vol 1, ch 2: Girls, girls, girls! Gotta smash

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Past a pedestrian bridge over a major highway was an abandoned outlet mall. It stopped being the group’s hangout when Sammy got nicked by a mad granny with a razor blade last spring.

Thankfully, behind those gutted discount stores was a three-story, boarded-up concrete block. That was the current Hangout, a ramshackle building next to the dilapidated fence of the local junkyard.

Rick was practically skipping when he and Jac got around the mall and started crossing tall grass to reach the Hangout. He knew the place enough to keep his eyes up and frolic around coils of rusted barb wire, rotten plywood stuck with nails, and more.

The only problem was the rancid smell, like a porter john during the summer. But that quickly passed once they got to the concrete steps.

It had been Dika who brokered a deal to get this place for the group and leave the junkies in the outlet mall. Speaking of the Devil, Rick heard her sing-song voice around the Hangout's left corner, which was shaded from the setting sun. She wasn’t alone based on the sound of an unfamiliar masculine voice.

“So, is this Boyfriend Number Fifteen? Or is it Sixteen?” Rick asked, interrupting the pair during a make-out session. You’re not supposed to bring strangers here, Dika.

He took in the tall guy dressed in a fancy, purple, button-down shirt. Then Rick’s inspection lingered on the gold watch that was probably worth more than the few months at the Burger Joint he did last year.

“If you work hard enough, kid, you can get a watch like this, too,” Gold Watch said. He turned a hyperwhite smile of eerily perfect teeth down at Dika. “Boyfriend number what?”

Dika laughed breezily. Her smile was nearly as white as the mystery man but not as uncanny since Dika didn’t need unnatural and overpaid dentistry.

“I’m serious here,” Gold Watch said.

Her reply was another laugh that made Gold Watch blink, then start to laugh with her as if he would look like an idiot if he didn’t.

Rick clenched his jaw, refusing to join in while Dika was working her witchery. She was a tall natural blonde with eyes that shimmered like sapphires and a figure that could own a runway. It was little wonder to Rick that Gold Watch was easily wrapped around her slender finger with looks like that.

“Don’t worry about my cousin,” Dika lied. “He’s a good guy. Always looking out for me.”

“Oh, okay.” Gold Watch was clearly in his late twenties, or maybe older, but he hung on Klondika Porter’s words like a puppy.

“Now, as I was saying,” she purred. “Tomorrow night, pick me up at eight in the corvette, the white one with the red rims since it matches my heels for the La Rue de Paris. Then your place fifteen minutes before ten so I can reward you for being such a stud. Then you’ll drop me off here by eleven. Did you get all of that, darling?”

“Hey, um, I’m not your chauffeur, you’re my…” He drifted into silence when Dika leaned into him. Her thigh rubbed up between his thighs. “Uh, don’t push it, okay?”

Rick almost felt sorry for the guy.

“Of course, I’m going to push it, darling. I’m not your boring ex-wife.” She planted a teasing kiss on one cheek, patted the other, and walked Gold Watch out in one fell swoop. She gave Rick a playful wink as they passed.

“She really does love playing with people’s hearts,” Rick mumbled.

“Earth to Rick, it’s Dika, remember?” Jac said.

Rick nearly jumped, remembering Jac had been beside him the whole time. She had her fists on her hips, head shaking.

“She knows this is our spot,” Rick said. “Why bring the handsome guy over here?”

“Probably to get rid of him.”

The loud rumble of an engine and the screech of tires on asphalt echoed out of sight. Dika returned soon after.

This time she was more herself, hands in the pockets of her ripped jeans, another white girl like any other. She seemed so unremarkable now that it bugged Rick how she could consistently switch from vixen to normal and back.

“So, Boyfriend Number Fifteen or Sixteen?” he asked. “If we count your girlfriends, that makes partner number twenty-six or twenty-seven.”

“Hah! Thanks, Rick.”

“Thanks?”

“That should help get rid of him when he starts getting clingy in a week or two.”

“Told you,” Jac said.

Dika shot him a silly smile that made her look younger than nineteen. Younger than the vixen that had made Gold Watch struggle for words. You always had to keep your guard up a little around Dika.

“Jac, babe, got a smoke?” she asked.

“You owe me a pack by now,” Jac grumbled. “No, I think you owe me two packs.”

“Awwww! Rick, can I bum some off of you?”

“We got something better than plain nicotine tonight,” Rick said.

“Oh, yeah, well, that’s good. I think Mad’s going to appreciate that.” Just when those words left Dika’s lips, a loud crash sounded from the Hangout's ground floor. How many Devils would be spoken into being today, eh?

