I Want My Hobbies Back

VERSE 1

Laying in bed staring into outer space

No life in my eyes, ‘cause the life went to waste

Lips are too heavy to lift for a smile

Haven’t left the bed for a long-ass while

Arm is too weak to give the cat pettings

Only reason to get up is to avoid bedwetting

This would be a hell of a time for a hobby

But my brain is soup, primordial and sloppy

 

VERSE 2

Every song I listen to has an extra singer

One blasting the lyrics, one pointing the fingers

Call me every slur that’s ever been used

By every abuser who was once abused

Every story I write has an extra villain

That genocides my joy, laughs at the killing

Every videogame that I’ve tried to beat

Hit the Game Over screen looped on repeat

 

CHORUS

I want my hobbies back

I feel like I’m on crack

An LSD flashback

A poisoned bottle of Jack

I never touched the drugs

My brain don’t give a fuck

I’m high as hell anyway

Pretty much every day

 

VERSE 3

My dopamine supply is always running dry

Yet I couldn’t get a tear to drop from my eyes

Porn addiction is my only prescription

To medicate myself in this world called hell

Refraction periods are overrated

When a million orgasms leave you sedated

Couldn’t get real sex with my personality

It drained away with my social battery

 

CHORUS X2

I want my hobbies back

I feel like I’m on crack

An LSD flashback

A poisoned bottle of Jack

I never touched the drugs

My brain don’t give a fuck

I’m high as hell anyway

Pretty much every day

 

OUTRO

You couldn’t call it highway robbery

Too fucked up to drive, mental sodomy

All my potential stolen without a reason

Food for thought rotted before it was eaten

I was too threatening to the new world order

Because how dare my heart break for kids dead at the border?!

How dare my soul hurt for children raped by priests?!

How dare I ask for fairness and justice for the weak?!

Make It Stop

It seemed like the world’s cruelest April Fools joke to live every day in a place like Meat Grinder City…except April Fools wasn’t just limited to one day of the year. At least the flames around the buildings and streets weren’t as tall as they once were. At least the sausage puppets walked normally down the sidewalks instead of jiggling around like lynched corpses. 

When their cyclopean eyes popping out of their mouths gazed harshly into Joel Upton’s soul, the sensation was only mildly chilling across his already sour stomach. He pulled the hood up on his thick rain jacket and tried not to draw too much attention to himself. Then again, he was already under this unforgiving city’s microscope as someone with no permanent residence outside of a garbage dumpster here and there. The smell wouldn’t come off no matter how hard it rained.

It wasn’t the sausage puppets walking past him that set Joel Upton’s brain on fire. It wasn’t the smaller-by-comparison fires that jolted his brain like a paper clip in a light socket. It was that laugh. That deep, throaty, horny laugh from behind that caused his heart to pump intolerably fast. The only breaths Joel could muster reeked of dumpster residue and rancid ashes. He slowly turned around and his worst tormenter towered over him as though Joel was dog shit underneath somebody’s shoe.

He almost snapped his own neck in half just to gaze upwards into the heartless eyes of Chainsaw Fist, a bulky, piss-stinking ogre with a metal jaw, an apron covered in blood, a necklace pieced together with skulls and intestines, and of course, a chainsaw/drill combination that just had to constantly be on fire in order to solidify the overkill of Meat Grinder City.

“Make it stop,” Joel whimpered. “Somebody please make it stop…”

Chainsaw Fist bellowed so hard that his garbage breath almost bowled his victim over. “Nobody’s going to make it stop, you weak little piss stain! Your writing career was a joke from the start! Nobody loves you, not even your own family! Why don’t you just quit like a little bitch!” He revved his flaming chainsaw. “I will make you tap out one way or another, you slimy sack of whale shit!”

Joel didn’t even have time to react before Chainsaw Fist tackled him to the ground and drilled his weapon into his victim’s gut, releasing a tidal wave of blood and spiritual energy. The sausage puppets drank the vile fluids like dogs lapping up garden hose water. The volcano of blood just wouldn’t stop. It kept exploding and destroying everything in its path. The spirits flying out of that festering wound laughed at Joel the entire time. And then…

“You’re weird,” said a little girl holding onto her father’s hand. The father mildly reprimanded her before the two of them left a writhing and screaming Joel to his devices. And just like that, Meat Grinder City was Seattle. Ordinary, urban Seattle with rainy weather, urban sprawl, and non-sausage puppet citizens wondering what the hell was wrong with Joel.

