Destroy All Monsters

by Jeff Jackson

  * * *

  On the monitor by the bar, the black-and-white image of Florian raises his guitar over his head. The spectators at the counter draw closer to the flickering video feed. They’re huddled tight, swaying slightly, drunkenly enthralled. Their number has steadily increased over the course of the evening. Eddie is uneasy that Xenie is no longer among them. A second before the pixelated picture of Florian’s guitar slams into the stage, they hear the resounding thud and feel the aftershock ripple through the floorboards.

  * * *

  Florian bashes his guitar against the trapdoor, but the wood barely splinters. It remains stubbornly shut, denying passage. Randy shouts at him to stop. Derek D. backs away in alarm. From the soundboard, A.C. waves his arms, sending urgent signals that not even he understands.

  Florian musters all his mad fervor. He swings the guitar in a wild arc directly at the trapdoor and brings it down squarely on his own foot. He howls, hopping in a frenzied circle, clutching at his broken toes. Toppling face-first, he lands with his nose pressed against the outline of the exit.

  Crawling offstage on hands and knees, he drags the guitar behind him, its cord towing the green amp after it. He’s pursued by screeching waves of feedback.

  * * *

  Randy and Derek D. barely seem aware they’re still playing. It’s a reflex born out of pure habit. They look to Florian for some cue, but he’s crumpled backstage, tangled in the guitar strap, moaning into his fist. They end the tune with an upsurge, a half-hearted attempt to make it sound like a planned finale. They drop their instruments and walk away, bare assed, no backward glance.

  * * *

  The chaos and commotion draw everyone from the patio. People stand in the darkness and point at the dimly lit stage, stillborn gestures and stunted phrases struggling to reconstruct what just happened. Even the deejay is too stunned to start any music. The room is a chorus of confused murmurs.

  * * *

  A figure hovers at the back of the stage. Emerging from the shadows, it floats a few steps toward the audience. In the murk and muddle, people need several moments to process the uncanny sight.

  As the impossible image coalesces, the crowd is confronted by a familiar boy with long hair.

  It’s Shaun.

  * * *

  Shaun carries a boom box. He places it at his feet and presses PLAY. A song with a hypnotically slow tempo and a chiming piano riff begins. An old tune that feels broadcast from another dimension. Shaun opens his mouth wide, creating the illusion that what leaps from his throat is the beseeching voice of a soul singer. He holds a flashlight under his chin like a microphone, the beam of light bleaching his features. His lips are in synch with the singer’s lilting croon, miming the desperate undertones of yearning and devotion.

  * * *

  It’s an eerie likeness, and people are only now beginning to realize this is Xenie. She wears Shaun’s ratty clothes and a wig with a flat plastic sheen. The familiar purple sweater sticks out under a flannel shirt. None of this breaks the collective spell. The summoning of the departed. The materialization of the apparition. The thrall of the visitation.

  * * *

  Xenie’s illuminated mouth enunciates the lyrics with relish.

  I’ll forever love you for the rest of my days.

  The banal words take on a new quality. It’s not the baritone of the singer or the shimmer of the accompaniment, but the emphatic movement of Xenie’s lips tracing the contours of the words that supply their meaning.

  I’ll never part from you or your loving ways.

  During the stately piano solo, she takes a tube of glycerin and squeezes a drop into each eye. Her irises turn an agitated red through the final verse, and tears stream down her cheeks. Her lips form the words:

  May this fire in my soul, dear, forever burn.

  * * *

  The end of the performance is met with silence. For several seconds, the only sound is the rattle of blank magnetic tape threading a path through mechanical spools. Xenie presses STOP, steps off the stage, and withdraws into the darkness.

  * * *

  Nobody wants to be the first to break the silence. Applause feels too disruptive for this delicate moment. Instead, a reverberating hiss spreads throughout the club. People steadily add their voices to the low whistle, an intensifying ovation of spooked appreciation.

  I can’t believe those idiots are impressed.

