Shoot you in the back

“Would you mind moving so that I can get to the bar?” It sounded like a reasonable request, and I honestly had no idea what they were doing standing between these two tables, blocking the most direct route between the watering hole and the stage. Until I glanced at the guy in the cloak.

He was standing absolutely motionless, except for a slight trembling in his hands, which he held a few inches away from his body at waist level. I thought he was having some kind of fit. His eyes were fixed on the stage, or at least on the mosh-pit in front of the stage, and he was taking deep breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth. But it was his eyes that grabbed me. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything in the room, really, but they had kind of an unfocused intensity. I would say that it was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen, but that would be lying – I’d seen some even stranger things in my short but pleasantly eventful life. Still, this definitely was not your average Saturday night drinking session.

Biker Number Two’s attention had been drawn. Without turning around, having faced the bar all this time, he asked over his shoulder if there was a problem. I was about to leave it and “go around”, like the nice people had asked, when I felt an arm go around my shoulders.

“That’s what I’d like to know. Is there a problem here, ladies?”

I’ve never figured out how he did it, but Mick could literally smell trouble from the other side of a room. It seemed to attract him the way most people would be attracted to the scent of freshly baked bread. Of course, Mick’s question had been in code. What he’d actually meant was “This my mate. You not. You die.” The “mate” thing was an optional extra he’d tossed in for appearances, just to give him an excuse. He must have been in a good mood.

“Nah, it’s cool,” I told him, not taking my eyes off the first Horseman. He shrugged, then looked at Mick. The big lad had already lost interest and turned away, with a pat on my shoulder, and missed the sneer that the biker tossed after him. I smiled again and went around the human island to the bar.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Have a great new year, wherever you are.

Till next time. Cheers.

Metal health

Halfway through the set I headed for the bar. The band were playing one of their few slow songs, and I was dying for a drink. There cannot possibly be a more strenuous exercise routine than a couple of solid hours spent headbanging in a club like the Irish. Sweat was pouring from every pore in the room. Some, with less experienced neck muscles, had already given up, and you could see these fallen soldiers hanging their heads at the bar, trying to stop the world from spinning. My left leg was shaking as I crossed the room, the thigh muscles stiff from the strain of holding back half a dozen drunken hooligans who had been trying to climb over me to reach the stage. That was one advantage of having Damien next to me – when the crowd got too rough, a few well-placed elbows normally cleared a space behind us. Didn’t win us many friends, though.

Two of the Horsemen stood between me and the bar. Not the safest of locations. These two weren’t the same as the two from the toilet, and they stood either side of some guy who was wearing a long black cloak. I didn’t care what he wore, as long as he got out of the way.

As I reached the trio, one of the bikers held out an arm and nodded that I should go around them. Now, this had not been my original plan, and I saw no reason to change plans mid-mission. I swept the hair from my face, using both hands to get the last of the sweat-stuck strands out of the way. Then I stopped in front of the group.

“’Scuse me, pal.” I thought I’d start with the civil approach.

“Go around.”

And that’s where it all started to go wrong. If only the man had said “please.” Or if he’d smiled. Or winked. But he just nodded off to the side again and gulped his beer, then tried to stare me down. As if he owned the club. Now, don’t get me wrong – I appreciate arrogance. Some misguided souls, who obviously don’t know me very well, have even, on occasion, described me as being arrogant myself. But here we had the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. In a place I liked to think of as my home away from home. I smiled.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Enjoy the festive season. Be as naughty as you like for the next 300 days. Check out the Smashwords Sale if you need something to read over the holidays. Lots of free/discounted ebooks, not just mine.

Till next time. Cheers.

And the band played on

A second stage-diver appeared, bouncing onto the platform and tossing a fist in the air before launching himself after it. But this one had miscalculated. He had aimed himself at the space between me and Damien. We saw him coming at the same moment, reached up, grabbed his shoulders with one hand each and pulled down hard. He hit the floor face first, boots spinning out of sight, as Bruce reached the last verse.

 

“The flames of the battle are dying away now.

The corpses are heaped in pile upon pile.

With fear in our hearts we crawl from concealment.

Blood touches our skin – we choke down the bile.

Astonished, we walk amongst sinners and demons.

The first rays of sunlight appear in the East:

A new day is dawning as terror forsakes us.

With smiles on our faces we worship the Beast.”

 

And that was it. The end of the song. There was silence for a split second, while heads stopped bouncing up and down, then the audience erupted in a roar of appreciation. Every single person on the floor was yelling, screaming, waving their fists in the air. Most of us took up a chant. “Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood!”

Bruce tossed his hair back and planted his microphone stand at the front of the stage. He raised his hands, acknowledging the response. The club belonged to these five. He raised his mike. The chant slowed.

“Hello! How the fuck are we?”

There was a surge of noise in response.

“It’s fucking nice to be back. It’s been too long.”

There was a shriek from the back of the room. Bruce raised his eyebrows.

“Seems we’ve got some ladies in the crowd tonight.” More shrieks. “Any of you girls want to suck some Blood?” This raised a few smiles, and a chorus of screams from one corner of the room.

