Damaged

by Timothy W. Long

  The artist finished up with the girl. As she stood and gingerly zipped her pants up, the song on the radio changed. She grinned and pointed up at the speakers.

  “Fucking love this tune,” she said.

  Michael grinned from ear to ear and Wex actually came out of his seat. He whooped and banged his head. Sunny tossed her magazine at Wex and flailed her head around.

  They were playing Damaged.

  “This is pretty detailed,” the tattoo artist said. His name was Chet and he wore his black hair slicked back. His arms were covered in intricate tats, one of which was a one-armed monkey with a syringe sticking out of his ass.

  “How much for all four of us?” Michael said.

  “I’d normally do it for $425. But was that really you guys on the radio?”

  “Fucking-A right it was,” Wex said. ““Tools of the Devil.””

  “Would you guys consider some kind of endorsement deal? Nothing shady. Just mention my shop a few times. I’ll call it $250.”

  “You got a deal, brother,” Michael said.

  He went under the needle first. The instructions were specific. The emblem would have to be inked onto their underside of their left arms. The outside circle was black but the runic lettering had to be in red. The demonic goat head was to be done in black as well, but with yellow eyes.

  The thing that struck Michael first was how much the needle burned. He gritted his teeth but refused to show fear or pain while the rest of the band watched.

  Chet chatted up a storm and had a surprisingly deep knowledge of the metal scene, especially the new wave of British heavy metal. He was a big fan of Diamondhead as well as Iron Maiden. He took a break and put Saxon’s Power and Glory Mind on then got back to work.

  After a couple of hours, they all bore their first marks. It would not be their last.

  14

  Fabulous Disaster

  Maximillian

  The phone hadn’t stopped ringing all day.

  Maximillian August, or Max to those who didn’t owe him money, had given up on answering it hours ago, but still it rang on in his secretary’s office, the sound barely muted by the closed Cherrywood doors between them. He’d given Charlize strict orders not to bother him. As much as he loved being the manager of Damaged, days like today rattled his nuts. Most days were like today.

  The band was a goldmine. He didn’t have to do shit to dig up opportunities to earn for them. The damn things were handed to him on silver platter. It got to the point sometimes, like today, where Max had to disappear into his hole for a while and let his brain settle.

  T-shirt companies, cologne manufacturers, movie soundtrack invites, guest appearance requests from up and coming bands to established legends—Metallica was begging him to authorize some Damaged covers for their next Garage Days release—and even condom companies wanted a piece of the band. Literally sometimes. It was exhausting.

  Despite the band not having put out a record in years, the contracts littered his desk as if they were the second coming of the Beatles.

  “Fucking death metal,” he muttered, highlighting a clause that prohibited the band from using their Satanic shtick at one of the venues in the upcoming tour. Max sighed. The place would back down or they would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on ticket sales, not to mention all the ancillary income from concessions and merchandise. Much as Max hated the band’s image, he’d bought each of his three ex-wives nice houses and still had enough cash for a Tony Montana ski vacation every day of his life. He could complain, of course, but he sure as fuck wouldn’t do it all that loudly.

  Just as he set his highlighter to work again, he heard Charlize’s voice rise above the background of sweet jazz spilling from his stereo, soft counterpoint to the brutality that infested the contracts. He got to his feet to check on her—she rarely raised her voice above a whisper—but her line rang before he even managed to push his chair back. He snatched up the phone.

  “Mr. August, there’s a man here who insists on seeing you. He says—” Max heard a rumble of a voice, cutting Charlize off, the receiver scraping as she slid the mouthpiece away. “Sir! You can’t go in there, sir. Sir!” Charlize growled into the phone as the door to Max’s office was flung open. “I’m sorry, Max. He won’t—”

  “I’ll handle this, Charlize. Have security on standby, please. Just in case,” he told her, hanging up the phone as a tall, lithe man sauntered into the office. Max’s gaze was drawn to the man’s eyes. Like the ghost of roadkill raccoon, the man’s eyes were deep pits of black, making the crystalline blue of his irises stand out, beacons in the darkness. At first Max thought it was makeup, but the closer he looked, the more apparent it became that they were tattoos permanently darkening the sockets.

