Death Metal

by Mark All

  “‘Congruent,’” John said, allowing more anger to seep into his voice. “What is this, fucking Geometry class?”

  “Most of our material is prog metal—”

  “Most of your material,” Mike said.

  “Most of the band’s music. As I said, you guys wrote some good songs, but they’re kind of…well, they have a pop vibe, a capriciousness.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” David said with a grin.

  John leaned as far toward Vince as his seat belt would allow. “Our ‘pop’ songs got a bigger reaction than your semi-classical masturbation, and you know it. We need more singable songs to sell the album, not less. Not a pile of ponderous, pretentious—”

  “Hey,” David said hastily, “this is getting ugly. Clearly there’s a little aesthetic disagreement and maybe some resentment lurking beneath the surface, but we can work it out. We just kicked total ass at the biggest rock club in Atlanta. Everybody get some perspective.”

  The van leaned to the left while entering a curve, and David felt the rear fishtail a little. “Yo, Alan! Don’t run us off the road!”

  “Sorry, man,” the singer said nonchalantly. “Hey, I’ve been working on some lyrics myself.”

  “Exactly,” John said.

  “Come on, guys,” Mike said. “The band is what’s important. The experience. This is our life. A group is a living organism. What makes it magic is not the songs, but the people, the relationships, the way we all click and function as a unit. It’s greater than the sum of its parts.”

  Vince shook his head. “You’re wrong. The music is what counts. What will last long after we’re gone.”

  Alan laughed. “After I’m gone, I don’t give a shit.”

  “Being the band is our success,” Mike said. “We’re a family.”

  David, as usual, tried to play the mediator, to be on both sides, to keep the band together. In his experience, a band was actually a holding pattern, an ephemeral assembly of role-players in a template that eventually swapped out members or broke up. “Performing is what it’s all about; it's what gives life meaning. We’re musicians. We play.”

  Alan swerved the van a little, jostling them, then corrected it. “Damn straight,” he said. “We were good tonight.”

  “Vince,” David said, “their songs are just as good as ours, and more accessible. Maybe they’re what get people to listen to the prog stuff. The Beatles, Queen, hell, everybody has songs contributed by different players that aren’t typical. Sometimes those are the biggest hits.”

  Vince didn’t look convinced and opened his mouth to speak, but David ploughed on.

  “How about this? We all write the next album together in the studio instead of bringing in our own separate songs. We can—”

  John interrupted him. “This one will just dominate the sessions,” he said, gesturing at Vince, who also looked skeptical, doubtless for different reasons. “I can’t create collaboratively with him. I say we all write our own songs like we’ve always done. If you don’t like it,” he jabbed a finger at the keyboardist, “you can start your own fucking band. Good luck finding another four people who’ll put up with your bullshit.”

  “We need Vince,” David protested. He attempted another joke. “Besides, we can’t break up now—we just took a band photo!”

  Nobody laughed.

  “You all know David and I write most of the music,” Vince said like a stern father. “From here on out, Penumbra’s albums will be written by him and me, and you can all contribute not only your parts, but, as usual, sections within the songs, if they’re stylistically appropriate. Like I said, you guys can do a separate project of your own tunes, and I’ll play keys for you. If you want.”

  He reached into his inside jacket pocket and retrieved a small stack of papers, folded in thirds. “What I’m describing just streamlines and formalizes our current process. I had a contract drawn up.” He shook the papers open and held them up, evidently looking for someone to take it.

  David was speechless. Vince was totally out of touch with reality and worse at human relations than he’d realized if he thought this group was going to sign that thing, and this sure as hell wasn’t the time to bring it up.

  John was doing a slow burn, his face screwing up. “A contract? A fucking CONTRACT?” The bass player reached out for the papers and was comically jerked to stop by his seat belt. He angrily tugged it at, struggling to free himself, then unfastened it and reached out both hands for the contract. At first Vince held it out toward him, until he realized John was planning to tear it up. They started slapping each other’s hands and arms like little girls, but the action escalated.

