I know this person who knows another person who hooked me up with a sound tech gig with a semi-famous rock band. The band is touring for their third album and they’ve gained market appeal in an area I’ve never visited until now. It’s warmer than I expected. How excellent. Back home, there is snow.
Then the drummer dies. The drummer made it to the very last beat of the very last song and then died unexpectedly. The cause of death came back as unknown.
The funeral is held during a full moon, as per the wishes of the deceased.
People everywhere are talking about this and that - basic funeral stuff. It is a semi-casual affair and it is dignified.
It is the third time a person has died at one of our concerts. The first two times, it was members of the audience who had died. This is the first time a member of the band or crew died. There was talk of calling it quits but the drummer included “the show must go on” statement in their will in the event that they died during a tour.
In a very macabre way, the band have soared in popularity thanks to r/news and we are busier than ever before. Emos and goths are attending our shows and lots of people have died for lots of weird reasons. The cops have investigated us and they attend our shows too. We have nothing to hide. We have no idea why people are dying. Paranormal investigators are also attending our shows, often recording them on paranormal style video equipment that measures the presence of ectoplasmic something something.
We are getting more work and traveling greater distances to perform. Tensions are high.
We depart early for the airport. It is the big moment. Some rich people are paying for us to fly to our next show. All we have to do is drive to the airport in our van and then get on the plane.
En route, we take the wrong shortcut for the wrong destination and then we make an unsuccessful u-turn that ends up totalling the front driver side cv axle.
“Do any of us know how to fix a van?” somebody asks the group.
It is beyond our combined skill to repair the thing. It would take either a new axle assembly or welding on site to get the van rolling again. We have not the materials to do any of those things.
*** time passes ***
We are waiting for the tow truck which is when the guitarist tells us this very very fucked up story.
Apparently, the guitarist had a cousin who had been executed in a foreign nation as punishment for seventy six counts of witchcraft.
The guitarist was unaware for months that this had ever happened because they thought that they had been in regular contact with said cousin. Once a month, they had met for muffins.
Then one day, a family member mentioned the news article and the musician was dumbfounded.
“So naturally, I look at my phone for pictures I had taken of us, me and my cousin that is… and there weren’t any at all,” says the guitarist.
“What a load of crap,” says somebody else.
The guitarist is adamant that the story is not crap.
It is a reasonable temperature for this time of night - oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it’s like 3am. We’re the only vehicle around for miles and miles. The sky is without clouds and the stars are very bright. We improvise a campfire and somebody plays a song on their phone. Then in an unwelcome turn of a events, there is hail and snow falling from what only a moment ago had been a cloudless sky. We do not like this change of weather.
The wet cold is dampening our spirts. Morale plummets and we discuss the pros and cons of how badly we would cause more damage the van if we used it as shelter.
*** more time passes ***
Still, there is no tow truck and now we are very worried. What if we can’t make it to the plane on time? Oh man that would suck. We would have to book new flights and it would become a haven of logical chaos.
A group of tough individuals on motorcycles arrive.
“Well well well what have we here?” says to us a one of the toughs on a motorcycle.
We try our best but we lose the fight - we are like mega outnumbered and we are not badasses like Chuck Norris or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
We wake in a prison cell in some underground area I had known to exist but had never visited. We are bruised with cuts all over our bodies. Nobody knows what to say and some of us, I’m sure, are wondering are we being listened to?
We have been stripped of the items in our pockets as well as all jewelry and watches.
The cell is enclosed with brick walls, an iron gate, and a narrow window that lets in some daylight.
Actually, it reminds me exactly of what I always imagined a medieval style dungeon to look like only smaller.
When was the last time you ever heard of a motorcycle gang that kept a medieval style dungeon? It’s just our luck to cross paths with the one and only motorcycle dungeon gang that just happens to exist. Perhaps you’re wondering “how naive are you that you didn’t know about motorcycle dungeon gangs? Even Simon Whistler has a video called the 10 Ten Most Historically Significant Motorcycle Dungeon Gangs,” or something like that.
