by Gary Jonas
Apollo wanted me to audition at seven. And then I remembered his warning. I pulled off my underwear and examined my balls. They were less than half normal size.
“Kevin!” I yelled.
Kevin rushed into the room with an evil grin. “You rang?” he said as if he were playing a tiny red version of Lurch from The Addams Family.
“Did you do this?” I asked, pointing at my nut sack.
Kevin crept up to me. He got down on one knee and stared up at my balls. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re becoming a eunuch.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, but this is,” he said, grabbing my dick and yanking it twice as he made a high-pitched train whistle. “Toot toot!”
“Don’t touch my dick, you douchebag!”
“Don’t dangle it in front of me.”
“Blow me. Wait. Don’t blow me.”
He grinned. “Make up your mind. But be warned, I have sharp teeth.”
I pulled my underwear back on then stepped into a pair of shorts. “Did you shrink my balls, or did Apollo?”
“It’s not my work. I’d make them get bigger and bigger until they exploded, but your father won’t let me do actual harm to you.”
“So this is Apollo’s way of getting me to audition?”
“Figured that one out all by your lonesome?”
I walked to the closet. My balls throbbed as they got smaller. I pushed shirts on hangers from side to side. “Where’s my Korn T-shirt?”
“Next to your broccoli T-shirt.”
“Korn the band, dumbass.”
“Like I’m up to date on Earth music.”
“Screw it,” I said, and threw on a plain black T-shirt. “Where’s my guitar?”
“Not my day to keep up with it.”
“Move,” I said, pushing him aside.
“Be nice or I’ll piss on your brand-new pillow.”
“Please don’t.”
“Well, since you said the magic word, and since I don’t need to go right now, your pillow is safe.”
I went downstairs.
Sabrina was in the kitchen cooking dinner.
“Do I smell bacon?” I asked.
“You do,” she said. “What were you yelling about?”
“Don’t worry about it. Why are you making bacon now? It’s dinnertime.”
“Anytime is good for bacon.”
“Can’t argue with that. Have you seen my guitar?”
She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “It was doing a dance in the backyard earlier.”
“Very funny.”
“You asked.”
“Is Michael coming over?”
“Later. He has to pick up some blood at the hospital first.”
“You two are quite the couple.”
She flipped the bacon in the pan with a pair of tongs. It sizzled and popped. “We’re going through a rough patch.”
“Because of Helen?”
“The siren you’re helping? That’s only part of it. I think Michael’s getting tired of me.”
“He hasn’t said anything like that to me.”
“Guys always get tired of me. Who needs them?”
“I certainly don’t.”
She moved the bacon around with the tongs. “You slept through today’s magic lesson, and your demon wouldn’t let me wake you.”
“I have an audition.”
“What? You’re leaving the band?”
“No. Let me rephrase that. I’m being forced to audition. I think I’m going to intentionally tank it, but I still need my guitar.”
“Did you bring it inside after the last gig?”
“How should I know? I’ve slept since then.”
“Check the backseat of your car.”
“Good idea.”
I took small steps as I moved toward the hall.
“Is something wrong? You’re walking funny.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
I went outside, and peered into my backseat. Sure enough, my guitar was there. Good.
Kevin came outside carrying my shoes. He thrust them into my gut. “You might want these.”
“I should go brush my teeth.”
“Why? You going to kiss Apollo?”
“No, but Helen might be there.”
“She won’t kiss you either. You messed that up by talking.”
“Maybe I can win her over.”
“To know you is to hate you, dipshit. Now, unless you want to be the Ball-less Wonder, we should hit the road.”
Kevin was right. Time was slipping away and it was taking my family plans with it.
“Get in.”
I yanked on the door handle. The door didn’t open.
“I forgot to grab my keys. I’ll be right back.”
Kevin leaned against the car and laughed. “Might want to move a little faster. Once the balls are gone, your cock is next. And truth be told, you can’t afford any shrinkage in that department.”
Demons should be ignored. Pretty much always. The pain in my balls intensified as I stepped into the house. I grabbed my crotch and winced. Sabrina now sat on the sofa munching on a strip of bacon.
“Do you have to pee?” she asked.
“I’m good,” I said, and went upstairs to fetch my keys.
By the time I came back downstairs, she had the TV on and was watching a rerun of Friends. Chandler was asking Joey what kind of scary-ass clowns went to his birthday parties. Sabrina laughed, and I left the house.
“Chop chop, baby balls,” Kevin said.
“Not funny.”
He grinned. “Not to you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Traffic was sparse, but I managed to get stuck at every light. Every time I sat there waiting for the light to change, I squirmed in my seat and scrunched my face in agony. It seemed like the lights were timed to stop me no matter how quickly I took off at each intersection. As the light turned red ahead of me, I glanced over at Kevin, who stared out the passenger window.
“Are you doing this?” I asked.
“Doing what?”
“Making the lights change.”
“They’re on a timer, stupid.”
