Free This Wicked World by RICHARD LANGE

one green, and skin so pale Virgil can see his veins. He’s wearing leather pants and a sleeveless New York Dolls T-shirt. Real old school.
    “We played Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio, where the Pistols played when they toured in seventy-seven,” Eton says. “These fucking cowboys, a whole gang of drunk shit-kickers, were waiting for us in the parking lot afterward, wanted to beat our asses. Black Ron, our drummer — he was a real big boy — pulled a machete out of his road case and chased them off, screaming like some kind of funky… funky… rhino on crack. Hey, did you ever see
Jacob’s Ladder
? Now that’s a trippy fucking flick.”
    Eton Dogfood. That’s his punk name. Virgil doesn’t know his real one. He played bass in The Despised back in the eighties, a hard-core band that made it onto a few compilations but never put out their own CD. Now he deals all kinds of dope, and DJs at clubs and private parties.
    Eton inherited this crazy old house from his grandma. In fact, her room upstairs is exactly as it was on the day she died.
    He took Virgil up to see it once, all the dusty old lady stuff still on the dresser, her robe laid out on the bed, a closet full of shoes. Fucking freaky shit.
    The whole place is freaky. The windows that haven’t been boarded over are covered with thick velvet drapes that keep the rooms dark all day, but not so dark that you can’t make out the peeling wallpaper and the water stains on the ceiling. There are candles everywhere, and paintings in heavy frames: men in armor, angels, hunting scenes. And the smell. Virgil once explored an abandoned gold mine with his dad, and the house smells exactly like it, like bat piss and dirt and rotting wood.
    Virgil exhales a cloud of pungent smoke, passes the bong to Eton, and settles back on the couch, which matches Eton’s chair.
    Virgil’s older sister, Olivia, met Eton at a club in Hollywood where he was spinning records when she first moved out from Tampa years ago. They became good friends, and she ended up moving into this house for a while, cooking, doing dishes, and making dope deliveries to earn her keep. “Olivia is like a little sister to me,” Eton told Virgil. “A little sister with a really great ass.”
    When Virgil rolled into town a month ago and needed a place to crash, Olivia called Eton from wherever the hell she’s living now, the desert or wherever, and arranged for him to stay at the house. At first Virgil was creeped out by the whole scene — the cobwebs, the rustling in the walls at night. He also thought that Eton might be gay and worried that he’d try to get with him. But everything turned out cool.
    The best part was how generous Eton was with his stash, even fronting Virgil some stuff so he could earn a little money. Virgil started hitting the clubs and moving product, and things had been going pretty good. He’d built up a little bank and was able to get high whenever he wanted. Until last night.
    “Where were you again when you got ripped off?” Eton asks for the third time.
    Virgil rubs his shaved head and feels his scalp move under his fingers. That kush is some sick smoke fo sho, he thinks.
    “Some yuppie place on Hollywood Boulevard. Had all these clocks everywhere. The Tick Tock or some shit.”
    “And you’re sure they were cops?”
    “Alls I know is two big motherfuckers came up with badges, saying they were police and that they wanted to talk. They didn’t look like no police to me, though, so I knocked one of them on his ass and was about out the door when the other one stuck a gun in my ear. They dragged me out to the alley behind the restaurant and jacked me for all the dope I had and all my money too.” The money part’s the biggest lie — he’s still got over a hundred bucks — but what the fuck.
    “I slid you three hundred dollars’ worth of shit,” Eton says.
    “I know, bro, and I feel really bad about that,” Virgil says. “But I’m gonna repay you, I swear. If I gotta