The Metastasised Spirits

The night shrieks like a banshee on the moor. It calls my name, over, and over again. Hands stretch like twisted branches into the sweat-fuelled air. Faces squash and scramble, creating a concoction of a mass amalgamated entity. My guitar screeches and swirls through the ears of the damned, it signals the end of the world.

My bandmates are demons, no longer wishing for the desire of a promised land. My hair... appendages that wrap themselves around my drenched face. There is a swelling in the air that the instruments obnoxiously push outwards to an unkempt crowd, begging for them to upheave as if we were gods. I scream out into the crowd:

‘Do you love your guns, your god, and your government?!’

In unison, as the sweat beads and drips down their trivial bodies, they begin to chant. My guitar creates a distorted feedback loop as it drones through the amplifiers, building a world of foreboding damnation before me. I notice a woman from the crowd staring at me with eyes that funnel eternity. She’s probably off her face on something manufactured behind the walls of a clandestine sweatshop. I down my bourbon and spit it out towards the crowd, many of which with their mouths open, catching the tainted spirits as they consume the recycled product. As the last note of the final song fades away, I vanish from the stage like a bad magicians act, disappearing downstairs without muttering a single word.

Fans call to me as if I were some messiah, but I do not heed them, for the only thing I can hear calling me is the sour end of that whiskey in my hands. I sit backstage, the demons begin their transition back into moulded angels with chiselled jawlines and fractured spirits. A knock resounds through my door.

‘Fuck off!’ I yell as whiskey comes spewing out my mouth. They know better than to disturb me, we’ve been through this before. She walks in. Long blonde hair as vibrant as Jupiter’s storm clouds. I do not know this woman, yet somehow I do. The one from the crowd, the one whom I thought to be from a renaissance painting with her vacant stares and discombobulation.

‘Great show tonight.’ She purrs as her long legs act as a turnstile towards me.

‘Why are you here? I don’t do autographs.’ I respond. She walks around the room, touching everything that is not hers, stroking anything that may look the slightest bit phallic. She leans in with a smile that would make kings shudder.

‘I think you know why I’m here.’ She responds, brushing my leg with nails that feel all too wicked.

‘I don’t fuck fans either.’ I harshly respond as I down more fire.

‘But the fans fuck you, don’t they?’ She asks. I roll my eyes.

‘They don’t get you… they never have.’ She states. ‘All that rage in you… you wish to build empires, yet they have no desire to follow your stead. They just wanna headbang and lose themselves to the sonic assault with which you present to them.’ I gaze into her everchanging eyes, she brings forth the resentment toward an unhearing crowd that I have tucked away long ago.

‘Build them? I want to dismantle empires…’ I reply. ‘All these years and not a single soul has truly grasped what I’ve sought out to do.’

‘Masses want to be entertained, not confronted.’ She says as she leans towards me. ‘They want to be sedated. Anything else is too much to handle. They are apathetic to what goes on around them, because they know nothing will come from their frantic antics.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ I respond after I scoff. She lures me in with her arms, bringing me in like I was nothing to her. Her stare is something caustic, like a forbidden element forgotten to be placed on the periodic table. I’m too drunk to care... but I could have sworn there was something behind those eyes of hers... something otherworldly, and I don’t mean that in the corny way, I mean in the sense of cosmic dread, like aeons are tearing themselves apart.

‘Do you believe in the afterlife?’ She asks me. A slight breeze pulses through my veins.

‘I believe energy is transformed somehow, and that nothing is ever truly gone.’ I respond. ‘Dead leaves dissolve into the soil to create nourishment, food turns to shit and lays dormant in a sewer, and bodies recycle themselves to nature, leaving the energy within to traverse through someplace no one knows properly exists.’

‘Did you get that from a fortune cookie?’ She asks, smirking.

‘Cereal box, actually.’ I respond. She grins cheekily, biting her lip.

‘And yet, here you are, Mr. Self-Destruct. Your wallowing is a product brought in through repressed thoughts beaten to submission. I feel all you rockstars share this theme. You all want to be heard, but seldom ever are. So, you retreat to a world of debauchery, a world where you can control your own destinies.’ The woman says, somehow seductively, pulling out a bag that I assume to be drugs from her cleavage.

