by Brian Keene
The lyrical part of their song was short, but the self-indulgent bass solo went on forever. Were bass players even supposed to do solos? Admittedly, Chester wasn’t completely sure which was the guitar and which was the bass, so it may have been a guitar solo. Still too long and self-indulgent.
However, the song did eventually come to an end. “Thank you,” said the front man. “We’re Eleven Mile Walk. Stick around for Replacement Kindle.” The band members waved to the audience and walked off the stage as the lights came up.
Then they walked back onto the stage. What the hell were they doing? An encore?
No. They were breaking down their equipment. Chester didn’t have a roadie either, so he didn’t judge another performing artist for having to do their own manual labor. But the audience was already losing focus, and though he hadn’t envisioned doing this with other people on the stage (except for the bouncers) he needed to move now.
He ran up onto the stage and stood in front of the microphone. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name’s—”
The microphone was off. Why had they turned it off? What if somebody needed to make an important announcement? He tapped on it a few times, then glanced back at the Eleven Mile Walk front man. “Do you know how to turn this back on?” he asked.
“They probably shut it off from the sound board.”
“Could you ask them to turn it on?”
“And you are . . . ?”
“I’m the middle act.”
“Nobody told me there was a middle act. If you want them to turn on the mic, that’s all on you.”
Jerk. Chester would totally have used his connections to get the mic turned back on if things were the other way around. He frantically waved to the guy working the soundboard and mimed that he wanted to speak into the microphone. The guy looked confused.
Fine, Chester would just have to do his concert without a microphone.
No, wait, the audience was already being way too loud. They wouldn’t hear a word of his hilarity. He needed a goddamn microphone.
He kept gesturing to the mic. Finally, the guy shrugged and flipped a switch.
“Hello, Shantyman!” said Chester, as Eleven Mile Walk continued to tidy up after their set. “You are in for a treat! My name is Zany Chester, and I’m going to rock you like a baby!”
The audience seemed disinterested. He hoped to God they didn’t think he meant anything dirty by that. His lyrics could be risqué, but of course making love to babies was entirely off-limits, even at his most edgy.
He hadn’t plugged in his iPhone. He wasn’t even sure where to plug in his iPhone. Even with the volume turned all the way up, nobody but the members of Eleven Mile Walk were going to hear the music. He couldn’t sing without the background track. Even Weird Al didn’t sing without accompaniment.
He was losing his audience! He was losing his audience! He was losing his audience!
This was a disaster! He wouldn’t get to perform his George Michael parody! He’d grown all this stubble for nothing!
“Please,” he said to the guys on the stage. “I have to plug this in. You’ve gotta help.”
“Give it here,” said the drummer, extending his hand. Chester hesitated for a moment, thinking the drummer might intend to steal his phone, but, no, that was ridiculous, and he’d have to take the risk. He handed over the phone, and the drummer plugged it in to an amp.
Saved!
“I’m going to rock you like a baby” hadn’t gone over well (and, in retrospect, it was a terrible line to get an audience psyched about a musical performance—he was surprised he didn’t catch that during the hundreds of times he’d mentally rehearsed saying it). A do-over was in order.
“Hello, Shantyman!” he said. “You are in for a treat!” Too egotistical? Too late now. “My name is Zany Chester, and I’m going to take you back to the ‘80s. The 1980’s, that is! Here’s my take on that George Michael classic, ‘Faith,’ but I think you’ll find that my version isn’t quite what you remember!”
He winked at the audience.
Nobody winked back. In fact, they looked at him as if he was kind of creepy.
Oh well. Weird Al could be creepy, too. No shame in that.
The drummer was still holding on to his iPhone. Chester took it from him, pressed “play,” and then set it on the amp because the cord wasn’t long enough for him to carry the phone around with him while he performed.
The opening notes to “Faith” began to play. Most of the people in the crowd were looking at him, so he was off to a good start. The manager was nowhere to be seen, and the bouncer (just one, which was nice) remained at the door. This was going to work.
