by David Bone
“Ah, come on, you don’t want to be roaming dark hallways your whole life, scaring the shit out of idiots,” Jack said.
It did sound stupid. Maybe if Janice said it, there’d be some good comeback. But it was depressing. I needed to enjoy the moment rather than stress its demise.
“Dono, you’re a mack. Be a mack. Get into some trouble. Do something natural and super instead of the other way around.”
There it was. He called me “mack.” I thought it would feel different. But now that I was a mack, I didn’t know how to act like one.
Jack threw his beer can in the open window of the hearse.
“Go for it,” he said.
I threw mine and it smacked the side of the window and foamed up as it tumbled inside the car.
“What?! You weren’t supposed to throw a full one!” Jack said and erupted in laughter. “Drink it up before you throw it away, mack.”
At the next roll call, Jack came out of the back and Rebecca, aka the Countess, ran up to him. She whispered in his ear. Rebecca was a celebrity, known around Dunes as Dracula’s sexy victim in the Castle commercial. She was a blonde super babe who looked like a prom queen five years past the crown. I never had anything to do with her because she was stuck up, and usually spent her break looking at herself in a compact mirror. Occasionally, she’d scoff at someone if they made a comment. But most of the time she kept herself busy being well groomed and on a pedestal. She was definitely the hottest chick in the Castle in the traditional sense, but she didn’t have any of the uniqueness that Melody had.
Jack called out the day’s assignments and said I was going to do the Maiden Slayer room. I’d be the druid that stabs a woman dressed in a white nightgown on an ivy-covered concrete slab. I don’t know if the whisper to Jack had anything to do with it, but he announced that Rebecca was going to be the maiden. It wasn’t her usual thing. Her normal role was Countess Bathory.
This was the first time I’d be working with a female “celebrity,” so I was a little nervous but also excited to have some better scenery than usual. I think Melody noticed. She came up to me at the tables before I started and said, “No matter what Rebecca says, don’t believe her.” I thought that was weird but okay, I won’t believe her. What was there to not believe?
I showed up in the room and Rebecca was already laid out on her back on the stone slab.
“Hey, there, that’s a big knife you’ve got,” she said with a wink.
If she wasn’t so hot it would have been corny as hell. I laughed and mock stabbed her.
“I’m glad we could finally work together,” she said.
“Yeah, it should be cool.” She was coming on strong for a person who had never paid attention to me. But I enjoyed being hit on and thought as long as I didn’t do anything, it would be harmless.
Rebecca pulled out a silver flask.
“Want a sip?”
“No, I’m cool. It’s early.”
“Oh, come on. You’re no fun,” she said, holding it out and pushing her chest together.
I couldn’t refuse her delivery. I took a small sip and pretended like it was a bigger one.
“Yay!”
We went to work, and I thought it was going pretty well. Most of the male plebes who came through would perv out on Rebecca. They’d stare at her as I yelled an incantation to some four-syllable demon I’d made up. Then I’d stab her, she’d writhe around erotically, and the guys would hoot and holler.
“You’re really good at this,” she said in between plebes.
“Thanks, so are you.”
“Let’s take another shot,” she said.
“Okay.” I took the flask and had a nice pull on it. Getting a little buzzed at work helped make the time go much faster. That and staring at Rebecca.
A few hours and shots passed by, and I was getting drunk. I started slurring the incantation and Rebecca’s writhing got even more sexual. Plebe traffic trickled down in the early evening and Rebecca started laying into me thick.
“You’re really cute, you know that?” she said.
“Thanks, so are you,” I said. My blood was running hot from her flask and the “Let’s do something bad” look in her eye.
“Really?” she pretended to ask. “What’s your favorite part about me?”
“Um, I don’t know. It’s all pretty awesome.”
“Oh!” She pulled my druid robe down toward her and kissed me. It flowed right into a heavy makeout session. She pulled me on top of her, and I immediately forgot about anyone coming through. It was a completely different way of making out than what Melody and I did. She was greedy with her lips and more aggressive with her body. I got carried away and gave her all the tongue I had. My head was spinning with the booze and her hair pulling when, just then, Melody came into the room whistling a theme from a horror movie, dressed as an evil gypsy. She held a lantern and quickly dropped it.
