Damaged

by Timothy W. Long

  He ended by standing up, kicking a pair of pedals, and launching into the rhythm section of “Tools of the Devil.” When he soloed, the fans in the little shop came to their feet and screamed their heads off.

  Michael smiled and took a seat while the applause rolled on.

  “Okay, guys. That’s the end of the demo. If you’d like a DMG-17 today, Michael promised to stay and sign them. Let’s form a line over here,” Bruno pointed at the rack of guitars.

  “Can I ask a question?” Someone yelled.

  “Me. I have a question for Mr. Blackstone.”

  Then it was a free for all as everyone in the room yelled.

  “Shut the fuck up, guys. Okay? Mr. Blackstone probably wants to get home,” Bruno shouted them down.

  “No, it’s cool. I’ll answer a few questions.” Michael raised his hand and stated.

  “When the hell is the new Damaged coming out?” a kid in the front row asked.

  “We’re going into the studio next week. Hopefully it will be out early next year but it depends on the record company,” Michael lied.

  The record company would turn a new Damaged album out faster than you could say multi-platinum.

  “Are you going back to the old style?” A guy with long brown locks asked.

  “We’re tossing ideas around. Bands evolve. We have our roots and we’ll never abandon them. You guys will just have to wait and see,” Michael teased.

  “I have a question for Mr. Blackstone.”

  His voice was deep and he had a European accent, Swiss if Michael were to guess.

  “What’s up, brother?” Michael asked.

  “Do you regret the deal?”

  “I’ve never regretted our record deal. Sony has been very good to us over the years,” Michael said. He swallowed because a chill raced down his spine. “Next question?”

  The tall guy didn’t sit back down. “I meant the other deal. It never works out, you know. It always ends in blood for everyone.”

  One of the audience members, an older buy wearing a vintage Damaged T-shirt, looked the tall man up and down then leaned over and whispered to his friend. The other guy squinted at the European and let out an audible gasp. Muttering broke out among several fans in the audience.

  Bruno stepped in front of Michael and put waved his hands back and forth. “That’s it, guys. Stick around if you’d like to pick up a guitar and have it signed.”

  Michael met the tall man’s eyes and found them unwavering. Now that he looked closer, the man did look familiar. It was probably nothing. Just an asshole here to heckle him.

  Michael left the stage and moved to the back of the room where a signing table had been setup. He poured himself an ice coffee from a carafe Bruno had left for him and took a sip. Then he sat back and watched Bruno and his clerks start to ring up sales.

  Michael signed a half dozen guitars. He also signed CDs and a few body parts. Fans were weird. One guy asked him to sign his calf. He told Michael that he was going to have it tattooed later that day. The guy wasn’t older than twenty and wore an old 80s Iron Maiden shirt.

  “That’s fucking metal, bro!” Iron Maiden T-shirt’s friend said.

  Michael didn’t get it but this wasn’t the first time someone had gotten his signature tattooed. There was a woman in Tallahassee who had all four band member’s signature on her ass. The picture had made the rounds on Instagram a few years back. Michael didn’t even remember signing her cheek. He’d been so plastered on Jack, those days were a blur.

  “Do you know me?” a deep voice asked.

  Michael looked up and found the tall European man standing before him. Now that he was closer, Michael realized the guy wore thick black makeup around his eyes. No, it looked like it was something more permanent.

  “From the audience, yeah.”

  “My name is Nils Christoph,” the man said. “We did meet once.”

  “Did we?” Michael had decided this guy was a delusional fan. Someone who thought he knew the band. It wouldn’t be the first time a crazy-ass had shown up and pretended to be an old friend.

  “Yes, Michael. It was at Wacken in 1996. My band played a second stage,” Nils said.

  “Sorry I don’t remember. I used to drink a lot,” Michael said.

  One of the men in line chuckled.

  “My band was called Serpent Christ.”

  Michael sat back like someone had slapped him. He looked closer and realized who the man was. It was none other than Lord Bolvrkr. The only surviving member of Serpent Christ. The black metal band had made headlines in the 90s for burning down churches. Bolvrkr had been accused of killing his friend, and lead guitarist, with an axe. The crime was never proven and he’d faded from the spotlight.