“Timed to stop me.”
“Relax. Even if your balls disappear, you’ll still have your sparkling personality to fall back on. Oh, wait…” He slowly grinned at me, then pointed ahead. “Light’s green.”
When I pulled into the parking lot by the recording studio, I was irritated and hurting and tired and scared.
The car clock changed from 6:58 to 6:59.
“You’d better run,” Kevin said. “If you don’t get inside by seven, you won’t have anything left in your ball sack. I’ll carry your guitar for you.”
I took off running for the door. Every step hurt.
“You’re welcome!” Kevin called after me.
The door was locked.
I knocked.
No answer.
I doubled over in pain, and pounded on the door.
Still no answer.
Kevin reached the door with my guitar case in his right hand. “It’s seven o’clock. Do I rename you Captain Eunuch now?”
“Get the damn door open.”
He laughed. “Seven oh one, Nutless Nimrod.”
I dropped to my knees. The pain shot up into my gut. I pounded on the door one last time.
Finally, Apollo opened the door. He looked down at me. “I see you’re finally discovering penitence. Admirable.”
“Give me back my balls!”
Kevin elbowed my shoulder. “He’s like a whining little brat on a playground, ain’t he?”
“Indeed,” Apollo said. “Come on in, Mr. Masters.”
“Ms. Masters,” Kevin said. “No cojones, no mister.”
I grabbed the door handle and pulled myself to my feet. It still hurt like a son of a bitch. I staggered into the building. Kevin followed me with the guitar case.
Apollo walked down the hall to the studio. “Go in here.
”
“I want my balls back, and I want the pain to stop.”
“You’ll have to earn them. There’s a stool in the center of the room. Sit there, and place the microphone in front of you, adjusted to guitar level. Nod if you understand.”
I nodded.
There were a number of microphones, speakers, various musical instruments crowding the back wall, and of course, the window to the meeting room. Another window across the way faced a control room, where Helen stood behind a bank of buttons and dials with the engineer, Thomas.
On the positive side, someone had cleaned the window to the meeting room.
On the negative side, I found it difficult to breathe through the pain. When I gingerly touched my crotch, I couldn’t feel anything beneath my dick. Smooth as a goddamn Ken doll.
Kevin followed me into the room and as I sat on the stool, he opened my guitar case.
When he carried the guitar over to me, I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close. “Helen said I don’t want to pass this audition,” I whispered. “What did she mean?”
He grinned at me and shoved the guitar into my gut. “Maybe she likes you better as a girl.”
Helen’s voice came over a speaker above me. “Get the demon out of the studio.”
Kevin patted my shoulder. “You’re on your own, kid. Make me proud.”
I flipped him off.
“Oh, baby,” he said and left the room.
“I told you not to audition,” Helen said.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
“Of course. Apollo will be here in a second. Make sure you mess up your playing. Don’t use the magic pick.”
“He took my balls.”
“He did what?” She shook her head. “Don’t repeat it. Trust me, you’re better off without them as long as you’re not in his band.”
“I disagree.”
Apollo entered the control room. Thomas put on a pair of headphones and gave him a nod. Then Thomas sat down out of my view, and Apollo waved to me through the window as he approached Helen. He leaned into a microphone. “Play something with balls, Elvis.”
A Greek god quoting the movie Road House was not what I expected. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t Jeff Healey, but I doubted he’d know the name. I considered laying the guitar across my lap like Healey and playing the way he did. I could even do “Hoochie Coochie Man.” But I couldn’t play properly that way, and Healey had never used my pick.
I adjusted the microphone, plucked the magic pick from between the strings where I’d tucked it after our last gig. I turned on my wireless amp, and hoped the batteries would last. I hadn’t recharged them, and while I might have been able to boost the power with magic, I was too focused on trying to ignore the pain.
Fortunately, the pick had pre-paid blood magic, so even if I hit the wrong chords or tapped the wrong string to get a harmonic or did a bad hammer on, or pull-off, the magic from the pick would give me a flawless performance.
He wanted something with balls. Fine. I launched into “Eruption” by Van Halen.
“Enough,” Apollo said. “Play something pretty.”
Pretty? “Okay,” I said, and played Joe Satriani’s “The Forgotten (Part Two).” While I didn’t have the backing instruments, the lead guitar opening the song was one of my favorites.
He cut me off after ninety seconds, right before things sped up in the song.
“Play a ballad.”
“Fine,” I said, and started playing “Still Loving You” by The Scorpions.
He stopped me after a bit. “Can you play an acoustic?” he asked.
“All I brought was an electric.”
“Against the wall behind you. Use one of those. And this time, I want to sing.”
He left the control room, and Helen grabbed the microphone. “You didn’t listen to me. Now he wants to sing. You’re doing too well, Brett. Take a dive. Play badly. I’m serious. Don’t you get it? You’ll be his slave, too.”
