Free Concrete Underground (2010) by Moxie Mezcal Page A

is a game. And sometimes, to keep things interesting, you have to change the rules."
    "I don't get what you--"
    Suddenly, I felt a presence behind me. "We're all set, boss," said a loud, deep male voice.
    I turned to see the man from the flophouse towering over me - the Bad Seed. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a distorted image of a bull that I recognized as a detail from Guernica .
    "Ah, Saint Anthony. Always impeccable timing," Max said.
    The two men shook hands, then the larger man hooked his thumb in my direction. "What's he doing here?"
    "Oh, don't worry about him. He's a journalist ," Max said, putting a derisive emphasis on the last word. "Mr. D Quetzal, I'd like you to meet Saint Anthony, my special advisor."
    "Special advisor? What's that mean? And what the fuck kind of name is Saint Anthony?"
    "It's a nick name," Max explained. "He's had it for years, on account of him being such a devout Catholic."
    "Yeah, I bet," I scoffed.
    "Saint" Anthony stared me down like he was two seconds from kicking the holy fucking shit out of me.
    Max clapped his hands together to get the attention of the entire room. "Everybody upstairs. Curtain time in ten minutes."
    "We're going back to the art show?" I asked.
    "No," Max replied. "I mean all the way upstairs."
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    8. Everyone Needs a Good Scare, Now and Then

    I stood on top of the warehouse's roof, watching about three dozen of the city's best and brightest stand around and freeze their asses off. And, truth be told, I was enjoying the spectacle, even though it meant I was freezing my own off right along with them.
    The anemic, refugee-thin heiresses shivering in their barely-there party dresses. The effete dot-com executives in thousand-dollar "distressed" jeans trying to look unaffected by the cold that's cracking their lips and shriveling their dicks. It warmed my spiteful, jealous little heart.
    Columbine was busy circulating through the crowd, handing out sheets of paper, one a head. When she finished, she came over to sit with me on the parapet.
    "What's this all about?" I asked as I grabbed one of the leftover sheets off the stack on her lap.
    "This is tonight's game," she explained. "Scavenger hunt."
    I looked down at the paper in my hands, which contained a list of items neatly printed in three evenly-spaced columns. The items were pretty far out there, things like an albino, a monkey's paw, a transgender prostitute, an original Matisse, a three-legged dog, a pickled punk, an ounce of heroin, and a human spleen.
    "Scavenger hunt?" I repeated skeptically.
    "Yeah. You have to try to find as many of the things on this list as you can and bring them back."
    I rolled my eyes. "Yes, I understand the concept of a scavenger hunt. I'm just wondering why a group of grown adults - the city's richest and most powerful bright young things, no less - would spend their Saturday night on one."
    I heard footsteps behind me on the parapet, and then a new voice joined our conversation. "Imagine you were filthy rich, richer than any human being has any right to be. You can literally do and have anything you want. You've traveled the world, had the dirtiest sex imaginable, imbibed the filthiest narcotics. What would you do for kicks when you grow tired of the same old thrills?"
    I craned my head to the right and saw Max standing atop the parapet, hovering over my head. He grinned like a deranged Japanese oni , the cold night air turning his breath visible as it streamed out of his nostrils.
    "All right, kids, listen up!" he called out to everyone on the rooftop. "We're going to get started. I trust you've all had a chance to look over the list for tonight's game. I see a few new faces, so let me bring you all up to speed.
    "The object is simple - whoever brings back the most items from your list by sunrise is the winner, and whoever brings back the least is the loser. Aside from that, there are no rules. Steal, lie, cheat, break and enter, wander around the bad parts of town, work your