  The lights flicker on. Backstage they illuminate the figure of Florian, curled on the floor and clutching his pulverized foot. His pain is doubled by the migraine throbbing in his temples. His bandmates call to him, but their mouths seem to move at a different speed than their voices. The entire room feels out of phase. When the words finally reach him, they deliver what’s either an ironic salute or a sincere curse: You’re still alive.

  * * *

  Randy and Derek D. pull on their clothes. They’re too pissed off to comfort Florian, who refuses to get dressed. He now sits perched atop the sofa, leg dangling, completely nude except for the bloody napkin cinched around his foot. He smears the red splotch in the middle of his forehead and stares at the runny residue on his fingertips. A compound of sweat, grease, lipstick. There’s some significance to this mixture, but he can’t summon it. Everything has been emptied of meaning.

  * * *

  People filter into the cramped backstage. Randy pumps each outstretched hand and accentuates the show’s virtues. They bought bulletproof plastic and wanted us to play behind it, he brags. But we totally refused. Several dudes nod their heads in muted appreciation. Florian hopes the show’s drama counted for something, but people avoid mentioning the most obvious aspects of the performance. They offer half-hearted congratulations and half-assed compliments. Their praise is like wet confetti. Lisa-Lisa is the only one who references what happened onstage. She appears with a fat roll of duct tape. My God, she says, how many toes did you break?

  Everyone’s too embarrassed to talk about the show.

  They actually pity me.

  —I really fucked up, Florian says.

  Eddie awkwardly rolls his shoulders into what might be construed as a shrug. It was fine, he says.

  —C’mon, Florian says. Don’t bullshit me.

  Eddie says: It was fine.

  —It was fine in sound check, Florian says. After the amp shorted, my sound was screwed. That’s when it all blew apart.

  Eddie won’t make eye contact. It was fine, he repeats.

  —Even you? Florian says. Even you can’t say it?

  If someone would dare to tell him the truth, it might puncture his black mood, but Eddie simply pats him on the shoulder. The obvious kindness of the gesture will leave a bruise.

  * * *

  B.C. appears with a black marker. Randy and Derek D. tag their names alongside the hallowed graffiti that covers the club’s walls. Florian refuses his part in the ceremony. His migraine tightens the grooves in his head another turn. All the signatures are just ink. They resemble the tired obscenities carved in bathroom stalls, each stroke the equivalent of the forged phone number, the exhortation to rim someone’s mother, the cannon spew of a scribbled cock.

  Maybe I tried too hard.

  Maybe I should’ve paid tribute to Shaun with some bullshit karaoke.

  Everyone seemed to love that.

  Most of the crowd has dispersed through the parking lot and into the night. Florian watches as A.C., Randy, and Derek D. strike the drum kit, break down the microphone stands, loop ovals of black cable around their elbows.

  —Hey, B.C. says. Why don’t you make yourself useful.

  He extends a broom to Florian, who ignores him. He can’t even summon the emotional energy to shake his head. The tide of dirt can rise, and the filth can choke them all.

  The pock-faced kid lurks at the edge of the stage, trying to remain incognito inside his hoodie. He presses his fingers into the battered indentations of the trapdoor, as if absorbing the evening’s emotions through these fissures.


  Florian’s guitar lays nearby, neck wobbly, frets cracked. The chipped enamel reveals the raw wood beneath, but somehow the instrument remains intact. It’s an absurd artifact, a rebuke to his powers of self-destruction.

  * * *

  Faces turn as Xenie enters the room. She’s shed the wig but still wears Shaun’s clothes. Something uncanny clings to her appearance. Even with her shock of blonde hair, she seems less herself than somebody performing the role of Xenie. People approach her with a half-reverential look in their eyes. Derek D. offers his unaffected applause. Randy quietly suggests that she should perform more often. A.C. and B.C. both bend down to kiss her on the cheek. We knew you’d do something great, they say. Florian stays silent. The sincerity of this praise intensifies his migraine. He’s consumed with jealousy watching her collect the accolades he imagined for himself.

  A man with a graying beard, a local music critic, claps Xenie on the back. Here’s the real talent, he announces. How did Shaun feel about the fact you were better than him?