Having snapped back to reality, Joel rolled over onto his knees and frantically searched his raincoat, pulling a broken needle out of his breast pocket. “No…no, no, no…” he whined to himself. “I need more…where is that goddamn pharmacy?” He searched his coat again, this time for money, but all he could muster up were a few pennies and some broken lug nuts. “Make it stop…just someone please make it stop…”

The rain came down so hard upon Joel’s back that he flinched in pain. And there was his answer: they weren’t rain drops. They were scorpion tails. “Not again.” Scorpion tails continued to pound and stab him before he was thrust right back into Meat Grinder City, the flames around the buildings bursting sky high while the cutest of cute kids jiggled around like the sausage puppets they really were.

A familiar beefy hand pulled back Joel’s hood and slashed his skull open, laughing like a demonic pervert yet again. Once his brain was exposed for the whole world to see, the scorpion tails morphed into little gray kobolds with blade-like fingernails and childish cackles. They laughed and hee-hawed as they jumped into Joel’s head wound and started bouncing around behind his face. The headache was so intense that he covered his eyes out of fear of them popping out. They did anyways, but not without snake tentacles holding them in their mouths.

“Give up your career, you waste of shit and piss!” Chainsaw Fist roared. “This world hates you! Hell doesn’t want you! Heaven is disgusted by you! You’re a fuck-up of the very worst kind! You deserve to die like the pile of diarrhea that you are!”

“STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE! MAKE IT STOP!” Joel screeched, holding his aching head while the snakes and kobolds partied in his brain.

“You want to quit, you little bastard! Do you want to quit! Then quit like the little bitch baby you are! Tap out!”

The kobolds, sausage puppets, snakes, and Chainsaw Fist himself formed a circle around Joel and chanted for him to quit. The flames of Meat Grinder City grew to their maximum limit and caused Joel to suffocate on the ashes. Chainsaw Fist continued to slash and murder his lone victim. The kobolds made incoherent jokes about his suffering and laughed like hyenas on crack.

“…I quit…”

“I’m sorry, what was that? What did you say, you little cum guzzler?!”

“I QUIT! I QUIT, I QUIT, I QUIT!”

Joel’s broken body could finally relax even though he ached literally everywhere, even in places outside of his flesh suit.

“Wow…you really are pathetic, Joel. You really are the weakest bastard I’ve ever met. Let’s go, quitter!” Chainsaw Fist wrapped his intestinal necklace around Joel’s throat and dragged his exhaustively bloody body across the ashen cement. He was too destroyed to care. He had lived in Meat Grinder City for far too long. There were several moments during his homelessness where he could have quit. He wanted to believe there was still life left in him. But if there was, he’d put up at least a little bit of a struggle against his worst critic.

“You can’t quit mental illness, Mr. Upton,” said a throaty, yet gentle voice that belonged to a hairy demon with spikes all over his body. The room Joel found himself in was still covered in flames. But these were warm flames that glowed like an outdoor campfire. They hurt like hell. They burned down the last of his brain cells. But even in Meat Grinder City’s loneliest prison cell, Joel knew he could relax.

Then again, he had no choice since he was chained to a wooden table. He also had his head shaved and a metal helmet strapped to his naked scalp. The furry demon used his talon to jot down a few notes in his wizard’s spell book. “You probably don’t believe me right now, but this is the safest place you can be. The streets should be nobody’s home.”

Entering the prison cell were three porcelain mannequins, all of which had snakes growing out of their heads. One of them had muscles etched into his torso, another had the feminine features of a Greek goddess, and the third was a child no taller than an average human’s waist. The woman’s sweet voice struck a familiar chord with Joel. “Everything will be okay, honey. We still love you.”

Tears welled up in Joel’s already bloodshot and battered eyes. “Wendy? Is that you?” The face of the woman he fell in love with all those years ago formed behind her gorgon façade. And then the face of his daughter broke free from porcelain permanence. But who was this strange man who accompanied them?