“Mad?” Rick sighed.

“It’s definitely not Lucy. She’s on that new shooter game,” Dika said.

Rick glanced at Jac.

“Nah, Fool, it’s your turn since Dika and me,” the Mom said, hooking an arm around the Flirt’s arm, “got girl thangs to talk about. Because giiiirrrrrrrrrl, you gotta tell me where you found that man at and let me know if he has friends that toss-up Amens for Jesus like they toss it up at the club!”

“Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrl!” Ugh, girl talk. As soon as they switched from reasonable human speech to high-pitched warbles and witch-like screeches, that was his cue to duck into the safety of the Hangout.

At least Sammy and Woo would finish their shift at their respective jobs and come through with the Friday stuff in an hour. Without them, Rick felt the place lacked some much-needed testosterone.

Well, I might not be seeing these girls ever again if they all graduate without me. Better make the most of it.

Instead of heading toward the loud smashes and crunches behind a wall splitting the front half from the back half of the first floor, Rick climbed the chipped concrete stairs near the front door to check on Lucy first.

The Hangout was as derelict on the inside as it was on the outside. The graffiti of phat names and dick art added some special charm to it, though. That stayed when the Team had cleaned the place out and added some stuff they received as donations from the junkyard.

On the second floor was the living room furnished with mismatched sofa sets, three coffee tables, and electronics powered by cords hooked to a gas generator out back. The kitchen was a charcoal grill set on a balcony overlooking the junkyard. It was fun to grill out there where they could watch cars get crushed into cubes.

As of now, Rick found Lucy with the main sofa to herself. Controller in hand, she pressed buttons that lead to pixel people exploding into bursts of vibrant blood on the TV screen. With a few more taps, her avatar lobbed grenades and was rewarded by explosions, sirens, and the screams of her victims begging for mercy.

If it weren’t for the hyper-saturated colors that glinted off the round glasses on the mousey brunette’s face, she would’ve melted into the dull brown of the sofa. Sometimes, if Rick didn’t make headcounts, he would lose track of Lucy. She had that effect, being forgettable since she seemed like an extremely average-looking girl. At first glance…

Luciana Fernandez stopped being average when you catch her using her bare feet to play with the handle of a combat knife stabbed into the nearest coffee table. For whatever reason, you continue to watch as her toes rubbed down the knife’s blade and prod at the teddy bear pinned beneath. And this was happening with the high definition of bloody video game violence in the background.

“Jac’s going to get mad at you if you keep walking around barefoot,” Rick said. “I still find random nails and splinters around here. It’ll hurt my heart if your dainty little feet get a booboo from one misstep.”

Lucy smirked, raising her leg to show the underside of her foot that was covered in healed lash marks. Where she had gotten them from, who knew. Lucy didn’t talk about her past much. She was an enigma most of the time.

But if Rick were ever in a real fight⁠⁠—a real-life or death ordeal, he would count on Lucy. She could do things nobody else had the stomach for.

Another thumping sound of destruction rang from below. Rick glanced down as a horrendous scream ripped out of the TV.

With a few more button-presses, Lucy replaced the screams with snaps, crackles, and gurgles. She licked her lips, her little toes squeezing together as her face reddened.

“Please don’t tell me you’re getting off on this,” Rick said. “Again.”

Lucy flashed an impish smile.

“Welp, I’ll keep this lovely moment in mind when I speak well of you guys once I become rich and famous. However, I hope you have some great words for me at my funeral if I don’t survive an encounter with Mad when she’s… angry.”

Lucy paused the game. She set the controller neatly on her lap. Her hands moved with a relaxed and jovial flow, asking, “Can I have your corpse for dummy practice when Mad wrecks you into oblivion?”

Rick replied with A.S.L. since he had gotten decent at it recently, as hard as it was to pick it up the past few years. “As long as I got a pretty face for people to cry over. Unless Mad wrecks me so bad I’m unrecognizable, then I’m one hundred percent yours.”

Lucy beamed. When she smiled like that, she added a hint of charm to her seemingly ordinary existence. Then she returned to being an avatar of pixelated death while stroking her foot along a knife that turned a stuffed animal into a pincushion.

Before he left Lucy to continue with her violent obsessions, Rick had a sudden question come to mind. It dealt with the blue box again because Jac mentioning it earlier had slipped his mind. Damn, his head could be weird sometimes, but this was a good opportunity to ask Lucy about it.

Just when he started opening his mouth, another loud crash from below interrupted him.

Geez, Mad’s really going crazy down there.