  “Yeah, yeah. Now I remember,” Michael said.

  “We should talk. I know what is going to happen to Damaged.”

  “You don’t know fucking shit, pal. We’re tighter and stronger than we’ve ever been. Why don’t you just fuck off back to Norway,” Michael said.

  Michael hadn’t been an angry man in years. Giselle had helped him tame his temper. In the early days of the band, he’d been the first to get in someone’s face. The first to throw a punch. And usually the first to go down in a pile of flailing limbs.

  Now his face was flushed and the old streak was back. He thought about getting up and decking this guy. But fuck, Bolvrk was an accused murderer.

  Nils leaned forward until he was in Michael’s face. “It’s not going to end well. I promise you. It never does. I’ve been there, Michael. I know how bad it gets.”

  “Go the fuck back to your shitty country and leave me alone,” Michael said.

  His face flushed and his heart hammered against his chest. Visions of blood, occult symbols, shapes drawn in feces, pentagrams, and orgies flashed through his mind. He thought of the dream from last night, of killing Giselle and being forced to consume her flesh.

  “It’s like a fever, isn’t it? The way it swirls around you every thirty-one days. The things you do to appease him and keep the deal going. When you fail, well, look at me,” Nils said. He backed away shrugged out of his jacket. He stuck his long white arms out and rotated them.

  Michael gasped at the damage. There were pentagrams and runes carved into his flesh. Words stood out in scar tissue, but they were in a language Michael could not fathom.

  “That dude is fucking crazy,” one of the guys in line said.

  “That’s metal as fuck,” someone else whispered in awe.

  “Get his ass out of here,” another one said.

  Bruno got between Michael and Nils. One of his clerks rushed over to help. As they pushed the Norwegian away, Nils managed to toss Michael a scrap of paper.

  It landed on the table and Michael studied it. Some of the people in line helped escort Nils away. Nils put his hands up. “I’m going. I’m going. Just a misunderstanding.”

  Michael took the paper and studied it. There was a phone number and something else scratched below it. A symbol that he knew all too well. He folded the little strip up and put it in his pocket.

  “Hey, Bruno. Sorry, but I need to wrap it up here,” Michael said.

  He had some thinking to do and, he suspected, a phone call to make, but it wasn’t going to be to Nils, aka Lord Bolvrkr. A man who had served fifteen years in prison for butchering his best friend.

  He would need to get Wex back on the phone and talk this through.

  Wex had been rambling about a solo letter. Now this asshole Norwegian had shown up spouting off at the lip about things he shouldn’t know about.

  Maybe it could wait until the band met. That was it. Just a few more days and he would be able to bring this up with the other three.

  It would be several days before he learned to regret his decision not to call Wex about Lord Bolvrkr.

  13

  Cum on Feel the Noize - 84

  Interlude Fall 1984

  Michael’s apartment had two bedrooms and it was in a shitty part of
LA. At least it was in LA.

  There was a Latino family on one side and a Czech family on the other. He got lucky and landed a bottom floor dwelling that was large enough to fit the band. Others tended to crash there after a night of partying, and that suited Michael just fine. Over the last year, he’d slept on more than one friend’s couch. He’d also woken up in cars, and one time, behind an all-night laundromat.

  The apartment had a fold out couch they’d found on the side of the street four blocks up, that had to be moved back by hand, and a card table with three fold out chairs. A couple of Damaged posters hung on the wall. They were new, freshly pressed by their record company, Rat Tail Records. A pyramid of empty PBR can’s occupied the northwest corner.

  The bathroom was backed up again because Rich Freist, lead singer of Sacramental Sacrifice, had filled it to the rim the night before with vomit. Rich wasn’t a big guy, but somehow he’d managed to evacuate a gallon of puke.

  Michael had already called the landlord. He’d told them to invest in a plunger because their number of free house calls was up for the month.

