Everything snapped back to normality as I stared at the bottle on the table.
Alberto stopped laughing. "Wine hombre? Not only red wine my friend, have you ever tried mescaline? I love that shit but I'm guessing you haven't got the stomach for it Ash. I put a whole dropper of that stuff in there. Now we gonna trip together my friend, and we'll come to some arrangement by the end of the night. Count on it!"
The red wine swirled in my glass. I saw a barmaid approaching through the bloody swirls of claret.
Alberto draped his arm over my shoulder as he ushered me out on to the deserted VIP terrace overlooking the ocean. The tide was high, lapping the shoreline like a lizard tasting the air to keep cool. Those eyes flashed slits of black emptiness again, tight slats of reptilian ichor draining my soul with the ageless divinity of death.
"I have this problem mi hombre". He hissed mingling with the breeze as it faded out like the transition between dreams. "We need someone to move the shit and it has to be someone white, hombre. I can't do it!"
His laugh stretched into the night, long melodious deep barreling waves of sound. The chirrup of crickets kept time with the background of the music humming from the club. That laugh concertinaed through the warm evening, a baseline modulated by the light of the moon.
SLAM. Alberto slammed his hand down on the edge of the balcony. Slam, slam, slam three times like nails being hammered into a coffin. "What's it to be then Ash?"
I stared down at the waves caressing the wall of the club, lights from the hotels in the bay cast modular crescents of color across the sea. El Nino had swollen the ocean with life, like a pregnant cat languishing in the heat. Poseidon taking a deep breath before the plunge. A tiger flashed across the sky, sleek stripped rivulet of stars leaping from sea and heaven to plunge down into me, filling me up with the heat of El Nino.
My elbow hit Alberto in the jaw as his hands flew up fast and practiced to my throat. Heat pumped through me like liquid mana, I was sleek death faster than this prey. My hand flew to his belt, automatic, as it grabbed the semi-automatic pistol and pushed it up under his chin. Those lizard eyes flashed mirth at me, mocking, unbelieving. The tiger responded, as the pain of a knee to my balls lit up the night in bright flashes of pain and the muzzle flash sprayed a bloody fountain of claret across the face of the moon.
He went up and over the balcony, landing in the lap of the oceans shallow waves. He lay under shimmering stars, haloed in bioluminescence from the tickle of the tide. Kissed by phytoplankton, silhouetted by the breath of El Nino.
To be continued...
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