by Marcus James
“I see your point. Who else?”
Angelina pushed through a small cluster of guys at the front of the line, saying ‘excuse me’ six times and ignoring their grunts and sexist comments as she got to the door man and informed him that she was on the list, and that Kathryn and Magdalene were with her.
“Some other band. I forgot to ask. I think Night Hunter is opening for them.” Angelina answered as they passed through the door and entered the humid, suffocating darkness.
It smelled of hot, stale piss and old vomit, and it wasn’t far fetch to assume that the place was only ever spot-cleaned at the end of the night.
They pushed through the usual throng of girls in next-to-nothing clothes, most of them probably strippers from the Tropicana or the Seventh Veil, who were the girlfriend-of-the-moment for the guys on stage, and also probably paid for most of the guys’ clothes, makeup, food, and shelter.
It was common knowledge by now, thanks to the many interviews on Headbangers Ball and in Rolling Stone, that nearly every guy in every band on the Strip rarely kept a steady job, or even looked for one, and most of them were taken in, clothed, fed, and even housed by strippers.
If the Strip was its own little world in those few blocks, and they had their own celebrities, then every stripper was a Marilyn Monroe.
After acquiring Jack and Cokes from the bar, they pushed their way to the stage, where five guys with long hair, spandex, eye liner, and boots danced and wailed operatically on stage. Behind the drummer was a white sheet with Night Hunter painted black in Olde English script, a monstrous werewolf was screen printed beneath it. The artist had obviously been more than a little influenced by the beasts in The Howling.
“They’re pretty good!” Kathryn said to her. Angelina smiled and Magdalene nodded in agreement. The band relied a little too heavily on the synthesizers, and there were some obvious echoes of David Lee Roth, but they still had enough individuality to not be called carbon-copies of Van Halen.
Twenty minutes later the band was done, and they made their way back to the bar, lighting cigarettes and ordering more drinks.
“I’m having a great time!” Magdalene shouted.
Kathryn smiled and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“I’m glad! And I’m so glad you made it!” Kathryn was feeling great, a little off-balance, but then that meant that the alcohol was doing its trick, and she felt relaxed for the first time since the events on the canyon from the night before.
This was what she needed. She was tired of worrying about everything, and tired of fearing for her life. All of that would be waiting for her tomorrow, for now all she wanted to do was enjoy this time with her cousin, feeling just like everyone else around them, everyone else who was their age and living life without a care in the world, even if it was to their potential detriment.
There was something out there now-three very real and very ruthless monsters-creatures from the pits of hellish nightmare that were stalking the dark, brutalizing and devouring the heart and the brain. And from that aside, there were the human monsters, the rapists and the serial killers who had a long history woven through the concrete and cement of Sunset Boulevard.
People were so fragile. At least Kathryn could protect herself against any human threat. But this, this was something else entirely. This was the thing of nightmares and horror films. This was monstrous and infernal. This was hell opening and releasing these demons from the pits to destroy.
There was purpose in what they ate-there was reason for the brain and the heart. It was offering and power. There was something from the brain and the heart that held importance and meaning to these beasts.
But the mutilating rape? Why? What did that serve?
Kathryn wanted to forget all of it for one night. For one night she just needed it all to disappear and to be as willfully blind to the shadows and the strangers on the street-or to the John who was picking up a hooker on Skid Row and could be a killer-that these girls were. She just needed to exist in the moment and believe nothing really bad could happen to her.
“We should try to meet up with Richie later!” Angelina shouted. It brought Kathryn back from the things that were running around her head.
“Of course! Though, I’m sure he’s not home.”
“I know where we could find him!” Angelina shouted back.
Kathryn looked around and saw that the next band had yet to get on stage. “Should we just go now, or should we see if the next band is any good?”
“Ooh! Good point!” Angelina took a drink from her glass. “I just wish I could remember who it was that was headlining.”
“I’m sure Richie will be around.” Kathryn assured her.
Magdalene nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I want to check out the next band.”
Five more minutes passed before the band got on stage. Five more minutes of conversations to fill the quiet, and then the sound came. It was a low dissonant chord, moving through the crowd and curling around their bodies.
It was the Devil’s Chord. The triton, it was not unlike the song Black Sabbath, with its haunting and electric darkness, the cerebral vibration, and the sense that the devil himself enjoyed this tone.
Then he started to sing and the whole bar went wild. The girls in the cages danced like they were getting fucked by god-and the guys gripped one another and banged their heads.
Her eyes followed from the crowd to the stage, as if it were a path made of hair dancing in the stage lights and panties flying through the air, and her heart seemed to stop in mid-beat. Kathryn took hold of Magdalene’s wrist, getting her to look up at the stage as well.
“It’s Nephilim!” Angelina shouted.
The three of them looked at each other, and then back to the stage.
Niiq was at the drums dressed in a torn white tee and black jeans, his usual Converse on his feet, his thick black hair glistening with the sweat that was beginning to form.
Kuri stroked his bass, as if he was going to use it to fuck everyone in the crowd, a black bandanna tied around his forehead, his long hair spilling out under it and over it, while his eyes were hidden by aviators. He wore tight black jeans, leather motorcycle boots with polished buckles, and no shirt under his leather jacket. His strong, beautiful chest and abs glistening like gold with the light sheen of sweat.