  “Guys, guys!” David reached out, grabbing John’s hand and pushing it away.

  John shook free, and when David tried to take hold of him again, he backhanded David’s arm.

  David’s forearm hit Alan in the head, hard, knocking it into the side window.

  The van sluiced back and forth on the wet pavement, its headlights sweeping the trees first on one side of the road, then the other. The right front and rear tires left the road. They sped down an embankment diagonally, leaning, leaning, then the van rolled, crashed on its roof, and rolled again before coming to a stop at the bottom of the hill, against a huge pine.

  * * * *

  Friday early evening

  “Okay, I fucked up,” David admitted to Mike and Alan. “Vince was way out of line, and he’d never have been that bold if I hadn’t always straddled the fence.”

  “Taken his side, most of the time,” Mike added.

  “Fair enough. He must have thought I’d go along with him on the contract thing. He misread me, but I gave him reason to think I would.” David sighed and looked at the floor, then into Mike’s eyes.

  “I was wrong,” David said. He knew what Mike needed, and was more than willing to give it to him. Because David had been wrong. “I should have supported you, and Alan and John. I should have stood up to Vince, not gone along to get along. To keep the ‘talent’ in the band.”

  Mike nodded. “It’s okay,” he said, but David knew the drummer had needed him to admit his role in the tragedy to make things right between them. Not to mention, to get him to play the concert, and sign on for the album and the tour.

  “People are what’s important,” Mike said. “Being a band. At the end of our lives, that’s what we’ll look back on, not how great our ‘art’ was. Vince was obsessive over the music, and so are you. I feel like you’re in danger of losing yourself.”

  “Losing myself?”

  “There’s something about this damn music. People are becoming addicted to a fucking song. More importantly, what is this shit doing to you? You seem to have a reason for living for the first time since the wreck, but it’s for something outside yourself. It’s still for Vince’s music. It’s as if he’s come back from the grave to continue fucking with us.”

  David froze, numb. Did Mike know? The dreadful secret weighed David down, made him question his sanity, his very definition of the reality, and he felt a compelling need to tell them about Vince. No, they wouldn’t believe him, and would probably dump the project and then have him committed.

  Mike continued on, evidently not noticing David's sudden disquiet. “You should just write your own songs, man. You don’t need Vince, you never did. In fact, we should just chuck Oblivion and come in here and compose all our songs together, as a group, like you suggested that night.”

  David had to get this train back on track. The music needed to get out. “It’s too late for that. We’ve got people’s attention right now, with this album. The world is waiting for it. After we release Oblivion, we can write our own ticket.”

  Mike shook his head. “I just have a bad feeling about it.”

  “Look, it was my fault Vince thought he could take over the band. Which means …” Choked with guilt and not a little shame, David didn’t want to say it, but it needed to be said—it wanted to be said. “I’m partially res
ponsible for Vince’s death. This is his legacy. The least I can do is put his last music out there as a tribute. Bury him with honor.”

  Mike looked pensive, but he was frowning.

  David leaned forward. “Then we’ll do our own album. After the success of Oblivion, it’ll sell like it never would otherwise. Just do the concert, and sign the contract to release the album.”

  Mike looked unconvinced.

  David fidgeted. “Okay, fuck the tour. Sage will just have to understand. I think Jessica will buy it, if it’s the only way they’ll get the album, and if she buys it, the company will. We can be a band again, Mike. Just you and me, and Alan, and John if he wants to. Maybe we’ll be a happier family without Vince.”

  Mike looked over at Alan, who was eying them intently, although David was not sure he was really following the conversation. The singer’s lips still moved, almost imperceptibly, like an autistic person counting or reciting. Mike looked back to David. “No tour,” he reiterated.

  Yes! thought David. He was going to do it!

  “Fine,” David nearly shouted. “Fuck the tour.”

  Like the dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s table, Alan piped up, “Fuck the tour!”

  Mike’s gaze drifted for a moment. “Okay,” he said at last. “New rule, though: no assholes in the band.”