  Wex stood in the kitchen, warming up some SPAM and Velveta cheese. Breakfast of heavy metal champions everywhere.

  “Rich, wake the fuck up and unclog the toilet. Jesus, dude.” Michael kicked the couch as he walked by.

  Rich was passed out and snoring like a train. When Rich didn’t move, Michael leaned over and pinched his nose closed. Rich stopped snoring.

  Michael dashed away and dug around in the pantry until he found some Doritos that miraculously hadn’t been completely consumed, using it as cover for his antics.

  “The fuck!” Rich sat up and shook his head.

  Rich had a lot of bleached blonde hair and it all stuck up in different directions. He tended to wear a shit load of black eye liner. Most of yesterdays had smudged and he looked like a scared raccoon.

  “I said you gotta clean up the toilet, dude.”

  “Why do I gotta do it? This is your place.”

  “Because you fucking puked up a gallon of barf last night and no one can use the toilet.”

  “I don’t remember puking,” Rich protested.

  “Look at this, my man,” Wex said. He proffered a paper plate covered in fried spam, melted cheese, jalapeño slices, and a huge pile of ketchup. Wex stuck his tongue into the mess and flapped it around splatting hot cheese and ketchup all over the place.

  Rich shot off the couch and headed straight for the bathroom.

  Michael snagged a piece of spam and tossed it in his mouth. “We live like kings now.”

  Wex chuckled and ate a piece next to his friend.

  “Any motherfuckers home?” Seth roared as he pushed the front door open.

  “Just got back from your mother’s place,” Wex called back.

  “Oh zing, buddy. You go me with that one. Hear that Sunny? He was at my mom’s place,” Seth said. “Guess he hasn’t heard she’s got the clap.”

  “He probably gave it to her,” Sunny said.

  Seth and Sunny strolled through the front door and stopped in their tracks.

  Seth was dressed in jeans with holes the size of baseballs. Some had been patched but most just hung by strings. He wore a Damaged T-shirt, something they’d had created at a local shop for an outrageous price.

  Sunny wore a pair of shorts, combat boots, a black tank top, and a jean jacket that was covered in Black Flag and Misfits patches.

  “Yeah. Want some of this?” Michael asked.

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” Seth practically dove on the bong after tossing a stack of stuff on the counter.

  It was sitting in the middle of what passed for a coffee table, two blue milk crates with a six foot long piece of plywood. There was a stack of playing cards, two ashtrays, a half ounce of weed, and the most amazing bong Michael had ever seen in his life. Two huge Frankenstein hands supported a tube that was constructed of a mummy, werewolf, vampire, heads, with a huge cyclops eye on top. The mouthpiece protruded from the rear of the eyeball, and a thin line of smoke rolled out. When Michael initially spotted the bong in a head shop on Sunset, he had thought the mummy’s head was Eddie from Iron Maiden.

  “Dude, that thing is grody,” Sunny said.

  Seth and Sunny loaded a bud the size of a thumb into the pipe and sparked it up. Michael was already so high he was thinking in slow motion. No, time had slowed, not his mind. Time had literally slowed down, and he was watching it pass him by, and it was not a bad way to spend the day.

  A portable cassette tape player thumped out a band called Overkill that Wex had picked up in a trade.

  “Fucking Bobby Blitz sounds like he drinks broken glass,” Wex said.

  “Listen to that bass line. It’s right up front in the mix,” Seth said. “Those fuckers know how to treat their low end.”

  “Seth, what did the bass player get on his math test?” Wex asked.

  “An A, man. One time I got an A in wood shop.”

  “Drool,” Sunny punched Seth’s arm. “The bass player got drool on his math test.

  Sunny rolled backwards and laughed, kicking her feet against the floor.

  “Oh that’s real fucking original,” Seth said and hit the bong again.

  “Burn.” Michael laughed.

  “How much money we got?” Seth asked.

  “We ain’t got shit but there’s some on the way. That’s what Rat Tail promised. Supposed to get a check in the mail,” Wex said.

