Atomic Lobster Read Online Free

worked with arterial spray before.”
    “I’ll teach him to fuck up my threads!” Rafael reached for the cutlery set. “Bleed on me, motherfucker?…Take this!…And this!…And this!…And this!…”
    “Rafael,” Tommy said calmly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “What?” said Rafael, wiping red specks off his face with a cruise line bathrobe.
    “What do you mean, ‘What?’”
    Rafael pointed at the tub with the knife. “The same thing you were doing.”
    “No,” said Tommy. “What I did was business.” He gestured with an upturned palm. “This is sick.”
    Benito tapped Tommy’s shoulder from behind. “Is it my turn?”
    “Turn?” said Tommy. “Are you blind? Look at this bloody mess.There’s no ‘turn’ left to take.” He twisted a faucet and washed his hands in the sink. “I can’t believe we have the same parents.”
    “Why are you so sore?” asked Benito.
    Tommy tapped his left temple with an index finger. “I try to teach you, but fuck it. You can chop him up yourselves this time.”

TWO
    THAT EVENING
    S erge worked efficiently in the dark with thick coils of rope. At this late hour he had the whole place to himself, just Coleman, the mugger and a steady drone of unseen traffic beyond the trees on Interstate 75. Serge finished the last knot and picked up a paper bag. Inside was a handkerchief gag and a tangelo orange.
    “I swear!” said the punk. “I won’t do it again!”
    “I know.” The gag went in the punk’s mouth. The orange was for Serge. He began peeling. “Coleman, tighten the line to that post…. Coleman?…Where’d that idiot go?”
    Something that sounded like a lawnmower engine chugged to life. Serge turned around; he stopped peeling the orange. “Unbelievable.”
    The noise grew louder as Serge approached a low rubber barrier. Coleman whizzed by: “Hey, Serge. I hot-wired it!…”
    Serge waited until his pal made another lap around the go-cart track. Red car number eight came through turn four. Serge reached back and fired his orange like a split-finger fastball.
    “Ow!”
    The cart spun out and crashed into a retaining wall of threadbare tires, ending up on its side. Coleman unbuckled his seat belt and spilled onto the track. He stood, rubbing his shoulder. “Dang it, Serge! Why’d you throw that at me?”
    “Because I need your help. And you owe me an orange.”
    They began walking. Coleman picked between his teeth at a stubborn popcorn husk that he’d just remembered from the other day. “I’m still surprised at how you noticed the mugger. I never saw it coming.”
    “To survive down here, you have to think like an air-traffic controller, constantly tracking everyone around you at all times. I had my eye on that asshole ever since he walked onto the parking lot from the highway.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you’re in a parking lot and shit’s about to break, it’s most likely coming on foot from the street. Now tighten the line on that post.”
    “It’s already tight.”
    “Needs to be tighter.”
    “Why?”
    “So he can’t tip his chair over. Then my whole plan falls apart.”
    Coleman pulled hard on the knot. “This is why I got bored and went over to the go-cart track. It’s taking way longer than your other projects.”
    Serge pulled on his own line. “Because I’m sending a strong message to his buddies.”
    “But he was by himself.”
    “It’s a ‘To whom it may concern.’” Serge fished a paper-wrapped cylinder from his pocket.
    “You’re using a whole roll of quarters?” asked Coleman.
    “It’s a detailed message.”
    Muted screams from under the hostage’s gag.
    “Shut up and like it,” said Serge. “Mugging old ladies is the lowest.”
    “Yeah,” said Coleman. “Good thing we were driving around looking for cars to break into.”
    Serge retrieved bolt-cutters from the Comet and ran off into the dark. He snipped the lock from a fuse box and threw breakers. Then he returned and stepped up to a