Rebecca propped herself up and yelled at Melody, “That’s for fucking Ronnie, slut!”
Melody stared at me in shock. I had been set up. The stone slab was a honey trap. Rebecca wanted nothing to do with me other than some revenge I didn’t even know about.
“It’s not what you think,” I said. It was as much a cliché as it was a lie. What was to think about? I was dry humping the Castle prom queen.
Melody ran off and I caught her in the next room.
“Hey,” I said, not knowing what to follow that up with. I grabbed her arm but she shook me loose.
“I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t, but you did,” she said and stormed away.
I chased after her but my robe tripped me up. I staggered and fell as she lost me behind the walls. I felt so dumb lying on the floor in my costume. I was supposed be a fake monster, not a real one. My corpse paint had smeared all over my face from making out. It sank into my pores and rotted me from the inside out. The stage fog buried me in smoke.
I went back to the Maiden Slayer room and shot daggers at the Countess, who was taking another sip.
“What the fuck?!”
“Hey, don’t be mad. Have a drink,” she said, holding out the flask again. I’d had enough.
“Who the fuck’s Ronnie?”
“Tssh. Ask her. She’s a fucking bitch. It’s not like I made you hook up with me.”
The rest of the day was awful. We still had to work together and my buzz was wearing off, making the remaining hours pass in slow motion. I changed my incantation to be based around punishment “for unlawful carnal knowledge,” the acronym for “fuck.” And I got way more pissed when delivering the fake blows.
“You’re creepy,” she said.
“I hate you,” I told her. I went from humping to hate in a pretty short time. The Castle had gotten to me. I went on break.
I saw Melody at the end of the tables, flirting up some random druid with reckless abandon. She shot a look at me that said, “Stay away.” I couldn’t even defend myself. If I had the chance, I don’t know what defense there was anyway.
10
“Dude, the Countess is a land clam. You need some metal,” Renaldo said, passing me a joint under the pier.
I was bumming and didn’t feel that the Tion demo would make anything better.
“I dunno, man. I lost what I needed.”
“No no no. Fuck that. Dude, King. The fucking King is coming to the Arena Dome. You gotta see a metal show.”
“That Tion show was kinda weird.”
“Oh, fuck Tion, dude. I’m talking about King!”
“I thought you said Tion ruled?”
“They rule The Ditch but King rules the fucking world, man. I’ll get us tickets.”
“How much?”
“On me, dude. Least I can do to keep your sorry ass from crying. We’ll meet tomorrow at the Arena Dome gate, like, at eight.”
“What if Melody’s there? We were supposed to go to that.”
“Bro, metal is the great uniter. If you want to hook back up, then that’s the place. But
if you want to piss it all out, you can do that too. It’s a no brainer, brah.”
I had no idea what to do. When Melody turned her back on me, it felt like she took all of my bones with her. Maybe I knew what I was doing but I didn’t know who I was. I went from semi-directionless to full-blown lost. But Renaldo’s confidence and unwavering friendship led me to believe in his metal plan.
Renaldo went to the show way early to sell weed in the parking lot, so I hitchhiked later. I thumbed it for about ten minutes in front of the freeway on-ramp before a metalhead in his twenties who called himself Axe and his silent, permed girlfriend picked me up. His bumper was plastered in KRIF stickers that proclaimed it rocked. The radio station’s promo spots featured a deep, monster truck rally–type of voice that bellowed, “KRIFFFFF, break the knob off!”
“Going to the King show?” I asked.
“Fuckin’ fuck yeah, brother. Get in!”
His girlfriend made me jealous I wasn’t with mine. Not that I still had one. If ever.
“Do not fucking hesitate, man. You know?” Axe nodded his head and turned it into a headbang.
“Yeah, totally,” I said. Shouldn’t there have been something before that message of his?
“I wouldn’t be here if I did. You wouldn’t be in my car,” he said.
