by Mike Allan
Left Hand
of
Doom
Mike Allan
1
Just like every morning of the last five years I grab my Les Paul off the dented stand, plug in to my practice amp, and tune up. She sounds loose. Needs some fresh strings. Can’t remember the last time I changed them. Once it’s tuned I put my fingers in the shape. First finger, sixth string, third fret. Third finger, fifth string, fifth fret. Pinky, fourth string, fifth fret. Just like I learned it when I was a kid, before I’d bothered with all the notes and the scales, before I ever learned what they called this chord. I didn’t want theory then. I barely tolerate it now. I just wanted to conjure up Iommic beauty. I was a cargo cult guitarist, turning a science and art into a ritual.
I strum.
Nothing. The pick twists between my fingers as it knocks against the strings, but no sound, not even the muted click of plastic through wrapped steel. No matter how hard I strum, no matter how fast, no matter what guitar I pick up, never any sound.
My punishment stands. That sound is forbidden.
I can’t complain. Usually for my sort of affront, you get chained a boulder and vultures liver peck you for eternity. I got off easy. Way easier than Till and Evan.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, knocking against the guitar’s body. Half an hour to practice. I slept in even later than usual.
2
I know something’s wrong as soon as I shoulder through the rickety door into our practice room. Olli’s not plugged in and Tyler’s sitting on a folding steel chair instead of on his throne behind the kit. So it’s that time again. I spark up a cigarette and lean against a patch of brittle acoustic foam tacked to the wall.
It happens every six or eight months. My drummer and my bassist get fed up, run to the hills and don’t look back. My idiot-syncracies wear their last nerves down to sizzling roots. They want to play with a guitarist who isn’t afflicted with an irrational phobia of a very common chord. What prima donnas.
“Eddie, we need to talk...” Olli says, voice smooth and sharp as an ice cold macrolager. Neither of them will look at me. Tyler looks away. Olli’s eyes bore right through me to the glitters of his dreams.
“We just feel...”
“Different direction...”
“Always be grateful...”
I’ve heard it all before. I could’ve written Olli’s speech for him. Done it in front of my cracked mirror back home, saved us all a lot of trouble. I could’ve drunk more at the Hour and slept in even later.
Olli finishes up, looks expectantly at me. I glance down at Tyler. Still can’t look at me. He looks ashamed, like a good kid dragged to the principal’s for the first and last time in his life. He’s taking it worse than I am. I feel bad for him.
“I get it,” I say, stubbing out my cigarette. “Bigger and better things. I really do. You two lasted longer than most. Eight months and two seven inches. That’s a record for Swamp Dragger low end longevity.”
They trade a look. “You’re. . .not angry?” Olli says.
“You know the stories. This has happened so many times. I expect it. Swamp Dragger is the saloon of doom metal, and I’m the barkeep. Everybody else is just passing through.”
They look at each other again. What do they want from me? Eight months they’ve known me, never once have I raised my voice, never once flipped my shit on them. Do they have some masochistic need for ridicule? Do they believe break ups--musical, romantic, whatever—don’t count without a proper quota of angst and teeth gnashing?
“Like I said, I get it. You want to maybe tour some bigger places. Make some more money. Record in a studio that doesn’t have roaches for a load in crew.” I light up another cigarette and blow a forked tongue of smoke out my nostrils. “Maybe find a guitarist who’ll actually play a G5.”
Olli laughs and shakes his head. Tyler’s nervousness cracks and molts. “Yeah, what the hell is up with that?” he blurts. The question puts me on my back foot. It always does, no matter how often I hear it. Strangely, even though my claimed phobia touched off more than a few heated discussions between the three of us, neither of them has ever come right out and asked me what the hell my major malfunction is.
I can’t really explain it to them. They don’t know the Soundscape. They’ve never stopped to think where the sound actually comes from when they play. You can trace the genealogy easy enough: buzzing string sets the humbuckers alight and they send a crackling signal down copper wire to an amp. In the amp the signal gets its ass kicked, bullied by all the laws of electromagnetism, but it’s okay because the amp feeds it steroids till the signal's beefy enough to shake the speaker cone. Technical terms, that’s how it happens. But there’s more to it than that.
