Deathskull Bombshell (8 page)

Trevor nodded, and put his hand out. I gave
him the napkin, and he eyed it suspiciously before handing it off
to his sister. “Alright, guys, any ideas? I think we should start
off with “Poison City Toxic Neon”, it’s our loudest one. And then
“Demeter the Martyr”.” He paused. “Thoughts?”

“It works,” Parker said, and Trevor scribbled
it down.

““Heart Toaster” should be next,” Elizabeth
said.

Hitting the power window switch, spring
breeze in my new punk rock hair, I felt like I was in a
Behind
the Scenes
special. Not bad.

May 2002

Somehow they got to the concert in one piece.
Austin noticed the Toyota Camry made a slight humming noise while
it drove, which reminded him of the dead Buick, rotting away in the
gas station parking lot, alone in the dead of night. He hoped
nobody would steal it from the parking lot before he had a chance
to get back to it.

Right now, though, it was time to rock
out.

The venue was a two-story house nicknamed
Rawkhaus, stuffed full of scenesters and party kids and punk
rockers of all hair colors and styles. Trucker hats and mohawks
everywhere. The upstairs and first floor was pretty much a
glorified drinking party.

The concert took place in the basement. The
band before Deathskull Bombshell was a metal band called
Ȼørpseflowerź; Austin could hear their industrial goth-punk sound
even though they hadn’t yet entered the house. Judging from a
poster someone left crumpled on the ground, there’d been two other
bands before Ȼørpseflowerź. One was called Zombie Bratwurst, and
the other, Aborted Dreams of a Better Catharsis.

There were probably weirder places than a
house in the sticks to hold a punk concert, Austin thought, but he
wasn’t sure where. He hoped Deathskull Bombshell sounded as good as
the Rob Zombie tribute band he’d planned for. At least they were
nice enough people. Even if their band sucked, maybe he’d end up
being friends with them or something.

Elizabeth got out of the car, frowning. She
opened the trunk and grabbed a dark pink zip-up hoodie, shrugging
into it. She wore a light pink
Invader Zim
t-shirt under it.
She kind of reminded him of Princess Peach, or Link’s girlfriend
from
Zelda
. “You got any cigarettes?” she asked Parker, who
gave her his best blank stare and batted his eyelashes.

“Parker?” she tried again.

He made no response, just froze his face,
bulging his eyes out.

“Oh, boo,” she said, and he grinned.

Elizabeth stalked off, long strides in her
old-school Adidas sneakers.

“Where’s she going?” Austin said.

“Inside,” Nick said. “She does this every
time, don’t worry about it.”

Austin nodded, marble-mouthed, staring after
her. She had a nice butt, curvy and fat in beat-up flares. It was
even more noticeable in cheap hand-me-downs. Nice clothing would
have just been a distraction.

Trevor cleared his throat.

Austin snapped to. “You guys need help?”

“If you want.”

Parker and Nick were already walking to
another vehicle, a dark red Chrysler van covered in Alkaline Trio
and Sugarcult stickers.

“By the way,” Trevor said. “Don’t touch my
sister. She’s got a learning disability and she’s very emotionally
sensitive. If you fuck with her, I’ll kill you.” He leaned in
close, making a fist. Austin could smell the cigarettes on his
breath, could count each individual pore. “Twice.”

Austin nodded, then ran to catch up with
Parker and Nick. He could feel his heart, rattling around like a
penny in a tin can. Gradually it slowed to a normal pace, and he
was able to contemplate his surroundings.

