In the Garden of Rusting Gods

by Patrick Freivald

Ken faltered on the bass, his glassy eyes scrunching confusion. An awkward grin spread across his face. “Did the power go out?”

  The crowd cheered as Ian Grant’s hit single, “Big Green,” blared through tinny speakers over the bar, drumming out the pop beat and the hometown hero’s singing, still as smooth and intense as the day Dominic had met him, hooting out love songs—in harmony—to the girls on the sidewalk. They’d endured the rolled eyes and giggles with the pathological lack of shame only possessed by seventh-grade boys. Carefree days crushed under the weight of celebrity and envy.

  Looking down to hide the wetness in his eyes, Dominic kicked their blurry set list across the floor then stalked off stage. The insult-to-injury stabbed at his throat, and a gagging reflex just kept down the soggy chicken wings and limp fries he’d gotten from the bar after sound-check. Stomach roiling, he lurched for the door.

  Dom had been the songwriter, Ian the singer. Gravel on silk, nothing could match the raw, jagged hurt Ian’s voice had developed their senior year. Rolling in girls and money his whole life, nothing about it came from personal truth. But on the stage and in the studio no one could hear the lie, and nothing said “show biz” like false truths.

  Rock stars.

  They’d dreamed it together, chased it together, shared late nights and long days and girls and drugs and boys and sometimes each other and when the studios came for their demo tape they took the singer and left the songwriter behind to rot in the rocky ground of Bend Creek, Indiana. Gravel on silk, the sound of heaven, the sound of hell. Dominic got in the van, slammed the door, and screamed into his hands.

  ~

  “Did you see this shit?” Phil shoved the flyer into his face, the eighty millionth Dominic had seen since that morning. Ian Grant, July 9, Bend Creek Pavilion. The international superstar would grace his hometown with a performance before leaving on the European leg of his world tour to promote “Small Town Cannibal.” Dominic’s idea, brooding, blood-soaked metal twisted and reborn through the sanitized, homogenous imaginings of corporate suits into flavorless electronic pop.

  “I saw it.” Dominic dropped his fork into the congealed glop that passed for a sausage omelet at two on a Wednesday afternoon and didn’t bother raising his eyes. “So what?”

  “Maybe he’d let us open for—”

  “I am NOT opening for Ian Grant.”

  Jason squeezed into the booth next to him, scooping up a handful of soggy, cheesy eggs and shoveling it into his mouth. “I thought,” he sucked on his calloused fingers, “you wanted to be famous.”

  Dominic lifted his eyes to Phil’s, half-obscured by stringy, dirty-blond hair the guitarist thought made him look like Curt Cobain. “This an ambush?”

  Even overruled at three-to-one, he’d never do anything with Ian Grant, not even a photo-op, not ever. To hell with band rules.

  “Nah, man, Ken ain’t here so there’s no vote.” Phil sat, waving off the waitress as she approached, sunken eyes hopeful for a tip she’d probably blow on a bump of crystal. “We knew you wouldn’t go for it. Just thought maybe you’d hook us up, get us backstage.”

  “Why would I get us backstage?”

  Jason stole a lump of sausage from a puddle of grease. “So we can introduce ourselves, maybe meet his manager.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “We’re not talking about you. We’re talking about us.”

  Seething betrayal ravaged his nerves. Of course Deathsmack sucked; half the members would sell out their integrity for a taste of money or fame. They had no passion for the music, for the craft. “You want what he has.”

  “So do you. Asshole.” Phil got up and stalked out of the booth. Jason joined him. “So do you.”

  The door jangled shut.

  ~

  The shrieking of delirious fangirls jabbed ice picks behind his eyes, almost painful enough to distract him from the stink of perfume and sweat, the tang of marijuana and the cloying Victoria’s Secret body spray used to mask it. And the concert wouldn’t start for another two hours, Ian Grant an hour after that.

  Dominic cut through the line to the side door and rapped a “shave and a haircut” with his knuckles. A black man the size of a house peered out, took in their back-stage passes, and stepped aside just enough to let them through.

