476 C.E. - Seven: Anacrusis B
We had just arrived at the arena-theatre-auditorium place where we’d be playing. There was already a huge crowd on the floor and in the seating behind that. I was nervous already. I clutched to Bertha in her case, not having trusted my beloved cello to the roadies. I was standing backstage, watching said roadies put the set together for The Collective Marge. It was 7:48, and officially the show was supposed to start at 8:00. The Marges would play their own blend of indie-folk-comedy-bluegrass-whatever, then, when they finished, it would be us.
I loitered backstage a while longer with Grey and Kenya, October and Denmark off doing something else. Finally, the set was set, the sound checked, and the Marges ready to begin their portion of the show. I watched from the wings, eventually having given up Bertha into the care of a security guard. October and Grey joined me after a while to watch the show. Clif stood in the front with Jane, respectively holding a violin and a banjo. Rebecca was further back, seated behind a string bass, and Sophie was off to the side with an acoustic guitar. Jane had a stool with a tambourine set on it next to her, and there was an unmanned drum set in the back.
Finally, it began. Clif walked up to the microphone to do the introduction for the band. He looked out over the audience and said, after a deep breath and a dramatic pause, “Hi.”
Then the band launched into their first song, a catchy, folksy tune about…being barefoot in Austin, Texas. Having never heard their music before, I was surprised that four such odd and mismatched individuals could make such decent music.
As the song wound down, and ended, Jane stepped up to mic to speak. “As Clif said so eloquently, hello San Diego! I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of us, but we’re from Austin, Texas and we’re called The Collective Marge! This next song is called And Then She Flailed my Tractor.”
I listened to their next song with confusion. Maybe I wasn’t hearing clearly, but it didn’t seem like the lyrics were making any sense whatsoever. This was closer to what I expected from those four. Each verse switched off to a different singer. They were all decent, but Clif and Jane definitely had the best voices.
The song ended with a line about “licorice flavored shoelace love” or something, and their set continued with the songs, in order: Polygamist Love x Infinity, Forbidden Fiddle Love, It’s Not a Goddamn Violin, which heavily featured Clif on the fiddle, and, the closest thing they had to a hit, Asian is not a Culture (Also I Will Love You Forever).
I was going to have to ask about those. Really. I was.
When they were done and heading off stage, the roadies and other helpful people started deconstructing their set so that they could put ours up. I was still on the side of the stage, and October, apparently able to see how nervous I was, clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, “Calm down, Rome. It’ll be easy. Come on, let’s get out of the way.” I looked over my shoulder where, indeed, a college-age guy was trying to maneuver something large past us.
“Sorry,” I said to him, and followed October back to the lounge-thing area. I had been told earlier that is usually took quite a while in between bands for everything to be done, so I tried to relax. I was failing miserably and praying to a god that I wasn’t sure I believed in for some sort of a distraction.
Possibly-nonexistent god answered my prayers in the form of Rebecca and Clif, who were making a direct line toward where I was perched on a wooden stool. Both looked a little worse for the wear, and Clif’s unruly hair was caught between being plastered to his head and sticking up even more wildly than usual.
“Hey, Rome. What did you think?” Rebecca asked, nodding her head in greeting.
“You guys are pretty good. I’d buy your album. I am curious about some of the songs, though…”
They shared a grin, and Rebecca said, “Shoot.”
“So, uh, your second song. The Tractor one. It sounded like you did some MadLibs and set them to music.”
Clif looked to Rebecca and said, “He’s discovered our secret.” Then, to me, “That’s actually exactly what we did.”
“I…see. Um, I think I understand the Polygamist one, but is there a story behind Forbidden Fiddle Love?” I asked.
Clif’s expression became distant. “It’s the story of my one true love. Her name…was Zepher Bregoni. She was Italian. But our love…it was doomed to end in disaster. Oh, Zepher…she was from the Appalachian Fiddle Clan, and I was from the Rocky Mountain Fiddle Clan… the feud between our clans would have put the Capulets and the Montagues to shame. We got together one summer for our annual fiddle-off, and that’s where I met her. She was beautiful in the moonlight…the slender curves of her…fiddle setting my heart aflame.”
