Castles Made of Sand

"Jesus Christ I needed that," she said up into the sky. "Doug doesn't even touch me." I flick my tongue against her red, slick little clit again, and she bucks. "Don't! Don't… it's too much right now."

And I'm grinning.

Suddenly the moment is split in two by the car horn. I look up and wipe the Madeline from my face to see Alanna's severely unimpressed eyes, underlit by the dashboard of the car.

"Oh, shit my clothes!" Madeline suddenly barks behind me. I spin to her.

"Madeline," I say. She turns to me. Nude in the imperfect near-full moonlight. Her hard little nipples and slim lips, shining wetness between her thighs. Her mop of hair covering half her face. She's not smiling any more. Not a half a watt.

"What?" she says.

"None of that matters," I tell her. I pull off my half-unbuttoned shirt and wrap it around her. It reaches halfway down her slim, pale thighs and she clutches it tight as she begins to shivver in the night air.

Alanna pushes over as I hop into the driver's seat and gun the engine. I shut off the jazz and stick in a CD of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

"What kind of fuckin' drug dealer listens to classical music?" Alanna says.

"The kind who doesn't define himself by what he does for a living," I say as I light two cigarettes and hand one back to Madeline. She finally pipes up;

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Road trip," I say. "Gotta' do some stuff down south." I look over to Alanna. She's been staring at me, now that my shirt is wrapped around her best friend. I catch her eyes as they move up from my chest. "I don't suppose you'd like to come along?" …what am I doing?

"No," she says bluntly.

"Oh, c'mon!" Madeline chirps.

"No, I'm sorry Madeline, but this was a shitty night."

"Fuckin' buzzkill…" says Madeline. I grin. Madeline is coming along nicely.

Suddenly I'm not in the car. I'm not driving. Some ghost is. They have an argument without me. Is

Alanna jealous?

Of what?

Of Charlie and Madeline.

As if Alanna's jealous of someone getting eaten out by her cousin.

Cousin by marriage.

They scratch back and forth until I pull up in front of One-Oh-Three Dunkirk Street. The final score; Madeline 12, Alanna 15. Alanna immediately gets out of the car and stalks up the driveway into the house. Slam. Madeline stays behind to whet my palette with her tongue. She grins a little grin and tells me to pick her up at eleven the next morning.

Madeline, with no pants and no underwear, grinning her little grin. She is free in a way that Alanna is not.

Not yet.

Slam. I light myself another cigarette and drive my ball of razor blades back home. My father's passed out on the couch. Ainsley's on the floor playing her video games.

"Hey Chuck."

"Hey Ains."

"Where've you been?"

"Out."

"Can I get a joint?"

"What?"

"Pleeeasse?" Fuck her and her scholarships. Fuck her and her big brown eyes. "I won't call you 'Chuck' for a week."

Fuck her and… oh, fuck it – I toss her a joint and a smoke for after and head upstairs.

"Thanks Chuck!"

Fuck her and her broken promises.

THREE: THROUGH THE BARREL OF A GUN

Somewhere between that night and the next morning, the second hand on my watch moved around four hundred and eighty times. I didn't see it happen, but I'm sure it did. It's one of those things that you take on faith. Little things are important when you're looking at life through the barrel of a gun.

Just like my watch, just like clockwork, the safe warm little world of my bed is shattered by the door opening and the stink of stale tequila on my face. You can't expect much from perfection.

"You been smokin' them marijuana cigarettes, Boy?"

ALCOHOL: tequila; four ounces of

CAFFEINE: pills; three caplets of

"No, Dad. It's just my contacts."

"Why don't you take 'em out before you go to bed, you lazy little prick…"

The convertible ball of razors rumbles up to One-Oh-Three Dunkirk. The Sun. I can feel the Sun burning me. The ozone is everyone's problem. They made a mess and it's our job to clean it up.

I roll up to the front door. An ebony doorbell in a cream-and-gold door. When you're golden everything glows.

Dinnnnnngggggg donnnnngggggg.

Uncle Steve in his khaki pants and fuschia sweater. Uncle Steve with his perfect hair and perfect life. I want to piss on his magnolias.

"You let the air out of my tires, didn't you, you little shit!"

"That hurts, Uncle Steve."

"I called the cops on you."

"Wound me, Uncle Steve. Is Madeline around?"

"She's packing," he says. "She's going out of town for a few days, so you can just get the Hell out of here."

"Really? Going out of town?"

"Her and Alanna. So piss off."

"Alanna too?"

SLAM.

I let the perfect air out of his newly-inflated perfect tires and called his perfect daughter on the cell phone.

"Hello?"