  “Security won’t be necessary, Mr. August. I intend no harm,” the man said, wiping a strand of blond hair from his face, futilely trying to get it to conform to the long ponytail the rest of his hair was tied into. “In fact, I have a business opportunity for you.” His accent gave him away to be European.

  Max laughed and dropped into his seat. “You and the other thousand people who stopped by this morning and waited patiently to be called. Who do you think I’m more interested in listening to?”

  The man joined in with a deep, rumbling laughter. “That would still be me,” he said. “None of those others have anything anywhere near as important to discuss as I do.”

  Max shook his head. He’d heard that line more times than he could be bothered to remember. “Look, whoever you are, it’s too damn early for Halloween and I don’t have time for—”

  The man lifted the manila folder he held, waggling it in a ring-covered hand—skulls and demons glaring from his fingers—and pulled a photo from it, tossing it on the desk.

  “My name is Nils Christoph and, trust me, you’re going to want to pay attention to what I have to tell you.”

  Without meaning to, Max stared down at the photo, the image standing out in red and black, enticing his eyes. He gasped as the Rorschach swirl of shapes coalesced into a coherent image. His stomach tightened into a cold knot and he felt bile scaling the back of his throat.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “Look a little closer and you’ll see.”

  As much as he didn’t want to, Max did just that, the morbid assault on his senses drawing him in. The high res image of a pile of huge snakes, all hacked apart and covered in gore, spread across the floor, were the first pieces of the picture to manifest. Beneath the ruin of serpents, he spied the dark lines of a pentagram, blood smeared across it and pooling beneath the carcasses. Given all the publicity material Damaged had worked up over the years, the image was fairly tame; just a bunch of butchered snakes. But it was what surrounded the gutted corpses that stole Max’s breath.

  He leaned in closer, not daring to touch the photo, and his eyes narrowed. Stationed around the pentagram was the band themselves, each member of Damaged standing out in a clarity Max only wished he could mute. It only took him a moment to realize the photo was old; real old, the early days of the foursome.

  Wex stood holding the severed head of one of the larger snakes, dripping knife in hand and holding a golden chalice that looked full of the creature’s blood. His lips and chin were smeared in crimson, the coating glowing in the glimmer of the candlelight that lit the scene. The serpent’s tongue lolled from its dead mouth, Gene Simmons on permanent vacation.

  Sunny stared at the singer, her nearly naked arms the first giveaway as to when the pictures were taken, her tattoos missing. The disgust was obvious on her face, her famed smile missing, eyes narrowed into slits. Michael looked on with a similar expression, hands buried deep in his jean pockets. Then there was Seth, his hand reaching for the chalice, a shimmer of glee in his eyes, captured perfectly and made all the more haunting for the timing of it.

  Max leaned back in his seat and drew in a slow, deep breath that did nothing to ease the tremble in his hands. “This looks like a promo shot,” he said,
though he couldn’t for the life of him remember having ever seen it before. Still, there was no way he could picture it being anything else.

  Nils chuckled. “I suspected you would say that.” He pulled another photo out and slid it to Max across the desk.

  The shock of red stood out even more, the image a close up of Sunny just pulling the cup from her lips, blood making them shine. She looked ready to vomit and, as much as Max wanted to dismiss the image, there was no way Sunny would have slipped out of character or had such a horrid look on her face if the image were intended to be promotional. Out of all of them, she was the pro at making everything they did seem normal, natural. At least back then. This was anything but normal or natural.

