed to groan.

We lugged Cobb out onto the bridge and rested him on top of the guard rail.

"Maybe we should find something to weigh the body down with," Violet ventured. "So it'll sink? I dunno, I don't have much experience with this sort of thing."

I peeked over the side of bridge. From this vantage point, I could faintly see the Guadalupe Bridge about a mile downstream. "Actually, the current looks pretty strong. It'll probably carry him far enough away before he washes up. If someone finds him, it'll just look like a bum who lost a fight or something."

"He's fucking naked," she objected.

"Fuck. Whatever," I said, losing my patience and heaving Cobb over the side, then watching as the river carried him out of sight.

"Oh shit," I said under my breath. "I think there's someone down there. Fuck, they've seen us."

I squinted my eyes to try to make out the two faint bodies walking along the riverbank in the distance.

"Where, I don't see anything?" Violet asked, her voice tinged with panic.

"Over there on the right," I said, but when I looked back to where I'd seen them, there was nothing.

Violet hooked her arm through mine and gently tugged me in the direction of the car. "Come on, you're just freaked out by this fucked-up situation. You need to relax."

We walked back to the car and sank into our seats, taking a moment to decompress. "You're not in any particular hurry to get home, are you?" she asked, biting her lower lip mischievously.

"Not particularly," I replied and thought for a moment that maybe - just maybe - I had a shot with this girl.

She flashed a wry grin. "Open the glove compartment."

I popped open the door and found a pipe, a lighter, and a rolled up sandwich baggie of pot.

"Tip tip hurrah," I said and proceeded to pack a bowl while Violet plugged her iPod into the car's stereo. I lit the bowl and took my first hit just as Neutral Milk Hotel started to play.

"Man, I haven't heard this album in years," I said as I exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

"It's one of my favorites," Violet beamed, taking the pipe from me.

She leaned against me and rested her head on my chest as she took a couple tokes herself, then passed it back to me. We smoked in silence, just relaxing and enjoying to the music. I stroked my fingers through her vibrant purple hair, then leaned forward to inhale deeply and savor the sweet honey scent of her perfume.

When the bowl was cashed, Violet sat up to dump the ashes out the window. She turned to look at me, her eyelids heavy, lips curled into a half-smile, and seemed to be waiting for me to do something.

So I did.

I leaned forward and placed a hand on her cheek as I moved in to kiss her. Our lips locked softly but passionately. The stereo sang out:

_What a beautiful dream _

That could flash on the screen

In the blink of an eye and be gone from me

She pulled back, reluctantly, and lifted her left hand to show a ring on her finger.

"How did I not see that before?" I wondered aloud.

She giggled as she started up the car again. "You seem to have this ability to see only what you want to see and miss anything that's convenient to miss."

I broke into a huge, toothy grin and slumped over in the seat, banging my head against the passenger-side window a couple times. Violet continued to laugh as she drove back onto the main road.

"Do you wanna stop and check on Col and Lily before I drop you off?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I'll worry about it tomorrow. For now, I need to just get home, throw up, jerk off, wash all this fucking blood off me, and go fetal. Probably in that order."

This set off another bout of giggles from Violet. "Thanks for the unnecessarily detailed and vulgar description."

"It's what I do," I replied.

14. Esoteric Psychological Warfare

I woke up the next morning to find a strange woman in my bedroom. I wasn't as happy about this as I normally would have been.

"Good morning, sunshine," she greeted me.

I sat up groggily in bed and rubbed my eyes. "Shit, I must still be stoned," I muttered.

The woman wore a very form-fitting black chauffeur's outfit complete with a matching cap. She sat on top of my dresser, legs crossed, thumbing through my copy of Dhalgren.

I dragged myself out of bed and pulled a pair of jeans on. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you spent the night here after a round of crazy, filthy monkey sex."

"Nah, I just got here like twenty minutes ago," she said, looking up from the book. "But I did bring your paper in for you."