Wendy held Joel’s hand while the snakes in her hair smiled at him. “You’ve been gone for so long ever since you had your breakdown. We never forgot about you. Yes, I have remarried, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore. I was so worried about you. Our daughter had nightmares.” The snakes wrapped around Joel for a hug. And then the daughter’s snakes wrapped around his legs. And the new husband’s snakes gave him the warmest grins.

“Wendy…I’m so sorry I didn’t seek help earlier. I didn’t want to quit what I poured my heart into for so long. I was so obsessed that it drove me insane…All I had to do was quit…”

“You don’t have to be strong anymore,” said Wendy with tears in her own eyes. “It’s okay to quit when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Nobody’s ashamed of you.”

“But what about those jerks on the street who laughed at me?” asked Joel through a stuffy nose.

“Fuck ‘em” said the new husband, which earned a round of laughter from everybody in the room.

Wendy and the daughter broke their embraces. The gorgon mother of his child said, “We’ll visit you for as long as we need to. If you need anything, we’re always a skip and a hop away.” She kissed her palm and waved goodbye, the daughter waving as well while the husband gave a thumbs up.

Joel’s tears accumulated as he watched his old family walk away, leaving the hair-covered demon doctor to do his duty. He pulled a snake fang out of his fur and attached it to a miniature spinning chainsaw. “You desperately need a vacation from your mind, Mr. Upton. And when you awaken, we can try some cognitive behavioral therapy. But for now…relax…and enjoy the darkness…”

Joel didn’t even try to fight the injection into his arm despite the fact that the needle resembled Chainsaw Fist’s favorite toy. Fire and poison flowed through his body, but they were just formalities to a much-needed vacation from a schizophrenic mind. He switched between Meat Grinder City and the psychiatric ward of the Seattle hospital while simultaneously drifting off into sleep. The furry monster became a friendly old man before morphing back into his nightmarish form. 

Back…and forth…back…and forth…the transformations resembled the motion of a baby in his mother’s arms…back…and forth…back…and forth…until darkness and snoring were all that remained of Meat Grinder City. Joel’s snoring did sound like a revving chainsaw, but that nasty ogre was nowhere to be found in such a black void of relaxation. No dreams. No hallucinations. Just hours of nothing. Getting lost in the nothing was a better vacation than Hawaiian beaches or Canadian architecture, both of which would have burst into flames anyways.

Silent Warrior, Final Chapter

“Good morning to you…good morning to you…good morning, dear Alan…”

“G…g…good morning to you!”

“Alan, why are you so sad?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sad? This isn’t good morning. It’s fucking dark in here, Ally! I don’t see any sunshine! I don’t hear any cock-a-doodle-doos! Instead all I hear are screams. It could be another prisoner screaming in pain. It could be a guard screaming bullshit instructions. Or it could be me screaming ‘cause I’m constantly in fucking pain! Why, Ally? Why all the worms and maggots?”

“I’m a biologist. I deal with such creatures on a daily basis. I’m not going to just sacrifice my life’s work because you find earth’s critters disgusting. Everything in this world has its own special place. It could be a bat eating mosquitoes. It could be a pack of wolves hunting down deer. It could even be something as natural as a mother bird regurgitating worms into her babies’ beaks.”

“Cut the bullshit! You know how disgusting you really are! Scott had it right all along and I didn’t listen to him! He’s got more common sense than the two of us put together!”

“Don’t you talk to me that way, little boy! If I wasn’t a hallucination, I’d wash your chubby mouth out with soap! I left Scott George on his own for the same reason I left his father Carter. They rejected me, just like you’re rejecting me now. I tried to keep the peace between you and Scott. I even showed up at his trial to put in the best possible word for you. But you threw that all away when you tried to stab him in your cell. Now you’re in the darkest part of jail and you’ve no one to blame but yourself!”

“It should be Scott in this room, not me!”

“Then prove it, Alan! Scott became the man he is today because he fought for everything he believed in whether it was right or wrong. Now’s your time to fight. You may be under lock and key, but your war with Scott is far from over. As long as your mind continues to destroy you from the inside, you have all the reason in the world to fight. You don’t want these images and words, do you? Forget the worms and maggots for a minute. Your real enemy isn’t anything that can be found in the animal kingdom. It’s your own weakness!”