Their eyes connected immediately. Kuri looked up from his bass and his head turned directly towards the bar-dropping his glasses and those stained glass eyes of emerald green with speck of yellow and blue-eyes that made her think of the ocean- locked with hers and he smiled.
Kathryn’s knees buckled and she quickly noticed that Arish had seen her as well. And yes, while Arish was just as beautiful, and just as invigorating, the memory of his cock in her hands while she had pumped him inside of his jeans that first night at the Rainbow, it was Kuri who had been there-who had been locked eye to eye with her while she did it and while Arish had worked his fingers between her legs.
It was Kuri who refused to break away as he was cumming, and it was Kuri who had caught her in the dark when she fell down those steps at Scream. Kuri was the one who was in control-he was in charge. Arish had just been the gateway, he had been the path, the show for Kuri.
Kathryn smiled at them both and turned back around to the bar slowly. She needed to put the puzzle together, and she needed to get her thoughts into place. One moment she feared them, suspected them and what they had to do with all of this, and the next she was finding herself desiring them. She looked at Magdalene and Angelina, and they both seemed to swoon, but like her, they knew something was completely off.
“I see what you were talking about!” Magdalene shouted.
Kathryn lit her cigarette and offered one to Magdalene. She shook it away and pulled her pipe from her purse.
“I’m good.”
“I just don’t know what to think. All I know is they are involved and they are dangerous in every way.”
“We just have to be careful.” Angelina took a smoke f
rom Kathryn’s offered pack.
“Easier said than done.” Kathryn responded. She passed her lighter to Angelina and then tucked it back inside of her small Chanel purse that hung from her shoulder by gold chain.
They played for close to an hour, and the music was phenomenal, like Guns n’ Roses if the band had sold their souls to Satan. It was dark and fast, and it poured sex like tar, inky and thick and covering everyone who could hear it.
When it was over Kathryn felt as if she were trembling, as if her insides were shivering, and her sex ached. “They’re coming.”
“How do you know?” Angelina asked.
“I can feel them.”
Sure enough Arish, Niiq, and Kuri emerged from the crowd and made their way towards them. They looked at Kathryn and grinned, and then their eyes fell on Magdalene and Angelina, as if they were taking stock and liked what they saw.
“You’re here!” Arish said. That exotic woodsy scent filled the air between them.
“We came to see the band that opened for you.” Kathryn said to him while taking a drink from her glass.
“Well, still, glad you showed!” Niiq responded.
Kathryn nodded. “This is my cousin, Magdalene Blackmoore.” They looked at her and then eyed one another. It was as if something about Magdalene had caught them off guard.
“And you know Angelina.”
“The hottest girls on the Strip, right here.” Kuri said with a laugh.
“Aren’t you lucky?” Kathryn rolled her eyes.
Kuri gave a melodic laugh. “You have no idea. You guys should come back to our place. We’re having an after party. It’ll be a good time!”
Kathryn, Magdalene, and Angelina looked at each other, all of them trying to measure the situation, and perhaps they were reading each other’s thoughts-communicating to each other without words, or maybe it was just assumption, but it seemed to Kathryn that they had all concluded that they were safe if they were together.
“Sounds good!’
They each offered their hands-Arish to Angelina, Niiq to Magdalene, and Kuri to Kathryn. She took it, and what she felt was a wave of pleasure that was so close to what she had felt when making love to Sheffield, that she almost lost her footing.
“I will catch you...” Kuri whispered in her ear as he guided her out of the Whiskey.
They erupted out into the night, which even in its heat was cooler than it had been inside.
They were turning to make their way up the block when from the corner of her eye she thought she saw a familiar face beyond the pack of bodies, thought she recognized those emerald green eyes, and a warm, lazy, and stunningly handsome southern bred face. A face she thought she would never see again.
Sheffield! Kathryn turned her back to get a better look, but she had already taken two steps too many, and by the time she had gotten a full view, there were just too many people to make out anyone’s face, unless they were right under the lights of the door.
She had to be imagining it. Her head and her heart had to have worked together to create his phantom-to make her rethink what she was doing. No, not this time!
Kathryn would remain defiant. She would push back the ghosts of her broken heart, and she would obliterate him from her thoughts. Sheffield Burges was gone and he was never coming back.
Tonight she would drink, and party, and do what she had come here to do, and she would leave the memory of that breakup in the back courtyard in South Hill where it belonged.
VI
They had left the corvette behind, and Kathryn, Magdalene, and Angelina were riding up North Clark Street on the back of the band’s identical three black Harleys, the warm summer air felt good moving fast over Kathryn’s face and yet it caused minimal disturbance to her spray-pumped hair.
She clung tightly to Kuri at first, hugging him through the leather of his jacket which he had zipped up to his torso before getting on the bike. She loved the feel of him, and that exotic scent that rested in the skin and filled her lungs and nose. It made her feel euphoric-this fragrance-and she could not understand how this smell could secrete naturally from someone instead of a bottle, and yet, here the mystery was.
