Crushing (The Southern California Wine Country Series) (6 page)

Someone killed the music blasting from the media center. Amanda looked over with everyone else. Haley’s black hair and translucent white arms embroidered with tattoos floated like a vampire ghost through the open patio doors into the moonlight. She pounded the air with her fist as her feet marched to a growing back-beat. Heavy guitar licks pierced the bucking drum line that now cracked through the yard into the house. Haley screamed lyrics into the wireless microphone in her hand while she wadded into the pool. The rest of her band stood at the long arc of the pool against the wall of stone that reflected more of their sound. Haley’s bell-like voice cut clearly over the twin growling guitars that seemed muffled as they seethed out from under wrinkled bed covers as bodies collided in the lurching beat. Half-nude dancers from inside the house shed their remaining clothes as they crossed the open doors and splashed into the pool. More bodies shed clothes and filled spaces in the water, dancing and bobbing. Steam rose from the hot tub filled with submerged lights that made a writhing tower into the sky.

Amanda and Julie eased outside the patio doors and listened to the music. Sardis appeared from the shadows in the house. He nodded to them as he walked passed, offering a slow nod, “Ladies.” His naked body dropped over the edge of the pool. His head crested the water’s surface next to a large breasted red head that had already apprised his saunter from the house, a sly smile brushing her lips.

“I didn’t need to see that,” Julie covered her eyes but split her fingers open to peek through and watch other parts of the pool.

Amanda said, “Too many tattoos and the wrong guy –” She wanted to see Kyle but the scene around the pool tugged at her attention like the carnage from a highway crash.

A blond boy in a baseball cap and overly long jean shorts leaned against the wall next to Julie. Amanda could not hear what he said but Julie smiled and giggled. The man pulled at Julie’s hand. She paused next to Amanda, “I hoped I might see Markus here. Don’t wait up for me. I’ll get a ride from him.” Julie winked at Amanda as she followed Markus deep into the house.

Pounding like a kick drum rumbled from the house. The bulk of naked Bert burst visible on the patio, “CANNON BALL!” No one in the pool was sure where he might land given his stumbling gait, so several spots immediately swept clear of bodies. Bert bounded from the edge of the cement and tucked himself into a massive sphere. The splash zone reached back to Amanda and Julie as well as across the feet of the guitar players who immediately took two large steps closer to their drummer and away from the shock hazard. The backwash nearly kicked others out of the pool. Two girls kissing under the diving board banged their heads against the underside of the board’s brackets. Bert flipped himself out of the water on the far side of the pool and sang “ARUU ARUU” like a beached bull seal. He spun over and dipped his feet back in the pool while he sat at its edge, his forearm across his naked lap. He shook his head to clear his hair and water from his face – where a sheepish grin filled its width. He watched Haley and her bikini top bounce in the water while she continued punching the sky with her fist. She bounced in the shallow end, never missing her lyrics as she sprang from her toes against the surging waves. Amanda saw how many of Haley’s tattoos glowed with neon phosphor from the black lights that radiated from the sides of the band. Swords and magic motifs scrolled along her arms. A large biohazard-warning symbol in regular ink marked her shoulder blade in zombie-like grunge but the black light set off an eerie glow behind it.

She saw Sardis sucking the breasts of the redhead at the edge of the pool. Her head tipped back on the cement, lost in a curling spill of red tresses but anchoring them in the deep end of the pool. Both of Sardis’ hands moved under the water causing the redhead to squirm in pleasure.

Several people came from the house, Amanda was glad these kept their clothes on. Scruffy and ill kept, they announced, “We found another cache!” They displayed a fistful of plastic bags stuffed with weed. “We’ll be by the hot tub!” The last of them waddled across the patio carrying a water-filled hookah, the tubes over his shoulder like the shaggy arms of a dead octopus.

Amanda looked around the party and back into the house. She saw Sardis and the redhead migrate from the pool to the hot tub. She did not see the one she looked for. She thought about walking around to find him. She paused a few moments in indecision. Maybe she needed more courage or, she looked in her cup, more beer?