Rick returned to the first floor. His mind now focused on the stuffed animal Lucy had stabbed and caressed with her feet. He was glad it wasn’t an actual raccoon or a squirrel this time around. That had been such a hard habit to break after she started revealing her true self to the Team.

“Maybe with enough attention and love, she’ll become a respectable young lady instead of a serial killer,” Rick said, stepping into the Smash Room.

He was greeted by the sight of splintered tables, crumbled metal cabinets, and shattered box TVs. At the center of destruction was a giant brown-skinned girl in a tank-top that was soaked with her sweat. Her victims' fragments crunched under her boots when she turned to look down at him with furious eyes.

Rick knew little about Hinduism, but he knew they had deities famous for their destructive quirks.

Madhavi Khatri looked like a child of said deities with her amazonian stature and love affair with anything black. Black lipstick, black eyeliner, black nails, black clothes, and jewelry. The makeup was running now since she had been putting in work in the Smash Room.

“I don’t think you sound loud enough, Mad,” Rick said. “We can still hear the screams of Lucy’s videogame victims. Got to dial it up if you want to drown those out.”

Mad pressed her lips into a thin line and intensified her glare.

Rick combed his fingers through his mullet, entering a staring contest. “Principal Hemmersbach ripped my ass a new one, by the way. He really went in on me. I might bleed for a week.”

He laughed.

She didn’t.

When she turned away and lifted the sledgehammer that was part of the Smash Room, Rick moved to lean against the wall.

“Safety glasses,” Rick said.

Mad halted, grunting.

After a few tense seconds, she stormed over to the corner of the room that held the equipment box. She dug up some clear eye protection.

Rick sighed as she returned to her position, readied her hammer, and beat the filing cabinet like it owed her money. Or called her fat. Rick had seen this enough not to flinch anymore.

Mad had some of her mom’s beauty. You couldn’t look angry enough to shake off the genes of an international top model. But when he had met Ms. Khatri during a rare time where she was not somewhere around the world working, he had been surprised to see that she was the absolute opposite of her daughter. Then he had been nearly floored when she… thanked him… for befriending a girl who got kicked out of a dozen special private institutions growing up.

“You can’t beat on stuff all day, Mad,” Rick said. “It’s a wonder your mom hasn’t given you a drum set.”

Two steps later, Mad loomed over Rick, hammer still in hand. She fumed, her body shaking. She gripped the handle so hard it made Rick wonder if she would break it. Unlikely, sure, but Mad was a big big girl.

The tense moment endured for what felt like an impossibly long time. Then Mad let the air out of her in one big whoosh and slouched a little.

“I did have a drum set, and it didn’t last,” Mad said in a croaky, slow voice. “So, leave me alone. I’m all angry still.”

“We got Brigette back for those rumors, Mad,” Rick said. “I collected the shit around the neighborhood my own self.” And someone else did the deed.

“Yeah, and you got in trouble for me,” Mad said, her voice getting quieter. Her next words were a silent mumble.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Rick hummed, wondering if he should press the issue. That wouldn’t be his style, though. So rather than, he threw on a goofy smile and hugged the giant Goth. He made sure to put his head on her shoulder rather than getting a faceful of tits.

Mad shook a little, muttered some quiet words, and then hunched into his hug. Once he felt the tension leave her body, he backed off and wiped her sweat from his face.

“Sorry,” Mad muttered.

“Eh, don’t worry about it. I just wanted to bring you up to hang with Lucy if you’re done here.” Rick examined the flattened filing cabinet. It looked like a giant chewed on it and spat what remained on the floor.

Mad furrowed her brow, looking thoughtful. She wasn’t much smarter than Rick, but if she had failed any tests or classes⁠—not saying she had, but if⁠—the girl’s mom had way too much money to allow her daughter to be retained.

Rick could imagine Principal Hemmersbach kissing the floor Mad, and her mom walked on. It was a wonder where a bully had found the courage to try to diss a girl like Mad who could financially—or physically⁠—make you disappear.

Too bad Rick didn’t have that power.

“A minute,” Mad said.

“What?”

“I need a minute more.” Mad reached into a plastic bin in the corner and tossed out a few rusty toasters. “Wanna join?”

Rick considered the time. It was easy to lose track and get worked up in the Smash Room. They would be a mess during tonight’s Friday Fun.

“Fuck it.” He grabbed an eye pro and a smaller hammer. When he stood by Mad, he was reminded how strange it was for her to be a year younger and so large. Maybe she could be a pro wrestler when she graduated.

“Ready?” Mad raised her hammer.

Rick followed her example. His imagination kicked in, and Principal Hemmersbach’s face replaced the toaster. “Ready!”