"Morning, Alanna. You forgiven me for last night yet?"

"I don't want you messing around with Maddy. She's an honours student." I roll my eyes.

"You're an excellent influence, Alanna. We'll have to do something about that." I look up to her window. Madeline is waving at me from it. I go back to The Lincoln and pulled a small bag out of the back seat.

"Madeline wants to know what's in the bag," Alanna tells me.

"Tell her it's sugar."

"It's sugar," I hear her say. Madeline laughs in the window as I pour it into the perfect shiny perfectness of the PT Cruiser's gas tank.

The convertible ball of razor blades is loaded with luggage and young women of great expectations, Perfect Uncle Steve's screams of retribution drown to nothingness under the rumble of the engine.

The highway. Long open stretches of road. I feel the freedom permeate me along with the unfiltered ultraviolet rays. I can feel it burn itself into my skin. Madeline lights two cigarettes and hands one to me.

Alanna hasn't stopped talking for the past half-hour, which was as long as it took to reach the perimiter.

"I'm just not at that point in my life where I'm willing to throw caution to the wind."

"You're twenty," I remind her. "If you haven't hit that point yet you never will. You just need to remember how much doesn't matter."

"Don't give me that shit," she snaps back. "There are important things in life."

"Like what?"

"Like putting on suntan lotion."

"That's horse shit."

The Lincoln rolls to a stop just ahead of a blue Charger.

"What're we doing?" Alanna says.

"Business," I say, and open the glove box.

"Is that a gun?" she demands. I reach past it to pull out the bag of weed.

"Probably," I say, and close the box.

Jason hops out of his car and walks up.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

He was walking strange. Too heavy.

I check the rearview again. He's brought a crew. A guy in the passenger seat I don't recognize and another in the back.

"What's with the company?"

"Just some friends," he says, grinning at a hundred-fifty watts. Jason never smiles. My gut tightens along with my so-called resolve.

Baby steps. "Alanna, open the glove box." And she does.

"I need more than a half," he says.

"Half's all I got."

"I don't buy that."

"I ain't sellin' it."

Life looks a lot different through the barrel of a gun.

If Jason's piece hadn't caught on his belt, he might have ruined my brother's leather bucket seats. As it turns out, opening the door into his kneecaps was enough to drop him.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

A flunky with a sawed-off double-barrel comes out of the Charger. He's just a silhouette against the sun. A black outline of a man. Death is coming for me, and I smile.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

"Gun," I say.

Crunch.

"No!" Alanna shouts.

Crunch.

"This isn't a fuckin' joke, 'Lanna!"

I feel the unfamiliar grip of a 9mm Beretta in my palm and pull it up.

Crunch.

Death pulls up his shotgun.

Click. The deafening click. The safety's on.

bang

It was so distant. So quiet. What was loud was the pain in my shoulder as my jacket tore open.

Baby steps. Click the safety off.

Death is reloading his shotgun. Jason is getting up. Crunch.

Baby steps. Aim the gun.

A gun is simple and perfect. Trigger releases hammer. Hammer strikes the firing pin. Firing pin ignites the powder. The resulting expanding gasses propells the slug or whatever in the only available direction – through the barrel of the gun. Just like your spitballs in junior high. Like the jism from a cock.

Baby steps. Don't pull the trigger. Squeeze it.

The first round misses completely. The second catches Death in the shoulder as flunky number two gets out of the Charger. Death drops as Jason stands.

Baby steps. Smash Jason in the head with the gun. Watch him go down again.

Baby steps. Aim the gun at the double-crossing shit.

"I just want the map, Chuck!"

I hate it when people call me 'Chuck'.

"Jason. Your problem is you don't see how unimportant you are."

Baby steps. Cock the gun.

I wonder what I would have done if he'd simply begged for his life like a normal persona.

"Chuck, just give us the map."

For a moment, I consider that the last thing Jason will see is the grimace of my not-so-tight resolve, through the barrel of a gun.

"Sorry Jason – you're not quite gold."

Don't pull the trigger. Squeeze.

When I was a kid my mother told me to never stare into the Sun.

So once when I was seven I did.

I drive until the moon has set. The imperfect near-full moon. The Slick Black Lincoln pulls into a motel parking lot along some nameless lost highway. Alanna hasn't spoken a word since that afternoon. Just chain-smoked. Madeline's asleep in the back seat. I envy her.

She might be dreaming of something better. Someplace where the air doesn't stink. Where the Sun isn't offensive to the naked eye. Something golden.

I get a room with two beds and tip the guy behind the counter in advance. He nods and thinks better than to ask about my shoulder.

He's seen better days.