  Xenie looks like she’s been kicked in the throat. Embarrassment is scribbled across her face. That’s fucked up, she rasps, trying to catch her breath. That’s a seriously fucked-up thing to say to me.

  The congratulations continue, but Xenie refuses to revel in the attention. She acts more dejected with every compliment, waving them off with a stern glare. Florian can’t decide whether this is a highly sophisticated form of gloating or she genuinely feels like shit.

  * * *

  The pock-faced boy makes his move. Florian braces as the boy approaches, but he’s headed for Xenie. He holds out his small sweaty hand. That was so cool, he stammers. I just had to say something. As he exits the club, the boy cinches the strings of his hood. He nods familiarly at Florian, as if they were former accomplices.

  * * *

  Randy peppers Xenie with questions about her performance. His candid confusion is the highest form of praise. Why did you lip-synch? he asks. You got a bad voice? Scared you can’t carry a tune?

  —I wasn’t scared, Xenie says.

  —Anybody can open their mouth, she says, and sing a fucking song.

  —That would’ve been worthless, she says. That would’ve missed the entire point. I never even considered singing.

  Xenie rubs her face. It’s as if her features have gone numb and she’s trying to massage the feeling back into them.

  —Besides, she says, who could ever sing that song better than Johnny Ace?

  —Never heard that tune, Randy says.

  —It’s an old rock-and-roll ballad, she says. The last song Johnny Ace recorded. He was shot in the head a few days later.

  —Somebody shot him? Randy says. You’re serious?

  Xenie says: He shot himself. He was playing poker and somebody challenged him to a game of Russian roulette. His eyes filled with blood, his limbs convulsed, and he died there at the table. The next month “Pledging My Love” became his first number one hit.

  —People say he’s the ghost that haunts rock and roll, she says. They claim that song is cursed and bad things happen to people who perform it.

  —Of course, she says, it’s also a love song.

  She thinks she’s fooled everyone.

  Florian coughs several times to draw everyone’s attention. He hikes a pair of jeans higher on his hips, balancing on one leg like a drunken flamingo.

  —If that story is true, he says, then you forgot the most important thing in your performance: the gun.

  Xenie takes her time turning to Florian, as if she’s only now registering that the sounds from his corner were aimed in her direction. Her face is purged of all emotion.

  She says: Maybe the gun was part of my original plan.

  —What changed your mind?

  She says: Maybe I didn’t need it.

  —Was it going to be loaded?

  She responds by sucking her teeth.

  —Because that would’ve been a real act. That would’ve been real commitment. But don’t worry, I’m sure Shaun appreciated your empty gesture.

  Xenie says: I guess you’d have gone farther. I guess I should be taking notes from you.

  She says: You’re like all the others. Looking for any opportunity for exposure. You don’t have the guts to be Johnny Ace. You don’t even have the guts to be Shaun. You’re not even Bruce.

  She says: You’re nobody.

  * * *

  Florian takes several seething steps toward Xenie, but then he’s staggered by a realization. Maybe it’s spurred by the clenched intonation of her speech. The sight of her quivering nostrils. Her flushed cheeks. Her despairing stare. Or maybe it’s those things in concert. He turns on his heel and heads for the bathroom.

  * * *

  Xenie tries to back out of the room, but she bumps into Eddie. He wraps his arms around her, thinking she’s looking for comfort. Her body starts to tremble. She can’t face the discovery of her secret. I brought it, she whispers. I brought the gun, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Her lips trace the shapes of words, but they produce no sound. She’s losing track of where her thoughts end and the world begins, everything becoming a spiral of fear and shame, rushing into the black hole that she calls herself. Eddie holds her tighter and murmurs comforting phrases, but she doesn’t register a syllable. Nobody in the room is paying attention to anything spoken. They’re listening with their eyes. Their attention is locked on the bathroom door.

  * * *

  That faraway night, Johnny Ace sitting at the poker table, shuffling the deck, cutting the cards, considering the wager.

  * * *

  He’s fresh off a sold-out show, his latest song climbing the charts.

  * * *

  He can still feel the applause.

