Issue #162 : Paying It Back
Drew let out a slow breath and reached blindly for the low-ball glass on the table. The bass from the stage seeped in through the wall, in perfect time with the throbbing of his headache. And somehow not one person in the band had any pain-killers in their bags. Or at least if they did, they weren’t sharing. So he was left with nothing else to dull himself to the pain except for this, one gulp at a time. The once full bottle sat next to the glass, now over half consumed.
This was exactly how he thought his summer would end up but that didn’t make it any less torturous. Nothing quite like babysitting a bunch of crybabies who just expected everything to be done for them. What? Why would we break down our own gear or help set up? Why would we dare to sit at the merch table and, God forbid actually talk to people? Why would we actually go out for the food or pump the gas?
And the inevitable answer to the obvious question would be, “No, we aren’t bringing on any roadies. We aren’t spending money like that. But we still expect all of those things to be done for us. And we still expect to be making money by the end of this tour.”
It wasn’t as if no one had warned him about this a bunch of knuckleheads. He knew. If he had possessed an ounce more of self respect, or a healthier bank account, he would have laughed off the offer for what it was.
The problem with self-respect was that it just didn’t pay the bills like it used to.
Maybe it was appropriate metaphorically that, as he reached one of the low moments of his career, it would happen in a club that itself, was one of the lowest spots in the universe. There were only two kinds of people who came here. The ones who had hit rock bottom and couldn’t seem to find their way back out. And then there were the dregs, the ones who simply existed from day one at rock bottom.
Drew picked up the bottle and weaved his way out of the dressing room. The hallway felt like some kind of a fun house ride as he stumbled along, bracing himself against the walls as he did so. The music got louder and there was a part of him that would have prayed for a blown amp or a broken string, if it weren’t for the fact that he would end up being the one to have to deal with it. Every day, he seemed to learn that the only thing these assholes were missing was the diapers. Maybe he needed to call it quits if this was the best he could hope for anymore.
Maybe Starbucks was hiring.
From somewhere ahead, in the darkness between the fluorescents, he heard what sounded like a woman crying. Even in his dulled condition, he couldn’t help but smirk at the sound. Probably wasn’t the first time these walls had reverberated with that before. He tilted the headache cure up and lost himself in the high pitched ringing of the liquid sloshing around in the neck of the bottle.
She sounded like she was pretty upset and as he got close enough he finally saw her, curled up on the floor like a baby, face pressed to the ground. He considered simply walking past her. This was also not an unusual sight and who knew why she was upset. Someone could have hurt her or maybe her BFF was kissing the wrong guy. And maybe she had gotten hold of some bad product and thought her earlobes were melting.
Still, he knew that if he just stepped over, it would be one more self-inflicted wound to his character. He couldn’t just ignore her.
“Hey,” he reached down to place his fingertips on her exposed shoulder.
Her skin was cool and clammy to the touch and she jumped at the feel of his. Her breath hitched up in her chest as she seemed to crouch even lower, as if trying to get away from him by scrambling backwards.
“Hey, wait,” he said again, “don’t worry, you’re not—”
“Get…” She started to speak but her voice seemed to crack and dissolve before she regrouped and started again. “Get… OUT!” This last was uttered so loudly that the sound of it echoed up and down the corridor, so much that he wondered if the band could actually hear it. Her head snapped up and the visage before him made him stumble backwards.
“Christ!” he said as the bottle slipped from his hand.
“OUT!” She screamed again. Where her eyes should have been were instead two gaping holes, filling with some kind of thick, viscous liquid. As she screamed, her mouth opened, revealing a row of teeth that looked like they should have been in the mouth of a shark. Her mouth continued to open until nearly twice as large as it should have been. The volume of her voice rose in pitch as he staggered back, feeling a hot wind blowing over him.
Drew blinked, realizing that he had fallen down and was now looking up from a sitting position as the thing charged him, sickeningly fast. Before he could react, she was on him, swatting at his outstretched hands and lunging for his throat, teeth gleaming in the low light.
“What in the—” he couldn’t even finish the thought as he braced against her hurtling shape, trying to shove her up and away. She snapped at him like an animal and he could already see streaks of blood on his arms where her teeth had met their mark. The music continued to pulse around him, oblivious to what was happening just off stage. He tried to push himself down the corridor a little more, where the drummer might be able to see him if he ever actually looked up. But he could get nowhere, pinned to the floor.
The thing wearing the woman’s body screamed again, leaning down so far that they were almost nose to nose. His arms were on fire as he shoved again, feeling the thing move ever so slightly. It started to drool as it lunged for him.
His first thought has been drugs, that this woman was out of her skull on something, bad shit passed along by some back alley kid who didn’t know his ass from the waste dump valve on an RV. Now that the thing was on top of him and he had the feel of it, the weight of it, he could tell there was something materially wrong. It wasn’t some drug making her into something different.
He didn’t think she was human at all.
The skin felt like plastic, rubber stretched out over a skeletal face. It felt lifeless, like a mannequin. He looked up into her eyes and saw no sign of any kind of conscious thought there, no calculation or reason. All he saw was emotion, pure and uncontrollable rage. It was as if Drew had become the personification of every evil to this thing and was now the target of her need for violence.
Drew tried to get clear enough to roll out from underneath but just as he started to slide away, he felt something clamp down on his ankles and savagely pull him back. He grabbed at a nearby pillar to try and keep away, crying out as two of his fingers bent back from the effort.
The figure of the girl swelled above him, expanded until all he could see over him was the massive face, the mouth and the teeth snapping for him. He could feel the strength ebbing from his arms and knew that they were close to giving in.
And she was gone.
Drew felt his mouth drop open as the immense pressure abruptly lifted. The girl was gone, leaving him lying on his back in the darkened hallway, the thumping of the bass highlighting the world’s ignorance to what had just happened.
He staggered out into the street, no thought spared for the squadron of entitled assholes he left behind. He didn’t even care if this ended up irreparably damaging his reputation professionally. That was more than he had signed up for.
As he staggered out, he passed a makeshift stand on the sidewalk, near the entrance to the club. He had seen it earlier and had mistaken for someone selling trinkets to tourists. This time, he stopped. The kid looked barely old enough to vote, and was handing out fliers protesting the club, the violence that had happened there. Drew looked over a panel of black-and-white photos, victims over the years of the drunken assholes that inhabited this particular place.
He recognized her immediately. Her picture was right in the middle of the page.
Killed three years ago.
Drew felt all the booze starting to hurtle back up from where he had left it and he stumbled on, hand pressed to his mouth. It didn’t take long to get back to his room. One advantage of working with cheapskates, the shitty clubs were usually pretty close to the shitty hotels.
Dropping onto the pathetic excuse for a chair, he leaned back and closed his eyes. It was stupid. The whole thing was crazy. Impossible. It was a good thing he kept another stash of booze here to replace the bottle he had dropped.
He was about to stand when he felt the presence behind him. He didn’t even have to look, could feel the truth in the cold sensation on his skin. The floor creaked as the thing leaned over him, eyes ablaze. He could feel the rage baking off of her and he closed his eyes, doing everything he could to ignore the hot stink of that eager, questing breath.