I didn’t say anything as I began to worry that his stoned notions might be veiled threats.
“Let me tell you a story,” he continued. “Sorry you have to hear this again, baby,” he said, putting a hand on her thigh, “but fuck, it’s so good! About a week ago, I was doing some drywall out on Sea Grave Road, you know? Some fuckers tore down about a month of my work, but whatever—I got hired again to do it all over, so I guess I shouldn’t be pissed.”
Oh shit. Sea Grave. I tried to keep my eyes from darting left to right.
“Anyways, I’m eating lunch and we’re all listening to The Riff on the radio. They were doing that thing were they’d play one second of a song, and whoever called in and identified it right would get King tickets. So they got my ear, we’re listening and they play the one second. I know what it is immediately, brother. It’s fucking King’s ‘Gypsy Dream.’ Kinda rare B-side, I guess. I tell everyone, ‘That’s fucking “Gypsy Dream,” where’s the nearest pay phone?’ All the guys are just like, ‘Man, no, it’s not.’ So I’m like, ‘Fuck you, guys, it’s “Gypsy Dream.”’ But I thought maybe they’re right. The DJ gets back on and goes ‘No one’s identified the song yet, here it is again.’ I’m telling you—it’s fucking ‘Gypsy Dream.’ You know that part where it’s all ‘Da na naaaa na naaaa da na naaaa na naaaaa?’ It’s the first ‘Da na.’”
At Axe’s request, his girlfriend opened up three beers and passed them around the car.
“So I lay back down,” he said, taking a heavy drink. “Start eating my sandwich again, another song gets played on the radio, DJ comes back on. No one’s named it. So I’m just like, fuck, man. This is bullshit. My boss tells everyone, ‘Get back to work,’ but I’m all, ‘That song is “Gypsy Dream,” and everyone can suck my dick.’ I didn’t really say that but I was like, ‘Can I go use the phone real quick?’ Boss says break’s over. I go back to work, radio’s still on. Man, ten minutes later, still no one’s claimed it. So I had enough, man. I had enough fucking dipshits telling me what to do. I knew the answer and all these assholes were telling me to sit down. Well, I’m not wrong, you fucks. I tore my belt off, jumped in my car, and hauled ass to the nearest pay phone. Called ‘em up and said, ‘“Gypsy fucking Dream,” motherfucker!’ Boom! ‘You got it,’ they said, ‘Come get your tickets.’ And I did. And here we are. And here we go! Believe in yourself, brother! Woooo!”
The dude was so wrapped up in his tale that we got lost on the way there and ended up late. When I met up with Renaldo he was pacing back and forth outside the gates.
“Hey, fucker! Over here!” he said and motioned me over to meet him crouched down behind a car.
It turns out Renaldo’s version of “getting tickets” meant to make them on a copy machine.
“Dude, just help me make some perforations with this paper clip,” he said.
“Is this gonna work? These tickets look super sketchy.”
“It’ll work. But we should go in separately. And if they call you out at the gate, just tell ‘em a black guy in a red sweatshirt sold ‘em to you for twenty bucks.”
“Why a black guy?”
“Well, if you say Mexican, maybe they’ll try to fuck with me—guy standing in the parking lot. And if I say Mexican, they’ll look at me like, ‘Why is this Mexican talking about how he bought them off a Mexican?’ And if I say white guy, they just won’t believe it.”
“So why a red sweatshirt?"
“When your mom asks, ‘What did you do tonight?’ and you went out getting wasted and boning chicks, you don't say, ‘I went to the movies.’ No, you say, ‘I went to see this but it was sold out and we had to see that instead and it sucked. We were totally bored and I choked on a Gobstopper.’ See how it just sells itself? Details are what makes it real, man.”
“Dude, I dunno.”
“To the ticket taker, the black guy detail makes it like, ‘Oh, of course he did.’ The red sweatshirt detail makes it like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that guy,’ and the rip-off price makes them feel sorry for you. Now go before we miss King.”