  * * *

  Florian flips over the toilet lid, unpeels the silver duct tape, strips away the newspaper. The revolver is untouched. He releases the weapon from its ceramic cradle. Freshly cleaned and polished. More slippery than he imagined. He brandishes it, ready to march outside and confront everyone with Xenie’s contraband and show them what she’s capable of. Then he thinks to check the weapon. He slides open the cylinder and rotates through the chambers. He’s shocked to discover they’re fully loaded.

  She wasn’t planning to play Russian roulette.

  She was planning to kill herself.

  Florian empties the bullets. He rolls them round his palm and registers their weight. When he tilts them into the sink, the metal shells make a rhythmic clatter as they tumble into the trough. The sound isn’t musical, it’s music.

  * * *

  He withholds a single bullet, inspecting it between thumb and forefinger. The rounded nose is slightly darker than the smooth cylinder. It seems almost benign. He wonders if his prints have blemished the powdered metal, but the light is too murky to tell if it’s greased with his whorls. He slides the bullet into a chamber and tries to spin it. The chamber sticks. Even this he can’t do right. He gives it a harder twist and it whirls. He spins it again. And again. His hands know what they’re doing even if his mind hasn’t caught up.

  * * *

  Florian centers his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The word JEANETTE is still scrawled on the surface. It’s comforting to see those eight letters obscuring his own pathetic features, and he wonders if the presence of his mother’s name will protect him. The floorboards whine under his weight. Dirty water sloshes around his feet. The night quietly offers one last opportunity for redemption.

  No more playing for applause.

  He gives the chamber a final spin. He should be seizing with fear, but the tension in his head feels lighter. The odds are stacked in his favor, he only needs to supply the courage. Florian’s thinking clearly, if coordinated actions count as thoughts. He places the gun against his head. He braces himself for the chill of the round tip of the barrel, but it feels comfortable, the exact temperature of his temple.

  I’ll do what Xenie couldn’t do.

  Don’t make a face in the mirror.
Don’t even look at yourself. It’s too easy to transform a moment of truth into a cheap performance. Florian shuts his eyes. The inside of his mouth is coated with the taste of licorice and stomach acid. He tries to spit but can’t summon any saliva. He’s not sure what he wants to happen. His index finger releases the safety.

  Steady now, Bruce.

  He can hear the incremental increase of pressure in the trigger, the springs growing taut, the interlocking parts preparing to lurch into action.

  He wonders if whatever he hears next will be able to measure up to the sound in his head.

  Easy does it, son.

  THE BIRDS

  Evening. As the sun retires, the flock of white-throated sparrows grows silent. Their numbers expand as more birds return to the grove of trees, quietly alighting on the branches. There’s no call-and-response against the darkening sky. They now crave silence. The only sounds are the crack of cartilage in flexing wings. The murmur of beaks cleaning sooty feathers. The steady blink of hooded eyes. No song erupts from their trembling throats, but let me assure you, son, even these movements are part of their singing.

  chapter five

  THE EMBERS

  THEY’RE LISTENING. Ears perked straight up. The big buck raises its head to register the noise from the woods. The does stop chewing grass. The three deer stand motionless in the meadow. Their ears are fur sleeves, individual hairs etched in fernlike patterns, prickling in reaction to every shift of the environment. The exhalation of trees. The fidget of leaves. The stereophonic hum of insects. The capering clatter of squirrels. After several moments, the deer warily return to eating. They’re acutely aware of the reverberations made by their own teeth as they rip mouthfuls of green stems from grubby roots. They catalog each sound with their entire bodies.

  * * *

  Their enormous eyes all lift and stare in the same direction. The three deer face into the wind, noses sifting the breeze. They stare into the bushes at the edge of the woods and wait to see if the sound will recur. The soft metallic click of a shell being slotted into a cylinder. The noise isn’t natural, but it’s familiar. Their bulging muscles are tensed. Their posture is perfectly immobile. Only their triangular white tails twitch. There’s a long silence. The sides of the animals press in and out, though no breath can be heard. The cries of several crows break across the sky, but nothing stirs. The entire forest frozen in the moment. The creatures can see themselves being seen. It feels like there’s an eye in every leaf. Each one lidless.