New Irvine Welsh

crystal castles - crimewave

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work - Extract

The air-conditioner on the silver Dodge Durango had fucked up earlier: the filter and cooler malfunctioning. Instead of sweet, chilled air, it had inexplicably started blowing hot desert dust into the vehicle. It streaked their sweaty faces and hands, merging with the previous layers they’d kicked up during their weekend of intoxicated dancing madness. Throats, dehydrated by drug and desert, dried out even more, as tearless eyeballs burned. They had been forced to switch it off. It had been a long trek out from the Burning Man festival, and a treacherous drive across these back desert roads. Now they were lost in this dust storm. Eugene’s spine was starting to hurt; his large line back’s frame uncomfortable in the seat. The dirt on his wet and slimy hands was turning to mud on the wheel and it was getting hotter all the time. His big chest rose and fell as his lungs struggled to fill up with the warm, dead air. This damn Dodge of Scott’s! 40,567 miles on the clock and the fucking aircon doesn’t even work! As the storm continued to kick up, the sky growing murkier by the second, Eugene was feeling the sense of his own stupidity snapping at him like a rabid dog. The short cut hadn’t materialized and as far as he could make out there were no fellow travelers around of any description. Eugene studied his pasty, wan reflection in the mirror, his filthy hair scraped back in a pony- tail, the sweat from it now running down his big forehead in rivulets of mud. Picking up an old white towel by his side, he wiped his face. He was glad he couldn’t see his eyes under his shades. Fatigued beyond tiredness, he pressed on as demons danced slowly in his peripheral vision. A bolt of lightning crackled in the phosphorous sky in front of him. He was unfit to drive; he was unfit for anything, he ruefully considered. The drugs and the sleep deprivation had taken him into a mildly psychotic status quo, which was now even starting to bore him. He was praying for clarity soon, both in the wild environment outside and in his troubled mind. And Madeline and Scott should have been awake to take their turns at the wheel. But he knew they were on a different trajectory to his, and so he’d been stuck with the driving. Rancorous bile rose in Eugene’s gut as he pushed on. Thunder quaked and rumbled in his ears on top of a tinnitus bass line that he feared would stay with him forever. This godamn mess. And Madeline. Asleep on the passenger seat next to him, his eyes straying onto her long, bare legs; tan augmented by surprising arousing streaks of muck, making her look dirty, dirty dirty, right up to the cutoff denim shorts…her long, curling blonde-brown hair cascading onto her shoulders, heavy with desert dust…dirty…filthy…. It was hot. It was godamn hot.