EMBRACE THE DEMON

The sign on the warehouse said “Armitage” and gloomed with a brightness only neon could afford.
Dan, Terri and this pudgy little guy with long green and orange dreadlocks they called ‘Critter’ were stuffed in the back of an orange Datsun that had belched an acrid blue smoke all the way from the Jetty, where they had met up an hour earlier, while Jackie and Gina were in the front. Carousing into the carpark, they bottomed out on the concrete and a trail of little orange sparks lit up a patch of night as the exhaust fell off again and dragged.
Gina was all like “Stop going so fucking fast.”
And Dan said “You can’t go fast in this thing.” at the same time as Critter who said “Look at all the fucking people already.”
The orange bug was careening into an open section of the yard at fifty when Jackie pumped all the stops, pulling the handbrake and jumping on the clutch and brake pedals all at the same time, throwing everyone forward and making a huge squealie noise that made the Christmas lights all over the dashboard and rear window splay forward. “Does anyone see a park?”
“Right. Go right, over there near that white thing.” Gina said after she’d steadied her drink. Terri was laughing because shit had gone everywhere in the back, the bottles of alcohol they weren’t supposed to be bringing, and Critter’s bong water which had splashed all over the vinyl in front of him. “Fuck you hit that hard Jack.”
Jackie was just happy even though she hadn’t drunk or smoked anything on the way (although the car was full of weed smoke anyway), like there was this kind of residual energy of just getting here alive that was flowing into her. The others were all already extraordinarily pissed and Critter was really planting himself for orbit this time. Nobody was going to be driving back home tonight anyway so it didn’t matter.
Jackie killed the engine about five rows of cars away from the entrance and already they could hear the throbbing rush from inside. There were people everywhere in the carpark, all swarming towards that pink-orange glowing tunnel like ants running from a rainstorm. It was raining, just a bit, just enough to piss them off, but it wasn’t going to last because there were a few stars out over the other side of the mountains to the west. It was just the inland edge of a storm that was making its way down the coast, so they got a bit of a chill off the back end as well, but all in all it was a great summer night.
Armitage was a chick, the DJ doing this rave. It had been thrown together as recently as three weeks ago because the locals in this area had something against raves, like they seen too much TV from O.S. but never bothered to check the facts, and if they took too long to organize them then some local council dick would call the whole thing off or turn it into a fucking all age blue light disco which nobody would go to anyway. Critter liked to argue that the people who went to raves didn’t go there to take drugs, and the people who did go and take drugs (which was pretty much everyone anyway) knew what they were doing (most of the time) and knew the rules. Rules like don’t mix and match your poisons – if you’re drinking, stay drinking. If you do ‘x’ (like he’d call it when talking to those people because it pissed them off) then drinks heaps of water because it dehydrates you like nothing else. And if you smoke heaps of the weed then don’t drink anything because you’ll get the worst fucking headache. And if you do tranks or amyl’s or tabs then you fucking miss the whole thing anyway because you get so twisted you pass out. He’d only bring all this up when some usually older person would say ‘But what about that girl from up the coast who died a few years ago at one of these events?’, which would launch him into the whole thing, his mouth would start up like a diesel motor, and like a diesel motor you just couldn’t stop it no matter how you tried, and he’d end by saying ‘She died because she was stupid.’ which was fucking stupid in itself and always got him into these arguments that went nowhere but took their god-damned time getting there. He’d learned to say ‘She was drinking alcohol all night and then took ecstasy, and everyone knows you don’t do that.’ He didn’t fucking care anyway, and that was the root of the problem.
Jackie reached back into the car via the little triangular window on the front of her door, and picked off the yellow glasses from the dash. She put them on. “How do I look?”
She was biting her lip. Her hair was normally beach blond, short and sort of messy in this half-fashioned kind of way. She’d put in a coppery dye mostly on the top, but it was dark out here that you really can’t see too well. She’d decided halfway here that she’d dye it blue after tonight. Anyhow about the colour: that’d all change when she’s inside. She’s wearing this hugging white high-necked shirt with no arms with a two-tone blue stripe around the middle that really accentuates her gorgeous tits (which was the idea), shiny sparkly grey-blue flared pants, and these big black things on her feet like platform clogs, which had made for some interesting driving, and probably explains the maneuver coming into the carpark.
“You’re nothing on me,” said Critter, who looks like he’s just finished painting a house with a bucket and spoon. He’s got a T-shirt with a big blue Julia set on the front that he’d printed himself using a cheap iron-on transfer he got from K-Mart. It wasn’t printed straight, like he’d messed up the alignment just a bit and kinked the transfer during the ironing, so there was this crease welded in melted plastic across the middle. He wore long shorts and his fat little lets ended in grubby white Nike’s. “Just look at my sexy body.”
“Hey Crit,” said Terri, “Are you related to Fat Bastard?”
“Can you tell?” said Critter, drawing the last little bit out of the bong before pulling the little brass cone from the front and tapping it on the roof of the car to empty it out.