Specific and incredible prompt from Sam that goes:Â
Andreil in a rock band setting â tattoos, harsh lighting, calloused fingers, Andrewâs sweaty arms, Neilâs striking blue eyes, someoneâs excellent voice, an uncomfortable undercurrent of drug abuse.
Neil meets the monsters two years after he sinks his motherâs bones into the sea, when his life is finally drooping in its stranglehold.
They roll onto the stage like a thundercloud, like a giant turning in its sleep, and they donât banter before they play, they drink with one hand and play with the other. The drummer taps on the bass drum pedal constantly, an unerring heartbeat. His blond hair is green under the stage lights.Â
There are two mediocre guitarists and a wicked bass player with the fingers taped up on his left hand, and they pass the vocal line between everyone like theyâre trying to find its rightful owner. They handle the melody like its hurting them.
When Neil peers up at them from rock bottom, hands searching strangersâ pockets and mind jammed at the foot of the stage, he feels like heâs seen them before.
He had graduated from Millport and never showed up to collect his diploma, walked out into the stadium and practiced on his own until his hands chapped bloody and the rainwater ate through his t-shirt. Heâd bared his teeth at the dark open goal and known heâd never play again.
He started to split between states and people, surfacing for air less and less. He didnât have school or exy anymore so he started looking for something else to distract him.Â
He bleached his hair raw and pierced his septum and painted his face into different shapes and felt the farthest away from his father that heâd ever felt. Everything was easy and blind in the bathrooms of clubs and in the middle of storms of smoke and ghoulish bleached light in parking lots.
When he stopped following his motherâs rules and still went un-caught, his old fear pulled away from his bones. He stopped feeling like he belonged to anything at all. He ripped away the armour his mother had put on him, her nails pricking his chin to force it up, sanding his edges off so that he was smooth and mangled and disguised in blood and war paint.
He stops running and starts feeling like the bleary, shimmering heat a jet leaves behind, like heâs had a fever for as long as he can remember but his pulse is too tired to race.Â
He starts to fight through bars, a dark, uneasy hangover of a presence, stealing tips and wallets and the expensive equipment that they leave on stage between sets. His disguise is self-made now, but he doesnât trust his own hands. He doesnât trust his voice and the ugly things it can do.
The MC introduces a band called AusreiĂer and butchers their name into pieces. Theyâre opening for some shitty indie rock solo artist, and theyâre so loud and so good for an opener that Neil stops moving, one ear towards the stage, fingers clenched in the cash in his jacket pockets. They slash through a set of eery instrumentals and fast-paced lyrics, and the air blisters. Itâs almost rap, percussive and impersonal in the mouth of the bassist and the grinning, glowing drummer.
Neil catches his eye, dark and blown apart, and the drummer winks, so over the top that it makes Neilâs stomach sink, though he canât pin down why.
He makes himself turn around and move through the crowd, heavier this time, somehow guiltier for stopping and listening than for stealing and lying.
He tucks his head down and smiles at the waitress so that she smiles instinctively before she slides back into indifference. Heâs polite like a performer, not charming so much as he is slick and insubstantial, one of many nodding strangers in a house of mirrors crowd.
He starts to move quickly like a hassled stage manager as soon as heâs close to the front of the throng, shouldering easily through the plain black door beyond the stage where the opening band is performing. He finds a makeshift backstage in the hallway, full of beer bottles and open guitar cases, a scribbled set list sitting on top of some jackets.
He passes them by, looking for storage rooms or dressing rooms, anything with expensive booze or instruments. Sometimes he doesnât find anything at all back here in the lush horizon between art and debauchery, but itâs so laughably easy to look. Back rooms and storage and cases and kitchens, topped up with pills and folds of bills and secrets on tap.
He catches the telltale glint of a bottle out of the corner of his eye, its sleek neck sticking out of a jacket sleeve. Neil stoops to fish it out, fingers sliding against cool, veined leather, and he finds a single malt whiskey, mostly full. He could top it up with water and sell it in the parking lot, it wouldnât even take finesse.
He starts to stand up, but something hits him hard in the gut, with the discordant church-bell clang of a guitar being struck. He sprawls back into crinkling coats and sharp edges, and looks up, disbelieving, at the drummer from before, a guitar held at his side like a smoking gun.
Now that heâs paying attention he can hear that music isnât wading in under the doors anymore, and the drumming heartbeat has stopped poking holes in the walls. He holds his own chest, winded and bruising.
âWhat is your problem?â
âThought I smelled a thief,â the drummer says. Neil can tell that his pupils are wide open even in the thin, yellow overhead light.
Neil makes a split second decision, and tightens his grip on the bottle, loosens his grip on everything else. âThere was no lock on the door,â he slurs, affecting the righteous certainty of the wasted. âAnd I found this.â
The guy makes a sound like a buzzer and says, âyou think youâre entitled to something because the door is unlocked? Try again.â
Neil pushes up onto his hands but the drummer jams the headstock of the guitar between his ribs, with the steady pressure and precision of a scalpel.
âI donât think Iâm the one who owes someone an explanation,â Neil says viciously, dropping the act, âwhen youâre assaulting me with a stringed instrument.â
The drummer cocks his head, looking amused. âYou take something from me, your wrist gets slapped.â He pulls the guitar back and slams the headstock home in Neilâs gut, nearly hard enough to break skin. He sputters, grabbing the neck in an attempt to ease up some of the pressure. The drummer only twists it deeper, then drops into a crouch. âIf you lie to me about it, maybe I break the bottle over your head.â
âYouâre deranged,â Neil says. Up close, he can see a slender tattoo of a hydra winding up his neck, a crop of dark snakes forking out of his collar, fangs bared towards his ear. It suits him, deadly, simple lines, impossible to ignore.
He makes a reproving sound, tossing the guitar noisily aside and reaching for the whiskey instead. Neil seizes the opportunity and swings his arm up hard, aiming to crack the bottle against his skull, but his wrist gets caught up in the snare of the drummerâs grip, un-slippable as a sailorâs knot.
âUh oh,â he says. âHeâs a fighter and a liar. Thatâs interesting.â