Bruce picked up on it immediately. “Scream for me, Irish Club!” We did. “Scream for me, Irish Club!” We did. “This next song… is… the Howl of the Banshee!”

And so it was.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

If anyone actually reads these things, I recently posted a cheeky short horror story on Amazon, just in time for Xmas. It’s called Inner Beauty.  99 American cents on Amazon. You could find it by following the above link. Or, in the festive spirit, you could follow this one – SmashWords – and download it for free. For a limited period. Or until I change my mind.

There’s also a new radio play – Fiddlesticks – available from various online retailers – Fiddlesticks . Because I can’t resist a challenge…

Till next time. Cheers.

Come taste the band

As I hit the front of the crowd, throwing up my left foot to brace myself against the knee-high stage, Bruce launched himself from behind Bonzo’s drum kit, microphone in hand.

“In darkness we run from the blade of the reaper.

Ignorance fills us with dread and with fear.

Hoofbeats behind sound the approach of the horsemen,

Galloping faster and soon drawing near.

The cries of the damned are a chorus around us.

Sulphur and brimstone and fire fill the air.

Before us the forces of Hell stand united –

Life has forsaken us – God does not care.”

The solo sprang like a living thing from the last line of the second verse, as Angus took his place at the front of the stage. He’d been playing guitar since he was eight years old, and on nights like this, you could see the results. Obviously straight from the sports field, he was still wearing a pair of shorts. Horned salutes stabbed the air. Bottles were held high inadulation. The rest of us launched into our own version of the solo, empty hands playing notes that hadn’t even been invented yet as hair and sweat filled the front row.

Then the inevitable mosher climbed onto the stage, threw his arms in the air and dived into the crowd. This one landed way off on my right, as his buddies broke his fall and helped him to his feet. Angus grinned and played on.

The third verse came and went, “the hordes of the dark one marching from concealment,” the apocalyptic fighting carrying on. This led to a second guitar solo, this time with Tony doing the honours. He’d lost the tips of two of the fingers on his right hand in an industrial accident, but this had never affected his playing. The crowd was rapidly banging its way into a frenzy. The guy on my left lost his balance and swayed for a moment, then was gone. In his place stood Damien, head down, foot up, bottle held precariously by two fingers as the rest of them danced along the air-strings.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.

Master of puppets

“Did you ever consider,” I asked, “that maybe you died outside the Moulin Rouge? And that all this,” I waved my beer around, “is just a fantasy running through your fevered brain as you lie dying in the gutter?”

“That would make you a figment of my imagination, then, wouldn’t it?” Damien enjoyed this kind of conversation, but I could see Ian starting to lose interest. Metaphysics and philosophy weren’t his cup of tea. In fact, I’d never seen Ian with a cup of tea.

“If it was true. Of course, the real truth is that you guys, this club, only exist in my head. And all your memories are just stories that I made up and put there when I created the universe this morning.”

“And one day you’ll wake up, right, and we’ll all just go poof?”

“Who are you calling a poof?”

“Do you really think that could be true?” Morag made a surprise entrance into the conversation.

“What, that he’s a poof?”

“Fuck off.”

“No. That we could all just be parts of someone’s dream, not really real. And that one day he’ll wake up.”

Damien and I looked at each other. Morag’s approach to magick had always been more down to earth than ours, with an instinctive, emotional grasp of what was required.

“Could be,” I replied, slowly. “I mean, how do you really know that you exist? What if you only think that you exist?”

“Or,” added Damien, “what if you do really exist, but the rest of us don’t? Like, there’s no way for you to be sure that I’m actually thinking my own thoughts, is there? You think that you are sure that you are thinking things, but what if the rest of us were just reflections of your own thoughts, appearing to think and act, but actually just thinking that we’re thinking?”

“What the fuck have you been drinking?” roared Ian as he got to his feet. “You’re all out of your fucking heads!”

“Sorry I made you say that, Ian,” I grinned. “I’ll make you a bit more tolerant next time around.”

“Aaargh!” He stomped off towards the stage.

“Maybe we’ll bring you back as a woman!” Damien yelled after him. “Think what fun you could have, looking at yourself in the mirror! Jumping on yourself!”

This last was a reference to one of Ian’s more daring sexual exploits. He had picked up an exotic dancer, and they’d gone out for a while. One night, probably not in a sober state, she had tied him to a bed, stripped in front of him to get him aroused, rubbed him with lubricant, then climbed on top of a chest of drawers. Taking careful aim, she had launched herself onto the bed, spreading her legs in mid-air and landing perfectly on the target.

Unfortunately, no amount of lubricant could have prepared poor Ian for this sudden wrench to his manhood. The doctor had been sympathetic, and had administered a local anaesthetic as well as a liberal dose of painkillers while stitching things back into place. Ian was now fully recovered, but for a couple of weeks he had been drinking even more than usual, and the story had eventually come out. Being the man’s friends, we had of course been extremely sensitive about the incident. Only one song had been composed to commemorate the event. Only three pictures had appeared on the toilet wall. And we had resisted the temptation to go that extra mile and have a T-shirt printed. After all, he was a mate.

Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning

Till next time. Cheers.