  “Hey, we’re Deathsm—”

  “Down the hall.” The bouncer closed the door and leaned against it. “He’s expecting you.”

  Ken twirled past framed posters depicting concerts from decades past, legends and icons lost to drugs or age or an inability to sustain their creativity against the ravages of time. The rest followed, Jason and Phil playing it outwardly cool. Dominic just managed not to throw up as Ian Grant appeared in a doorway, teeth too white, brown hair too perfect.

  The superstar shook hands, spending just enough time with each man before moving to the next, leaving them with a taste and wanting more. The world grew dark as he enveloped Dominic in a hug, crushing his heart and bones to lifeless jelly before pulling back and looking at him with eyes that shone with inner light.

  “Dom. It’s good to see you, man. It’s been too long.”

  Dominic choked down years of abandonment, jealousy, and impotent regret. “Yeah. Too long.”

  The “green room” consisted of two leather couches and a coffee table piled with local barbeque, chicken and pork stacked high next to thick, crusty bread, and not a vegetable in sight. At Ian’s insistence the band tucked in, everyone but Dominic chewing between excited questions about the road, the studios, and the groupies. His stomach lurched, hot bile tickling the back of his throat.

  “It’s not like you think.” Ian’s grin fell from his face. “It’s exciting, but it’s pretty lonely, and it’s easy to spend too much on fans and fun. You got to work to save anything, ’cause this won’t last forever.”

  Jason waggled his eyebrows. “But the groupies?”

  “Are part of the problem.” His eyes bored into Dominic’s. “Nobody just wants to be your friend. Everybody you meet wants something, an angle, an introduction, a collaboration, maybe just a star-fuck. Even people from back home.”

  “Fuck, man, Dom didn’t even want to do this. We—”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. Enjoy the food, and the show.” Ian stood, brushed nonexistent lint from his jeans, and walked out.

  Phil snorted. “You really hate each other, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Dominic said. And no and never.

  ~

  Phil, Jason, and Ken left to enjoy the show. Dominic moseyed down the back hall, where a security guard’s eyes wandered to his backstage pass before returning to stare straight ahead. A light flickered from a dark room to his left.

  Eyes rose to meet his, black surrounded by whites turned blue by the screen of her phone. Soft, high cheekbones accentuated black lips and straight, dark hair, the only parts of her not lost to shadow.

  “You must be Dominic.” Harsh consonants pulled him into the room, an ancient accent from another continent yet somehow English. Her screen went black, plunging the room into a nothing that swallowed light from the door.

  “How do you know that?” The darkness around her devoured his voice, muffled it to a whimper.

  “I smelled you on him when we first met. I never forget a smell.” Her tone shifted, became conversational. “Come in, have a seat.”

  The words dragged his feet and he approached, sank onto the lukewarm leather. Scant light emanating from the doorway betrayed nothing of her form, though her warmth crawled against his shoulder and thigh, her scent a mélange of mint and jasmine.

  He cleared his throat. “So who are you, again?”

  Hot breath tickled his neck. “He calls me Polyhymnia. I’m his sacred voice, and in this age what is more sacred than sex and money? I’m everything you wanted but he stole. From his mother, from Mr. Charles, even fro
m you, taken for his own as he abandoned you to this … life.”

  Confused, Dominic pulled away, but on the soft cushion her leg fell against his.

  Mr. Charles had left a love note for his wife and swallowed a month’s worth of oxycodone the summer before their senior year. The school hadn’t replaced the beloved music teacher, instead assigning Mrs. Logan to the junior and senior high chorus as well as the bands. The whole program had suffered. Still suffered.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her low giggle shivered down his spine, stroked his groin, entered and infused him, a shudder of pleasure made sound. “Come on, Dom. You’ve felt the loss since he gained his voice, and your talent withered. You can’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

  “How … could it not be?”

  Her voice grew hard. “I am not coincidence.”

  Melodies flooded him, harmonies and counter-harmonies, dark chords and bright trills, raw, screaming emotion on modern instruments. He gasped as they engorged him, cried out as they faded. “No, wait! I need—”

  Her lips met his, breasts pressed against him, and her breath filled his lungs, sweet cherries and rich, dark chocolate, and a hint of something acrid.

