Get Bent (Hard Rock Roots)

by C. M. Stunich

  “I'm in until Naomi comes back,” I say, and then before the asshole can speak up, I add the next bit. “However long that takes, you catch my drift?” Ronnie whistles under his breath. Being a front man for two bands? Maybe not such a good idea, but I'm making this pledge on a bet, on the idea that Naomi Knox will come back, that she's out there somewhere, alive.

  I'm making this pledge out of love, stupid or not, because without that, there ain't nothing in this world worth living for.

  How cruel is it that after I've accepted my defeat, surrendered to the dark and allowed myself to slip to the other side, that I wake up? That I come to with a gasp that never escapes my lips, that gets caught up in something constrictive, that chokes me as I flail and struggle, desperate to determine the purgatorial hell I've been caught up in?

  It's wicked cruel. Wicked cruel and real ugly.

  I kick and fight and snarl, but it doesn't do me any good because I'm caught. In what, I don't know. It could be rope, could be chain, could be threads of demonic power, or shit, if I'm lucky maybe it's angel hair? Maybe I'm waiting at the gates of heaven, wrapped up and ready for judgment? If so, then I know I'm screwed. So I struggle some more, and I scream, and I scream, and I scream. And in the background of my mind, I hear a response, a chant coming from all around me, echoing in response to my cries.

  And the chanters are repeating one thing and one thing only, two little words that mean nothing and everything all at once.

  Turner Campbell.

  The next morning, I wake up to rain that plasters the windows with moisture and leaves room for really inappropriate sketches from my bandmate's fingers. The windows in the back all have giant dicks drawn on them. I swipe them away with my hand and smoke a cig, hoping that Milo's still feeling sorry enough for me that he won't bitch. It's my bus anyway.

  I sigh and wonder where it is we're going now, what city's next. I stopped caring after Naomi went missing, but I can't help but feeling like I'm getting farther away from her, like maybe she's still in that blood drenched bus back in Denver. I tap my ashes into a glass tray and put the cig between my lips.

  If the woman in the hospital is Naomi's manager, America, and she's not the girl in the morgue, then who the fuck is that? That's the question that's been bothering me all night. I figure the police should have DNA or some shit, and I wonder what's taking so long. Or maybe if they know and they're just not telling me. It'd make sense. I mean, who the fuck am I really? A rock star? A drug addict? They don't fucking care. In all reality, she and I have nothing to do with each other. The police don't know I'm in love. And even if they did, love doesn't mean shit in the real world. It opens you up inside, fucks your soul crazy hardcore, but outside, it's just a weakness to be exploited.

  And right now, I'm being shit all over.

  I crush the cigarette into the ashtray and spin around, moving between the bunks, past Jesse's snoring ass and into the front where Trey is sitting shirtless, nursing a rank ass hangover and glaring daggers at me. He's mad, I get it. I'm not acting like myself, but you'd think he could cut me some slack considering the circumstances. I pause and look over at Milo who's typing away furiously on his laptop. I know last night created some buzz; I heard my name being chanted in the parking lot. I bet he's got his hands full. At least I know I'm paying him to do something other than bitch. On a whim, I reach over to the counter and grab one of the stupid Mrs. Turner Campbell bracelets, sliding it on my wrist. I snap a photo with my phone and post every-fucking-where.

  Only woman that could ever hold this title is missing. Help me find Naomi Knox and keep the music alive.

  “Turner,” Milo warns when he sees what I'm doing. When I glance over at him, he looks tired, and I feel guilty for maybe the first time in my life. The man's infuriating, but he's a good manager. I guess.

  “It wasn't a picture of my dick this time, I swear,” I tell him, and he almost smiles. The little crinkle between his brows takes over quickly enough and wipes that bit of humor away. I move over to the fridge and grab a beer.

  “Turner, if you're going to be singing for Amatory Riot, there are some things we need to talk about, legal things.” I take a swig from my bottle and set it down on the counter, folding my fingers around the edge of the countertop. Up front, I catch snippets of the song our driver is listening to. It's something old, something that I recognize vaguely that I've heard before. Hiding from you in the most obvious way, giggling behind my hand I pray, that'll you'll see me. Oh baby, just see me. See me.

