by R. D. Tarver
“Seriously?” Jesse asked. His eyes widened as he looked to Mal for confirmation that the conversation was really happening.
“Yeah, fuck it. Why not?” Travis replied. “Fucking record label is burying us with tour dates since we got signed. We can always use some fresh meat for the grinder. You got a booking agent?”
Jesse gestured to Rick, who was making change for a t-shirt order. “That’s our manager—I mean he’s also my brother. He does all of our booking.”
Another member of Prisoners of Flesh called for Travis at the bar. “Let’s talk after the show. You guys are gonna stick around, right?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
Travis ambled back towards the bar, stopping periodically to visit with friends and fans that seemed to hang on his every word.
Mal shot Jesse a look of concern. “Jesus, Jesse, are you hard?”
“Dude, that was the guitar player from Prisoners of Flesh. Alex said they just got signed to Metal Midnight—they’re like one of the biggest bands on the scene.” Jesse took a deep breath. “And they want us to go on the road with them.”
She put her camera up in its case and tucked the strap under her arm. He felt the warmth of her fingertips as she slid her hand beneath his jeans.
“Oh my God, you are totally hard.”
“Thanks for that.” He laughed and gently deflected as he felt himself blush. “Come on, we should celebrate.”
Mal gave him a gentle squeeze before relenting. “I hate to be a downer, but I have to get Kara home before curfew.”
“But the second band hasn’t even played yet, and I was really looking forward to us hanging out.”
She edged up closer and pouted her lips. “I know, I’m sorry—I can tell. I promise to make it up to you. You wanna meet at the Hell Hole when you guys get back?” Her breath was warm as she whispered into his ear. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Is that cool? I know it’s lame, but now I pretty much have to stick around to see those guys or they’re going to think we’re assholes.”
“It’s okay, I promise—I’ll still be up.” She looked down to his crotch. “And so will you, by the looks of things.”
“Real funny. I’ll bail now if you want… it’s just that this could be a big thing for us.”
“Seriously, enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it. Plus, I feel bad about dragging you through all my drama, lately. You’ve been really good to me, and I just want you to know that if you weren’t around, I honestly don’t know what I would do.”
“That’s not something you’ll ever have to worry about.”
They locked eyes for a moment.
“I’ll see you later, just you and me, okay?”
“I’m right behind you.”
She gave Jesse a parting hug and disappeared into the amassing throng.
3
Hell Patrol spent the majority of the second band’s set in the back parking lot sharing kudos and a few lukewarm cans of beer that Rust had managed to pilfer from Prisoners of Flesh’s green room.
Jesse relayed the conversation he had with Travis to his bandmates and Rick, who reprimanded Rust. “Knock off the bush league antics and focus on the four-octave range. We might actually have a shot at this thing here if you guys don’t fuck it up.”
When they returned to the stage, the crowd had gathered en masse to witness the headlining act. The lights went down as Jesse fought his way to the front row with his bandmates trailing behind him.
The restless crowd cheered in unison as the tension began to build.
A lone spotlight pierced through the darkness to reveal an elaborate stage dress depicting a post-apocalyptic prison scene. Four prison cells, comprised of spray-painted styrofoam, were erected on the fog-filled stage.
The light illuminated Travis at stage left who appeared chained to the walls of his modular cell. He appeared alone in the cell with his guitar, which he used to play a solemn chord progression, plucking the strings lightly with his fingers. Up on the stage he appeared like a Greek god, looking down on the audience from Mt. Olympus.
A second spotlight revealed yet another manacled guitarist at stage right, producing a single high note that sustained above the airy chords of Travis’s rhythm guitar.
As the dual guitars built to a crescendo, a third stage light revealed the bass player within his cell. The thunderous low end pushed out through the speakers, causing the chained shackles that bound his wrists to fall apart. Jesse could feel the deep pulsing rhythm in his chest as the drums answered the call.
Finally, the lead singer emerged center stage, dressed like a skeletal prison warden, and belted out a soaring high note that swelled with vibrato until the lights went dim once again.
By the time the opening number had come to a climax, each member had broken free of their chains, and kicked down the walls of their cells.
As the stage lights came back on, the band lumbered into a tight, technical number devoid of the theatrics of the set opener. Jesse was beside himself with how rehearsed the band sounded and their seemingly effortless musicianship.
He felt Mazes’s arm wrap around his shoulders. The lumbering teen’s eyes were like saucers as he howled with excitement. Jesse felt himself get lost in the moment, his life’s cares washing away under the sonic assault.
Live music was the closest thing in Jesse’s life that could be compared to a religious experience. He had seen his share of shows even at his young age, thanks to Rick; though for the first time in his life, he began to perceive some of the themes that he had read in Agostino’s master’s thesis from the perspective of a participant observer.