  “Oh shit. That reminds me, I grabbed our shit on the way up,” Seth said. “We got a weird one addressed to Damaged. Maybe it’s money?”

  Seth popped up and grabbed a pile of stuff off the counter and deposited it on the table. Michael leaned forward and sorted things into two piles. Bullshit, in which bills went, and then fan mail. They had started receiving a few envelopes a month, then a few a week. Lately it had been letters every day. The best part was that fans sent weird shit. Chicks sent Polaroids, and dudes sent demo tapes. Sometimes dudes sent Polaroids, too. Those went up on the wall of shame, a taped off section where they tossed darts.

  “What the hell is this?” Michael picked up a brown envelope that looked like it had been lost in the mail for fifty years.

  He toyed with the flap while his bandmates tossed the bong back and forth. Wex went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple beers for everyone.

  “That’s the one.” Seth pointed at the envelope. “Fucking weird, right?”

  Michael slipped his finger under the flap and cracked the seal. Mildew, rust, old leather, putridness. The smells coalesced from the envelope and made him sit back and shake his head. “Something died in there.”

  Michael took a hit off the bong to clear the smell of death with the sweet smell of pot. He pulled a piece of parchment out of the envelope.

  The material wasn’t like anything he had ever seen. It did seem old and it was thick as a paperback book cover. There were runes in a circular pattern around a six-inch pentagram with a goat’s head in the center.

  He read the front and handed the letter to Wex.

  “I’m high, right?” Wex asked. “Is this for real?”

  Wex handed it to Sunny, who read it and handed it to Seth like she didn’t want to touch the thing.

  “What did you guys think would happen when we signed?” Seth said.

  “This is hella’ weird, man.” Sunny said.

  Michael noticed the Overkill bootleg had played out. He ejected the tape and flipped it over.

  “So what do we do?” Seth asked.

  Michael hit the PLAY button and waited for Bobby Blitz’s vocals to kick their asses again. But what came out of the tape player was anything but the best thrash metal band on the east coast. The sound, like a child crying, faded into something like a pig squealing. The tape click, click, clicked, and then a deep voice came over the over worked speaker.

  “Do not disappoint me.”

  Michael hit STOP and sat back.

  “This is some truly Satanic shit,”
Seth echoed what everyone must have already been thinking.

  LA Ink n’ Tattoo was an old shop on the strip that Michael had passed by many times. The seedy entryway was covered in band posters and sketches of the artist work. They strolled in a little after 8:00 PM, after digging up enough money to pay for the work.

  Michael had a stash of cash but it was Seth who proved to be the squirrel because he had managed to put a few hundred bucks away after Lou, the man who had handed them the contract six months ago, had dropped stacks of cash in front of them. They had blown through most of it in weeks, mainly getting setup in their apartment as well as upgrading their equipment, buying cases of booze, and bags of weed.

  Michael had purchased a full Marshall stack but he was eyeing an Orange amp when their first record contract money came in.

  Together, they had about three hundred dollars.

  “Woah. Look what the cat dragged in. You guys in a band?” a man asked.

  He was perched over an old black chair that looked like it would be at home in a dentist’s office. A girl had her jeans hiked down to her hips, and her panties had been pushed down to reveal enough skin for the work. The guy was inking a rose. He worked the needle back and forth, then wiped her skin with a piece of gauze, leaving streaks of blood each time.

  “Yeah, man,” Michael said.

  Seth and Sunny took a seat while Wex perused sketches on the wall.

  A pair of high powered speakers played some lame glam metal shit that made Michael want to find the singer and punch him in the throat.

  The girl opened her eyes and looked Michael up and down. He wasn’t shy about looking at her new work. “That hurt?”

  “Only in a good way,” she said, and then closed her eyes again.

  “Be with you in a second.” The tattooist said as he applied darker lines to the thorns that kissed her upper thigh.

  Seth stepped out for a smoke. Sunny lounged on a chair with her legs splayed open. She took a folded magazine out of her jacket pocket and flipped through the pages. Michael suspected most girls her age would read something like Seventeen, but she was thumbing through the September issue of Hit Parader.