“Weakness? I’ve been beating ass since the day I was born and you have the gall to call me weak? What about all the crybabies on the playground who threw a fit because they couldn’t hang with me? What about all the teachers who care more about precious self-esteem than they do about the real world? Why aren’t you calling them weak?”

“Because they’re not weak, Alan. They have the kind of strength you could only dream of having: strength in numbers. You’re only one man trying to fight an entire world. But if Mr. Simpson has taught you anything, it’s to pick apart the army one soldier at a time. Mr. Simpson may have softened over this long exhausting semester, but that doesn’t mean you have to. I want you to take every ounce of your insanity and use it as a weapon. Fists alone have achieved nothing.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in solitary confinement! You even said yourself you’re a fucking hallucination! Who am I supposed to use this weapon on? There’s nobody here with me! Even the guards have tuned me out, for Christ’s sake!”

“You can’t stay in solitary confinement forever, Alan. Even the strictest prosecutors know this to be true. For what you did, you won’t even be in jail forever. You may be a destructive bastard, but you’ve never once murdered another human being. Implanting suicidal thoughts in someone else doesn’t count. I’m talking about the worst kind of murder there is. I’m talking about animalistic rage that can only be forged in darkness like this. Channel that rage and don’t let the world get away with locking you up like this!”

“…You want me to survive this place…by beating the shit out of everyone here? You want me to find my exit by pushing around people more powerful than me?”

“This isn’t the sandbox, Alan. This is jail. If you don’t stand up for yourself here, nobody else will. The guards aren’t here for your protection. They’re here to make sure you conform. They’re here to use you as a punching bag whenever they damn well feel like it. You’re not going to let that happen, are you?”

“…Never…I never wanted to be a part of society…I never wanted to follow anyone’s rules…Why should these assholes in uniform be any different? Is it because they have keys? Is it because they have so-called training? Is it because they’re tougher than me?! I don’t fucking think so!”

“Good! That’s what I want to hear from you! That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from you since I married your father! Nobody pushes my baby around! And when I say baby, I’m not talking about that ungrateful snake Scott! I’m talking about by one true baby. The one I’ll forever cherish. The one I’ll forever spoil and love. Alan…this is your time. Don’t screw it up!”

Alan Young awoke in his solitary confinement cell with rough stubble on his chin, razor sharp hairs poking out of his bald head, and his heart beating a combination of fire and nitro glycerin. He breathed heavily like a wounded animal. He lusted for violence and aggression with bloodshot eyes. He smiled so hideously that he could smell his own sour breath.

Only a small patch of light illuminated the room through the barred window to the outside. Even though the sun was barely rising over the landscape, Alan still had lost track of how much time he spent cooped up in here. No clocks, no indication from the guards, only the occasional shitty meal which was inconsistent with the rest of the feedings.

Alan stood his clumsy body up and grabbed hold of the bars while staring out into the horizon. He held his stepmother’s words deep inside him until his very core was hot enough to melt away the last of his sanity. What once was a heart was now a heap of ashes. What once was a racing mind was now a zombie’s rage. The urge to kill had taken over his entire body. Just one taste of blood…anybody’s blood…

Surely another prisoner would satisfy his violent appetite just fine. He even believed some of the guards deserved a few undead thrashings. But the ultimate dessert at the end of this blood-soaked meal would be none other than Scott Marcus George. All Alan needed was one opening to strike. One tiny mistake made by another occupant of this hellhole. The rest would come as naturally as breathing.

“Scotty-Boy…I’m coming for you…and not even your marsh-dwelling girlfriend will be able to save your skinny ass this time!” Alan ranted as he shook the bars like a steroid-pumped professional wrestler. “I’m coming for you, motherfucker!”

THE END?

Rx

“I am so frickin’ bored. Nothing to do today. I guess I’ll sit around and medicate,” sang Nathan Toney as his heavy body sprawled across the living room couch. Getting off that couch was a feat of strength akin to power-lifting a small Japanese car. His eyes were glazed over like a frosted donut. The multi-colored afghan blanket did little to cover his flabby torso.