She gingerly released her grip from Kuri’s body, and slowly leaned her head back and began to spread out her arms, embracing the wind-calling to the night with her thoughts. Seeing the stars inside her mind and mapping the entire universe.
She invoked it. She called to the moon and sang the name of Hecate. She reached out to the ethereal world and sent her witchcraft like a beacon, and praised her, The Queen of the Night, The Mother of Witches, The Keeper of the the Crossroads, The Goddess of the Triple Path, and The Queen of Ghosts. The Queen of Heaven and The Queen of Hell and the In-between. All these names she sang in her mind.
On the back of this bike she wished that witches really could fly on broomsticks, that she could travel over rooftops and rise to the stars. She imagined flying over the houses of South Hill on an autumnal night, their windows lit, and grinning pumpkins in windows and porches. Great skeletal branches from the bare trees along the blocks, and the light of a bright yellow moon-those autumn moons-glistening above Bellingham Bay and the San Juan islands.
In her fantasy she was dressed in a gown of black satin, with white lace on the hem of her sleeve and bosom. She was a sexy Gibson Girl; the oughts’ version of a flapper.
If only it were real. Kathryn grinned.
They took a right on Devlin Drive, now immersed in residential streets and immense oak trees, followed with another right on Devlin Place, arriving to a white single story ranch at the end of a dead end street the spilled down a hillside.
There were motorcycles and cars parked along the curb, and aside from a lamp here and there, it appeared the house was mostly lit with candles, and the sound of Judas Priest was blaring through the cracked windows.
Kathryn felt relief when she saw how many people seemed to be there, knowing she would have more control of herself with Kuri if she were surrounded by people.
She needed to be distracted from him. From his golden skin, his taunt chest and dark nipples, and his firm abs. She needed to be able to focus on something other than those plump lips, and those ethereal eyes and that mane of thick black hair.
All she wanted was to take Kuri by the hand and request that he give her a tour of the bedroom, to throw him down on the mattress and mount him-tear his jeans open and slip his cock inside of her. She wanted to ride him. She wanted to ride him to a gallop and make him have to squeeze his thighs together to try to keep from cumming too soon.
Yes, distraction was good. It would keep her grounded and focused. It would keep her guarded and alert.
Magdalene looked like a seductive fairy queen in her loose white dress and her thick auburn culrs were now loose tendrils that spilled over her bare arms, and Angelina looked like sex on two legs, holding Arish’s hand gingerly.
“Our label put us up in this house last year.” Niiq said.
“You’re label?” Magdalene asked him with an impressed grin.
“Yeah, tonight was our record release. That’s why we were headlining.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Kathryn said with tone of faux-dismissiveness. “Let’s get drunk.”
Kuri slipped his hand down her back and stopped at her ass, giving it a squeeze as he kissed her earlobe. “Let’s do it!”
They walked up the concrete path to the double entry front door that was as white as the rest of the exterior, with brass door knobs. Kuri pushed one of the doors open and led them into the near dark.
As Kathryn suspected, there were a scattering of candles throughout the large midcentury living room with a natural stone fireplace that was so common for the fifties, and the hard wood floor was littered throughout with little piles of beer cans and beer bottles, along with empty bottles of Jack Daniels and Grey Goose in every corner of the room.
There were a couple of bikers in their leather jackets and leather pants, all of them Banditos, and other gu
ys in Iron Maiden tee’s with the same long hair. The eighties would be remembered for almost every guy in the western world having long hair. Kathryn was sure of it.
There were a couple of strippers hanging out with guys in bands-some more known than others-doing lines on the coffee table.
As they made their way through what seemed to be the microcosm of the Strip inside of this house, Kathryn was certain she had seen a guy and girl in a corner, her head thrown back against the wall in delirium as the guy finished shooting her up.
Jesus. Coke was one thing, but heroin was another beast entirely. One she had no desire to know.
She wanted the comfort of alcohol and music. She wanted to dance and talk. She wanted to devour this moment, to take it into herself and let it feed her like offerings to feed the gods.
She was The Queen of the Night. She was the thing to fear in the dark. She was the witch of the wood. She was the muse of the dead. She was dangerous and deadly.
“Fuck!” Kathryn let out with a chuckle. She opened her purse and removed her flask, grabbing Kuri’s aviators from off of his face and slipping them on her own while she took a swig.
“Gotta love a babe who packs her own booze.” Kuri laughed.
Kathryn grinned and kissed him hard and fast on the mouth. “Always...”
“So, when are we going to hear this record of yours?” Magdalene asked, taking the flask from her cousin’s hand and giving it a swig, followed with another.
“Hey, Niiq, go throw it on, man!”
Niiq looked at Kuri and nodded.
“I’m surprised you guys didn’t tell me that first night.”
Arish laughed, “It wasn’t the subject that came up.”
Kathryn could feel the memory of his fingers between her legs, as if it was happening right in front of everyone, and she pressed her thighs together. She wasn’t done with him, either. But tonight was all about Kuri.
Soon that music was playing, fast, dark, and electric, with drums pounding quickly to the beat and making the women move.
She took another swig from the flask and handed the whiskey to Angelina. She winked at her and swigged it back.