“I’ve got my reasons.”
“I gotta say, man, you’re really taking this well,” Olli says, prompting a nod from Tyler.
“What, you’d rather I lose it on you two? Like I keep saying you’re not the first rhythm section I’ve chased away. I’ll find some more suckers who think they can change me. Swamp Dragger shall live on.”
The fearful look creeps back onto Tyler’s face. Olli frowns, his thin mouth drooping.
“Eddie. . .were you listening to what I’ve been saying?”
“Sure I was.”
“Eddie, I told you. . .we. . .Tyler and I paid to register the trademark on Swamp Dragger.”
Blood congeals to sludge in my ears. “You what?”
“The logo, mainly, we couldn’t really get the name itself. Look, despite everything, the name’s still got a lot of recognition. A lot of potential to take it further so we just--”
“Give it back.”
“What?”
“You stole my band. Give it back.”
“We didn’t steal anything,” Olli says, stiffening with righteous umbrage. “We just took something unclaimed.”
“Unclaimed? I’ve been playing music under that name for five fucking years. How is that unclaimed?”
Olli rolls his eyes. “Yeah, we know. Five years without anything longer than an EP and without a tour longer than five dates. That’s barely playing.”
Tyler looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here. I sympathize, except Olli is here, and Olli is integral to my greatest ambitions. Call me a late bloomer, but at twenty-eight I’ve finally found my calling. Darwin or Yahweh or Odin or whatever fish decal you slap on your car put me on this earth with a divine mandate to kick Olli’s ass. Cigarette still in my lip, I commence self-actualizing my new vision.
Now I’m not a fighter. Not to say I’ve never scrapped. I mean who hasn’t been in a pit gone sour at least once, or had a crusty take offense at your hygiene suggestions? But in most of my scuffles me and my opponent(s) have been more dangers to ourselves than others. Usually we’re drunk, brain-bruised by headbanging, and the floor has a slick finish of cheap beer. You get in a few punches, slip, flop around, get pulled apart. Then depending on the kind of place, you either get hauled out by security or you become best friends for the rest of the show.
I uncork a punch right at his face. Right in the fucking face. Right where his seeballs and smellholes and talkflaps are. That’s the best place to punch them, and you don’t have to be an expert to know that.
If you were an expert I think you’d call what Olli does next a slip. Some unholy union of twisting and ducking and sliding away all at once. Boxing is not the sweet science, it’s witchcraft of the fists and feet. All the air puffs out of my lungs in a nicotine tinged cloud. Olli’s knuckles tickle my vertebrae.
Vaguely, like the repressed memory of Satanic ritual abuse teased out by a quack hypnotist, I recall a conversation he and I had in better times when he hadn’t stolen my band. Something about kickboxing. Not the van
Damme kind. The one crazy Thai people with ropes wrapped around their hands do. Right, I think, as he laces his fingers behind my neck and tugs down. That explains it.
His knee mashes my nose. Eyes tearing up, I stagger back. Only the wall stops me from falling on my ass. Something gooey sprints out of my nose--blood, I think, till it hits my lips. Snot. Somehow that’s worse.
Fortunately, Tyler drags Olli back before he does any real damage. Somehow, I managed to hold onto my cigarette while being introduced to his knee, so it’s a moral victory. A battered, lopsided, extinguished one, but moral nonetheless.
I try to light it up, but my lighter refuses. I thumb it over and over again, but sparks don’t come. Finally, Tyler takes pity and gives me his orange plastic Bic.
“You can leave your gear here, we’ve got a new place lined up. We’ll make sure to lock up.”
I mumble thanks, and walk out.