The coffee table in front him was covered in pornographic magazines and cigarette ashes. The center of this table represented his only two choices in this world: a steak knife to end his misery or a bottle of Floydicon to numb him out. Nathan gazed at the scars on his wrists with a single tear in his eye. He wanted to go through with it. He wanted any excuse he could to exit this world forever and free himself of the unnecessary pain. But the bottle of magic pills was right there in front of him.

“Eh, what the hell…I’m too lazy for this shit anyways…” said Nathan flatly as he opened the bottle and popped one of the large white tablets. Another five hour nap was on the horizon. What kind of weird ass dream would he have this time? Unicorns and rainbows? Teeth falling out? Being naked in school? But then again, who said anything about a dream?

Nathan’s eyes shot wide open and pulsated as he watched the rain outside come to a complete standstill. The drops of water just floated there and changed colors at random whether it was clear to green, green to purple, or purple to blood red. “What the fuck is this?” asked Nathan in a hushed voice. The lights flickered in his tiny apartment before completely blacking out and leaving him in the shadows. “Oh no…not this shit again…not again!”

“Yes, Mr. Toney, we’re doing this again!” belted an ophidian voice. Nathan held his sausage fingers over his eyes and slowly uncovered them to reveal a woman in a business suit with a cobra’s head and scaly green skin. The chubby depression patient shivered and cowered further into the couch while pulling the afghan under his double chin. “It was a simple offer,” the snake woman said. “You could have had a promotion. You could have been the boss’s boss. All you had to do was one small little favor for me.” That favor was clear the minute the snake boss licked her fangs.

Nathan trembled and stammered as he struggled to say, “You knew I had a family. I can’t just do that to them. I can’t go sleeping around with whoever I want!”

“What family? This family?!” shouted a scorpion woman in a nightgown with two crying daughters clinging to her legs as tightly as they could. Nathan pulled the afghan over his whole head, but the scorpion’s tail ripped it away and poked him in the bare chest. “I knew I was right to divorce you, you son of a bitch! How could you ever consider taking that whore’s offer?!” She shed bloody tears and wiped them away with her pincer. “We didn’t need the money that badly! We needed a father and a husband!”

“Man, fuck you little bitches!” shouted Nathan as he tossed the blanket aside and shot up to his feet. “I gave you all nothing but hard work and this is how you repay me?! By taking it all away and making me live in this filthy piece of shit apartment?! You’re all poison to me! Fuck you bitches! Fuck you all!”

The two crying daughters morphed into wasps and pointed their sword-like stingers at Nathan’s face, but the disgraced father wouldn’t be deterred. “We didn’t do anything!” they said in synchronized demonic voices. “We wanted you to come home with us! We never wanted this divorce to happen! We miss you! Come home with us!”

Nathan’s raging face softened into solemnity when he hugged the two wasp children and said, “I can’t come back anytime I want. Your mom changed the locks. She has an order against me. I tried to fight her in court, but she wouldn’t let me win.” The wasps poked him in the gut with their stingers and sent their father sprawling on the couch screaming in pain. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled while clutching his green bloody wound.

“So this is it, huh?” said an elderly toad woman with red slime dripping from her amphibian skin and gnashed flies between her teeth. “You’re just going to give up on your family like this? As your mother, I can’t allow that, Nathan. I raised you to be a real man and a real man takes care of his family! A real man fights for what he believes in! But if you don’t believe in your own wife and children anymore…” With one flick of her poison tongue, she captured the wasp children and devoured them while drooling a river of thick goop.

“No!” shouted Nathan. “You can’t do that! You can’t take them away from me!”

The scorpion wife, cobra boss, and toad mother spoke in unified demon voices, “We can do whatever we want to you, Nathan. You gave us permission when you walked out on us. You gave us permission when you gave up the fight. All you had to do was see a psychiatrist about your…little problem! But you couldn’t do it, could you? You didn’t have the guts to do it then and you won’t do it now!”

“Little problem…” whispered Nathan with growing fury in his voice. “Little problem?!” He pointed to his brain and roared, “You call this a little problem?! Newsflash: I’ve been living with this shit for nearly all of my fucking life and all you three bitches did was make it worse! You all did this to me! I don’t owe any responsibilities to you pieces of shit anymore!”