Through Agostino’s words, he could see that all the ritual elements were present: the performative dress; the dynamic relationship between the audience and the sonic mystics who gallivanted upon the raised dais; the creation of an alternative universe that allowed all participants to transcend from the mundane, transforming the venue into a sacred space.
It was a gathering of worship in the purest sense, absent gods or kings. Just people—united together in their commonly held love of perhaps the one benevolent creation humanity could offer the universe: music. And for Jesse and his friends, that music was heavy fucking metal.
He felt healed. He felt complete. But more than that, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was now tied to the mast on the sonic odyssey that would define his life’s journey.
4
Back at the Hell Hole, Jesse found Mal’s instructions scribbled on a note that was wedged in between the bars of the wrought iron gate. rock star groupie, this way.
He passed through the mine entrance and followed the soft glow of candlelight into the control room. Inside, a sleeping bag was stretched out in the middle of a fresh chalk pentagram. “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All),” from the album Bloody Kisses by Type O Negative, released in 1993 on Roadrunner Records, was playing on a small, blood-red cassette/fm-radio player set atop the bank of gutted consoles.
Jesse found an unused candle that lay on the floor next to Mal’s backpack. He lit the candle from one of the half-melted others that made up the points of the pentagram, and headed back out into the mine’s central corridor.
Seeing no sign of Mal between the entrance and the control room, Jesse decided to follow along the rail track that snaked through the central tunnel. The air was stale and damp as he headed farther along the track.
The cart was still there, and much to Jesse’s relief, empty. He tried to shake the memory of Halloween night as he ventured deeper into the mine.
As he passed the rusty metal cart, he called out for her, half expecting to see the flash from her camera answer back. Instead, the empty tunnel echoed her name drenched in the growing desperation of his voice.
He ventured deeper still, towards the beginnings of a noticeable descent in the track when he heard a slight rustling coming from up ahead.
As he took another step forward, the flickering candlelight revealed a grey, scaly ta
il that quickly slithered away into the darkness. Jesse uttered a sigh of relief as a rat squealed in protest of his pursuit.
As he came to the end of the track, the soft, orange glow from the candle reflected off a small, silver object at the edge of the light’s radius. He could hear the hum of the battery-operated flash charging up on the camera as he drew nearer. The lens cap had been removed, but was still held attached to the lens by its lanyard. He slung the camera strap over his shoulder and continued into the darkness that lay ahead.
“Mal! I got your camera. Where the hell are you?”
The track dead-ended at the mouth of a large chasm surrounded by piles of rubble and fallen debris. Jesse was suddenly reminded of the dream he had had about Rick standing across the mouth of a similar opening in the ground without the aid of his chair.
A towering winch apparatus was stationed next to a crumpled shack that stood on its last legs across from what remained of a rail switch station near the end of the track. The winch craned over the edge of the vast opening, whose depths reached well beyond the light of the candle.
“Very funny,” Jesse said. “You can come out now, you got me.” The words were tossed into the abyss of the dark pit below with no response, as before. No longer amused, Jesse headed back towards the entrance.
He searched the woods surrounding the mine and everything in between the Hell Hole and the control room three times before he decided to search elsewhere. The pale moon guided his path as he hurried through the woods that separated the Old Townsite from the rural parcel of land that defined his grandparents’ homestead to the north.
After a quick search of the practice trailer proved fruitless, Jesse scratched out a note to Mal and laid it on the kitchen table next to her camera.
He sprinted all the way from the trailer to Mal’s street.
Her house was dark, save for the flickering of the television set through the living room window. He could see Frank’s silhouette stationed at his usual post on the couch.
The kick drum in his chest started beating a little faster as the incessant knocking on her bedroom window went unanswered. He pushed up on the outer windowpane, which eventually relented, and crawled inside the room. Inside the darkened room he fumbled for the lamp that he knew to be near her bed.
The room was empty.
He searched the rest of the house with no sign of Mal. Finally, he stormed into the living room. The theme to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was blaring at full volume. Frank was slumped over on the couch with a beer in his hand.
“Frank,” Jesse called. “Hey Frank!” The words were lost in the noise of the television and the snoring coming from the couch. “It’s Jesse. I’m trying to find Mal. I think something might have happened to her.”
Jesse threw an empty can at the pile of beers that circled the tv tray in front of the couch, causing an avalanche of aluminum to fall into Frank’s lap.
Frank shot up, knocking over the tv tray, and lunged towards the intruder. He began screaming incoherently at Jesse, who despite all efforts to calm the man, was pushed aside as Frank reached for the wall-mounted shotgun above the mantel.