He paused to take a deep breath, and I wasn’t sure if this was serious or not. He went on, “To win her affections, I stood outside her window and played a love song on my fiddle, just for her. But she took the feud very seriously, and she poured a bucket of water on me. My spirit was crushed, so I ran away to Mexico to drown my sorrows in cheap tequila. It was then that Zepher realized that she had loved me all along, so she came to Mexico to get me back. Unfortunately, by then, I had been kidnapped by the drug cartels, who were holding me hostage. Luckily for me, Zepher was a complete badass. She killed them all and rescued me. We would have lived happily ever after, except she decided to wrestle a bear…that was wrestling a crocodile. The two of them together were more than a match for her. She didn’t make it. And I lost my one true love.”
I stared blankly at Clif for a minute, and decided to risk it. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
“Yeah. None of that happened. Except that I actually did date a girl named Zepher Bregoni. And she really did play the fiddle. I asked if I could write a song about her, and she said it was okay, but only if I made it really epic. Hence, Forbidden Fiddle Love.”
I blinked. “That’s. Um. Awesome?”
“You know it, bro,” Clif said, leaning casually on the wall near me. “Anyway, Rebecca and I have a proposition for you.”
“I don’t want to have a threesome with you,” I said, just as one of the security guards walked by, and gave me an odd look. For the third time that day, I colored hotly.
“Aww, damn,” Rebecca said, “But seriously. I play the string bass. Clif plays the fiddle. You play the cello. This could be the makings of a beautiful string trio to amuse the audience in between bands.”
The classical geek in me really liked that idea, but the practical part of me said, “I somehow doubt our audience is particularly interested in string music.”
“What if we covered pop songs?” Rebecca suggested blithely.
That sounded like way too much fun. I caved. “Okay, I’m not gonna lie. I love it.”
“One problem, though…” Rebecca said, looking at the ground. “Neither of us,” she gestured between Clif and herself, “Can write music, really. Clif can just read, and I can get down a melody if I try really hard, but you’re way more talented than either of us in that department.”
I shrugged. “I can arrange pretty well. Especially with how simple pop songs are, these days.”
Her face brightened. “So you’re in?”
I smiled. “Why the hell not? I never pass up an opportunity to lovingly play my cello,” I said wistfully.
Rebecca smirked. “I understand the joys of playing with the wood between your legs. But… I have to point out… Mine’s bigger.”
“Ouch, low blow,” Clif commented as I groaned, and smacked my forehead, asking, “Did you really have to go there?” The smirk on Rebecca’s face just got more malevolent, until she was interrupted by Denmark stalking over loudly.
“Sound check time,” he announced to me, lightly tapping me on the head with one of his drumsticks.
Nodding first to him, then a goodbye to Clif and Rebecca, I followed Denmark onto the still-dark stage. Holy shit, that was a lot of people. Good thing I had used the bathroom recently. I took some tall stairs up to a platform on the left side of the stage, where my keyboard was set up. It was a little too low, so I raised it up to a comfortable height. I wasn’t really sure how this process worked, but I just did what they told me to and, an immeasurable amount of time (or so it seemed, then) later, it was time for the show to begin. The lights came one, and there was a moment that I was blinded, but I brought my gaze quickly away, and recovered in a moment.
October was at the mic, his guitar strapped onto him. “Hello, San Diego! This is a weird note to begin our first show on, but I feel like I should get it out of the way. I will absolutely not, under any circumstances, be playing anything from my solo album.”
He stopped for the crowd to make noise, and I’m not sure if they were cheering or “aww”ing. Maybe both.
“With that covered, I’d like to introduce Existential!” He gestured sweepingly to the rest of us, and the huge gathered mass of humanity screeched again. “And without further ado…” October said, and Denmark, taking the hint, counted out the beat for our first song. The first few minutes of the song were something like an out-of-body experience for me. I played my part exactly, not missing a beat, but it might as well have been someone else doing it. I guess the months of practicing really were worth it.
The song ended, and October waited until the shouting died down to say, “That was Life and the Human Experience, which basically sums up our album, What is Means to be Human. That’s why we played it first. The second song was written by our super-awesome songwriting duo, consisting of Rome, the keyboardist, and Grey, the bassist.” We both waved weakly. “You guys wanna come down here to explain the song?”