Amanda felt a hand on her shoulder that turned her around. Kyle’s voice purred, “I couldn’t resist any longer.” His lips touched hers, tasting of salt and lemon. Warmth spread from her mouth all through her body and she melted into him. She forgot all about the rest of the people, the noise, and the craziness. Her fingers brushed through the back of Kyle’s dark hair. The ends of his hair tickled the sides of her face. “You smell wonderful,” escaped from her lips between a moment their faces separated. Remnants of leather and just the smell of him. She wanted her body against his without any of these binding clothes that pinched her. Kyle’s lips skipped to her throat, sending waves of heat down her spine. His kisses moved across her shoulder. His teeth pulled the strap of her top, dragging it over to tip lightly against the side of her arm. Her eyes closed as Kyle kissed her neck again and then reached for new frontiers to trespass along her collarbone before proceeding lower. She needed his tongue further down. Her fingers pinched his hair. Her breast ached and her nipple firmed under the cloth, excited about its possible liberation.

A scream pierced the party. Hookah pipes flailed the air now when sudden activity sprang around the hot tub. Sardis pulled the body of the redhead out of the water. She did not move. Sardis pushed on her chest. Her massive breasts flopped around as he attempted pumping life in and out of her. He tried to breathe on her mouth but his ineffective technique revealed he had only observed this on television. Kyle pulled Amanda toward the hot tub and Sardis.

Haley appeared in her glowing tattoos, her eyes flamed, and her teeth flashed like a vampire’s, “What the fuck did you do?” The other band members stood quiet with their instruments shut down. The rest of the people around the pool hovered motionless. Only a few moans came out of the house that did not realize the outside world had changed.

Sardis said, “We’d been smoking and she told me she wanted to blow me under water. Fucking fantastic feeling –”

Haley touched her hand to the girl’s neck, “She’s dead.”

Amanda saw the girl’s deathly stilled fingers curled up from her soggy hands. Hearts and cupid arrows tipped the girl’s fingernails.

They heard police sirens wailing faintly in the distance.

Bert yelled, “COPS! CLEAR OUT!” He sprinted around the pool and flipped over the pool fence, rattling the chain links. He wiggled his body over, careful with the wire top to not catch anything nakedly important on it. He disappeared barefoot into the darkness of the trees.

Sardis said to Kyle, “I can’t stay. Neither can you. We have too many shoplifting, robbery, and vehicle theft dings already.”

Amanda paused. What had Kyle done? Who was he – could he be the worst person she could want? Should she trust him? How dangerous could this man be?

Others fled the party. They scooped up their clothes and shoes and sprinted for their cars. Lights and engine sounds filled the road in the opposite direction from where the police sirens approached.

Haley looked from the girl to Sardis, “Too bad she’s naked. That will get her on the news tonight. If she had clothes on she’d be just another party girl that drank herself to death.”

Amanda hooked her top’s strap over her shoulder. “We need to get Julie.”

Haley looked at Amanda, “The house is already cleared out. You need to go.”

Amanda ran behind Kyle and Sardis through the pool gate around the house to Kyle’s car.

“Hey! How are you here, Amanda?” Startled by a voice she recognized, Amanda stopped. She saw Nicholas Cowger standing with an annoyed date. The whole confrontation bubbled up that she had with him at the fuel station back in Michigan. How could this be? Kyle yanked at Amanda’s hand toward his car and she followed.

Nicholas yelled, “Hey, stop!” to a kid dragging the hookah and gripping a nearly empty bag of weed, but the kid already vanished into the brush along the house.

Nicholas’ date said, “You told me your cabin was secluded and quiet and your weed stash huge. I just saw the last of your weed.” She jabbed her finger into his shoulder. “Take me home.”

Red and blue police lights swept the treetops as the vehicles approached the house.

“Shit! The police will think this is my party. You know how much weed I had in there?” He turned to his date, “You better be older than eighteen –”

Amanda did not hear the girl’s response because she hurried after Kyle.