Out on the sidewalk I plug one nostril and launch a glob of blood marbled snot out the other. My nose is tender but I don’t think it’s broken, at least. I flick tears out, whip my head from side to side, blink rapidly. Picture a man jolting back to consciousness after a Biblical drug binge. I grind my battered, limp cigarette out and start on another.
I can’t think. I’m not even angry anymore. Just nothing, like a sea without even a breeze to stir it. I don’t know what to do.
That’s a lie. I always know what to do when all else fails me.
3
The Hour of Purdition’s entrance is at the bottom of a narrow, crumbling concrete staircase pocked with ice melt craters. A real leg breaker. The door’s got an eye level panel from a previous, seedier life. Ghostly glue and faded decals from half a dozen previous incarnations. The current signage is peeling away so it reads, “|-our of Fiidition”. Inside the house lights give an impression of a dimly lit cave or a dungeon. Strategically placed gig posters and brewery tin tackers cover the walls. At just after four on a weekday there’s no one inside but me and the eponymous owner. She looks up from cleaning glasses and nods at me. A sickly green neon beer sign splashes verdigris highlights on her copper hair.
"Hey, Purd."
Purdition’s parents were pseudo-hippies with an apocalyptic twist (her words), hence the name. I don’t know if the misspelling was intentional or they just didn’t know. They were too young for Woodstock so there’s no blaming the brown acid.
She ducks down below the bar and retrieves a bottle mummified with butcher paper. The Hour is a slightly pretentious beer joint first and foremost, but there’s always a bottle of unidentified booze available for those seeking enlightenment through liver flagellation. It’s never the same twice; each one is uniquely foul.
“You read my mind.” I slide into my customary seat at the end of the bar, farthest from the register. If Purd were the sort to spend the bar’s cash reserves on anything without an ABV, my name would be engraved on it.
“Thank god that’s not true.” She fills me a rocks glass with an ogre’s finger of rust red liquid. Flakes float in it. She pours herself a wee-er dram of the stuff. “Sucks man. To the real Swamp Dragger.”
“You heard?” It hasn’t been that long. Maybe half an hour, since I went back to my apartment to scrounge up some cash. We clink glasses and slam it back. A delightful taste of pureed rusty nails giving way to tar sands on the back end.
“Yeah,” she says, screwing up her face. “It’s all over. . .well, everything.”
“Define everything.”
She tops off my glass. “Facebook, Twitter. Even Blabbermouth posted about it.” She unlocks her phone and spins it towards me.
I’m almost glad they kicked me out now. I’d have disbanded Dragger via a ritual double murder suicide if I ever thought Blabbermouth would shove me through its clickbait grinder.
Fucking Blabbermouth.
I shove her phone back to her. “Nobody gave a shit before, why do they give a shit now?”
She rapid-fire taps her index finger on the bar. Her fingernails are painted black with quicksilver veins. “Drama. Clicks. Profit.”
Slugging back the rust, I wince. “Well, whatever.”
“Seriously, man, it’s bullshit. That’s fucked what they did to you.”
I shrug.
She knows me well enough not to push for a reaction. We all mourn in our own ways. Self-pity’s like your intestines; a lot less disgusting when you keep it all inside.
“Cyclopean’s back on. You want one?”
“Till the keg blows.”
She sets a pint of inky black crowned with an off-white cream head next to my glass of rotgut. We chat a while longer, scrupulously inconsequential. She lays a crackly copy of Live and Dangerous on the turntable and goes down to the register to count widgets or whatever. Fine by me. I don’t want to be alone but I don’t want to talk much either. Purd understands feeling like that, I think. Maybe all bartenders do. Sometimes you don’t want to be alone but you still want to be by yourself.
After my first beer's done she comes back for the glass. She doesn't bother asking if I want another. She knows why I'm here. "Need anything else?"
"Yeah. A couple minutes with the old axe." I flick my eyes up towards the space above the bar. One beer and I'm already feeling brave, usually I need a few more in the belly before I ask.