"I don't subscribe," I replied, but then noticed that there was, in fact, a copy of today's Morning-Star sitting on the foot of my bed. I picked it up and scanned the headline: Peterman Indicted - Inspiratech VP Charged with Fraud, Embezzlement.

I recognized the man in the accompanying photo as the impatient man Max had words with at the warehouse party.

"Wanna go for a ride?" the woman asked with a suggestive hint in her voice that I prayed wasn't just in my head.

"Do I ever. Where to?"

She handed me a business card. It was printed in dark red ink on lighter red card stock with the Abrasax Inc. logo and the words: Dylan Maxwell, CEO/President.

I followed her out to the front of my building where we found a white limousine waiting for us. The engine fired up as we approached, and the woman opened the back door for me. I climbed in, and she followed after me, closing the door behind us.

"You're not driving?" I asked, puzzled, as the car pulled away from the curb.

She took off her cap and shook out her long raven hair. "No, he just thought you'd like the uniform," she said and slid closer to me on the seat.

I shrugged. "Yeah, he was right."

I had never been up to the twenty-third floor of the Abrasax building before, despite my best efforts. The obsequious little intern who met me in the building's front lobby had to swipe a special keycard in the elevator just to get there.

Once the elevator doors opened, I walked out into a vast reception area with a large rectangular reflecting pool, sky lights, and marble desk where Max's assistant sat. She was a young freckle-faced woman with short-cropped red hair and a slim, boyish figure, wearing gray slacks and suspenders over a white blouse. Towering over her on the wall behind the desk was a giant LCD screen running a continuous loop of Abrasax commercials with no sound. The contrast of the bright, garish ad images against the serenity of the room gave it an unsettlingly hypnotic Clockwork Organge-esque feel.

Max's assistant smiled when she saw me and intoned in a chipper voice, "Mr. Maxwell will be with you in just a minute. Please go in and wait inside."

She pointed to the far end of the room where there were three doors - one white, one red, and one black. The white door slid open. I crossed the room and walked through it.

The door automatically closed behind me as I entered Max's office. It felt like stepping inside a giant iPod. The entire room was painted white - the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor was white. It was sparsely furnished with only a few pieces of furniture - a white plastic desk and chair, a long white wet bar with a row of matching stools, a couple white pleather couches, and a glass coffee table. All the furniture had a shiny, plastic look with rounded edges and polished stainless steel accents. The walls were completely empty, and the entire room was devoid of any personal flourishes like art work, baubles, or photographs.

I plopped myself down on one of the couches and waited. After sitting there a few minutes, I realized that the sound system was piping in Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats at a low, barely audible volume, which I took to be some esoteric form of psychological warfare on Max's part, a way to put his visitors off-balance.

I pulled the newspaper out of my messenger bag and decided to read the article about Peterman while I waited. It said that an anonymous tip had led authorities to information that revealed he'd been running an elaborate kickback scheme. He would guarantee certain suppliers sweetheart purchasing deals with Inspiratech in exchange for payments to an outside company he had set up, which somehow managed to pay him a hefty salary as a consultant despite being a completely imaginary business.

I opened the paper to see the rest of the article after the jump, but as I unfolded it, something fell out and landed on my lap. It was another blue envelope, stamped with the crown and globe emblem just like the others. Inside was another small white card with a typed message: Win Some, Lose Some.

I heard the quiet buzz of an electric door opening behind me and quickly stuffed the envelope into my inside jacket pocket.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Max said as he entered the room and extended his hand.

I stood up and shook his hand. He smiled at me congenially, then pointed down below my belt. "XYZ, D."

I looked down and saw that my fly was open, so I zipped up. Meanwhile, Max made a beeline for the wet bar. "How about something to drink?"

"Sounds good," I replied, sitting back down on the couch.

Max poured us two glasses of scotch. "So I gather the ride over here was okay," he smirked while walking back to the couch with the two glasses in one hand and the rest of the bottle in the other.

I took one of the glasses from him and drained its contents in a single gulp.

"You really should sip a whiskey this expensive," Max chided while refilling my glass. I snapped my head back and drained the second glass just as quickly. Max grinned.