“Do something about it!” said the three creatures. With every repetition of that phrase, their monstrous auras grew brighter and their voices grew louder. Nathan covered his ears and crouched down to the floor, yelling for them to shut up, but they never did. They tormented him further and began to form a circle around him. They danced and sang their demonic tune while Nathan’s eyeballs were glued to the steak knife on the coffee table.

“I know what I have to do…you want me to do something about it…you’re damn right I will!” Nathan scrambled for the knife and held the jagged blade to his throat while the horrifying ladies taunted and teased him some more. He made one small incision and a tiny droplet of blood hit the carpeted floor. He made another cut and smeared even more blood on the floor.

The blade made a full on slash and the monsters around Nathan were dropping dead one by one. Their bones snapped and their own slimy blood mixed with his. Nathan struggled for oxygen, but all that would come up in his throat was his own life juices. His stomach grew queasy at the thought of his death coming so soon and he barfed up what little oxygen he had left. All that was left of Nathan Toney and his demons was a mixture of biological sludge that made chemical plant explosions seem mundane. The goopy red rain fell once more and washed them all away in the storm.

A lightning bolt flashed across the sky and awakened Nathan Toney from his drug-induced haze. He pulled his face out of the toilet and coughed profusely until he could breathe fresh oxygen once again. He gazed around with bloodshot eyes and saw that his apartment remained in the same messy state as when he first took the Floydicon. He placed his fingers to his throat and saw that a nasty scar had developed there, but it wasn’t bleeding heavily like it was in his high.

After a while of shaking heavily, Nathan steadied his body long enough to pull himself to his feet using the rim of the toilet. He limped his way out to the living room and spotted the bottle of Floydicon resting conveniently next to the steak knife. With an expression of boiling fury etched on his jowly face, Nathan marched over to the coffee table, grabbed the medication, and stomped back to the bathroom to flush the pills down the toilet.

“What kind of dip-shit takes these kinds of pills anyways?” Nathan vengefully whispered. “What kind of doctor prescribes this shit to begin with?!” He eyeballed the label on the bottle and saw that the medication was prescribed to him by Tri-Circle Enterprises, the company he used to work for. “Figures…it fucking figures!”

He discarded the bottle in the trash and marched back over to the coffee table to grab the steak knife. Instead of holding it to his throat or his wrists, he held it like a samurai warrior and gnashed his teeth together like a rabies-infected wolf. “I’m taking my family back one way or another,” Nathan vowed. “If I have to kill every last one of those motherfuckers…so be it! No more lawyers! No more judges! No more courtroom bullshit! Ass-kicking is what’s called for!”

“But first…I need to get out of these god-awful clothes…” He spent the last few days in pajama pants and a 3XL white T-shirt. The clothes had seen pizza stains, cigarette ashes, and liquor spills of the worst kind. They smelled as though he’d been shit on by a horse in the middle of a burning junkyard. He changed into fresh jeans and a red polo shirt with black combat boots on his feet. His boss always told him to dress for the job he wanted. With a steak knife tucked firmly in his back pocket, his new job was corporate assassin. He could have done this the legal way, but it didn’t take a tripped out Floydicon user to know the law was one big conspiracy against the underdogs anyways.

Ghost

CHORUS 1

You’re just a ghost

With no love to boast

Gone with the wind

Are all of your sins

The shit in the past

Is never built to last

You’re just a ghost

Whose ass is toast

VERSE 1

If I wanted ghost stories, I’d sit at the campfire

Instead all I’m listening to is a fucking bad liar

Twisting the truth like the arms of your victims

Turning the strongest men into prison bitches

A haunted house isn’t good enough for you

A dark cemetery is where you’ll forever stew

Banging on the gates in search of your freedom

As if somewhere beyond is the Garden of Eden

CHORUS 1

You’re just a ghost

With no love to boast

Gone with the wind

Are all of your sins

The shit in the past

Is never built to last

You’re just a ghost

Whose ass is toast

VERSE 2

The spiritual realm has been calling your name

Like a chorus of boos stripping you of your fame

Like a necromantic chant in a sacrificial ritual

Like a street corner sermon of a sick individual

Consider this your one and only eviction notice

It’s extermination time for the swarm of locusts

There’s nothing left here for you to feed on

No more tortured souls for you to beat on

BRIDGE

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood

Burn it to the ground with gasoline and wood

If there’s a ghost in your brain that’s causing you pain

Flush that shit out and watch it swirl down the drain

CHORUS 2

You’re just a ghost

A parasite to the host

Gone with the wind

Let the new wave begin

The shit in the past

Is never coming back

You’re just a ghost

With no bail to post

FINAL LINES

You’re just a ghost!

