Experiment in Terror 05.6 The Dex-Files (17 page)

I reached over and turned off the engine. My fists curled at my side.

“Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?” I asked.

“What the hell are you talking about, Dex?” He rubbed at his cheek while looking pained.

“I’m giving you a choice in how you want your ass kicked,
Max
,” I replied.

He frowned. “Maximus. It’s Maximus. Why do insist on calling me Max?”

“Because that’s the name I know you by. I don’t know this
Maximus
who fucks me over and sleeps with my…my…woman.”

I cringed at the way it came out and knew Max was going to throw it back in my face.

I was right. He laughed without it reaching his eyes. “Your woman?
Your
woman? Oh you’ve got to be kidding me, man.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, actually I don’t. I reckon you’ve got you and Perry’s relationship completely wrong. Your
woman
wants nothing to do with you.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. My protest sounded weak and I hated that.

“It is so. Brother, you have no clue what you did, do you?”

“Don’t call me Brother,” I barked at him.

“Don’t call me Max,” he shot back.

“I know what I did, all right? It doesn’t matter.”

He raises his brows to the roof the car. The look said,
holy shit you are in denial
. And I was. But I needed to win this argument. I still wanted to kick his ass and he distracting me with words.

“If you reckon that it doesn’t matter to Perry,” he started.

“Get out of the car,” I interrupted. “I can’t kick your ass in here.”

He eyed me wearily. “And why do you want to kick my ass again? Is it because I just bailed you out of fucking jail with my own money?”

Actually, that was part of it. I hated the idea of being in debt to Maximus. Er, Max. Douche.

“I want to kick your ass because you’re a traitor, that’s why.”

He snorted. “Seriously?”

“You took advantage of her.” The thought of Max putting his hands on her, his tongue on her…I had to stop thinking about it. If I kept on, Max would be missing his balls.

“I did not,” he said. “She wanted it.”

“She wasn’t herself,” I sneered. The anger was getting harder to suppress.

“Well how was I supposed to know that?”

I sat back a bit, feeling smug. “Exactly. You don’t know her at all. So you wouldn’t know that.”

He looked out the window. “And how does that make me a traitor anyway?”

“Have you not heard of something called the Bro’s Code?”

He laughed again, this time it shook the car. I had to wait impatiently for him to calm down enough to speak.

“You are really something, you know that pal?” he finally said.

“Fuck off, I’m not your pal.”

“And thank God for that. Dex, you slept with
my
girlfriend. Or did you forget that along with everything else from New York?”

“She came on to me.” It was true, too. No excuses, but I was in a terrible place when it happened. There was a reason I tried to forget everything that happened in New York. Too many memories. Too many ghosts.

“And Perry came on to me.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, searching his face for the truth. His jaw was tense and the skin beside his eye was twitching. I didn’t know if it was because I hit him there or that he was lying.

“I highly doubt that,” I said, even though my voice wavered with uncertainty. “But even without that, you not only turned on me but you turned on her. She told me everything that happened. You hung her out to dry when she needed you most.”

His face went cold. “I did what I had to do.”

“What the fuck does that mean? No one said you had to side with her parents and make her look like a nutcase. No one said you had to pretend that all this supernatural stuff was bullshit. No one made you do this stuff. You fucked it up yourself.”

He grew silent. I didn’t like the silence. I wanted him to come back at me with words. I wanted to keep wanting to hit him.

“That’s not true at all,” he said quietly. “You have no idea.”

“No idea about what? You were being a selfish prick.”

“Oh, and you weren’t? You destroyed her.”

“And you turned her in. Fine pair of men we make.”

I clenched my fist and sat back in my seat, suddenly angry at myself as well. All Perry needed, deserved, was a man in her life that would love her, support her and make her his world. He had his chance. So had I. Now I was afraid it was too late.

“Anyway, I didn’t turn on her. Her parents wouldn’t have believed me at any rate.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the point. You should have sided with her no matter what the cost.”

“The cost would have been greater than you realize,” he said. His drawl was low and there was a hard edge to his voice. It commanded my attention.

What the fuck did that mean?
I want to ask him that but I wasn’t sure what kind of answer I’d get. Something about all of this was tugging at me but my brain couldn’t really focus on what or why.

“Why did you come here?” I asked.

He twitched then composed himself. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you come to Portland? Why did you contact Jimmy?”

He shrugged. “I wanted a change of scenery.”

I watched him closely. He wasn’t meeting my eyes.

“You have good timing, you know that?”

“It depends on what you mean by good,” he mused.

“Just funny how I’m out of the picture and you immediately swoop in.”

“Hey, I had made plans to come here while you were still…in the picture.”

That was true. Jimmy had told Perry and I about Max the night of the Xmas party. The best night of my life turned the worst night of my life. Still…

“And in Red Fox…” I wondered aloud.

Max gave me a funny look. “Red Fox? What about it?”

I didn’t know, exactly. I wasn’t sure where I was going with it, only that something was off, like a missing puzzle piece. I started to think back about Max and what I actually knew about him. Despite being in a band together, sleeping with his girlfriend, spending most of our NYU days working on the same films, frequenting the same bars, I still didn’t know that much about Mr. Maximus Jacobs.

But then again, he could say the same about me.

“Who are you?” I asked, looking him square in the face. “Really?”

He blinked. “Maximus. Just Maximus. Not your buddy. Not your pal.”

“Yet, you’re always around at the most…pressing moments. Trying to help me out in the most backward way possible.”

