We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

by Paula D. Ashe

The lead singer’s voice was some abominably beautiful blend of a shriek and a growl. I couldn’t understand a word but the intensity of the lyrics were clear. In addition to his anguished cries, he played guitar with a rapidity that seemed inhuman. The other guitarist to his left was thrashing his hair in violent cadence with the sonic assault, brutalizing the fretboard and the audience. To the singer’s right was the bassist. I have never been impressed by that particular instrument or its players, but that night I understood their crucial role. Each note was a drop of dark matter that reverberated into my marrow. Every flick of the strings felt like a bullet pummeling my pounding heart. The drummer was monstrous. His limbs blurred and when the weak light caught the reflective surface of a trembling cymbal I saw the beast behind the man. Ivory teeth, anthracite eyes, a snarling snout, and a hunger that blazed hotter than one-thousand hells. And I knew. Annia of Naples; the wandering witch, the Dionysian priestess who brought a Bacchanal so brutal it almost toppled Rome; she who danced barefoot in the still hot ashes of massacred children in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, my origin, myself untouched by even Moloch, she knew it too. Had it not been for the centuries of sleeping in catacombs, sepulchers, and mausoleum vaults to escape vengeful mobs of priests and politicians, I would have incinerated every single person in that filthy bar save the man behind the drum kit. Instead, ...