I wonder if that day ever comes. When you've never seen one better.

I hope so.

I carry the luggage in and set it in the closet.

I close the roof on the car and show the women inside.

They're not laughing tonight.

"Jesus, Kid," the guy behind the counter says. "You look like you been through some shit."

I tell him I'm not a kid.

I'm nineteen.

By the time I get back from the office with extra towels, Madeline and Alanna seem cognative. The second hand on my watch moves around eight times before anyone says anything. I know this 'cause I watched it. Today has nothing to do with faith.

"Who was that guy?" Madeline finally says.

"A rival dealer," I tell her.

"What did he want?"

"The map to my brother's grow house."

"Jesus Christ, Charlie!" Alanna barks. "Is that where we're going?"

"Yes."

"WHY."

"Sully's in jail. I've got to clear out his grow house before the cops find it, or he's behind bars for a long time."

"I thought Sully was just another dealer," Alanna says.

"He's more than a dealer; he's a grower. And that's some major shit. Most likely there's anywhere from a quarter to a half million dollars worth of ganje in that growhouse, and it's not going in an evidence locker."

Alanna gets up and begins to pace.

"I'm an accomplice. I'm an accomplice to murder. I handed you the gun! My life's over."

I glance to Madeline. She flashes a hundred watts at me, then at Alanna. Madeline says,

"What if it's just starting?" I grin. Madeline's come a long way.

"Madeline," I say tossing her a dimebag, "roll us a joint. Alanna and I need to go for a walk."

"What about your shoulder?" she says.

"Just grazed me. It stopped bleeding, don't worry about it."

Madeline flashes her hundred watts again as I lead Alanna out the door.

The points of light in the sky are infinite and ideal. They haven't been corrupted. Not yet.

I look at Alanna. Not yet.

"This far our in the middle of nowhere," she says, "when the moon's gone down… you can really see them. The stars, I mean."

"Yeah," I say, lighting two cigarettes. I could really use that joint right now. Fuck it. "Alanna, if you could use one word to describe Uncle Steve, what would it be?"

"'Miserable'."

"Exactly. Your stepfather's perfect. He eats balanced meals and excercises regularly. He drives his PT Cruiser. He lives in a mansion. He's got the DVD and the VCR and the home theatre system and the jet skis for summers at the lake. But he's miserable. Why?"

"I don't know," she says. Her hand shakes as she takes a drag. My jacket drops over her shoulders before I continue;

"He's too content. Too perfect. All that shit he has? His big screen and his DVD and his SUV? He doesn't need that. All that shit… he thinks that'll make him complete."

"And I suppose you know what he needs?"

"I think so."

"And what's that?"

"Enlightenment." I think I'm clever.

"Sure, Charlie, you're so ZEN."

"Find a word to describe me." She stops. She stares at me.

"You're right," she finally says.

"Why?"

"If I had to describe you in a word, Charlie, I'd say 'content'."

…I'd never thought of myself like that.

"Come to think of it, I am." I grin. She doesn't grin back. "That shit this afternoon? That wasn't your fault. That was some asshole who pulled a shotgun on me. And if I hadn't killed him, he woulda' killed us. Self-defence in any court in the world. Well …maybe not Texas.

He mattered as much as I do. And that's not a whole Hell of a lot. You just gotta' get that through your head."

"Get what?" she says as we begin to walk back.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch on the gravel.

"The future doesn't matter. Only now. Perfection is not to be envied. Pitied. Let's smoke some weed."

FOUR: BEAUTIFUL FALL FROM GRACE

By the time we get back in, Madeline has finished rolling her second joint. Sitting in her underwear and a t-shirt on one of the beds, she grins up at us and slides the joint between her lips before holding it up for inspection.

"Beautiful," I tell her. "You've got a gift."

I stick it between her lips and let my Zippo flare to life in front of her. She gently burns the end before taking a long hoot, holding it in as she rolls the joint onto my thumb and index. …rolling rolling rolling…
I hear another lighter behind me and can see Alanna lighting a cigarette in my mind's eye. A plume of thicker marijuana smoke hit me in the face as she walks by. She's dedicated to this. I grin and took a long hoot.