“Oh, I guess it would be nice,” he and George sang, “if I could touch your body . . . ”
No! It was supposed to be “birdie!” He’d accidentally sang the original version! It was like when Don McLean accidentally sang part of Weird Al’s parody of “American Pie” except in reverse!
He could fix this. Nobody would notice.
But the next line didn’t make sense without “birdie” in the previous line! He’d have to stick with George Michael’s original lyrics for that line, too, and then cross over into his parody immediately after that.
The audience did not seem to be enjoying his musical performance. Chester refused to panic. The “head lice” lyric would win them over. It was irresistible.
“And I’ve got head lice . . . ” he sang.
Nobody laughed. Nobody even chuckled. Nobody even smiled. Nobody even stopped frowning.
He kept going. He’d gotten off to a shaky start with the whole microphone thing and the audience just needed time to catch up.
Somebody booed.
“You suck!” somebody shouted.
“Get off the stage!” shouted somebody else.
Chester stopped singing. He hurried over to the amp and shut off the music. Screw these people if they didn’t appreciate his effort to bring a bit of joy into the nihilistic pit of black despair that was their lives.
“Leave the parodies to Weird Al!” shouted the same guy who’d told him that he sucked.
“Weird Al never parodied George Michael!” Chester shouted back at him.
“Yes, he did!”
“He did not! ‘I Want Your Socks’ wasn’t him, dipshit!”
“No, he parodied him in the ‘UHF’ video!”
“That doesn’t count!”
“It was a parody of the frickin’ ‘Faith’ video!”
“But it was just a visual parody! It wasn’t a spoof of the song itself! It’s not the same thing at all!”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree!”
“Fine. Whatever. Do you all want me to leave? Will that make you happy? Will you at least get a chuckle out of watching me slink away in shame?”
“Yes!” shouted multiple people.
“Quit disrespecting his memory!” shouted a man in green.
Chester didn’t think he’d heard that right.
“What did you say?” he asked, pointing to the man.
“I said, quit disrespecting his memory! George Michael is rolling over in his grave!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean just what I said!”
“George Michael’s not dead.”
“Ummmm . . . yes, he is. Has been for a while.”
Chester looked around the audience. Most of them were nodding.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Holy shit.
He wasn’t going to cry . . . he wasn’t going to cry . . . he wasn’t going to cry . . .
“But when?” he asked. “How did it happen? Why didn’t it make the news?”
“It was all over the news!” shouted a woman from the back. “Where have you been?”
Chester could feel his entire world collapsing. He knew he’d never again be Zany Chester. Not just the stage name—he knew he’d never again be in a zany mood. His fantasies of a standing ovation were over, and not simp
ly because it was a standing room only venue. This was to be his first and only performance.
He wished he had a few moments to himself so he could mourn George Michael properly, but that wasn’t an option. He had to act now if he was going to ensure his immortality in the history of musical performances. Though he’d hoped that it would be because of the stellar reaction to his song, he’d come in with a backup plan.
Chester took out a pocketknife.
He snapped out the blade. He had to stab somebody quickly, before anybody realized what was about to happen. The drummer was closest, so Chester slammed the knife into his chest, pulled it out, and then stabbed him again.
The audience didn’t do anything. They just kind of stared at the stage, as if thinking, “Maybe this is all part of the show. His song was terrible on purpose, and we were supposed to think that we were seeing a disastrous musical performance, but it was all misdirection for the moment when he pretended to stab a dude.”
The drummer, of course, knew it wasn’t fake. He touched the bloody wound and gaped at Chester in horror.
“I . . . plugged in your phone for you . . . ” he said, before collapsing onto the stage.
It was true. The one guy in the entire club who hadn’t been a complete dick to him was the one he stabbed. Chester felt bad about that.