** more time passes in silence **
An entire evening comes and goes without a word among us. There are rats but they leave us alone. There are spiders too and they also leave us alone. I know they were there because they crawled around on me for a little bit. I stayed completely motionless, terrified that they would bite me. The rat crawling around over my DNA chamber was very very curious indeed. For a moment, i was worried it would - well you get the idea. Fortunately, nothing bad happened.
Daylight finally enters the cell and one of our number has vanished.
We are naturally terrified.
In my last daylit memory, I recall there being one more person in the room than there is now. I wonder what has become of them.
Perhaps they found a way to escape and they’re getting the keys to the iron gate as we speak and in a moment or two, they will arrive and say something awesome like “good news people, not only am I about to open this iron gate to set you free, but there’s also a party upstairs with sexy company and free refreshments.
Alas, that does not happen.
I did not sleep during the entire night. At no time did I ever hear a single movement from anybody other than a bit of stirring and snoring by those who had managed to fall asleep.
Maybe I did fall asleep and I just don’t remember, and during my period of unconsciousness, something happened to make one of our number vanish. I’m like ninety percent sure I was awake the entire night at at no point did I ever hear a nose that sounded akin to abduction or escape.
“Who do you speak to get the fuck out of here?” asks the lead singer, breaking the silence.
A moment later, a walking green corpse approaches the iron gate.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to ask,” to us says the walking green corpse.
Walking green corpse is a terrible description of what this thing looks like. I mean - yes, it is green and it best resembles a corpse. The eyes have died, the skin is rotting with bugs crawling all over it and the smell is repugnant. Either this being is living without hygiene or it is decomposing alive.
“You wish to leave, is that right?” to us says the walking green corpse.
“Yes,” is the reply.
“Never going to happen,” to us says the corpse. “Do you like what you see? This is what you’re going to look like after we’re through with you. It’s really nasty, what you’re about to go through. You get use to it but it’s not the same as being whole. It is really going to suck.”
“What a bummer,” says the lead singer, trying to empathize with the corpse. “Is there any way at all to cure it?”
“No,” is the reply. “Well maybe, but they don’t care enough to bother trying. It only gets worse.”
“Maybe there’s a way we could make you feel a little better,” says the singer. “Let us out of here and we’ll take you on tour with us. We’re a band and really don’t want to disappoint our fans. You’d get to meet lots of interesting people and maybe one of them will be a scientist who’s interested enough to have a go at it and maybe you’ll even get lucky.”
The corpse considers the idea and shrugs, replying “no. I think I’ll just watch you suffer. Misery breeds misery, after all. Enjoy your flesh while you still can. Would you like to know how they’ll do it?”
None of us reply.
“I won’t bother telling you. You would never believe me,” and the corpse deserts the iron gates to go and attend to corpse stuff.
*** more time passes ***
“I wonder what they will do to us,” says the lighting technician.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” says somebody else.
Another uncomfortable day passes and during the night, we are each wondering will one of us be next to go? Has our friend and colleague been subjected to humiliating torture and doomed to walk to the end of their days as a green corpse? I do not know and nobody is saying anything.
The blackness is worse tonight than it was last night. I don’t think anybody is asleep this time, and we dare not speak just in case we wake something cunning, hungry and lethal. There are more rats tonight than there were last night and the spiders are a little larger.
I can’t take it. I just can’t take it. Get it off get it off get if off. I’m terrified of spiders, ok? I’m freaking out I’m just freaking out they’re all over me. What do I do? If I shudder or shake, they may confuse my movement as attack. In defence, they are sure to bite me until I die of poison and they will devour me for spidery generations to come and what then of my friends and colleagues once I have died and they remain?
I keep my cool but it is not easy. My nightmares for years to come will be about this very night. The spiders are large enough so that their spider chatter can be heard by my human ear.
The lights turn on. My eyes adjust to the unexpected brightness and once they’ve adjusted, I can see quite clearly there are no rats or spiders anywhere on me or anywhere near me. How lovely. Perhaps in a state of panic, I had only dreamed or imagined that I was being tread on by spiders. It felt ridiculously real. I thought for a moment that my time had come. Now that the lights are on and I can see there are no rats or spiders, I can relax.