Sardis stopped and vomited by the side of the car. He crawled in the back seat, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand, “Gah! That whiskey burns on the way out as much as on the way in.”

Kyle pressed the car keys into Amanda’s fingers, “You’ve had the least to drink.” She could only think of how she was now the getaway driver – an accessory to second-degree manslaughter. She looked forward to a little excitement tonight, but not like this. “This is crazy.” Amanda scooted the seat forward and started the car. This car was a monster compared to any vehicle she had ever driven. The loose steering jerked under her fingers as if she held a boat’s tiller that only guided the thing between the edges of a canal. Swashes of other cars and dust spewed around them like a brown fog as they sped away.

Haley padded through the house, taking a draw on her freshly lit cigarette. She threw a dozen bottles of booze across the great room to smash against the walls. A pair of bottles bounded down the carpeted hallway toward the bedrooms and burst when they struck the dressing mirror attached to the wall at the far end. Shards of broken mirror added to the sparkling rubble and the alcohol soak. She turned up the gas range and sniffed for the reek of natural gas. She splayed her fingers and picked up six bottles of high octane rum. She tipped her hands and poured the alcohol in a line that followed her out to the drum kit that she doused in a full bottle and the last bottle she traced a line behind her into the garage. A slug of rum remained in the bottle after she finished pouring. She brought the bottle to her lips, drank the last shot, and threw the bottle against the wall where it shattered.

A year old, metallic blue Camaro rested in the garage under a light car cover. She stripped the canvas off and climbed in. The key she had taken earlier in the evening from the kitchen hook fit perfectly and started the engine. Haley loved the feeling of the engine along her thighs and bottom. Her bare breasts swayed with the rocking of the car as the engine throbbed beyond the firewall. She closed her eyes for a moment and enjoyed a long drag on her cigarette. The cigarette flared bright and hot.

She could see out through a broken slat in the garage door that her bass player had smashed open so she could slip through and unlock the house. Out front, she saw Sardis collapse on the back seat of Kyle’s car. She watched Kyle push Amanda into the driver’s seat with the keys.

Haley growled, “Sardis, you fucker! You were supposed to scare that bitch off with the shots. Now she’s found a savior. I was supposed to end up with Kyle tonight. Fucking fuck!” Haley flicked the cigarette to the concrete where it bounded into the puddle of alcohol. The vapors ignited like a fuse and ripped out of the garage, through the drum kit, and back into the house. Haley put the car in reverse and floored the accelerator. The car burst through the back wall of the garage. She spun the wheel around and bounded off through the side yard, brush scraping against the car like angry witch claws scratching at the growling beast. The car fishtailed as she hit the gravel road but she righted the wheel and disappeared down the shifting fog the others spun up during their escape. The garage wall smashed the car’s taillights and plate illumination so she vanished from sight just as the police rolled to the house on the crunchy gravel drive. 

Police sprinted from their cars around the sides of the house to the pool. They found the girl but then the house exploded. The officers not knocked down by the blast, ducked under the tumbling debris. One officer gripped his walkie-talkie and yelled a call to the fire department. Another shielded the girl from the broken lumber and hazy blown-in insulation that now fell like snowflakes around everyone.

The red headed girl lay next to the hot tub and wore an ill-fitting, too-small bikini top that barely covered the nipples of her huge breasts. The bikini strings were rudely tied under her arms and across her chest rather than behind her back. A gigantic pair of red swim trunks covered from her thighs to her belly but were not slid passed the weight of her bottom. “Good, she has clothes.” The first officer said as he pumped her chest up and down. The second officer tipped her head back, fitted her mouth with the breathing device, and pushed air into her lungs. “Less reporters chase news of a dressed party girl, so no chance we will be on television tonight.” The second officer said, “Yeah. EMS was only a mile back from us –”

“Correction officer. We are here.” The EMS specialists flipped open their cases and waved the officers away from their work.

“Pretty girl. Think she’ll live?” asked the second officer.

“No idea. If she doesn’t then you’ll have more paperwork to complete.”