  David felt a sudden outpouring of emotion after the catharsis of admitting his partial culpability in the wreck. He hugged Mike, oblivious of the sweat that made the drummer’s tee shirt cling to him.

  Mike clapped him on the back, then shoved him away and said, “Okay, gay moment over.”

  “Don’t be a homophobe,” David said, but distanced himself as well.

  “You know I’m not.” Mike grinned. “I’ve got such a man crush on you, bro.”

  “Okay, fuck you. We’ve got shit to move.”

  * * * *

  At nine o’clock, David found himself standing before the shed in the backyard, having forgotten why he’d come or even walking out here.

  They’d loaded in at the gloriously renovated Athens Theater in record time, having only to set up the drums, the guitar rig, their personal monitor and lighting effects systems, and a compact workstation for David to run his laptop and feed it to the house PA. They’d used “Fire It Up” for the sound check as the late afternoon, after-work drinkers gave way to the early evening partiers. They were fortunate that they worked all the kinks out in two run-throughs, because everyone in the club, including the bartenders, gathered around the stage like lemmings, howling for them to play the single over and over again. David felt like they’d been lucky to escape with their lives, or at least their clothes intact.

  Now David scowled at the shed, certain he had a reason to be here, but having no clue what it might be. He climbed the short ramp, unlocked the door, and peered inside, reluctant to enter.

  On some deep, unconscious level, he was at war with himself. Roiling emotions churned his gut. He felt a deep-seated discomfort growing within him, the source of which he could not identify. He needed to do something but could not think what it was. His thoughts were a whirling fog, insubstantial, yet fraught with importance and weight.

  His picking hand tensed, his fingers twitched. His computer suddenly appeared in his mind, as if he stood before it, its brightly colored lights winking seductively at him. He wasn’t sure what it meant, or what he was supposed to do.

  He forced himself to cross the threshold into the little outbuilding, yet was hesitant to turn on the overhead fluorescent lights. Instead he peered into the darkness.

  A sparkle of light caught his eye. Moonshine on the blade of the axe, hanging on the back wall. The blade looked dull, as if some viscous fluid coated it. For a moment as he stepped toward it, it seemed spattered with something, a dark liquid that drizzled down the handle. Then he reached it and saw that it was as pristine as if he’d just cleaned it after chopping firewood.

  David stared at the axe for a long time, his right hand itching to reach out and grasp its smooth, blond wooden handle, but he could not move his arm. He wasn’t sure how long he stood that way, in blank non-contemplation, but eventually the urge to play music welled within him and compelled him to head for the studio to fire up one of his spare guitar rigs. He could use some practice playing Oblivion. It seemed ages since he’d heard it.

  He locked up the shed and headed for the sliding glass doors to the lower level of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Saturday morning

  Barry Hoffman marched into the Roswell library in a murderous rage.

  He hadn’t listened to his song for over twelve hours, which made him feel the same way he had when he’d tried to quit drinking and smoking simultaneously. He’d already put his fist through his living room wall. Twice.

  Fucking bastard cable company had cut off his Internet and TV. It wasn’t right. He’d lost his construction job, and the unemployment checks only went so far, and those sons of bitches should understand. A man needed his entertainment when he’d been flushed down the shitter by the fucking economy. It wasn’t his fault the Wall Street con men had butt-fucked the golden goose and nobody could afford a house anymore. Barry had looked for work, had gone to the “training” sessions at the Department of Labor, which should've been called “depress the hell out of you” sessions. He had jumped through all the hoops and still found no job. Now his benefits had expired. The Internet and TV should be a public utility. He paid his damn taxes, what the hell did he get for them?

  Barry wanted his music, and he was pretty sure there were computers in the library. He rubbed his neck, wincing from the crick he’d developed, and scanned the open area in the center of the stacks.