The tv was knocked on its side in the scuffle. A burst of applause from the studio audience rang out as the tv flickered on and off, creating a strobe-like effect that cast disorienting shadows across the living room walls.
Jesse was reaching for a light switch as the sound of the shotgun blast filled his ears. The kickback from the weapon’s discharge sent Frank careening backwards over the coffee table.
A burst of high-frequency sonic needles stabbed Jesse’s ears with such intensity that he almost didn’t notice the dull, creeping pain in his right shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a ring of chrome bbs lodged in his jean jacket, illuminated by the light of the television set. It was the last thing he saw before his vision faded.
5
Jesse came to when the cops arrived. They had stormed into the living room and placed him in cuffs before he could say a word. He winced at the throbbing pain in his shoulder as they donned the restraints. Luckily, the birdshot had not fully penetrated the denim of his jean jacket, but it still hurt like hell.
Frank was snoring audibly, his legs draped over the coffee table, the shotgun across his chest.
One of the officers, a rotund specimen with a thinning combover, was rifling through Jesse’s wallet while he talked into his shoulder-mounted radio handset. “Officer Jenkins to dispatch. Dispatch, we’re on the scene of the shots-fired call. Looks like we got a home invasion at the Henderson place out on Scissortail Drive. One seventeen-year-old suspect in custody, last name Lynn.”
“Dispatch confirmed. You need backup, Marcus?” the voice responded over the radio.
“Negative dispatch, situation under control.”
“Looks like one of those punk kids from the high school,” said the other policeman, who appeared to be Jenkins’s junior by several years. Jesse could make out the last name warren on the name tag pinned just above the right-breast pocket of the officer’s uniform. “Lucky he didn’t get his head blown clean off.”
“Might be one of the perps that lit the fire at the church by the looks of him,” Officer Jenkins said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you son?”
“I was just looking for my girlfriend. This is her house,” Jesse managed. “Please, her name is Mal—Mallory Henderson. We were supposed to meet up tonight, but she didn’t show, and I think something happened to her.”
Officer Jenkins was trying to rouse Frank with smelling salts. “Save it for the judge, kid.”
Officer Warren hoisted Jesse up off the ground and marched him into the squad car that was idling out front.
Muffled shouts came from inside the squad car that appeared to already be occupied.
“Must be the full moon,” laughed the younger officer as he opened the back passenger door. “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”
Jesse was shoved next to a disheveled-looking man in the back seat who reeked of alcohol. A secondary stench emanated from the vagrant who, in a spate of worsening fortune, appeared to have recently soiled himself.
“That’s how they hypnotize you, man. They hypnotize you with that noise,” he said. “The sound is power—raw power used to keep you down, man.” He gestured despite his bindings to the pair of headphones draped around his neck. “They couldn’t get to me because I know how to fool them.”
The smell of the vagrant’s breath directed into Jesse’s face caused his stomach to turn as he waited for the ride to the station.
6
After several hours of interrogation, Jesse managed to avoid a slew of felony charges including, but not limited to breaking and entering, burglary, and criminal trespassing. Luckily, the Reynolds name still retained some measure of respect in the small community of Macomb Springs; a community that Jesse’s grandparents had helped to build.
Randy was pacing in the station’s waiting room when Jesse was released from custody. His mother was too upset to wait inside. She sat in silence on the drive home.
When they arrived back home, Randy was visibly shaken. He grabbed Jesse by the wrist, hard.
“You’re not off the hook, young’un. You and I are gonna have a nice long talk in the mornin’.”
It was the first time Jesse could recall Randy ever laying a hand on him.
Jesse went to his room without another word and succumbed to the exhaustion delivered by the night’s events.
7
In the days after the news of Mal’s disappearance—one of now six missing persons that had been reported within the community—Macomb Springs High had undergone many changes.
Principal Anderson had unveiled a new dress code forbidding any articles of clothing affiliated with the Parental Music Resource Center’s (pmrc) filthy fifteen—a list of “porn rock” recording artists deemed vulgar and obscene by the organization.
Jesse was intimately familiar with the list; it
included some of his favorite artists: Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath, Venom, etc. It was one of Rick’s favorite anti-establishment topics. Jesse had been subjected to many of his brother’s tirades detailing, at length, the many transgressions of Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, founders of the pmrc.
Another equally nauseating development of Macomb Springs High’s newfound austerity was a regular morning prayer given by mscoc’s own Pastor Seth Roberts. Each morning, the prayer was piped into each classroom over the school’s intercom system to a captive audience of increasingly anxious teenagers.
Jesse cringed at the cadence of the canned speech, whose contents would often detail upcoming events at the church that targeted his peers.