The ticket gate didn’t have many people going through since everyone was already inside. I got nervous because it meant my ticket would be inspected that much more closely. I handed my ticket to a paunchy guy in his forties with a cop mustache.
He tore the stub off the ticket, but the paper ripped instead of a properly perforated tear.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“A black guy in a red sweatshirt sold it to me for twenty bucks,” I said.
His cop ’stache wiggled and he sighed.
“Go on in.”
Holy shit, it totally worked. I walked over to the outside T-shirt booth and waited for Renaldo. After a couple minutes, I saw him approach the gates and the same ticket taker. He got stopped, started giving the story, but was then turned away. We hadn’t factored in the ticket taker’s own racism. What was I supposed to do? I was on the inside staring at Renaldo a hundred feet away, trying to decide if I should bail. He was waving his hands like, “Fuck it, dude. Let’s split.” But I couldn’t. I walked inside. It was a cold-blooded ditch but I was powerless against the lure of the arena.
Renaldo’s fake tickets were for shitty seats. I was way in the back of the place and all the way up top. I thought it was weird he didn’t make rad fake tickets. I was perched among a patch of burnouts and people who came to the show to make out.
The lights went down and I didn’t expect the rush that came with it. It was different than some touchdown cheer. Different than the Castle. Instead of scaring one person at a time, it was like scaring fifteen thousand plebes at once. A tubby DJ from KRIF came out to jeers and cheers from the crowd.
“This is Ragin’ Rick from KRIF! Are we gonna break the knob off or what? I said, are we gonna break the knob off?! Ladies and gentlemen, King!”
The curtain dropped and revealed something more amazing than the Castle. Renaldo was right. But it wasn’t really the music that made me stoked. It was the insane stage set. A mix of a futuristic city and Egypt, it took up the whole other end of the arena. A floor-to-ceiling pyramid dominated the back of the set, with ramps leading up its sides for the band members to run around on. The singer, King himself, came up from the ground inside a giant crystal ball that cracked open with smoke and lasers. There were twelve-foot-tall mummy robots that battled each other with magic explosions and more lasers. Lording over the drum riser, a massive, animatronic sphinx head split open to reveal an evil robot dinosaur that spit fire. Almost every song had its own theatrical element to it. The whole thing made me forget about ditching Renaldo and Melody ditching me. At least until the show ended, and I went to the parking lot.
There she
was. Melody holding hands and hitchhiking with a girlfriend I had never seen. They were both wasted and yelling at cars to let them in. I kept my eyes on her and tried to stand around like I was doing something important. Renaldo was nowhere in sight.
“Piss Bucket!” It was Colin in his mobile bedroom Mustang, patrolling the parking lot, looking for fish in a barrel. He must have booked it up here after work just for that purpose because he always said metal was for losers.
I ignored him and went back to staring at Melody. I shouldn’t have, because he followed my eyes and zeroed in on her and the other girl.
Colin flashed a wide-eyed, toothy smile at me and popped his polo shirt collar like it was his cape. He did a burnout and drove toward the girls. The burnout caught Melody’s attention, and then she saw me staring at her. At the same time, Colin leaned across his front seat and opened the passenger-side door. Melody flared her eyes at me and jumped in the car, giggling with her friend. Colin stuck his middle finger out the window and did an even bigger burnout than before. I wanted to throw myself under it.
I was pissed and needed to blow off some steam, so I headed over to the new homes on Sea Grave Road. When I got there, I saw Renaldo being put into a cop car. I didn’t know if I should run away or try to help. What could I do? I’d ditched him once already and needed to face up.
“Hey!” I yelled to the cops while walking up to the scene.
“Take off, kid,” one of the cops said.
“I called you guys to catch the guy smashing up the homes.”
The cops looked at each other.
“Well, we finally caught the punk,” the other cop said. “He’s going away for a while.”
“No. You’ve got the wrong dude. I just saw a black guy in a red sweatshirt running in the other direction with a sledgehammer, covered in drywall dust. Seen him around here before.”
Renaldo’s eyes lit up. “See?! I told you, I fucking told you!” he said at the cops. The two officers looked at each other wearily and nodded.