  She pulled away, panting, and whispered. “Take me away. I am not his, I don’t belong to this. Free me, and I’ll give you everything.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  A tornado of images shone in her wide pupils; screaming fans and hotel rooms, Deathsmack merchandise on Walmart shelves and in teenagers’ rooms, red carpets and fast cars and Hollywood mansions, and at the center Dominic screaming into the microphone.

  He pulled back, gasping. Then he lifted her from the couch, light as a feather, heavier than the cloud of depression that had become his reality, and ran.

  ~

  Polyhymnia—Nia—whispered to him, and in the wake of her voice his imagination exploded across the page. Darkness and hunger made sound in his mind, flowing through his hands to ink dots on stanzas, chords and lyrics shining forth in a brilliance he’d never known he’d possessed. Stacks of pages had piled up, and at some point the phone had stopped ringing—he could only assume his boss had given up, figuring out that he’d quit.

  Blinding light blasted across his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut, cracked them, and turned toward the door.

  Ken stood, hand still on the light switch, eyes wide. “Dude. You need a shower.”

  Grinning, he leapt to his feet, stepping over piles of laundry and scattered music sheets to grab his friend by the shoulders.

  “And to brush your teeth.”

  Dominic nodded, eyes wide and bloodshot in the reflection of Ken’s glasses. “Yeah, sure. But we need to make a demo. Like, now.”

  Ken pulled back. “Shower, teeth, maybe a little food. Then we’ll talk about a demo.”

  Dominic’s stomach gnawed at his spine, and he swooned against the door. How many days had Nia whispered to him, driven him with her furious passion? He had no idea, and he didn’t care.

  “Okay, yeah.”

  ~

  After the last chord faded the sound tech killed the microphones. “That. Guys. That was incredible. I don’t think I’ve heard anything that good in … in ever.”

  They high-fived, hugged, celebrated with beer and chicken wings at the local tavern.

  Jason raised his glass in a toast, eyes on Dominic. “This is you, man. You’re a freaking genius.”

  Glasses clinked. Dom ignored the sour taste that accompanied the smooth draft pouring down his throat. He slammed down the glass, got up, and stumbled to the bathroom, a mess of graffiti and filth under a single flickering light bulb.

  She met him in the stall, pulling back his hair as he threw up, semi-liquid chunks splattering the unflushed mound of paper and shit in the stainless steel bowl. His stomach settled but his mind roiled.

  “Are you in my head?”

  “No, but if you let me in you would see that what I’ve given is but a pale shadow of what we could be.”

  He raised his hands, palms up, to the glamor of their surroundings. “I could stand a little less of this glory.”

  Her sigh breathed solace through the stink of vomit and piss. “We’ve only just begun.”

  ~

  Dominic threw his sweat-soaked black T-shirt into the crowd with a triumphant scream, bowing as they roared their approval. The moment the lights died he stalked off the stage. Their energy filled him to bursting. Dark filaments flickered in and out of substantiality, grasping, dragging him toward her. With a pirouette he tromped down the hall into the back parking lot, fumbled open his trailer door, then collapsed face-down on the couch inside. Throat raw, lungs burning, heart thundering, he couldn’t keep the grin from his lips.

  “He died tonight.” Nia’s voice squirmed through the dark, crawling across his veins and into his blood, sucking at the adulation, basking in the worship of the crowd.

  “I know. I felt it during ‘Midnight’s March.’” Second song of the third set, a discordant wall of sound with symphonic accompaniment. It roared with new life at the moment of Grant’s death.

  Ian’s career had ended as meteorically as it started. A competent musician, he’d never had the raw talent necessary for stardom, and when Dominic had stolen away with Polyhymnia mid-tour, his popularity plummeted and his fans had abandoned him, followed by his sponsors and then his label. In three months he’d snorted, injected, and drank his fortune to nothing, then spent two years in and out of rehab and jail.

  “How?”

