The Speed Chronicles by Joseph Mattson

decibels.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œMan, fuck Cortez!” Grace howled, slapping his knees.
    â€œLook,” I said, pointing out the windows at thick chaparral climbing up the rise, houses disappearing into the shadows of oak and rocky crags. “Old Mexico.”
    â€œFuck Spain! Fuck the United States! Goddamn goldbrickers! This is Mexico! Glorious Mexico!” Grace cried, now a hardwired demon full of fast rage.
    â€œYou’re not Mexican,” I said. I leaned into the left turn going at least 45 mph. After a good fifteen-minute bounce up the mountain we reached the gate and were buzzed in.
    â€œBetter leave the tent in the car,” I said.
    â€œRight,” Jim Grace agreed.
    â€œGents,” Harv greeted us as we walked up the three-hundred-yard stretch from parking to the house. There were about ten cars in the lot, meaning the place was going to be a scene.
    â€œHarv, que pasa ,” Grace said, extending his hand. I simply nodded, keeping my clenched fists in my pockets.
    â€œCome on in. Mi casa su casa and all that.”
    We went into the den—the business room—and as we passed the kitchen I caught a glimpse of Nettles slunk against the stove smoking nothing but two inches of ash from a beaten cigarette. She had a lake of purple around her right eye. I reached up and patted my own bruised orbital plate. When we passed the sliding glass that opened into the courtyard we saw a half-naked blond girl prancing around the pool in a fried haze. She looked no older than sixteen.
    â€œThat’s Tabby,” Harv said. “Her and Nettles are getting … acclimated.”
    In the den Harv measured up two very generous sixties, even though I was just along for the ride; not buying, necessarily, but knowing that Grace would part me off a kind freebie.
    â€œDon’t worry about it for now,” Harv said. “Two for one today, and you’ll make it up to me later.”
    A loaded deal to be sure. Regardless, Grace and I quickly pocketed our bounties when we heard a gang of intriguing cheers and whistles explode from the clubhouse out beyond the pool. Harv eyed us cautiously, then fixed a stern, secure gaze on us that warned: You shall not fuck with me .
    â€œYou boys want to come out back and ’tend the ceremony? It’s totally cracked.”
    My throat clenched no , but the ill-fated notion sank back down to my gut unspoken. I had a bad feeling. I’d only been up to Harv’s Hills house a handful of times, and the place didn’t sit right. It always felt appropriate to leave. I’d never seen anything too strange going on outside of meth heaven and hell and their according crimes in general, mostly just a bunch of paroxysmal, self-entitled eccentric turds jettisoning their brains toward sweet oblivion; rather, it was an aura of badness, and all I wanted to do now was go home and read a thick nineteenth-century Russian novel front to back, or masturbate for four or five hours, maybe.
    â€œCeremony?” Grace asked.
    â€œYeah. The New Church of Zoom,” Harv shrugged. “It’s not my thing—pretty fucked-up, really—but they pay me too much to refuse.”
    We leaned into Harv’s taster plate and each took a hefty snort. Somewhere deep down inside not wanting anything more to do with any of this, I still couldn’t refuse.
    â€œWell, okay,” Grace said.
    Never coming here again , I swore, this is the end , when Harv slid the clubhouse door aside.
    â€œThis is Jesus. He died for our—your—sins.”
    In the middle of the clubhouse stood a meticulously constructed seven-foot crucifix with a beautiful, sleek, powerfully built, but atrociously dead brown-and-white pit bull terrier nailed to it, flies swarming around the bloody spikes driven through its spread front paws and its bundled hind quarters. A male, his eyes expired shuddered in incomprehension. A dozen people were cajoling in a circle, swathed