You’re just a ghost!

Of all the hatred I could give

You deserve it the most!

Demon Axe, Chapter 13

It didn’t matter how many times Daniel Mercer screamed for help, because not even his heavy metal death cry could wake the dead bodies left in the holding cell. As he sat in an even darker room with his hands and legs bound, the brutalized corpses of his friends kept flashing across his face like schizophrenic ghosts. He screamed for them to go away and stop haunting him, but the louder his screams became, the less his tortured brain cared.

No matter how many times he tormented himself with these images, it couldn’t compare to the actual strobe lights dancing and flickering across the room, each of them blindingly bright to where closing his eyes didn’t relieve the soreness. Obnoxiously loud music blared in the background and pierced his eardrums like a poisonous dart. Not even Daniel’s shrieks for help could drown out this familiar heavy metal beat. The same grinding guitars, funky bass, and machinegun drums that he had grown to love were being used to make his ears bleed. The vocalist’s death growls were indecipherable, though something about a “Valentine’s Day Massacre” seemed vaguely familiar.

“Turn it off, Roger! Turn that shit off! I can’t take it anymore!” shouted Daniel. Instead of getting what he demanded, the volume was turned to its absolute maximum and the strobe lights were even faster and even more grating on his eyes. The music could probably be heard from miles away, but Daniel was right here feeling his brain turn to mush, either through physical brain damage or going insane.

His eardrums went numb and his vision made him a candidate for Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder jokes until the end of time. In what Daniel thought was his temporary moment of freedom, the ghosts of his fallen comrades paid him a visit once more. The original members of Demon Axe were the first to show their floating heads and dangling spinal cords.

“You fucked up, Daniel. You fucked up badly, my friend,” said Vulture Man.

“When is enough going to be enough? How many more of us need to die so that you can keep making a living?” said Pig Man.

“We didn’t ask for our heads to be chopped off. We didn’t sign up for war. We wanted to play music. How the hell can I bang the drums with no arms and no legs?!” shouted G-Pac.

Tears rolled down Daniel’s eyes and added to the fiery sting he felt from the quickly blinking lights. He couldn’t even hear himself say, “I’m sorry, guys. I wish I could take it back.”

“Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first!” blared a familiar Arab accent. The image of Tarantula Man with a mangled body and limbs hanging in odd places danced into view. “You promised us paradise. You promised us heavy metal. Well, the only heavy metal I ever got was the blade of a machete! That shit hurts like hell! But it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as knowing my band mates will never see their guitarist again.”

“What about MY band mates, Daniel?” said Bear Man as he crawled into view with the lower half of his body missing and the rest of his body bloodied to a pulp. “Did you think I was going to forget about the boys and girls of Juice? Did you think Tarantula Man was going to forget about I Am Death? Just because you took our names and gave us these disgusting aliases, doesn’t mean we’re your permanent bitches!”

“Lady Killer?! What kind of a goddamn name is Lady Killer?!” The aforementioned drummer of Juice crawled across the floor leaving a pool of blood in her wake. “Face it, Daniel: this is all your fault. Every one of us is dead because of you! What did Roger Zee say about hastening the inevitable? Did it have to start with us?!”

The members of Daniel’s various bands all shouted together in a cacophony of swear words and vitriol that rivaled the heavy metal music playing in his torture cell. The tears became hotter and more plentiful. The rage inside him exploded like a gasoline fire. He could feel his limbs growing stronger and his teeth grinding away. In a voice he could finally hear, Daniel screamed, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

“Why should they, Daniel? Are they saying things that you don’t want to hear? But isn’t that the purpose of heavy metal music: to bring the truth to light?” asked Johnny Vega, who had gushes of blood pouring out of him like a river of violence.