“Can we go now?” He straightened out his long legs and put his hand on the key. “If you reckon bailing you out of jail is backward helping, you’re the one who’s got things turned around.”

“I don’t trust you,” I told him but buckled up my seat belt.

“I don’t like you.”

“Why did you bail me out then?”

He sighed as he started the truck. “Because I like
her
.”

His eyes were completely sincere. I know what that look meant. He had it bad for her. Well that made two of us. Whoop dee fucking doo.

“You can’t have her, you know,” I said. I meant it.

“That will be her choice.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. No big deal that he had already lost.

“She already made her choice. I thought that was quite apparent.”

“Yeah, well we’ll see when she’s normal. Which she is now, thank the Lord.”

I bit my lip and looked out at the darkening afternoon. “How far away is the car?”

“Not far. Then you’re free to do whatever you like.”

I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off. “Whatever you like providing you don’t go to her.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what I can’t do.”

“I’m not,” he said testily. “You reckon her parents are going to welcome you with open arms if you go back there? They’ll call the cops again.”

“They can’t arrest me for visiting.”

“I wouldn’t press your luck.”

“You care about me again?”

“I’m not bailing you out twice.”

“You won’t have to.” I wasn’t just going to show up. I brought out my phone and started to text Perry. But I didn’t know what to say.

“What are you doing?” Max asked, looking over.

“Do fuck off.” I decided to text Ada instead. I wasn’t sure where Perry was, if she was OK. Just because Maximus said she was didn’t mean it was true. I also didn’t know if her psycho parents were monitoring her phone or something.

I texted,
The douchecanoe bailed me out. Where’s Perry? Can I see her?

I waited a few moments for an immediate reply and when I didn’t get one, I put the phone back in my pocket.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Max warned. “Believe it or not, I really do care about her. We were lucky that she’s fine, that the doctors didn’t find anything wrong with her.”

“That wasn’t luck,” I told him. “That was
me
. If I hadn’t of showed up…”

“If Ada hadn’t have reached out to you.”

Fuck. I hated it when he was right. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Ada hadn’t called me that day.

Max lowered his voice. “You know I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her. I wasn’t going to let them put her away. I wasn’t going to let it go that far.”

“Just far enough, right? And for what reason then?”

“I told you.”

“No, you really didn’t. You’re acting like you’re serving some higher purpose here.”

A weird thought struck me. Was he serving some other purpose? I squinted at him, taking in the ginger. I thought about what we had talked about minutes earlier. His appearances in my life. His “ghost-hearing” abilities. Some things fit together, some things didn’t.

He didn’t say anything. I was tempted to ask the “who are you” question again but I knew it would get me nowhere. He was my old college buddy Max, that’s all he could be. That’s all I wanted him to be.

My phone beeped and I jumped in my seat. Everything had me on edge.

I looked at the text from Ada:
WTF?! OK I’m glad ur out. She’s OK - sleeping. Maybe come by around 11 when the rents R asleep
.

The thought of Perry lying in her bed, sleeping, brought a smile to her face. As creepy as it sounds, there had been so many times I’d watched her sleep. Just a ratty Slayer concert tee, bedhead, no makeup. She looked so beautiful, so serene, even when she was drooling.

My heart flipped in my chest, a mix of hope and sadness. I swallowed the feeling and buried it by telling myself I was going to do whatever it took to make things right between us again.

Whatever it took.

AFTERWORD

In case you haven’t noticed, almost all of the chapter titles are songs. Favorite’s of mine, actually. Check them out:

-
After School Special –
Mr. Bungle (too weird? Listen to Retrovertigo instead)

- Spookshow Baby
– Rob Zombie

-
Even Deeper
– Nine Inch Nails

-
Big Dumb Sex
- Soundgarden

- Butterfly Caught
– Massive Attack

- She’s Got a Way
– Billy Joel

-
Stripsearch
- Faith No More (the song playing during the scene)

- Digging the Grave
– Faith No More

- When Good Dogs Do Bad Things
– Dillinger Escape Plan

- She Loves Me Not
– Faith No More

-
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
– The Beatles

- Mr. Self-Destruct
- Nine Inch Nails

-
Demon Cleaner/Bailout -
Kyuss

Actually just play Nine Inch Nails, all albums, on shuffle...THAT is Dex’s mind.

If you want to listen to the songs, please visit my playlist on the Official Experiment in Terror Website,
HERE
.

I love to interact with readers on
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or my
EIT Facebook Page

Coming in September from Metal Blonde Books

“Almost Famous meets The Devil’s Advocate in this sexy new adult horror.”

It’s the summer of 1974 and 21-year old Dawn Emerson has only three things she wants to do: compete one last time in the Ellensburg Rodeo, win back her ex-boyfriend Ryan, and become the best damn music journalist at Central Washington University. But all her plans are left in the dust when she’s contacted by Creem magazine to go on the road with one of her favorite groups, the up-and-coming metal band, Hybrid.

At first the assignment reads like a dream come true. Not only will Dawn land some much-needed credibility as a female music journalist, but she’ll finally get to experience life from the other side of the stage, and maybe crack the drunken, enigmatic code that is guitarist Sage Knightly. Instead, Dawn finds herself on an aging tour bus filled with ego-maniacs, band politics and a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. When monsters start showing up in dressing rooms and some of Sage’s groupies become increasingly strange and dangerous, Dawn discovers the band is not only going places – they’re going straight to Hell.

And Dawn has a backstage pass.