My series of writing prompts #1: "Rave Girl, Slave Girl"

In varying degrees of undress, hundreds of intoxicated youth blazed and sweated at sunrise to the beat of his latest song, “To the Sea.” The girl in the bikini and purple leg warmers seemed the only one dancing to forget. She mesmerized him with every sway of her body, and he forced himself to listen for the next cue of his two-hour set.

            “I’m T-Rex, and my time’s up; show some love to Scotty B.” He handed the headphones to the following DJ and pocketed his thumb drive. “Can y’all throw me back my ball,” he said into the microphone with raised hands. He caught the LED glow ball a kid volleyed up to him. The sun rose over the red rocks as he scanned the crowd one last time, but the girl had vanished.

            It had been a perfect gig, he thought, while peddling his bike along the gravel path. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his DJ costume, a dinosaur onesie, since home was ten minutes away. A sudden pop and the bike’s wheels lost resistance. Rex lowered his leg and hopped to stop. He crouched to examine the slipped chain and saw it had sheared apart. Guess I don’t have the monopoly on sexy right now, he thought, as he pushed his bike onto the asphalt road at the end of the path.

            A dirty red pickup truck slowed by his side. There she was––brown hair in pigtails, a white bikini browned with sand, and smeared make-up. Now she had the sexy, he thought.

            “Just another dinosaur walking his bike?” Even her voice, although huskier and older than he expected, was sexy. “Where you headed?”

            “Down the road a bit. Onto route seven?” He pushed the dinosaur hood off his head, his shaggy hair wet from sweat.

            “Well, this truck won’t load itself.” She waved him in. “Put it on top.”

            Rex went to the back and lifted his bike onto the black tarp. He smelled decomposed flesh, like the roadkill he passed on the bike ride in. He leaned his head towards the girl. “What’s under here?”

            “Dead dog,” she said, with her head out the driver’s window. “Be a good accomplice and help me bury it?”

            A bit weird, he thought, as he lifted his bike but said, “Okay.”

            Rex climbed into the passenger seat. As she drove, she fiddled with the radio. He lifted a broken necklace from the gearshift. It had torn far from the latch.

            “Irreparable,” he said, lifting it with his green glove. “Like my bike chain.”

            “A lot of things break,” she said. “Most permanently.” She took a drag from her vape pen and exhaled a ghost-like cloud out the window. “You hear about that cult leader? The sex trafficker they arrested?”

            “The psycho who tattooed victims with a bar code?”

            “They let him go yesterday. He strolled out of the courthouse, got in his Rolls Royce, and drove off.”

            “That’s a whole level of wrong.”

            “Broken system.”

            When they got to the woods, Rex got out and went to the back of the truck.

         With the sun higher on the horizon, he could see a shape under the tarp. It was bigger than any dog. He lifted the black plastic a few inches, peered underneath, and saw the body of a man. The back of his head was bashed in, and a shovel with dried blood was on top of him. Rex dropped the tarp. She’s going to kill me, he thought.

      He backed away, wondering if he could grab his bike and get away from this girl as she stepped towards him. He watched her pull her leg warmer down, convinced she was hiding a gun. He knew he needed to overpower her right now, but fear paralyzed him. His mind said to attack, but his body wouldn’t respond.

Under the leg warmer was a tattoo on her ankle; black vertical lines in varying degrees of thickness were imprinted on her fair skin as if she could be scanned and purchased.

            “Not all things are permanently broken,” she said, ripping the tarmac off the trunk and gripping the shovel. “Sometimes, you just have to fix it yourself.”