  A crowd roiled in turbulent motion around a double row of computer desks in the center of the room, arguing, pushing, shoving. Men, women, and kids clustered around each workstation, apparently fighting with the computers to get them to do what they wanted. A nerdy twerp with a bow tie defended the computer on the near end, standing between it and a semicircle of agitated patrons.

  “I’m sorry, that site is blocked,” Bow Tie shouted as Barry made his way to the edge of the commotion. “People have legitimate uses for the workstations, you can’t just use them as a jukebox!”

  “Fuck you,” a man yelled.

  “People, please,” the librarian responded. “Try to observe civility and common courtesy! Our genealogical society meeting was supposed to start twenty minutes ago—”

  “Fuck ’em,” the same man shouted. “They can stick their family tree up their ass!”

  Calls of agreement went up, further flustering Bow Tie.

  Well, fuck these people, too. Barry had come here for a reason, and he had the means to get what he wanted. The song was still looping in his head, but it just wasn’t real enough.

  A fistfight broke out halfway down the row of computers and the librarian attempted to move toward it through the crowd, gesturing in the air toward a late-middle-aged security officer who was being jostled by angry patrons on the other side of the row of desks.

  Barry took advantage of the thinned ranks in front of the computer where Bow Tie had been, but so did the others, who swarmed in like a horde of rats going after a piece of rotting meat. He elbowed his way in.

  The Fuck You guy grabbed his sleeve, yelling at him. Barry pushed his arm away, then knocked the shit out of him. The man tumbled backward into the men and women behind him, holding his nose, blood leaking between his fingers. People began to make way for Barry.

  The security guard, a laughable term for an unarmed geezer at a library, caught Barry’s eye. The coot was coming his way, evidently having decided Barry was a bigger threat than the other fight down the line. Little did he fucking know.

  Bow Tie must have put out the other fire and now also headed for Barry. As a couple of women steered Fuck You guy away from the action, Bow Tie stomped up and stuck a finger in Barry’s face.

  “Now see here, sir!”

 
; Barry needed to plug back in. He shoved the little queer back, turned, and grabbed the teenage boy at the computer by the neck as if he were a misbehaving kitten. He ripped the earphones from the kid’s head with his free hand, then jerked him back, toppling the chair and sending the boy sprawling.

  “Hey!” croaked the security guard, who had arrived and took Barry by the shoulder.

  “Enough!” Barry screamed, throwing the man off. He slid the .38 Police Special revolver from his waistband under his shirt, poked it in the guard’s comically shocked face, and pulled the trigger.

  The pistol’s report was loud enough to knock the music out of Barry’s head for a second. Blood, bone, and brains exploded like a water balloon filled with raw meat and ketchup.

  The librarian screamed like a little girl, and Barry shot him through the little faggot bow tie.

  As the twerp lay on the floor beside the headless security guard, his body flopping like a drowning fish, his feet tapping the floor as his legs twitched, the place erupted like an anthill on fire. People screamed and ran, knocked each other over, and stepped on the unfortunates who fell. A shrill alarm started ringing.

  Barry put the gun on the desk and sat at the computer, where the song was already playing on a pirate site. He looked around for the headphones, picked them up, wiped spatters of blood from them with his shirttail, and put them on.

  The fucking alarm was too loud. It was infringing on his right to hear the music, and that seriously pissed him off. Barry stood and the short cord on the headphones jerked him back and slid off his head. Bellowing curses, he put them back on, crouching so they’d stay on his head, then picked up the revolver again and started firing at the people who hadn’t made it out of the library yet.

  * * * *

  Anna Simonoff turned up the volume on her earphones, trying to ignore the hubbub from the group forming in the printer area. It was time for the lame office party for people with birthdays this month. The get-together consisted of standing around for fifteen minutes jabbering, eating the “healthy” carrot cake, and pretending to laugh at the “From All of Us!” card everyone had signed with “funny” little birthday comments in the blank word balloons beside stupid-looking cartoon animals in a cube farm. Anna had ignored Jim Holston, her manager, the first two times he’d bugged her. That tactic proved to be as ineffective as her attempts to block out the noise, because here he came again.