  “I don't want to talk about legal things, Milo,” I tell him, letting my chin drop to my chest. “Work it out for me, will you?” And then I stand up and start to move towards the back. Ronnie's finally done in the bathroom, leaving it open for me.

  I head straight in there with a single purpose in mind: getting high. Last night, I had a dream that Naomi was sprawled out on a bed in front of me, eyes rimmed with liner, face sweaty and lips parted. In it, I crawled on top of her, kissed her and found my way down her throat, between her breasts. I tasted her, and then I fucked her hard, and we ended up coming together and lying twisted, arms and legs tangled. When I woke up, I wanted to blow my fucking brains out. I give Ronnie a look as I move past, finally feeling for the first time that I understand what he went through all those years ago. If it's this bad with an unknown hanging around my damn throat, how would it be to actually know that the one you're so desperate to see is dead?

  I can't even fucking imagine.

  I don't want to.

  So I'm going to get high, so what?

  But then I pause with my feet on the tiled floor and my mind starts to spin. With only a few sips of beer in my system, this is probably the most sober I've been in a long time. Wheels start to turn, clues click into place. The blonde in the hospital is the manger. By my faithful pledge, Naomi Knox is not in the morgue. There's another woman then, dead, cut up so that she looks like Naomi, or rather doesn't look like much of anything. And nobody's reported her missing, so nobody's made the jump yet.

  I slam the bathroom door and head back to the front, ignoring Treyjan's glare and Milo's frantic typing. The old song winds its way through the air and crawls into my skull, getting me thinking.

  See me, baby. Oh, oh. See me, baby, so you don't miss me. If you miss me, then I'll have never been there.

  The driver. The roadies. The groupies. There are a whole host of people that follow us around, who come and go so often that they're not ever really missed. If one of them were to end up toe tagged, who would know? That's right. Fucking nobody.

  “Milo,” I begin, setting my beer down in the sink. I might not get it then, but I don't have as big of an urge to pick it back up. Whether this is a trend that'll continue, who the shit knows? I'm not saying I want to go straight-edge or anything, but if I have to stop using to think straight, and thinking straight leads me to Naomi, I'll become a damn priest. “Can you get me a list of all the people approved for travel? Anybody that has a backstage pass that might've had access to the buses during a show?” He stops typing for a moment and looks up, obviously baffled. His blonde hair is stuck to his eyebrows with sweat and his lips are pale. Again, I get that little niggle of guilt, that whispering voice on my shoulder that says maybe I'm too hard on the guy. I try to smile, but it won't come out, not without Naomi. Still, my face ends up neutral which is better than a straight-up frown, right? “I need the records from the day before Naomi went missing up until now. Can you do that for me?” Milo opens his mouth to respond when I interrupt him with a word I'm pretty sure he's never heard pass between my lips. “Please?”

  He pauses, fingers resting on the keys of his computer, and then sighs.

  “Alright, Turner,” he says, and I try not to get too excited. This could mean nothing. But then, it could be fucking everything. “Let me finish what I'm working on and I'll get that together.” Milo looks down at his screen and then back up at me. “Is this important?” he asks, like maybe he already knows the answer to that q
uestion.

  “The most important fucking thing I've ever asked from you.”

  A couple hours later and I'm holding a stack of printed pages in my hand. On page ten, I find exactly what I'm looking for.

  I'm pretty sure I'm not fucking dead.

  If I were, I wouldn't have to piss so bad, right? My shoulders wouldn't be aching, and my stomach wouldn't be growling. If I were dead, I wouldn't have an IV in my arm, and I wouldn't be bouncing around in this darkness.

  I think I'm in a car. Or a van maybe. A truck? Wherever it is that I am, I'm on the open road, that's for sure. And I'm tied up. It's nothing magical, no unicorn hair or fairy dust, just rope and tape. I think I've been kidnapped, but who the hell knows? I try to pull up memories, try to piece together what happened to me, but all I can see when I close my eyes is Turner Campbell onstage with me, grinding against me, mixing his voice with mine and screwing the crowd with his words. After that, everything's a big, fucking blank.

