The first streetlights were already on. “Magic Hell” hadn’t opened yet, but the music inside was booming. The ground beneath my feet vibrated and shook. Torches burned in the bowels of “Hell”, something flashed and exploded violently, sending a shower of sparks into the sky.
Randy emerged from the swirl of colorful crowds at the entrance and immediately asked: “Did you hand out the flyers?” “Yeah,” I nodded out of breath, “to old people.” And for some reason I added: “I don’t think they’re coming.” “They will,” Randy grinned. “Turn around.” I looked over my shoulder and saw two girls in bright makeup smoking nearby.
At first glance, they looked like schoolgirls in provocative outfits – short skirts, tops up to their navels, arms and legs covered in tattoos. But when I looked closer, I recoiled in horror – the “schoolgirls” turned out to be old women. Toothless, with sagging wrinkled skin, they looked like lizards. “Nice girls, huh?” Randy tapped me on the shoulder. “The cream of society! They’ve been hanging out on the dance floor for ten years and they’ll be hanging out until they kick the bucket. Well, are you ready to work?”
There were two bars in the club; behind the far one, by the stage, stood a young Thai, a regular local bartender, not dead. He made cocktails – Pina Coladas, Margaritas and Mai Tais. Next to him, speakers as tall as the house shook.
The bar where I was supposed to spend the night was across the entrance, but that didn’t help the noise. The speakers blasted techno-house, an eerie mix of screeching and drilling that echoed in my legs. The DJ turned up the volume and the decibels started to pulsate somewhere around my solar plexus, then went higher, hitting my brain. Stunned, I covered my ears.
My heart was racing like a frightened horse, stumbled, limped, and finally stopped. I coughed, pounded my chest with my fist, and engine jerked, reluctantly restarting. “I could have a heart attack!” the thought flashed through my mind. I know it sounds strange for a dead man, but I kept forgetting that I was dead.
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I looked around to see if I was the only one who wasn’t feeling well. In the darkness cut by the laser beams, distorted faces flashed, bodies wriggled and writhed glistening with sweat. Hands reached greedily for the bar, I didn’t have time to get the cans of “power drinks” out of the boxes – people grabbed them in an instant. The only way to endure such a cacophony was to consume a lot of caffeine, I suggested. Then I glanced at the mediator screen and saw that the green scale was almost a third full. And the party was just getting started!
In my mind, I was already calculating how much I would earn here without too much effort, but when I went to the cash register in the morning, completely deaf and dazed, I found out that my income was not so great – only one-tenth of one percent of the profits. Out of the megaton of downloaded “cream” I only got a thousand. Half of it was immediately deducted from my debt, so I went to the exchange office with a measly five hundred.
There I made another unpleasant discovery. With a click of a button, the money changer announced that my exchange rate was one to two, and that I could get 250 coins. “Why so few?! I protested. “Oh, really?” the money changer raised an eyebrow. “It is the best rate on the Island!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Randy confirmed, as he approached us, “I have a rate of one to five, but I know guys who get one in ten and nobody complains.” “What does it depend on?” I asked, hiding the money. “On your past merits, on how you used your energy when you were alive.” “Are you saying I’m not hopeless?” “Everybody’s not hopeless,” Randy said coldly. “It’s just everyone’s past is different. So put your nose down and stop being proud that your rate is better than others. You’re here, which means you certainly didn’t have a halo over your head.” I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.
There was nowhere to sleep. Honestly, I thought Randy would give me shelter while I looked for a place to live, but it didn’t look like he was going to help me. “Dude, it’s every man for himself here,” was the answer. So I trudged to the beach. It wasn’t long before dawn. I lay down in a chaise-longue and immediately jumped up as if stung, when something noisily twitched, moaned, and shook beneath me.
A minute later, yawning and scratching, a shaggy dog crawled out from under the chaise-longue. He stretched out, wagged his tail in a friendly manner, and then froze, his snout turned toward the sun, which was already rising over the horizon. So, together with the dog, we met the morning of a new day.
To be continued