A couple of motorcycle toughs armed with chainsaws approach the iron gate.
“Are you wondering what has happened to your friend?” says a chainsaw tough. “Your friend is safe for now but the rest depends on you.”
A quick glance around the room reveals us to be with minus one members. The other chainsaw tough says to me, “you come with us.”
A small escort of chainsaw toughs arrives and then tough who is without a chainsaw unlocks the iron gate, sliding it open enough so that one person may fit through the gap at a time. They reach in an arm and grab me. I’m just about to knock this person’s lights out but the chainsaw toughs give me a look that tells me I may really regret doing that so I keep my cool and I really hope I don’t hate what’s next about to happen to me.
To the other prisoners, they say “if you like this person and if you don’t want them to live the rest of their days a hideous wretch of a creature doomed to die painfully and without dignity, you’d better consider carefully what we say next…” and I don’t hear the rest of that conversation.
*** time passes ***
I am all alone in a lonely room that probably used to be a broom closet. There are no rats or spiders.
I fall asleep. I sleep terribly, dreaming of spiders crawling all over me and giving me the willies. Little do I know though that I am dreaming and I am apparently filled with self-hatred to want to relieve this nightmare in my nightmare until suddenly I wake up.
It is still nighttime. I cannot see a damn thing and I can hear the rats. They must be nocturnal. That is why I never see them in the daytime. They have holes or something and at night, they do their thing. I can also feel the spiders.
Don’t panic, I tell myself over and over. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Panic would lead to loss of control and loss of control would lead to poor decision making.
The spiders are treating me as furniture, I tell myself, only this and nothing more. No matter how I try to lie to myself, I am one single straw on the camel’s back away from a nervous breakdown and it will go terribly for me, outnumbered by rats and spiders. I have got to keep my cool or I will die.
Breathe slowly. My eyes are shut as a spider crawls along my eyelid. I want so badly to bat it off but it that might enrage it and the last thing I want is a giant pissed of spider near my eyes.
“WAKE UP YOU GARBAGE BREATH SCUMBAG!” I wake up and it is daylight. It was only a nightmare. My mind was merely playing a joke on my arachnophobic attitude. What a shitty nightmare that was. But it felt so real. I would have put money on having been present in reality at that moment.
Speaking of moments, this bossa nova blues musician whose music I frequently enjoy once said in an interview something like “we are often thinking about what has happened or what will happen and less often are we focused on the actual moment during the moment of the moment.” He said he’d read it in a book and I’m sure that the guy who wrote the book heard it from some other person.
I was pretty high when I listened to that interview. Maybe I’m taking it more seriously than I really need to.
This is easily the shittiest period of my life - my nadir, if you will.
As far as infancy, childhood, teens and adulthood have gone, they were never remarkably awesome nor remarkably bad. A few highs, a few lows, and now I am rotting in a dungeon. How lovely /s.
Anyway, somebody has just yelled at me WAKE UP YOU SCUMBAG and now I am awake.
A chainsaw tough who also has a sword on their back has entered my humble cell. Their smile is sickly and unappealing.
“Are you wondering what I’m so happy about?” they ask me.
“Yes,” I answer.
“They said if I could get you to say just one word, I’d be allowed to cut your tongue out.”
*** The next bit has left out so that at people with weak stomachs don’t have to know all the gory details. Do not ask for the details. I have moved on and have no desire to relive any of it. ***
I have often heard that silence is golden. I wonder if that is true. Maybe they will say I have a golden personality. I am using my 3am-style sense of humour to get me through this trying time. The next time you eat, think about how often you use your tongue. The next time you drink water, imagine how useful is your tongue.
“Well prisoner, are you ready to talk?” the chainsaw toughs will occasionally say to me in daily greeting whenever they serve me my water that I’m sure they’ve spit in.
I smile a bemused grin. I think it’s a pretty funny verbal jab, though I’m not fully ready to joke about it just yet. Breathing is weird too.