  But I'm not dead.

  I'm pretty damn sure about that.

  I don't tell anybody about my find. Not yet. I want to wait and see what happens tonight at the show, if that bald girl will show up again. I make the decision in advance that if I see her, I'm going after her, everything else be damned. I might have figured something out, or at least think I figured something out, but I won't really know anything until I talk to that girl. Knowing that the woman in the morgue is not Naomi doesn't tell me where Naomi is. For that, I've got to dig deeper. I feel like freaking Sherlock Holmes or some shit, like I should be walking around with a damn magnifying glass. Everywhere I look, everything I see is calling out to me, promising me that there's a puzzle here to be solved if I just get closer to the core of it all.

  Everything changes when we get to San Antonio.

  We pull into the lot behind the venue and already, there are news crews everywhere, blocking the roads, clogging the sidewalks. It's raining, but fans have shown up in the hundreds and the show's already sold out. I always wanted to be popular, but shit. I didn't want to get there like this. These people aren't just here for the music or the sex or the drugs. They're here for tragedy, showing up in flocks to absorb the mystery and the heartache. Some of them wave signs that say things about Naomi, none of it helpful or useful. My post probably made things worse instead of better.

  “It's like a zombie apocalypse out there,” Trey says, coming up to me with his brown hair slicked up, spiked out with gel. He's got on a Burning the Bleeding tee, reminding me that there are other bands on this tour besides Indecency and Amatory Riot. Kind of easy to forget that sometimes.

  Hands slap the windows as we slide through the crowd, inching our way into the gated area our roadies have set up in advance around the back lot behind the old building. This place is sick, and I've been looking forward to playing here for ages. Now, though, doesn't seem so damn important. My mind's all wrapped up in other things.

  “Worse, maybe,” I say as I get out a cig and light up. Trey follows suit and we stand there in silence, puffing out gray smoke and casting glances over our shoulders to make sure that Milo isn't about to pop in and yell at us. “Zombies just bite, right? I'd rather get eaten alive or turned then go out there with these crazy bitches. Kind of have a feeling I'd get raped.”

  “Probably,” Trey replies. More silence. Outside the windows, my name is chanted like a curse. I've just become more than a rock star. I'm a damn superstar now. Not that it really matters, but I checked some of my shit on my phone earlier. I have ten times as many likes on Facebook, a dozen times as many Twitter followers, and my name is actually trending on Google. How about that? If I wasn't heartbroken and bloody inside, I'd probably be in the middle of a damn orgy by now. Damn you, Naomi Knox, with your fuck all attitude and your pretty orange eyes. Who the fuck are you to disrupt everything, to tear up my soul and leave me wanting and searching without my ever knowing I wasn't whole? I step back into the bathroom and grab some eyeliner, scribbling the words out on the mirror before I forget them. Might make for a good song if I ever get the chance to write a new one. The way things are going, I'm feeling hopeful.

  Marta Yadley.

  Signed up to join the tour and passed a background check, started with us in Seattle our first day and didn't show up for work the day after Naomi went missing. She wasn't the only one. No, lots of crew members bolted that day. I don't blame the fuckers. I mean, who wants to ride around on a tour if you might get your head bashed in? Drugs and easy fucks aren't worth dying for. But Miss Yadley is the only white female that disappeared that day. Nobody else fits the bill.

  I drop the eyeliner in the sink and grin at myself in the mirror. I look much better today, less like a corpse and more like a man with a fucking mission.

  I will find Naomi Knox. A real man never lets his lady slip by the wayside. If she's out there, I'm going to fucking get her back.

  “Hey, man,” Trey says as I put out my cigarette. “I want to apologize for last night. Don't know when I turned into such an asshole.” Silence falls between us again, punctuated only by the crowd outside the windows. Trey and I have never been any good at this heart to heart shit.

  “You've always been one,” I say and he gives me a lopsided grin. “Not your fault. You can't help acting out when you're named after a fucking condom.”