“Don’t you get it?” I asked. “I don’t want to go through life without testicles.” I packed up my guitar then eased my way to the back of the room to check out the various instruments. There was a lovely fiddle of gold, but I wasn’t betting my soul, so I moved on to the acoustic guitars. I selected a nice Taylor.
“I tried to warn you,” Helen said.
I ignored her and sat down on the stool with the acoustic. I picked out Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas” for a warm up and to test the playability. Even with the pain in my nether regions, the guitar sounded like heaven.
Apollo entered the room.
“I want to sing with you,” he said. “You’re more talented than I expected.”
“Heal my balls first.”
He chuckled. “Very well.” He snapped his fingers. My pain stopped, and my balls dropped.
The relief was instant. I rubbed my crotch. “Oh, wow,” I said.
“Shut up and get ready to play.”
“What do you want to sing?”
“I want to sing ‘Worship Me.’ Alas, I haven’t written that one yet, so you won’t know it. Start playing something and I’ll join in.”
“You think you’ll know whatever I play?”
“I’m the god of music. I am the source for all songs. If you can play it, I can sing it. Don’t challenge me again.”
“Sorry,” I said, not wanting to have him take my balls back.
I started with “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.
Apollo had an amazing voice. Yeah, I know, he’s a god. What did I expect? He had perfect pitch, of course, and added flourishes to the song that didn’t distract or seem showy, but added to the emotion. I was impressed.
I played “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie, and again, he sang flawlessly.
We went through “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce, and “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. I grabbed another guitar set to open tuning and played “She Talks to Angels” by The Black Crowes, then went back to the Taylor and ended with Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.”
Apollo beamed with pleasure at the end of the impromptu set. “Congratulations, Brett Masters, you are now part of the band so I don’t have to kill you. Bring me your bass player. I already have a drummer and I’ll play keyboards myself when necessary.”
“My bass player is a vampire.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “Helen told me. Tell him if he plays for me, I’ll cure him of his vampirism.”
“You can do that?”
“I’m a god.”
He patted me on the back. “We’ll write our first hit tomorrow, record it on Wednesday, and deliver it to radio stations across the country on Thursday. By Friday, we’ll have the number one song in the nation, and we’ll play a concert in New York City. From there, we’ll take the world, and I shall have the adoration of billions!”
If anyone else had said that, I’d have been filling out papers to have them committed to the local asylum after making a couple of Carl Sagan jokes. When Apollo said it, I worried that he might be right. Twisting the world to do things it normally couldn’t was the kind of thing gods did on a lazy afternoon.
“Okay then,” I said.
“Buck up, champ,” he said. “Play your cards right and you’ll be playing with me for all eternity, and you might get to partake of my cast-offs.”
“And if I don’t want a permanent job?”
“Then I eat your soul and you die.” He patted me on the head. “My way is better. You’ll have more women than you’ll know what to do with.”
“Get laid or die?” I asked.
“Essentially. You may have to service me from time to time as well.”
“Wait. What? I trust you mean carry suitcases, run errands, and that sort of thing.”
“Sure, that too. But I think you know what I really mean.” As he whispered the last, he put his thumb to my mouth and traced my lips.
Maybe I should have given u
p my balls.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Dude, where are you?” I asked when Michael answered the phone. I stood outside the studio. Kevin placed my guitar in the backseat then sat on the hood of the car to watch me. I paced the lot. A warm breeze blew in off the coast carrying the salty scent of the sea.
“I’m having dinner with Sabrina before we head over to see Demetrius,” Michael said. “She went to the ladies’ room, but she’ll be back soon. What do you want?”
“We have a gig.”
“Sounds good. Where and when?”
“We leave on Friday. It’s going to be a major tour. Worldwide.”
“Oh, well, that could be problematic. Transport for my coffin, for one. Teddy’s job, for two. And don’t forget about Chuck’s wife. On top of that, Sabrina isn’t as excited about singing these days. She wants to do something else. She signed up for a class on painting auras or something.”
“Sabrina, Chuck, and Teddy aren’t invited.”
“I don’t know, man.”
“I don’t know either, but I’m kinda trapped here. We need to talk because this thing could be a freight train roaring into hell.”
“You make it sound so glamorous.”
“It could also include a cure for vampirism, but it’s wonky and I don’t want to make any promises.”
“Nice try. Dude, I gotta let you go. Sabrina’s coming back.”
“But we need to talk.”
“Later.”
And he hung up. Maybe I should have led with the vampirism cure. Not that he’d have believed me that way either. I wasn’t sure I believed it. But I needed a plan.
“That went well,” Kevin said.
“Don’t start,” I said, pointing at him. “Get in the car.”
“We can talk about it, Brett. I’ll have better suggestions than your vampire friend. I’ve dealt with gods before.”
“Apollo doesn’t even like you to be in the same room with him.”
“You should be so lucky,” he said and hopped into the car.
I slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door then pounded on the steering wheel.
“You’ll make good money,” Kevin said. “So you have to blow a god every now and then. It could be worse.”