Sonia Marquez, who had no arms or legs, scooted over to Daniel with a wicked glare on her face. She rasped, “If I had my limbs right now, I would suplex your ass until the end of time. And to think, I actually had a crush on you. I would have been a hell of a lot better of a lay than that Raven chick you were running around with! What has she ever done for you anyways?!”

“Don’t you ever talk about her like that again!” Daniel roared, his fiery voice blowing away the spiritual essences of his former friends. He kept breathing fire and poison until all that remained of his traumatic insanity was the loveliest thing he had ever seen: Raven Triscloud in a purple Celtic dress. Daniel’s tears felt chilly on his cheeks as they soothed his burning pain. They were even more freezing when Raven blew him a whirlwind kiss.

“Find me, Daniel. Help me. You’re my only hope. You are our only hope. You must stop Roger Zee before he destroys everything we love,” said Raven in a beautiful high-pitched voice.

“I’m sorry, Raven…I tried so hard…I tried…” sobbed Daniel.

“It’s not over yet, Daniel. Not by a long shot. Find me, my love…find me…find me…” said Raven in a voice that got progressively softer until her spiritual essence was blown away by a tornado of obnoxious sound.

Daniel screamed for her to come back, but she never did. All that remained was a bright white light and the shadowy visage of a familiar middle-aged man. The raging heavy metal music was gone, the strobe lights were dim, but Daniel was so far down the rabbit hole that all he did was shake, grunt, sob, and bleed. He could barely hear the shadow figure call his name. There was no way this could be Raven or any of his friends. This man had a bald head. And pointy ears. And green skin.

Daniel, with now free hands, wrapped his fingers around the shadow man’s throat until he could feel the wind being sucked out of him. The grip became tighter than a hangman’s noose and more violent than barbed wire. Finally, the shadow man said, “Daniel, stop it! It’s me, Detective Shawn Henry! I’m here to help!”

The Lord of the Pit’s grip weakened until his arms were limper than spaghetti. That was all of the fight he could put up after being tortured for so long. His body felt like it had been crushed in a trash compactor. His skin felt raw and shredded like meat. His crotch felt wet and smelled like rancid fruit. His mouth, ears, nose, and eyes felt like he was drowning in a lake of blood and lava.

Despite the cataclysm of agony he was in, Daniel could comprehend what Shawn was saying as the detective held out a familiar shape. “I got your microphone out of the evidence locker and came here as fast as I could. Mr. Mercer, this isn’t a police station. This is a black site. We had it shut down for obvious reasons, but it seems Roger has brought it back to life.”

With a mouthful of biological sludge, Daniel struggled to say, “Where is she? Where’s Raven? I need her…”

“Don’t worry, Daniel, we’ll find her, whoever she is. But right now, the world needs you, buddy. I’m sorry for arresting you and bringing you to this awful place. My family’s lives were on the line. But given Roger Zee’s reckless ways, I doubt they’re even alive right now. Terrorists don’t keep their end of the bargain, which is why we’re not supposed to negotiate with them. I’d rather my wife and daughter be in a better place than spend another minute with that…that…” Tears formed in Shawn’s eyes as he wiped them away with his calloused fingertips.

Daniel spit out the venom brewing in his mouth and said, “The word you’re looking for is asshole, Detective! Roger Zee is an asshole! And if he lays one fucking finger on Raven, I’m going to kill him!” The burst of anger caused him to cough up more bile and blood.

“You have your microphone now, Daniel. You can do this! We can do this!” cheered Shawn.

The Lord of the Pit breathed heavily for a while and said, “Fuck heavy metal. Fuck it! I don’t need it anymore. I can’t listen to it now. If we’re going to kill this motherfucker…well, fuck, where are your goddamn tanks and drones and shit?!”

“Daniel, I know you’ve been through a lot, but if you give up on your music now, then…”

“Then what? I’ll actually have some peace for the first time in my life?”

Shawn’s expression became solemn as he grabbed Daniel by his back and legs and carried him baby style out of the black site. The Lord of the Pit, whose magical microphone sat in his lap, glared at the instrument of destruction with poisonous disdain and said, “I hate you, you stupid microphone. I fucking hate you!”