  “Screw you, Turner,” he says, but I know then that there's not bad blood between us. He'll give me some space as I long as I don't drive myself into the ground. If I try to, then he'll be there kicking my ass until I stop. That's what friends fucking do.

  Once the buses are parked and the equipment is being dragged in, covered in plastic and hauled through the sudden downpour at record speed, I head out with an umbrella over my head and a pair of thick, leather boots on my feet. I'm looking for Dax and end up running into him in a vulnerable position, bent over on Terre Haute's empty bus sobbing his fucking eyes out.

  When I open the doors and climb up the steps, he raises his face to look at me and wipes the back of his hand across his eyes, not apologizing for the tears or making up justifications. I don't ask him to either. I get it, whether he knows that or not.

  “They found her blood,” he says before I can speak. I shake some water off my umbrella and close it up, pulling it inside behind me before I slam the door.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask as I stand there staring at Dax's damp hair and tired eyes. He's not wearing any makeup, and he's got on the same damn gloves from the night before. I don't even think he's bothered to change his clothes.

  “But not her,” he continues, sniffling hard and taking a deep breath. “They found Naomi's blood on the bus, but it doesn't match the body. The girl in the morgue, it isn't her.”

  “Marta Yadley,” I say and he startles, glancing up at me with a wary expression. He's got stubble all over his jaw, and the skin on his cheeks looks sallow. The Little Drummer Boy is not faring well in all this shit. Guess I'm made of tougher stuff. I try to thank my momma in the back of my mind, praise her for beating the shit out of me all those years. It was enough to prepare me for this. But then, fuck the bitch. I'm not thanking her metaphorically or otherwise.

  “How do you know that?” I resist the urge to go for the joint in my pocket and glance around. There are bags everywhere, guitar cases, empty beer bottles. Looks like shacking up together hasn't been kind to either band.

  “Good gumshoe work,” I say which is sort of a smart ass thing to do. Looking at Dax's bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, I decide to add, “I went through all the missing roadies and found a girl that matched Naomi's description.” I shrug, but inside, I'm shaking, too.

  It isn't her. It isn't her. It isn't her.

  The mantra plays through my head on repeat and brings the first real smile to my face that I've had in days.

  “But they don't know where she is?” I figure that Dax wouldn't be bawling his eyes out if they did, but it never hurts to ask.

  “The police don't know sh
it,” he tells me which isn't surprising. I don't expect them to help out much. Dax sighs deeply and lowers his chin to his chest. “Or if they do, they haven't told us. That's all I know. They found her blood. A lot of it they said. There's a pretty good chance she's dead based on the amount.” I don't respond to that. What the fuck am I supposed to say? Dax is lost in his own world, mourning the loss of his love. I'm determined to find mine.

  “That's why I came here to talk to you,” I tell him, looking up at the ceiling. This bus isn't nearly as nice as ours. The appliances are black, not silver, and the floor is covered in linoleum, not hardwood. Maybe if Rook Geary spent a little more time on his music and a little less fucking groupies, he'd have a better rig. “But I guess the point's moot now.”

  “Don't dig into this, Turner,” Dax tells me, voice so low it's almost a whisper, lost in the patter of rain on the metal roof. “Let it go. Let the experts handle it.” I smile again, not a pretty one, but a bitter one. If Dax had lived the life I had, he'd know that the police don't always get it right.

  “See you onstage,” I say, and then I'm descending the steps and sprinting through the rain. When I hit the back door to the venue, the bouncer nearly tears my fucking head off and then apologizes profusely when he sees my face. That's when I know that something is changing inside of me, mutating, shifting, becoming something different. I would've fired that man before, beat the ever living crap out of him. Now though, I'm having a hard time justifying why. I've got a purpose now, and it feels damn good. Everything I do between now and the moment my lips meet Naomi's again, is focused wholly on that task. Nothing else matters.

  Inside, I search around until I find the girl with the dual colored hair. I have no friggin' clue what her name is, but the thing I'm looking for, if it's here, she'll have it. She's the only chick I ever saw Naomi hang around with.