  “I don’t know where you—”

  “The where isn’t so much as important as the why,” Nils countered. He plopped down into one of the leather seats set out before Max’s desk. “And I assure you, the photos are real and not some promotional stunt by the band, which I’m sure you know since you oversee all of that.” Nils slid another to Max, this one of a smiling Seth downing a mouthful of the chalice’s contents. Max felt his stomach churn, though he wasn’t sure if it was because of what lay splayed across the photos or it was because the man was building a clear cut case for blackmail.

  “What…what do you want? Why are you showing me all this?”

  Nils grinned, showing off his pointed eyeteeth, obviously sharpened for effect. “Relax, Mr. August. I’m not here for the reasons you’re thinking. Nothing so petty, I assure you. Had I simply wanted money, you would have seen these photos in the Enquirer. They would pay me without the hassle that comes with twisting your arm.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Like I told you earlier, I’ve an offer for you. One I guarantee you will not want to miss out on.”

  Max swallowed his questions and met Nils’s gaze, saying nothing, waiting for the man to show his hand. It didn’t take long.

  “Damaged aren’t who you think they are, Mr. August,” Nils set the folder on the corner of the desk, the rest of the images inside hidden, to Max’s relief, “and that revelation is the reason behind my offer to you. There something you need to know about Damaged.”

  Max sat silent for several moments, his gaze flitting between the man and the folder. Tension hung thick in the air until he reached out and grabbed the folder, opening it to display what lay inside. He covered his mouth and fought the urge to run away screaming, the other photos he’d seen a pale introduction to what remained inside the innocuous folder.

  “Are you ready to listen now?”

  Max nodded, unable to find his voice.

  15

  Serpent Tongue

  Seth

  Morning arrived with a whimper and a half-dozen complaints.

  “You need to get up,” Seth told her, nudging her shoulder. He’d let her sleep in his bed as a not-so-subtle reminder of the months they’d spent there when they’d dated. Before Sunny cut it off for some bullshit. ‘It’s not you, it’s me. You’re a good guy. Blah fucking blah.’ Yeah, screw all that. “Get up, bitch. We’ve got places to be.”

  “Fuck your places in the ass,” she muttered, rolling over and not even bothering to cover up her tits. “I’m staying right here.”

  Seth growled and looked away. “Need I remind you, this is the bed I spend I my days jacking off on while dreaming of you? There’s more lube and jizz on the sheets than anything else.”

  Sunny groaned and rolled to her side, sitting on the edge of the bed, sneering. Of course she was completely nude. Seth didn’t bother to look away this time. She was doing it on purpose, teasing him, but he’d damn well make the most of it.

  “That explains the smell,” she said, rubbing her nose as she got up and traipsed toward the bathroom, stretching as she went. The colorful tattoos she’d acquired over the years did nothing to take away from her looks. They only accentuated them, the full sleeves of Japanese art softening the hard muscles of her arms and the back piece, with its lower design curved like half-moons set side to side, perfectly highlighted the shape of her ass. He sighed as she slammed the bathroom door shut, cutting off his view.

  He turned and snatched her pipe off the bed, sneering at the scorch mark it left behind. As he did, he caught a whiff of the sheets. She was right. They did stink, though not because he’d been whacking off on them. Shit, he hadn’t even been in the house for months. That’s why everything stunk. The air was stale and the place hadn’t had a good cleaning or even an open window since long before the last time he’d swung through. He’d have to correct that to keep up appearances.

  The flush of the toilet drew him from his thoughts and Sunny came out of the bathroom, still completely nude.

  “Damn it, woman, put some fucking clothes on.”

  She laughed and strutted across the room, leisurely headed for the wad of her clothing on the chair. “What’s the matter, Seth, getting blue balls?”

  “If they were any bluer I could put hats on them and call them Smurfs. Now get dressed. I’ve got some errands to run and we need to swing by your place on the way out to Wex’s.”

  She stopped halfway to the chair and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Do we have to go there? I can just pick up something and—”

  Seth swallowed his grin at her hesitance. “I told you last night, though you probably don’t remember that,” he held up her pipe and tossed it back on the dresser, “but my buddy went out there and he didn’t find anything.” He actually hadn’t told her anything, seeing how she’d smoked herself to sleep not twenty minutes after they’d arrived. Not that she’d remember even if he had.

