Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I get out, coat on, and walk the block, each step a stone in my gut. The cold cuts through my shirt. I like the feel of it, the slice of air, the little reminders that I’m alive. Up close, the house is worse: paint sheared off in long strips, porch rail rotted out at the base, piles of Solo cups and cigarette butts in the shrubbery. The windows are pulsing with music, bass so dense it rattles the glass in its frame. Overhead, the trees are bare, branches like fingers scratching at the sky.
The line outside is a clot of undergrads, mostly dudes with backwards baseball caps and acne, most of the girls in skirts so short their pussies are barely covered. I drift past them, head down, hands in my pockets. The kids don’t even look at me: in the dark, in the cold, nobody expects the threat to be a man in his forties with gleaming blue eyes and a surgeon’s hands. Inside the vestibule, the air hits like a backhand. Sweat, beer, a sweetness underneath that’s not quite right—something synthetic, almost medical.
A guy in a football jersey checks IDs at the threshold, but I don’t break stride. I look him dead in the eye and say, “Alumni,” and he shrugs, stepping aside with the deference of a kid who’s seen his share of alpha males and knows when he’s the company of a superior. I’m in.
The front room is bodies—dozens, maybe a hundred, the crush of heat making my scalp prickle. Strobe lights paint the walls in arterial red and white. Every surface is sticky. The music is eighties retro, louder than the city at rush hour, so thick it thrums in my teeth. The main thing is how young the kids look. They’re not even people yet, just raw matter being shaped into futures, still soft at the edges, all cartilage and potential trauma. The boys wear baseball caps, or those grown-out broccoli cuts that make them look like they’re about to cry over spilled milk. The girls are pure energy: short skirts, boobs everywhere, faces lacquered and shining, hands up in the air like they’re drowning and want to be seen.
I move through the crowd, scanning for Mary Kate. It’s a matter of training: look for the anomaly, the soft spot, the mistake. I see three girls who can barely walk, two of them being led by boys in billowing t-shirts. The boys are “helping,” but their hands are everywhere—waists, lower backs, up skirts. No one else cares. I count at least twenty empty beer cans sitting in the corner of the room. Again, no one cares.
Near the kitchen, I see the transaction happen. Guy in a Twins cap, face like a dropped pie, tips a folded square of paper over a drink, taps it with his finger, and hands it off to a girl who’s not even watching. She downs it in one go, smile never leaving her lips. I feel a surge of hate, not just for him but for the entire ecosystem that made him possible.
No sign of Mary Kate on the main floor. I try the kitchen. It’s a dead zone—empty bottles, pizza boxes, a puddle of what looks like ranch dressing crawling down the cabinet face. Two girls are making out on the counter, one of them holding a vape in each hand, the other pawing at her own chest with the desperation of someone who wants to be anywhere but here. Next to the fridge, a boy in a beanie is topping off a pitcher from a plastic handle of grain alcohol. He’s careful about it, even scientific. A future pharmacist.
I cut through a side hallway, following the current of people. There’s a bathroom door, open, a girl inside vomiting into the sink while her friend holds her hair and yells at anyone who looks in. I keep moving. My heart’s up around 130, maybe more, but my hands are steady. I tell myself I’ll find her, just to see that she’s safe, then I’ll go home and jack off and never think about this again. It’s a lie, but it works for now.
At the back of the house there’s a staircase. I take it two at a time, my shoes silent on the old wood. Upstairs is less crowded, a myriad of darkened hallways. At the very top, there’s one last hallway, and at the end, under a bare bulb, there’s a closed door with a strip of yellow leaking from underneath. I hear a chant—a deep, regular sound, male voices stacked on top of each other: “S-E-X. S-E-X.” It’s more animal than language, the kind of chanting that ends in police reports and bruises.
I don’t go there. Instead, I slip around a bend and find another set of stairs, these narrower, steeper. I take these down. The noise is less, but the air is dead, no ventilation at all. Then I stop, listening. A cheer goes up from one of the bedrooms in the hall, a roar, and then a pounding, rhythmic, like someone’s trying to hammer their way through the floor.