Oh, probably-nonexistent god. He wanted us to talk to the crowd. But Grey was walking over, even if he didn’t look particularly pleased with the situation. I could do the same, I supposed. Kenya, to fill the silence, played a soft minor-keyed melody in the background.
I went down the stairs and joined Grey at October’s mic. He took one look at my face and decisively started talking.
“For most of the songs that Rome and I wrote for the album, he would do the music, and I would write the lyrics. This one is one of the exceptions. The Road is all Rome,” Grey explained, looking at me again. I’m not sure where I got it, but I summoned up the nerve to jump in.
“That’s a lie, Grey, and you know it. I can’t write shit without you. Anyway, this is a song based off of a very…emotionally charged novel by Cormac McCarthy. You may have heard of it. If you haven’t…you should. But since we were writing an album based on human nature, it was too perfect to pass up,” I finished lamely. I was terrible at improvising.
“I read the book,” Grey added, “After Rome expressed an interest in writing about it. It was an exploration of the darkest and most noble aspects of humanity, I thought. Something incredibly hard to put into a song. Well…I’ll let you judge as to whether we’ve managed it or not.”
The audience cheered, and that sounded like a cue for us to shut up and start playing, which I was incredibly thankful for. I all but fled back to the shelter of my keyboard, and Grey took his spot at the foot of my platform. The song had a piano intro, so it was all up to me. I changed the settings on my keyboard to the appropriate ones, and placed my fingers so that they were spread out to play the starting chord. I began, and went into the song. I was present for that one, feeling entirely there on the stage, as I played my lines and chords, as I leaned into my microphone and did my backing harmonies. It was then that I decided that, as long as October didn’t make me talk again, maybe playing for a crowd was…actually kind of fun.
October spoke as we finished the song. “Did they do a good job or what?” He asked the crowd, gesturing at Grey and me. They roared, and I couldn’t help but smile, as I wiped the sweat that was already beading on my brow away. October went on, “Now, this next song isn’t one of ours. But it’s dedicated to Denmark, our drummer, and his addiction to flash-based internet games, anyway. This is Erasure’s Always, and you may recognize it as the music from Robot Unicorn Attack.”
I enjoyed playing the synth lines on that one, and piano on the next song, another one that Grey and I wrote, called Beyond Ourselves. As that one finished, October stepped up to explain our second cover of the night.
“This next song is one that we’re doing just because Kenya dared me to.” He flourished a bow to the guitarist, who curtsied in reply. “And because my middle name is Stephen. Which, coincidentally, is the title of a popular song by autotune princess…Ke-dollar-sign-ha.”
I’ll admit that we all had a bit too much fun doing Stephen. And our next two original songs, which were titled Yes, and, following that one No. We followed those with our rather strange, toned down, cover of Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas, featuring myself on Bertha the cello.
The next song was a clever little piece written by October and Denmark, of all people, named Cliché Title. Then, a cover of Why Don’t We Do It In The Road? by the Beatles-it had to be done.
October did another long introduction for the following song. “This is another song by Rome and Grey, and one that we’re all particularly fond of. I’d ask them to come down and talk about it, but judging from the looks they’re giving me at that idea, I’d be murdered in my sleep tonight. So, this is Hate.” I got up and went to where Bertha was in her stand next to a stool, and Rebecca dashed in from the wings and up to my keyboard, where she’d be covering the piano line in the song. She had learned the part overnight, so I hoped it went well. I gave her an encouraging smile. Kenya started the intro, and the song. It went beautifully. I was proud of us.
We followed Hate with another Rome-and-Grey song, entitled The Dreamer, and closed with our hit, Fly, one that we had all written together.
“Thank you, San Diego!” October called over the crowd, “Good night!” And we all left the stage, though we loitered in the wings. We totally had an awesome encore planned. The applause and cheering didn’t die down. Finally, the lights went back on and we wandered back on stage and took our places.
October said, “And now, just to prove that I can, this is Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, in the original key.” October, might I add, had an excellent falsetto, and I’m pretty sure it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. And it was goddamn sexy.
We did one more serious song, a Rome-and-Grey about death, but in an exploratory way, rather than an emo way. It was called Fade. And then we finished on a super positive note.