The other members of Eleven Mile Hike (Eleven Mile Walk? Which was it? And why was Chester squandering his final thoughts on trying to remember the band’s name?) also knew it wasn’t a simulated stabbing, but they apparently weren’t inclined to rush at a guy holding a knife.
“Security!” the bass or guitar player shouted.
Chester knelt down and stabbed the drummer a few more times. For his piece of resistance, or whatever the French version of that phrase was, it was important that the bouncers think of him as a serious threat and not be gentle with him.
A woman screamed.
He wanted the crowd to panic but not panic so much that they missed what he was doing. A lot of cell phones were recording him. He begged God not to let him mess this up, although God had probably bailed on the whole endeavor after Chester stabbed the drummer.
A bouncer rushed onto the stage.
Chester dropped the knife.
His timing had to be perfect.
The bouncer ran at him, then did the exact move Chester had hoped for: he yanked Chester’s arm behind his back.
“Hey, everybody, look at me!” said Chester. “I’m breakdancing!”
Chester did a violent twist. Though he couldn’t hear the bone break over the horrified noises the audience was making, he could definitely feel it. He’d known it was going to hurt, obviously, but not that bad! He should’ve tested it out beforehand. Well, no, that would have been impractical.
“Did you hear me?” he asked. “Breakdancing!”
Did the audience realize he’d just broken his arm? Shit, they didn’t, did they? His joke didn’t make any goddamn sense if they didn’t know his arm was broken. He’d expected the bone to protrude, but it remained completely contained within his skin.
Also, his expectation had been that he’d be able to wiggle free of the bouncer and do an actual breakdance, at least as well as he could with a broken arm flopping around. But he remained firmly in the bouncer’s grip. This could not be going more poorly.
What if he broke his arm even more?
Chester twisted again, and—oh, yeah, that did it. The bouncer shoved him down and stepped away, as if Chester’s insanity might be contagious. The audience let out a really loud frickin’ gasp. Protruding bone for sure.
He picked up the knife. The timing on the breakdancing joke was completely fouled up, but he had a Plan C. It involved a less famous, though equally classic, dance from the ‘80s: the Sprinkler. Yes, the dance where you pretended to be a lawn sprinkler. Anybody who said they didn’t enjoy the Sprinkler was a damned liar.
Chester was starting to feel a bit dizzy. Didn’t matter. The show was almost over. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted. “I’m doing the Sprinkler!”
He jammed the knife deep into his neck. Blood poured down over his hand, which was exactly what he needed. Finally, something was working out perfectly.
He did the Sprinkler, sprinkling blood into the audience as he did so.
Success! It would be, he was confident, the most legendary performance of the Sprinkler in the history of dance. What performance would even come close?
Nobody was laughing. That was okay. Maybe somebody would smile thinking back upon this night, or get a chuckle watching the video on YouTube. That’s really all he wanted.
Chester collapsed. Then he died, feeling zany.
ASCENDING
Robert Ford
Love happened slowly and then all at once.
I don’t remember who described love that way, but it was exactly that with Layla and me. It started as a prank. My best friend Josh stole my phone, downloaded the CupidsArrow app and set up a fake account for me under the name “PikachuLUVR.” After I found out, I fixed the profile details he’d put in (I don’t find farm animals erotic, nor have I ever collected Pokémon). Swipe down to ignore and swipe up if you thought they were an angel of love.
Corny, I know. A few days in, I saw LaylaGirl’s profile.
LaylaGirl
Age: 23
Zodiac: Don’t Care
Interests: Reading/Writing, Music, Life
Seeking: Idk. Let’s find out together. ;)
Turn ons/offs: Ask
She seemed interesting so in a rare moment of bravery, I sent her a message. My friend Josh will walk up to any girl in the room—even if she’s a Victoria’s Secret model—and chat her up as if they’ve known each other forever. Make her laugh. Get her number. It’s like breathing to him. I do not have that ability.
A single online message turned into conversations and soon I found myself checking in with her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It was exciting, getting to know each other.