‘So who are you anyway?’ I raise the concern, pushing myself away from her slightly. She doesn’t say anything, at least verbally anyway. No, she talks to me without talking, it is as if I knew all about this woman just from that split second of staring into her eyes.

‘Who I am is not important.’ She mutters into my ear. ‘For all you know I’m a descended angel here to deliver you the night of your life, or some deranged schizo that just so happens to be seducing you whilst rambling about your fans.’

‘So, which is it?’ I ask as we gravitate towards each other.

‘Someone with a helluva lot of drugs to share with you.’ She responds. Suddenly, the door swings open. All my bandmates begin crowding in with their instruments on their backs, heavy with expressions of weariness. The woman’s head jolts towards them, her face still maintaining her irreverence.

‘You’ve done it… it’s finally happened.’ My bassist says.

‘Done what?’ I ask.

‘Incited a fucking riot.’ My bassist continues. ‘All that talk of burning down churches, you’ve gotten what you wanted. The media is outside, they want your fucking head.’

‘No shit?’ I respond, my eyes sparking interest.

‘Yes. And you know what, man? I quit.’ My bassist continues, throwing his instrument towards the ground dramatically. ‘I just wanted to play some fucking music, man… not start shit.’

‘Of course you did.’ Says the woman next to me.

‘Yeah, look, fuck this shit. I’m outta here too.’ My drummer says. ‘We can’t let him keep getting away with this attitude. He’s a fucking sociopath who uses us to translate his fucked up messages of dismantling the status quo to the world and couldn’t give a shit about any of us. We get it, you’re edgy, you’re a rockstar… it’s just so overplayed, man. I’m done with it; you can’t treat people the way you do. Someday something is gonna get to you, man.’ He continues as he storms out of the room, throwing his drumsticks towards my head. I brush the damn things away from me, the woman beside me looks even more tantalised.

‘Anyone else care to have a hissy fit?’ I respond, blatantly.

‘You’re a fucking asshole.’ My rhythm guitarist spews. They all leave, slamming the door behind them, rattling the buildings foundations with it.

‘They bore me.’ The woman responds apathetically, jerking her head back towards me.

‘People are just inherently boring. The dramas, the worries, the self-righteousness. I can’t believe someone out there in my audience truly listened though. I’m actually excited for once.’ I respond as the woman spreads the dusty substance over her tits. I have never seen any drug like this before, it looks like cocaine would if it came out a unicorns ass.

‘Sometimes I wish we would have another great flood, don’t you?’ she asks me, blankly staring into my eyes.

‘Asteroid would be way cooler.’ I respond as I begin inhaling the drug off her perfect bosom. It hits me like a blow from a heavy-weight boxer, I feel as if I can walk on clouds. I feel as if I can destroy foundations. I feel as if I was made from clay and forged through fire. I feel like dismantling an empire.

She reels me in like an angler fish at the bottom of the abyss. The room spins through a night of lights, a carousel from some deranged carnival. Her sounds are visceral, performing operations on my dopamine receptors. We entwine, the two of us. This is ecstasy, if only the synthetic kind. Her skin presses against mine, her body heaves and cranes as her moans permeate the dense air. We make history. The night goes by quickly, and there is now a wind brushing up against my face.

*

The silky skin I once felt against me has now transitioned into wind that wields a cat o’ nine tails. My back is sore, and I have now noticed I am completely naked within a wasteland. There is a number seared on my chest and a sky above that looks like it was deserted long ago. Everything hurts. Seriously, where the fuck am I? Where is that woman? My mind is racing, I’m going to blame all of this on the high, although this is unlike anything I have ever experienced… and I’ve taken just about everything known to mankind. I pick myself up from the sandy ground, groaning as I rise like some creature that has been awoken from its thousand-year slumber. I cough, the sky cracks above my head. I can see mountains in the distance with looming red and orange storm clouds that roll through them. Other than the mountains, there is nothing but sand and salt plains as far as the eye can see. The number on my chest, it reads ’1123’, in all its blackened scarred glory.

