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 and there are often refreshments and sexy company to be enjoyed. How excellent. Back home, there is snow and my fridge is empty.
Then the drummer dies. The drummer made it to the very last beat of the very last song one concert 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. There is cake and coffee.
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. We actually had a talk about this before the tour.
“We’re all agreed that if one of us should die, the show much go on, yes?” “Yes,” and that was the conversation.
We will miss the drummer but the drummer would have wanted the show to go on. The lighting technician is decent-ish at drums so they’re on music duty and I’m doing both lights and sound. It is awesome. I have the entire stage lit by lava lamps and I worked a deal with the bartender that all drinks could be glow-in-the-dark.
In a very macabre way, the band have soared in popularity thanks to a subreddit that isn’t r/news but is a lot like it. Must of the stuff written about us inaccurate or an outright speculation but we are becoming popular as a suicide act. People who want to die without doing it themselves show up and wonder if this will be it for them.
Some people come to our shows just to commit suicide and that’s just fucking weird. The cops are naturally involved and are asking us if we’re part of suicide occultist practice and many of the questions are oddly detailed, “what do you know about the (unpronounceable) ritual? You probably have performed it many times.”
I don’t understand half of the words these cops are saying to me - but I could also be really ignorant to a field of knowledge that everybody except me seems to be aware of. Maybe one of us really is secretly in the occult and is secretly puppeteering a suicide cult in search of power. Maybe not. I’m not aware enough of my surroundings on my best day to really know for sure.
Maybe that person I used to work with was the leader of a cult. Could be true. I know so little about most people.
Cops have started attending our shows as have online paranormal investigators. A trashy streaming service did a show about us wherein none of us were interviewed and they spelt our names wrong.
We depart early for the airport. It is the big moment. Some rich people are paying for us to fly to our next show in a private jet that’s got it’s on hot tub and a glass floor. 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 and had discussed normal things. The guitarist had followed his cousin on social media.
Then one day, a family member mentioned the news article and the musician was dumbfounded. How could the cousin be have been dead for so long while looking so alive?
“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. All the social media stuff is gone like it was never there,” says the guitarist.
“What a load of crap,” says somebody else.
“You probably just had a dream that you had a cousin,” says another person.
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 much more damage would we inflict on the van were we use it for shelter and would it put our lives in danger.
*** 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 an inconvenience of logistical chaos.
A group of tough individuals riding motorcycles arrive.
“Well well well what have we here?” says to us a one of the toughs on a motorcycle.
We try our best and we get in a couple of good hits 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.
** more time passes in silence **
The cell is lit only by natural light and we are below ground. Just below the ceiling, there is a long strip of window to let in light. When the sun sets, it is pitch black.
I didn’t appreciate until now how uncomfortable I find the dark. Close your eyes. For a moment, you can’t see a thing but it’s a controlled environment. You can open your eyes whenever you want. We are in pitch blackness.
The 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 are there because they are crawling around on me. I stay completely motionless, terrified that they might bite me should I move the wrong way. The rat crawling around over my DNA chamber is very very curious indeed.
I hope this rat has no plans to attack the contents of my pants. I would surely want to defend my future children and would fend away this rat. My movements though would surely offend the spiders and the last thing I want is to be attacked by spiders. The entire evening passes with me still as a statue while vermin use me as furniture.
Daylight finally enters the cell and one of our number has vanished. 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.
We are naturally sad and terrified.
Perhaps they found a way to escape, 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.
Not once during my sleepless night did I ever heard a noise akin to abduction or escaping.
“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. I’m leaving out so many details, I don’t know where to begin. Like, this person is missing chunks of flesh, the odour is unbearable like a kitchen grease trap but worse and some of their bones are showing.
“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 they’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 a roadie.
“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? Have they been 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. I manage to sleep for a little bit but the rats and spiders rouse me from my sleep.
I can’t take it. I just can’t take it. There are more rats tonight than there were last night and the spiders are a little larger. 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 don’t care for the rats either.
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.
Then there is light and I am temporarily blinded. Once my eyes adjust, I notice with relief that there are no rats or spiders nor any traces that they were ever there - not a hair nor scratch on my clothing. Did I dream the whole thing?
A couple of motorcycle toughs armed with chainsaws are at 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.”
They unlock the iron gate, sliding it open enough so that one person may fit through the gap at a time. One of their number reaches in an arm and grabs 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 wraith 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 so far.
I fall asleep. I sleep terribly, dreaming of spiders crawling all over me. Little do I know though that I am dreaming and I am apparently filled with enough self-hatred to dream this nightmare.
It is still nighttime. I cannot see a damn thing and I can hear the rats. I hear the rats and I hear the spider chatter.
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. 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!” and suddenly I am awake 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 and it felt so real too. Thank goodness it was only nightmare.
This is easily the shittiest period of my life - my nadir, if you will.
Anyway, somebody has just yelled at me WAKE UP YOU SCUMBAG and now I am awake.
A chainsaw tough who also carries 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.
“No,” I answer.
“They said if I could get you to say just one word, I’d be allowed to cut your tongue out.”
I put an impressive fight for someone of my unimpressive physique against a gang of chainsaw toughs but the fight is hopeless. The best possible outcome would be to die and avoid a future of pain but I am not so lucky today.
*** 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. My tongue has been removed.
“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, your legs, and even your wobblies, 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 and to you. We will force feed you water so that you don’t die too soon of dehydration because we wouldn’t want to commit necrophilia now would we?”
My only chance is to die fighting. I’ll dive head first into a chainsaw if I have to.
“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 this outcome favours me so it is still a pleasing gag.
“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 soup and water 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, reliving the removal of my tongue 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?
I will not let this inhibit my tongue-in-cheek sense of humour.
*** the past ***
“This is it. Any last words?” they ask me.
“Please don’t remove my tongue,” says me for the very last time. For the rest of my life, I will be limited to b, f, h, m, p, r, v and w consentants. I will have to become ridiculously savvy with my vocabulary.
***
“Hey fuckface,” to me says a chainsaw tough a couple of days later. The healing is painful and hours feel like years. I am starving and thirsty and I think my throat is infected. 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 I am waiting in line for a free drink. I hope it will be poisoned.
“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.
“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 before you 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. In the score sheet of accomplishment, I’m somewhere near the bottom - I was full of flaws. I did more damage than good 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 and my sins will be long forgotten.
“If you say to us please me go,” we let you go.
Even if I had a tongue to speak, my throat is so badly swollen and caked in pus I can’t even pronounce a vowel.
“Stop, you scum!” I hear somebody say.
Those are 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 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.
I’m on a public computer and my time expires in five minutes. Long story short - that’s why we had to cancel all those shows. If you bought tickets in advance, you will be refunded. The rest of the story is on the band’s website.