"You're golden," I say to her. A hundred watts hits me in the face. Madeline starts kissing my neck as I take another hoot. I let my hand drift down the small of her back to her bottom and trace up and down her tailbone as she begins unbuttoning my shirt. It falls to the floor along with my jacket and she goes back and forth between the joint and my stomach as she kneels in front of me. I smoke the joint and watch Alanna smoke hers on the bed as a shopping list appears on the floor;

BLAZER/DANIER (BLACK LEATHER - m) --------- $649.00

SHIRT/HUGO BOSS (WHITE DRESS – m) ----------- $119.99

BELT/HOLT RENFREW (BLACK – 32) --------------- $45.00

SHOES/DOC MARTIN (BLACK LEATHER – 13) --- $199.99

SLACKS/HUGO BOSS (BLACK – 32) ----------------- $299.95

SOCKS/DKNY (BLACK – m) ---------------------------- $38.99

SUBTOTAL:$1352.92

PLUS TAX: $189.41

TOTAL:$1542.33

All the shit I want but don't need. Drug money. But when you've got a Madeline licking your crotch and an Alanna stripping down to her designer bra and spreading her legs for you, morality seems to be a mute point.

I let my fingers slip through Madeline's thick mane of curls and my head rolls back as I feel her warm lips envelop my cock. It's so hard it hurts. I suddenly remember that I hadn't gotten off the previous night, and I gasp a sudden gulp of air as she takes me all the way to the base. This perfect petite woman of great expectations with her mouth stretched taught around my cock, her perfect nose resting on my pubes. Her hand wrapped around my balls.

"Mmmm…." she moans below me. And I can feel it.

For a moment, I almost wish I was experiencing this without the benefit of psychotropia, so as to feel her minstrations undiluted. Alanna catches my attention again.

She's tracing a finger along her thigh now, and she flashes me a few watts as she lets her index slip between the lips of her pussy. I watch her breathing while I guide Madeline's head as it slowly slides up and down the length of my cock.

Alanna's c-cups are beginning to heave. Her usually perfect blond wavy hair slowly becoming less perfect. Less golden. Her eyes huge. She smiles to me, and I feel… something. A connection.

My dick is suddenly cold, and I look down to watch Madeline remove her shirt. She smiles up as she jerks at me with her hand, and I am aware.

I am so aware.

I can feel her breathing against my thighs. I can feel the air from the conditioner at the far side of the room. I hear a distant big rig. I see the layers of the bed. The cheap yellow sheets with the cheap bown blankets and the hard white pillows. I see the screws that hold the lamps in place. I can feel the Bible in the end table drawers. I can feel Alanna's eyes on me. I want to fuck that woman.

"How far are you going to take this?" I ask her from across the room. Madeline knows I'm not talking to her.

"I'm ready," she whispers back. Madeline stands beside me and guides my face to hers, sliding her tongue into my mouth as she grinds her pelvis against mine. A hand instinctively goes to her breast, and I can feel the nipple become peaky beneath my palm. A tiny mountain just for me. But then again, you can't expect much from perfection.

She grips my cock with surprising strength and leads me to the bed with Alanna. Alanna hands me her half-finished joint and grins as I take a hoot. I am so stoned.

Her hand replaces Madeline's and she firmly jerks its length as Madeline lays back and begins to play with herself, stroking Alanna's thigh as she does. And I want to fuck this woman.

I want to bend her over and fuck her until her cheek is red from grinding against the bed. I want her best perfect, pert little friend to watch while I make her scream. But not yet.

I lean down to kiss her and she lets my tongue slide over hers, her full breasts pressing warm against my chest as she pumps my cock, still slick with Madeline's saliva. And Madeline's almost there. She moans besides us. Her hips buck into her fingers and her mouth forms a perfect, pink little "O".

Her left hand cups a tiny breast and gently runs over the nipple. Her sex a firey red in the dim light, and she smiles at me.

I want to muck them up. I want to show them how far you can fall. Madeline's already halfway there.

I reach down and remove Alanna's hand from my crotch, replacing the joint in it. She looks at me. She's confused. Isn't this what I wanted? I kiss her lips long and soft, and let a finger slide up through her slick pussy, quickly and gently grazing her clit.

"Nothing matters," I tell her, and slide over to Madeline.

Madeline looks so happy at the thought. Her eyes are huge in the dim light.

Madeline's arms are around me.

Madeline's lips are upon me.

Madeline's sex is burning against me.

Madeline's legs are clutching me.

And I fuck her. Kneeling on the bed, her body grips me along with her pussy, I fuck her. Her heels kicking at me, I fuck her. Her fingernails raking my back, I fuck her. I can feel her break the skin and her breath hot in my ear, telling me to fuck her.

"Harder!" she tells me. "Don't stop. Jesus Christ, it's so perfect…" When you're golden.

I look over her shoulder to look at Alanna.

Alanna in her perfect blond perfectness. Her hair flailing across her face as she rubs her pussy in a blur of pink and red. Her hips bucking in time with my thrusts into Madeline. Her eyes locked on me as I fuck her friend. And now I'm fucking her too.