Chuckling, she walks away. Above the top shelf manned by old school beer cans hangs an old Explorer. Real collector's piece, one of the few they ever made with the forked headstock. A missing link between the Futura prototypes and the regular Explorer. When I first started coming to the Hour I always asked her to let me play it. She never did. Wouldn't even say where she got it.
Minutes and hours lose meaning down in the murk. I mark time by foam cobwebs at the bottom of pints. An unreliable metric because I tend to drink faster as the night goes on. A rotating menagerie of companions filter in and out. Most of them have heard about Swamp Dragger. Far more than I ever expected to care. They buy me drinks. For that I love them more than anything, more than Romeo loved Juliet, more than Hades adored Persephone.
So, I’m a happy drunk, a friendly one even, but ever heard of horseshoe theory? At some point, I drink enough to circle back around to my default surly misanthropy. I make my excuses and prophesy my return with a coaster atop my pint. I just need a minute to cauterize the glum with a cigarette.
The clammy chill slips its fingers into my collar. Honestly, it feels good that a few people cared, at least. But still, it leaves behind something bitter.
“Hey.”
I blink through my cigarette’s birth smoke at a guy in double breasted pinstripes. His hair’s neatly combed back from his long, wolfish face. He smiles at me, not showing his teeth. He holds a phantom cigarette between his fingers and puffs on it. I hand him the pack.
“Thanks,” he says, after lighting it and luxuriating in the nicotine for a long, orgasmic breath.
“Howard Phillips.” He holds out his hand without my shaking it just long enough to make it awkward. As he slips his hand back into his pocket, he doesn’t look hurt by my snub at all. Now I’m actually pissed. If I’m going to act like an asshole, the least my victim can do is look distressed by it.
“I’m a fan.”
“One of the three. You here to buy me a beer too?”
“Not of Swamp Dragger, although that is a shame. I prefer your earlier work with Huskarl.”
“I never recorded anything with Huskarl.”
“I know. A real shame. But I caught you at the Ooze a few years back.”
Huskarl’s last show.
“Whatever happened to the rest of them? After you all broke up it’s like they disappeared.”
My cigarette loses its rich, refreshing flavor. I want to get away from this guy and his creepy, Roman statue stare. Flicking my smoke aside, I mutter a good night.
“Which titan was it?”
A cold, clammy fist clenches in my throat while another squeezes my heart. White noise, black notes. Tentacles with
suckers that shriek perfectly in key. Human shapes striding towards me, black eyes trailing smoky pennants from their corners set in white, featureless faces.
“I know, they all sit in judgment, but which one was it that reached in and plucked the sounds out of you?”
I lick my lips. My tongue feels like it’s wrapped in gauze. How does he know? Purd’s the only one I’ve ever told about my stupidity. The only one living’s who’s supposed to know.
“I didn’t know they have names,” I say.
“You were close, weren’t you?” He steps closer, nostrils flaring. Without thinking I take a step back. “I can smell it on you. Singed by Promethean fire. You had it in your hand, didn’t you?” Another step. “That perfect G5 chord. You had it but you couldn’t get out in time.” He gives me a pitying look. “So they took it from you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t want you to talk about it,” he says. “I want you to try it again.”
“You’re either stupid or fucking insane.”
“To the first, no. To the latter, without question.”
I shake my head like I’m trying to rattle what I just heard out of my ears. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“But I do.” His mouth tugs into a weak smile. “Because I’ve done it myself.”
He slips his hand inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a harmonica. He tosses it to me. “Try it.”
“I can’t play.”
“Just try it. Make some noise.”
There’s no charms or runes on it I can recognize, just the company logo and some copyright info stamped into the body. It’s an ordinary ten hole chromatic. I blow a few honking notes into it.
“Give it here.” He wipes the mouthpiece off on his chest, then places it against his lips. He breathes in deep, puffs up his cheeks, and then blows.
Nothing.
He shifts down the scale, repeats his big bad wolf impression, but still nothing comes out. Not even a tuneless pop of air. When he tries a third time, I hold my hand up close. Breath glides across my knuckles, but there’s no sound.