  “What do you mean he didn’t find anything?”

  “Exactly what it means in English. He found nothing; zip, zilch, nada God damn thing. No bugs or any sign that there had been bugs there.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Seth chuckled. “No bullshit. My bro, Colt, swung by last night and I gave him your key. He owns a pest control business. Known the dude since kindergarten. He went out there and hunted high and low and didn’t find a single bug; not in the drains or pipes or anywhere.”

  Sunny plopped into the chair, her legs spread immodestly. With her eyes taking at the floor, Seth didn’t even pretend not to look. He stared, taking all of her in as she processed what he’d told her.

  “That can’t be…” her voice faded.

  “You change dealers lately?”

  Her chin snapped up and her eyes ignited. “I’m not making this shit up!”

  He was ready for her fury this time around. “Not what I’m saying, sweetheart. I’m asking if you’re buying your shit from someone new these days.”

  “No. Shit. Maybe. I don’t know,” she said, slumping into the seat. “I pay a guy to score my shit to keep me out of it. I really don’t know who he uses.”

  “That’s probably what it is. Dude bought some laced shit, well, above and beyond the usual shit, you know.”

  “You’re saying I imagined all those damn maggots filling up my fucking sink?” She shuddered and wrapped her arms about her chest. Seth hid his disappointment.

  “If this guy bought bad shit, then yeah, maybe you did.” He raised a hand to ward off her half-hearted argument. “My exterminator buddy didn’t see anything, Sunny. Nothing. He said there’s no way the number of bugs you described just crawled back down the drain, leaving no trace behind. How else do you explain that?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Shit’s been stressful lately and you probably got a bad batch. You’re already mixing dust with weed and whatever else. Maybe they cut the shit with Drano. Let’s just go get your clothes and whatnot. We need to get on the road.” He snuck one last glance at her, fighting off the urge to go over and hug her, to feel her wrapped up inside his arms once more, and stormed from the room. “I’ll be in the car when you’re ready.

  Seth wheeled his Mercury into the driveway and killed the engine. Both of them sat there in silence, only the
sound of the cooling motor ticking in their ears. After a moment, Seth turned in his seat. Sunny stared through the windshield without blinking.

  “Sooner we get this done with, the sooner we’re out of here.”

  Sunny sighed. “You suck at this comforting thing, you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I learned from the best, sweetheart. Now come on.” Seth hopped out of the car and waved her on. She crawled out, reluctance carved into the lines of her face. He grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him, not letting her weasel free. He finally let go once they were at the front door. “I’ll go in first and take a look. If I see any bugs, I’ll drop a match in the hallway and we’ll run the fuck to Hot Topic to buy you a new wardrobe and we can call the insurance company later. All right?”

  She nodded and Seth unlocked the door, using her keys. He handed them back to her and went inside. He’d held onto his car keys to make sure she couldn’t steal the car and leave his ass there. Seth wouldn’t put it past her.

  He heard her shut the door and grinned as he made his way to the nearest bathroom. The bowl gleamed in its whiteness, no trace of roaches anywhere. Then he went to the kitchen. The sink sat pristine, just as Colt had told him it would.

  “Come inside, Sunny. It’s all clear,” he yelled.

  The front dear squeaked open a crack. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, no bugs anywhere. Come on.”

  To her credit, she crept inside with argument. She inched down the hallway and to the kitchen doorway, though she refused to go any further than that.

  “See?” He waved his arms around, stepping aside so she could see the empty sink. “Nothing here.” He stuck a hand inside just to prove his point.”

  Seth watched as she sunk in on herself. “Fuck.”

  “Don’t stress this shit,” he told her. “We’ve all had our bad trips. Just go get your travel gear and clothes and let’s get out of there.”