ooc: in the first person of Billy, Failed Youth
The sound of the crowd vibrated all around my head. Tom had already taken to the stage, and was slamming down his wooden sticks so hard I thought they’d snap in two. Every bang on the bass drum sent my brain spinning. Everything was shaking around, jittering. There was a strange green tinge on everything, as it seemed to be swirling in front of me, almost like water down a drain. It swirled and it swirled but it never moved. It was there, almost like the world around me was all fake. Nothing was real, I was real, and nothing else was though. Everything else was born from my sick little imagination. Would be right though wouldn’t it. Everything was just in my imagination. Nothing could be real could it, especially those around me, who is around me? I realised that I’d murmured that myself, out of my mouth, rather than through my brain. Like some sort of strange dance move I swayed back and forth on the spot, fixed on the drums, as the lights flashed on and off. There was a delay. The lights would flash and a second later Tom would crash on the drums. Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? Weird. I felt a shove on my shoulder, and spun on the spot to see the Monster looking at me. He told me to get the fuck on the stage. Why does the monster have to tell me what to do? No one tells me what to do. Everyone’s fake, no one actually matters in real life. What is real life anyway? This is no life. I’m an experiment. People are watching me. Something’s watching me, I know it is. I think it’s the Monster. I can feel his eyes burning into my neck like a hawk, looking at me like it would its prey. Like some sort of teleportation device, suddenly I found myself on the stage. Everyone was screaming. Why must they scream? I’m the one who’s meant to scream. I scream. That’s what I do. That’s what I do best. So I did, I did scream. I screamed down the microphone but then they screamed back. Like eyes of a spider they sat, gargling for more. I could see down the throats of most of them. God how I’d like to shove this fucking mic down it. That would stop them screaming. So I decide now, scream louder. Fucking scream louder. Scream until their ears bleed. I looked down at the sheet on the floor by my feet. It was weird, the lines were blurred but I could make out some kind of set list.
Snap out of it Billy, I thought to myself. This is your moment you fucktard. Wake up. So I did. I picked the liquid from my feet and chucked it all over my face. It felt good, and it did wake me. I was more alert; now the spider eyes wanted it more and more. I could see them, begging for it. Begging for me. I heard behind me Tom crash on the drums. Boom, boom, twaaaaaaaang. The Monster started playing the cute little opening riff for God Bless the Doorman. It wasn’t cute. It was a fucking beast, an animal I had to tame. A wild boar I had to control with my wailing. I had to rip it’s head off and feed its to its mother. So I screamed the lyrics like a kind of meditation. The words sounded strange and funny but the spider was grinning like a fucking idiot and so was the Monster in his strange, ugly way, so it was okay. They came, clear as day. Like lights being turned on all around me. Being shone on all the dark parts, they just came. As much of an instinct as shitting, they come flooding out of my like I’d just eaten a messed up curry. They sounded beautiful now, just beautiful. They came and they came and everyone just wanted more and more. As it got the chorus, I through my head all around. Fuck it if it didn’t sound good, I’m in the zone. The spider cries for more, and I cry back, I cry back the words and I cry them good. I cry them out like a baby crying for tit. They came and they came like ice cold droplets of salty water coming from my bunged up eyes. I bleed; I bleed like a pretty little suicide. All the blood gushing out of me, out my mouth. Crimson and beautiful, sick and violent. It comes like magic dust, gushing and washing over like I was being blessed. I was being blessed. Baptism by fire. It sounded sick, fucking sick, but they loved it. As the Monster played the notes on his guitar, I slammed my foot on the floor until it stung like a hornet. Again I was teleported. It went black and then white, the song had finished and Tom was smacking his drums again, waiting for me to begin singing the opening lines to Corporation Terrorism. I looked around, everyone was smiling, everyone was happy. Boy dun good.
Bang bang bang. The drums went. I counted myself in and started at the spider as I howled the song out, like a crying wolf. Angry and hungry for more. It went on and on, the howling, the wolf. It erupted from the back of my through and stood in front of me, growling and wailing at the spider. The spider bit back, spitting a vile concoction of poison at the wolf. It jabbed and it grabbed, the wolf getting weaker and weaker as the poison soaked into its veins. No, no. Fight wolf. The starving wolf, shoulders protruding from its broken body, fought back. It bit and it snapped and it teared it up. It left it in tatters, the eyes bleeding blood from their destroyed pupils. The wolf howled with victory, but the spider wasn’t finished yet. As a last attack, it bit out, it attacks and it pounced, leaping onto the wolf like a flea. It bit in and it bit and it bit. More and more poison. This time the wolf looked near dead, it yelled and cried out in pain, and the cries were heard. Out came more, the pack, the pack of wolves. Each one starving and bleeding. Each one broken and in pain, but each one ganged up and it viciously cut the spider, and the dying wolf. It lay broken as it’s brothers bit into its crippled neck in an attempt to kill the spider. It carried on, ripping and ripping, the battle waged on for what seemed hours. Eventually, when the first wolf was just a bloody maimed carcass, the others seemed satisfied. They left, hunger quenched, and leapt back up inside my throat. They clambered in, one after one. Each one cutting into my voice box with their claws. Once inside, they sat inside their lair. I turned to see the monster, his smile almost reaching to the ceiling. It stood on its hind legs, begging for one more from me. And so I screamed. I screamed the question. One word. MORE? I turned to see that where the spider had hung it had now been replaced by a bull, a raging bull. Once again, as I sung the opening words to Unhinged, I was transported to a huge ring, a bullring. I spun around to see the crowd, staring down at me, each one as sick looking as the next. The bulbous, bleeding, bloodshot eyes burned right through me as the Monster’s had. Their faces, crushed, bruised, cut. Torn. Through their ripped cheeks the muscles worked on as they bayed for blood, as the ugly black bull stared angrily at me. I stared back; eyeball to eyeball we raised our backs and got ready for action. It pawed at the blood red sand, soaked from a hundred dead before me. It’s veins pushed out of its sickeningly muscle clad arms. It’s horns twinkled in the burning sunlight, the point of them almost fading into the colour of the sand. Saliva dripped from it’s mouth. It charged, fuming, livid, at me. I dodged to the left and stabbed out with my spear but missed by mere inches, scratching it’s ass. I could smell blood, and it knew it. The crowd pumped louder and louder, to the tune of my heart beat. To the tune of the bulls, as well. The two merged together, until we were virtually one. To defeat this beast I was to destroy myself, so it would be.
Again, it charged, this time double speed. Heading for, eyes insane with anger and lust for my guts to be strewn across the floor. I leapt to the side, landing face first in the sand, particles flying up into my eyes. I stood up, the sand sticking to my saliva covered cheeks. The bull went past me, I felt the air brush fast my bare, blood stained feet. I reached for my spear and stabbed deep into it’s neck. I stabbed and I stabbed and I fucking stabbed again, molesting the creature’s body until it was a bloody wreck. I stood back; the crowd were closing in on me, their eyes burst into pieces with the shock, drenching the coliseum with more blood. I looked at my blood stained hands and jumped high, high up into the air. Until I left the atmosphere, flying through the thin nothingness that was space. It crushed and it crushed, I could feel the pressure on my skull. Still I carried on, heading for the inferno that was the sun. It burned and it burned and it burned, tearing the flesh off of me until my eyes were pressed back into my brain, exploding. The flames engulfed me, burning me to infinity.
Black.
