The Latest Excerpt from ‘Into a Corner’ Is "All the Rage"

I just want to lead off by saying violence never solves anything. That said, smashing things to bits can feel pretty damn good—especially when the things you’re smashing belong to the spouse who robbed you blind and destroyed your life just before losing theirs.

Don't worry, I'm not referring to anything from my life (though I do like smashing things to bits); rather to that of Odessa Scott—the protagonist from my upcoming (some day) crime thriller Into a Corner.

While we all have stuff to be furious about these days, few of us will ever become as furious as Odessa is throughout much of my book.  At the start of the book we learn her dead husband—before getting dead—drained all their accounts AND the accounts of Odessa's widowed mother (Mama), then ran off with the cash ... and his mistress. Odessa found all this out the next day, when her husband and his mistress and every cent Odessa and Mama ever earned exploded. Talk about a change of fortune. 

When you create a character who has a serious axe to grind with someone but that someone is already dead, you have to give your character an opportunity to vent in a healthy manner; otherwise they'll end up destroying themselves and all the innocent people around them before they reach even the middle of the story. Fortunately for Odessa, I came up with the idea of having her good friend Griff come up with the idea of giving Odessa the gift of catharsis ... by taking her to a "rage room" and letting her loose. For those of you who don't know what a rage room is, you are about to find out—and will likely want to visit (or create) one yourself afterward. If you do, remember to always wear a helmet and protective eyewear before beginning to obliterate everything in your path. Safety first.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 14 of Into A Corner. It shows how, when pushed too far, even an artist who's all about creation will fully embrace destruction.  

 

I swing the bat so hard, several of my thoracic vertebrae pop and crackle. The forty-inch glass screen implodes on impact. Shards skitter and glisten across the stained concrete floor. What’s left of the television screen is a web spun by a crystal spider. I stand there admiring the damage.  

Through the spectator portal, Griff gives me a double thumbs-up. “Hell yeah!” he shouts, barely audible behind the plexiglass and over the Wu-Tang song blaring out of the speakers. Lucky for him, I’m not wearing the earplugs the owner of this place offered me.

Griff taps the partition and points my attention toward the Kawasaki in the center of the wrecking room. I look at him and shake my head till my safety helmet rattles out of position. “Not yet!” I yell through the glass while readjusting my helmet and goggles. “Saving the worst for last.”

The digital display on the wall says I have eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds left to destroy everything around me.

I’m off to a damn good start. Wayne spent half his waking life and most of his sleeping one in front of that TV I just demolished. Beneath my All The Rage-issued white coveralls and work gloves is all the sweat.

Eight minutes and twenty-four seconds left and I line drive one of Wayne’s golf trophies off a table and against the cinder blocks of the side wall. The little gold man bounces back toward me with a crushed skull, a lacerated spine, and none of the granite that allowed him to stand around showing off his swing for years.

I show off mine and send two more trophies flying disfigured across the room while several members of the Wu-Tang Clan shout about how they “ain’t nuthin’ to fuck with.”

The song holds a special place in my heart.

This room is all about rage, but it’s hard to resist smiling as Griff cheers me on. He’s matched my every smash, crack, and shatter with a booming exclamation of support. If this keeps up, the worst years of my life will give him laryngitis.

Seven minutes and sixteen seconds and the last remaining wedding photo. The only one that didn’t go through the shredder in my studio months ago. I switch out my bat for a sledgehammer, then switch out the sledgehammer for a golf club because irony. Besides, ten pounds of steel to obliterate a marriage is overkill. Plus there’s no need to hurt myself. Getting injured over Wayne would raise my rage to a level not even a place built for it could handle.

I pick up the framed photo and fold its stand flush against the back of the frame, then lay it flat on the oak table. The tabletop is scarred with scratches, dents, and gouges from All The Rage’s previous satisfied maniacs.

Wu-Tang switches to The Clash. I raise the nine iron over my head machete-style and bring it down on the thin panel of glass no longer protecting Wayne’s face on the happiest day of his life. The opposite of wedding bells pierces the air as the frame’s edges detach and hurtle toward the four corners of the earth. Most of the glass panel is now scattered in assorted shapes and sizes across the table and floor. The rest of the glass is slivers and sand pinned between the head of the nine iron and the head of Wayne. My smile and wedding dress have escaped with just a few scratches and glass splinters. I go to lift the club but the edge of its head is stuck in a groove behind what’s left of Wayne’s face. A tug releases the weapon from the oak surface underneath and I smile like King Arthur, then search for what to slay next as I catch my breath.