LaylaGirl: So . . . do you give your phone number out a lot?
PikachuLUVR: Idk . . . 5, maybe 6 times this week.
LaylaGirl: Oh.
PikachuLUVR: To Human Resource departments as I’m applying for jobs. =)
LaylaGirl: LOL! Ahhh ok. :) NOW I feel special! Hahaha
PikachuLUVR: Good! I like making you feel special.
LaylaGirl: You do, Naz. You’re very sweet. I like talking with you. A lot. =D
When my parents got to America, they thankfully left the old ways behind. Arranged marriages and caste systems. Instead, they embraced their new country—especially rock and roll. My mother was always quoting lyrics or things musicians said. They became her wise men.
Instead of Red Fish, Blue Fish, my mother read the poems of the Lizard King himself, Jim Morrison. I missed out on Clifford the Big Red Dog, but I got a master’s degree in Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream.
For my tenth birthday, my parents bought me The Beatles White Album and a brand new Team Murray bicycle. The bike had metallic red foam pads and freestyle wheels and looked magical. I was invincible on this stallion.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I rode into the woods along the dirt trails of the construction crew building a neighboring development. One day, I got the idea to ride an uprooted tree and jump off the jagged stump at the end of it. There I was, hauling ass to acid-fueled Hendrix blasting in my ears. I rode onto the tree trunk, made it to the end, and for half a second, I was flying. Major Tom leaving the confines of Earth itself.
Except Ground Control had a serious problem. The spokes of my rear wheel caught in the tree roots and I slammed into the pile of rocks beneath.
I broke my right arm, my collarbone, and two ribs. Hobbling back home, crying and bloody, it was the first time I ever heard my mother speak her native tongue, as she came wailing to my rescue.
That injury changed the course of my life.
I recuperated in bed and my father let me use his laptop to
pass the time. He also bought me a copy of The Hobbit.
I hate to admit it, but the book went untouched. The laptop however . . .
I started reading about programming. On the third day, something clicked. Maybe it was Janis Joplin screaming in my ears or Pete Townshend blasting away, but it all just made sense. In less than two weeks, I learned C+ code. I moved on to JavaScript, then html, which, by that time, seemed juvenile.
In every other way, I am admittedly unremarkable. I have one friend—Josh. I’ve never had a girlfriend though I’ve been on a few dates—all set up as doubles by Josh—and one time a girl kissed me. I’ve never gotten drunk or stoned. I’ve never even been to a concert. Was never voted school president or class clown. Always the last one picked for teams in gym class.
But I can code like abeast.
I wear headphones when I code, typing to the rhythm and pace of the music. It somehow all meshes together and makes sense. In many ways, it’s the only thing that ever really has.
That, and when Layla and I fell in love.
PikachuLUVR: My being Indian isn’t a problem for you is it?
LaylaGirl: I don’t think so, not really. I mean . . . are you Indian or are you INDIAN?
PikachuLUVR: I don’t worship a cow in the backyard if that’s what you’re asking. :)
LaylaGirl: No arranged marriages or payment in farm animals and jewels?
PikachuLUVR: No, no. My parents left all of that behind when they left India. Fell in love with America and its fast-food, MTV society with open arms. Besides, when we get married, payment will be in expensive bourbon and rounds of golf at private clubs. Lol
LaylaGirl: Oh? We’re getting married now?! =D
PikachuLUVR: Whoaaaaaa slow down! You American girls are SO fast! I didn’t say NOW . . . Let’s wait at least a week or so. :)
LaylaGirl: HAHAHAHA! Ok. Got a deal, babe. ;)
I had given her my phone number about a week after first messaging her, but she hadn’t used it yet—every conversation had been on CupidsArrow. Layla worked in public relations at Stapleton and Baker, an advertising agency in downtown San Francisco. She didn’t talk much about it, but there were a lot of late nights and it really seemed to stress her out.