“Removing. your tongue was only step one,” to me says the chainsaw tough who serves me today’s water and soup. “Step two is we remove your eyes.”
My face betrays me and the chainsaw tough appears satisfied by my fear. They go on, “after we remove your eyes, we will remove your teeth, your arms and your legs, and then we will use you as fuck doll until you have starved to death. Your ears will be left intact so that you can hear all the shit being said about you.”
I’m not going down without a fight.
“Hahahaha!!!” laughs the tough and the other toughs join in as well, joshing around with comments such as “look at their face!” “They thought we were serious!” “Only a sick deranged scumbag would ever consider such a vulgar fate.”
I am less amused than they but at least I will not have to engage in combat against a force of chainsaw toughs.
“Sorry, I’ve been wanting to try that joke for ages,” to me says the tough. “We would never do that to you or to anybody. We’re just going to kill you.”
Well thank goodness for that.
“You can expect to die probably within the next couple of days. Don’t be offended, but we’ll be cutting your rations. You’re going to die anyway so they’re no point wasting them on you,” says another chainsaw tough.
They fuck off and I am alone again in my cell, doomed to die with my last dreams being nightmares of limbless rape and spider torture.
My whole life, I have believed that in this situation, I would prefer death to life. I wonder if others feel the same or if they would endure the agony, the degradation and the despair just to cling to the hope of a better tomorrow being just over the horizon?
*** the past ***
“This is it. Any last words?” they ask me.
“End-quote,” says me for the very last time. No other words came to me during the moment and no words will ever come to me again.
***
“Hey fuckface,” to me says a chainsaw tough a couple of days later. I have been sitting against a wall doing jackall. “Today is the day. You die today. We were going to do something worse to you but then we remembered that we needed a sacrifice for tonight’s party. Drinks are free tonight. All you have to do is say what you want and they’ll get it for you. Oops. You can’t talk. Well, maybe bring a pencil.”
The party is sinful and wild.
“Your fun ends now,” to me says a person dressed in thick clerical robes, and I am bludgeoned so hard on the head that I completely lose consciousness.
This time there is no spidery vivid dream reality.
I open my eyes to find my head, neck, arms, chest, stomach, hips, thighs, calves and ankles each restrained to a chair. Standing before me is group of people each wearing clerical robes. One of them splashes me with a bucket of bilge water.
“That was unnecessary,” somebody says to the bucket holder. “They were already awake.”
“Forgive me, your highness,” the bucket holder humbly apologizes.
“The device in which you are seated is called The Pain Causer,” to me says the cleric who is wearing the most decorated robe in the room. “Your head is in a fixed position so you can’t really appreciate all the fine little details but let’s just say you will feel a lot pain. I’m not saying that from personal experience, of course. I’m only basing it off of the excruciating screams I’ve heard from all who have sat in The Pain Causer. I’m sure you can guess for yourself how it got it’s name.”
Death by agony. What a shitty way to go. I reflect a moment on my life - I wasn’t that great. Perhaps judged against the rest, I was truly terrible - I was full of flaws. I did more damage than I ever had intended and I was far less powerful in reality than in my imagination. Pathetic. I will never get a chance to apologize to the people who deserved it. My lasting impression will be that of a snivelling prick. Oh well. One day they will die and all memory and trace of my life will be gone forever as though it had never existed. Never again will I or my memory be a part of any moment.
“Stop, you scum!” I hear somebody say.
Those were exactly the words I was hoping I would hear. Hip hip fucking hooray.
There is noise of fighting and violence. Vroom vroom go the chainsaws. Pow pow go the guns. There is grunting and yelling and I am getting splashed by blood and empty rounds.
Moments later, the chainsaws die down, there are no more gun shots and the volume is tolerable though my ears are ringing like crazy as if I was about to have my head explode.
Somebody undoes the restraints on my chair.
“You’ll wish you died here after we’re through with you,” to me says an unknown individual, pointing a machine gun at my face while their friends each hold knives at fleshy bits of my body.
Jet Li would calmly kick their asses and escape to freedom. I am not Jet Li.
More to follow.