Griff’s “woohoo!” and “go get it, girl!” competes with The Clash’s “Straight to Hell.” The song list was my creation. This has all been carefully thought out and choreographed. It’s the opposite of my life.

Out of the corner of my goggles, Ray, the owner of All The Rage, has joined Griff in the spectator portal. The two bump fists and start chatting like a silent movie. Ray looks like Denzel Washington and Bruce Lee had a baby and told that baby to work out a lot and shave its head when it got older.

With five minutes and fifty-three seconds left, I don’t need this kind of distraction.

Ray points at Griff’s new watch and says something while nodding. Griff nods with him, gives him a closer look at the watch, then points at me. I avert my eyes as the two of them peer through the window at my kindness and mayhem.

It’s time for the bowling ball. Wayne didn’t bowl. The ball isn’t his—it’s included in the Deluxe Destruction package. The blood-splatter pattern painted on the ball is a nice touch. Ray was kind enough to help Griff and me set Wayne’s stupid rare beer bottle collection up as a double-decker ten-pin bowling installation against the back wall when we arrived earlier. He even threw in a thin ceramic tile to separate the two layers of bottles, for free. But I didn’t come here to think about Ray or his generosity. Or his Zen-like ruggedness or his wild stallion glutes.

I pick up the bowling ball that’s not a bowling ball but Wayne’s severed head and stand close enough to the bottles to read their labels. Griff and Ray urge me on, roaring over The Clash’s chorus of hell as I take aim. With two fingers stuck through Wayne’s eye sockets, my thumb shoved up his nasal cavity and my weaker hand supporting the rest of his head, I step toward the glass pins, rear my arm back, and release.

Gutterball. But the smack and whirr of Wayne’s head hitting and rolling across the concrete floor before bashing against the cinderblock wall behind the bottles was almost worth the boos now coming from the spectator portal. Wayne’s decapitation rolls back to me. I bend over, pick it up, and turn around to stare down my taunters, but a tiny laugh escapes my scowl.

Ray’s beauty is ruining my temper tantrum. His kind eyes and smile are sucking the life out of my anger, spoiling my desire for violence and displaced aggression. So I turn around and think back to Wayne telling me he’ll be working late again hours before he exploded. I think back to seeing the checking account statement the next morning. I think back to hearing about who was in the car with him.

His head leaves my hand like a cannonball and turns the stacked bottles into a terrorist attack. Every microbrew Wayne ever bragged about now mimics what was left of the windshield in the photos the police showed me. Only this time I’m grinning the width of my goggles instead of shrieking like a brand-new widow.

“Strrriiiiike!” shouts Griff from the spectator portal. “Fuck yeah!” And if he doesn’t stop pounding his appreciation against the portal window, there’s going to be even more pieces of glass for Ray to clean up when we leave.

I turn around and flex, then do a little celebratory jig, shaking my booty a little more than I probably would if Griff were alone in the viewing booth. Ray gives me a thumbs-up and goddamn it another smile. If he doesn’t get the hell out here and leave us alone, fat chance of me mustering up the kind of unbridled fury I paid good money to finish off with.

I turn around and approach the Kawasaki. Griff and Ray slap their palms against the plexiglass and shout out inaudible words of encouragement. I do my best to block them out with thoughts of Wayne paying for the motorcycle with money he secretly siphoned from my dead father. Thoughts of Mama losing her house. Thoughts of Mama losing her mind.

The Clash switches to Rage Against the Machine just in time.

Three minutes and forty-one seconds and a crowbar. I pick it up from the weapon station and grasp it so tight it’s a part of me. Even with Zach de la Rocha shouting the heavy-metal rap of “Bombtrack” beyond the limits of the volume bar, my ears are hungry for louder. One swing of my steel appendage, and the Vulcan 900’s headlamp is a head-on collision. A swipe above the width of the handlebars beheads both mirrors like a Samurai and sends them sliding across the floor to mingle with the glass-and-ceramic remains of my previous victim.