“This really is the last song for tonight, guys, and it’s not one that was on the album, but we hope you’ll enjoy it anyway,” October said, “Denmark?”
Denmark leaned into his mic and said, “This is a song I wrote about mean people, inspired by Rome’s stories about being bullied in elementary school. It’s called That’s Stupid. You’re Stupid, alternative title, Fat Kid On The Run. One, two, three, four!” And we launched into it, our one truly funny song, and the audience laughed (at my childhood pain) and had a good time. It was a great ending to what had, in the end, turned out to be a great show.
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Friend-From-Across-The-Hall wrote an alternate ending for the chapter, which also ends the story. It draws in a few details from Fragment, but not so many that you need to read that to find it ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS. Note: I haven't told her who Rome ends up with, but she's a Grey fan.
Oh, probably-nonexistent god. He wanted us to talk to the crowd. But Grey was walking over, even if he didn’t look particularly pleased with the situation. I could do the same, I supposed. Kenya, to fill the silence, played a soft minor-keyed melody in the background.
“Well, um… Us explaining the song sounds kind of boring, so how about we just take our shirts off instead?” asked Grey, to thunderous applause and whooping.
He walked over to me and took my shirt off. I punched him in the eyebrow, which is also his hair. My hand instantly flew off; I had mistakenly punched him with my left hand, the one I lost in the war. My prosthetic landed with a clatter at Kenya’s feet. She reached down and broke off a finger, popping it in her mouth.
“Yum! Peppermint!”
I started crying, because I’m so lame. Grey, Denmark, October and a few random roadies came over to solace me by grabbing my butt.
“Don’t worry, Rome. The audience is busy passing around your hand, so they can’t see you crying like a giant TOOOOOL.” Drawled Grey.
I only sobbed harder because Grey had just revealed that he was truly a hick and pushed through the mass of ass-grabbers to flee backstage. The Collective Marge was back there, dressed in lots of leather. Well, not a lot of leather, but in clothes made entirely of leather, if they could be called clothes. I’m OCD, bitch!
“What’s wrong?” they asked simultaneously.
I punched Rebecca in the boob with my nub and continued to flee. I grabbed Bertha and a can of gasoline and made my way to the door, liberally dosing the room with the flammable liquid. I took a match out of my fanny pack and lit it off Bertha’s case then threw it on the trail of gas.
“Hasta la vista, emo past!” I yelled as I skeedaddled out into the alleyway.
I had about 20 kilos of meth in Bertha’s case so I should be good for food for a few days. Now to call my boss.
“Ya?” a deep voice answered.
“The job is done; I got rid of Existential.”
“Good. Now for phase two. Report to the safe house.”
“Yes sir.”
I smiled as I nonchalantly strolled into McDonalds. I went to the counter and ordered the Chunkmeister. The boy at the counter immediately led me to the bathroom and punched in the code in the secret stall. I saluted him as I flushed myself into the secret base.
Once I was there, I reported to the boss’ office. He was on the desk, waiting for me, naked. I rang the bell and the orgy boys ran in.
Hours later, after the orgy, the boss turned to me.
“You did vell, Roman. I shall revard you.” Svetlana said, suddenly a woman. Then she hit a button on the desk and a gun popped out. She pointed it at me.
“DIE!!!”
I dove out the window and landed with a roll on street below. That’s right, our underground base had windows. I hopped into the nearest running, unattended Lamborghini and floored it. I roared off, accidently hitting an old lady and Benny, the bus driver. Then, a flying saucer landed right in front of me, making me come to a halt. I jumped out, and aimed my crossbow at the person getting off the space ship. I fired, but the being caught the bolt. Shit, I was no match for it. I fell to my knees and looked up into the beings face. It was Grey.
“Come with me!” He said calmly, british once again. I got up and he lead me onboard by my genitals. It was hot.
“Where are we going?” I said as we took off into the sky. That’s right, the underground base has a sky.
“A place called Fides. I received a transmission from Amir, my exboyfriend, saying that he needed help. So we are going to help him, and we’ll be together forever.”
“Yay!” I murmured. Overcome with emotion, I thrust my hand down Grey’s pants only to find… nothing. I looked up at him, confused and sobbing. He shrugged.
“I’m really a girl, Rome.”
I fell to the floor, writhing in emotional agony.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”