The sky cracks and bellows like a collapsing building before me, opening up like something was about to spew through from it. I hear the sound of distant screaming sweep through the darkened wasteland, a stream of what looks like tentacles begins to pick people up in the distance, all yelling and flailing as whatever this thing is consumes them. This is some far out shit, but I’m not one prone to panicking. Afterall, I am merely high right now. The ground begins to shake beneath me, raising the sand into the air as something groans underneath it. Something is racing towards me. The sounds of this thing... it is as if a horse’s vocal cords were fused with a man ridden of his wife and dog, even then am I struggling to narrow it down to something known. I decide the best thing to do right now is to run. I run as fast as I can, out towards the big nothing, away from the rampant beast and strange creature collecting people near the mountains. My agility feels heightened, I am running faster than a human should be able to run, and the wind still burns against my face. The beast chasing me retreats and begins to head towards the mountains. Perhaps it wasn’t coming for me after all? I call out to the woman who drugged me, fuck… what was her name? Did I even ask for it? Nobody responds, nobody except for the echo of my voice that seems to swell around me somehow. I call out again, but I am responded only with the sounds of thunder and distant screaming. A tinge of fear begins to rise within me, from my amygdala down to my toes. Is this Hell? Fuck, I seem to be panicking a little bit now.

‘You!’ a voice calls out from behind me, ‘Over here!’ The sound of a woman, but not the one that brought me here. I turn around to see a group of five people on motorcycles, all clothed, masked, and pointing guns towards me. How did I not hear the engines? I walk towards them.

‘Hol’ on there, buddy.’ The woman that called out to me says as she aims her sniper towards my head. ‘You a Drainer?’ She asks.

‘Sorry, what?’ I question.

‘Fuckin’ Drainer, you deaf?’ She bellows, her voice matured and cracked.

’I have no idea what a ‘Drainer’ is, I’m just tripping on something a woman gave me.’ I respond. A man from the group begins to laugh, his laughter aged like wine.

‘Yeah, he ain’t no Drainer. He’s a newbie.’ He says as he aims his gun down.

‘A newbie?’ I ask, beginning to walk towards them again. The mature woman grabs a towel from behind her large motorcycle and throws it to me.

‘No easy way to say it, kid, but yer dead.’ She says, taking her helmet and facemask off. Fuck, she’s old.

‘Seriously?’ I respond.

‘Seriously.’ The woman says. ‘Now wrap that goddamn towel aroun’ yer pecker.’ I listen to her, wrapping the dingy towel around my lower half. A million thoughts rush through my head all at once. I should be frightened; I should be panicking… but all I feel is a weight off my shoulders. Finally, I’m somewhere far from a world that has fallen from grace that was never even there to begin with, even if it is some barren hellscape filled with monsters.

‘You gon’ freak?’ a younger man asks me.

‘So, is this Hell or what?’ I ask, nonchalantly.

‘He ain’t freakin’…’ the younger man says.

‘Good, it’s a waste of time anyway.’ The woman in charge responds. ‘No, this ain’t Hell, nor is it Heaven, though the two do exist. Yer a god, just like the rest of us.’

‘Well… were gods.’ The younger man says.

‘I was a fucking god and no one ever told me?’ I ask.

‘Come on…’ the other elderly woman says. ‘you knew you were, don’t fool around.’

‘Look… all yer life you knew you were somethin’ greater, huh? Somethin’ above all humankind.’ The woman in charge says. ‘We gods all got that narcissism in us, we all wanna shove humanity into different directions. It’s our schtick.’

‘None listen though, gahdamn arrogant bottom-feedin’ parasites.’ Another man adds.

‘This is where gods go to die, a graveyard of sorts.’ The woman in charge says. ‘We exist here because we can no longer exist with humans. That thing in the sky there collects us, that’s all we know, and we’re all tryin’ to survive out here. But this shit ain’t no cakewalk, son.’ My face goes numb. I have nothing to say right now.

‘So, you comin’ or what?’ The younger man asks me, spitting to the side as he does.

‘Where the fuck else would I go?’ I respond, painting a smirk across my face as I shrug to his question. I briskly walk towards the woman in charge and hop behind her as we all begin to take off within this wasteland as something chases us. The sky above shifts and whirls, the motorcycles roar like untamed fiends, and I am left clinging to the back of a god, knowing that I too am a god, now stuck in a wasteland trying to survive with other gods with nothing but a towel wrapped around my cock. A towel, and a number seared into my flesh. Such is life.