More joyous cheers from the box seats force me to watch Wayne pulling up the driveway on this beast two years ago, calling me out to brag about its fierce power and beauty, promising me I won’t regret his unilateral decision.

He’s finally right.

With enough downward force to knock a lighter bike into hell, I bring the crowbar down on the gas tank and almost regret not heeding Ray’s earplug advice. The ringing makes it harder to hear the motivational distortion and screams of “Bombtrack,” but not even possible deafness can ruin the aluminum carnage for me. I grin at the huge dent and gash in the tank, imagining Wayne’s reaction. He gives me a smirk and asks if that’s the best I can do. My reply is another deathblow to the tank, then one to the taillight, two to the exhaust pipe, and who knows how many to the midsection. But enough to knock the motherfucker’s metal heart out.

One minute and fifty-three seconds and oxygen. Not enough of it. Not to fill my lungs or to lift a finger, let alone a crowbar.

So this is what total muscle failure feels like. Success.

The concrete cools my back through my coveralls and damp shirt. I didn’t realize how high the ceiling was before. My chest heaves toward it to bring air inside. Gas and oil fumes get mixed in despite me draining everything out last night. Now I understand why Ray rejected my request to bring my acetylene torch to this session.

My helmeted head falls to the side. Through the spokes of the rear wheel there’s the battered engine, lying motionless on the other side of the bike’s upright carcass.

Griff is overjoyed someplace I’m too tired to look.

Rage Against the Machine switches to Gloria Gaynor, but I’m still struggling to catch my breath. Having a coronary during “I Will Survive” would be humiliating and ruin an otherwise wonderful tantrum. I roll my head to the other side of the floor and catch Griff following Ray out of the viewing portal. Despite my urge to fake unconsciousness and steal a little CPR action from Ray, I sit up, then struggle to my feet and take in all the beauty of my unnatural disaster. Hurricane Odessa has been downgraded from a Category 5 to a mild tropical storm.

And time’s up. The buzzer on the digital display says so.

“You okay?” asks Griff, bounding from the padded door Ray’s holding open for him.

Doubled over, panting, I give Griff a raised fist and a “yup,” then return my torso to its fully upright position and pretend to breathe normally as Ray enters the wrecking room, closing the door behind him.

“You sure?” Griff asks.

I nod again and remove my helmet so he can see my eyes begging him to help me look like I have my shit together.

 

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the excerpt and are now counting the seconds until Into a Corner comes out, which should be sometime between Fall 2021 and Summer 2050—depending on my agent’s success landing a nice deal for it. (She’s starting the submission process very soon and she’s a rock star, so stay tuned.) If you’d like to learn a little more about—and read some additional pages from—the book, I posted an earlier excerpt a while back, and another one before that, and ANOTHER one even before that. (What can I say, I'm a giver.) 

As for cool crime novels that are available NOW, it just so happens I recommended a couple by badass authors in the latest issue of my newsletter today. Those books/authors include:

Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias. As poetic as it is visceral, Iglesias' second novel howls its song and rips into our social fabric and fabrications like few other books dare to do. It's a story as old as injustice but as fresh as tomorrow. Don't just take my word for it. Here's what Booklist has to say about this up-in-your-grill cult masterpiece: "Coyote Songs​ is gorgeously written, even when Iglesias is describing horrible things." 

 

 

 

 

 

Whisper Network by Chandler Baker. Yes, Chandler Baker lives in the same city as I do (Austin). No, I don't know her. But after reading this phenomenally sharp, smart and witty thriller, I'll likely seek her out (no, not in a creepy way) for an interview over drinks once COVID-19 calms the hell down. Furious and hilarious has always been a great combo in my book; if you feel the same, then be sure to check out Baker's. It's Outstanding.  Entertaining. Important. I'd list all the praise and accolades this novel has received, but that would require a book of its own. Read. It.    

 

 

 

Don’t want to miss out on my future recommendations for books by baddass Cri-Fi authors? Then I have another recommendation: Sign up for my newsletter! (Just enter your email address in the sign-up box near the top-right corner of this page. Trust me.)