  “Robbing a grocery with an Airsoft gun. The clerk had a shotgun. It will be on the news in due time.”

  He said nothing, content to give his former friend a moment of silence, and for once in thirty months Nia didn’t take the last word. In the hall a raucous crowd bumbled past the dressing room, his band and their entourages and a new stream of hot young groupies, the best on offer in … wherever they were. They’d be on buses the next morning and hit another city, then another. Phil, Jason, and Ken would enjoy the night, drinking and laughing and fucking, and he’d write their next hit, and their next, burning through Polyhymnia’s limitless passion in an orgy of creativity.

  Her passion. Her creativity.

  Stolen by Ian Grant through black magic Dominic didn’t understand, then regifted when Nia had abandoned his old friend.

  She’d never given him an indication that she’d do the same to him, claimed Dominic had rescued her and that she’d serve him as long as he needed her. But her power rankled, her gifts offended his sense of pride. He had everything he’d ever wanted—fame, fortune, respect, a life doing what he loved—but “fraud” and “charlatan” skirted the dark corners of his heart, black rats gnawing at his happiness, denying him contentment with every greedy nibble.

  He’d had talent before Ian had stolen it from him, some talent, enough to get by, maybe enough to climb the charts. But nothing like this. He’d written—she’d written—a thousand songs with his hand, stashed away in drawers and on remote servers, backed up and protected from fire or malice. A lifetime of work penned in two years of insomnia, all of it brilliant beyond measure, enough to create as many albums as he’d ever want. If only—

  Nia sighed, a tickle on the back of his neck, a lingering promise across his skin. “He thought he didn’t need me, too, in the end. Thought he could sustain what he’d taken from me, tricked himself into believing the lies of the mob. That he mattered, that he was worthy.”

  The TV flickered to life, muted, bathing the black-curtained trailer in a harsh LED glow. A talking head spoke in front of an ambulance. In the corner of the screen, Grant’s latest mug shot scowled, skin sallow, cheeks gaunt, haunted eyes sunken and desperate. The splash banner scrawled SINGER IAN GRANT DEAD AT 24 across the bottom of the screen.

  Her confident whisper nipped at his ear. Her fingertips stroked hi
s naked back. “What more evidence do you need? He stole what I’ve given you freely, and though that makes you righteous where he was not, it doesn’t make you worthy. So be with me, use me, let me inside you, and enjoy the life I’ve given. Don’t throw it away on an arrogant whimsy.”

  “It’s not whimsy to be my own man.” He spat the word out so as not to choke on the dismissive, condescending syllables. “I …”

  He swallowed. Memories swirled with her voice in his ears, a haze of passion more glorious than sex, more sensual than the wildest of Deathsmack’s already-legendary backstage parties. He couldn’t remember a time before her smell, a breath before her taste on his lips, a night without her as his moon—his star.

  “Don’t say it.” Her whisper turned almost petulant as she repeated the same old request. “You could be so much more than you are, not less. A sun blazing across the Earth, scorching all who come too near your brilliance. Don’t push me away. Don’t discard me. Don’t leave me in your wake. Take me into you. Let me be you, and ride with me into unimaginable glory.”

  And that was it. He’d lost himself in her, giving everything he could without losing himself completely, and she only wanted more.

  “I need to do this. Without you.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I need to do it myself.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I am. And I need you to leave.”

  Nothing. Then when she spoke he strained to hear the soft words. “Very well.”

  Sharp and clear, the darkness faded to a dull, earthy dusk. He cried out as her scent left him, mint and jasmine fading into decades of spilled beer and old spunk. Gagging, he rushed to the bathroom as vomit shot up his esophagus, splattering the floor and sink before plopping into the dingy toilet. Bile burned his throat and tongue. Aches ravaged his bones, seared his mind, and drained him of purpose until only a tiny spark remained—the final ember of a dying star.

  His ember, not hers. Meager, mortal talent.

  Pulling himself up, he wiped the stinging mess from his lips, and washed his hands, then shuffled to the dresser. The next album would be his, with just a hint of Polyhymnia for inspiration.