Checking out the other concert attendees, he
felt boring. Everyone else was so fashionable. Parker wore a
Nirvana hoodie, the kind with the old Xs for eyes smiley-face logo,
and Nick with his bracelets, that took balls. There were a lot of
punk kids with crazy hair, pink and red and blue and green, some
goths too, a lot of fishnet and eyeliner. Some people just defied
classification, wearing whatever. Austin wasn’t sure about his
trench coat, he couldn’t find anyone else wearing one, but Trevor
remained relatively undecorated in a black shirt and jeans, and
Elizabeth with her flares and earrings and light pink t-shirt just
looked like a girl.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

Austin and Nick and Parker unpacked the amps
and instruments from the van. Austin was too lost in his brain to
hear the guys talking. Just voices. The heavy amp strained the
muscles of his gangly arms, and he had to take a break a couple
times to stretch his legs out. Nick huffed and puffed with the
other amp. Parker hoisted his bass guitar on his back,
military-style.

“Hey, it’s the Deathskulls!” A guy with a
mohawk and more piercings than a pincushion greeted them at the
front door, holding up a beer bottle in a loopy toast.

“Oh, I’m not in the band,” Austin said.

“Hey, it’s the Deathskulls and a poser!” he
said, in the same tone of voice, toasting them again. He drank,
Adam’s apple bulging.

Everybody laughed.

Austin tried his best to smile amicably. He
shoved his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. Well, he was
here for the music anyway. It didn’t matter if these guys thought
he was a poser. Whatever. Maybe they were posers.

He pretended like he didn’t hear anything and
brought the amp down to the basement, leaving Parker and Nick
upstairs with mohawk guy and his friends so they could all BS about
things.

In the basement, Elizabeth sat behind her
drum set, grinning ear-to-ear under a cloud of cigarette smoke. She
took another drag of her cigarette as four tired-looking old punks
stood by her, big shoulders like leather jacket walls. She looked
like Marilyn Monroe, surrounded by all those men. Evidently they
were on drum-lugging duty.

Under his trench coat, Austin felt small and
useless, nothing to give her, nothing that she didn’t already
have.

There was a second girl.

She leaned over her guitar, tuning the
strings with fast hands, squinting in deep concentration. Her
penny-colored hair spilled in her face like a veil. She wore baggy
jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt and she was very skinny. Her face
had a pointed expression, stern, almost vulpine.

Watching her, Austin felt his breath catch in
his throat. Suddenly he wanted to sit next to her, ask her about
her favorite musicians, what books did she read, where did she want
to go to college, what did she do for fun, anything.

He wondered what her name was, wanted to
write it on his hand and press the still-wet ink to his cheek,
tattooing her name on his face.

Trevor strolled into the basement just then,
guitar case on his shoulder. With him it was an effortless gesture;
he made the guitar case look light as a feather. He was a fit sort
of guy, muscled arms, probably worked out every day. He pulled up a
screechy metal chair next to the redhead and reached a hand over to
brush her guitar strings. They made an ugly jarring noise.

She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes.

“Hey,” Trevor said.

She nodded at him without a word of
acknowledgement, then went back to her guitar.

“Hey, poser!” The mohawked guy again, calling
from upstairs. “Come up here and get wasted with us!”

Austin stumbled upstairs, feeling dizzy. He’d
had enough spying for today.

Beer was better.

May 2002

It was Austin’s second drink, but it felt
like his seventh. The floor looked like churned butter. Warm and
inviting. A feathered bed.

He could sleep forever.

Beer was beautiful. Only grains, but with a
sweet taste, like honey. Funny. Fuzzy. Good sweetness, like bread.
Manna from heaven.

Transubstantiation.

He’d found it.

He sat on the floor, and a few other punks
joined him. Somebody had a joint and they passed it around. He
smiled lazily as everybody talked about George Harrison and dead
musicians and politics. They were good people.

Elizabeth, back from the basement, stood over
him. “God, you’re easy.”

He looked up at her. It was kind of hot how
she scolded him. Kind of like a teacher. If he could only stand up
and kiss her. But his legs wouldn’t move. He was too drunk.

Wordlessly, he curled up at her feet and
yawned. He felt like a cat.

He closed his eyes.

She nudged him with her shoe, but not in a
mean way. “All good?”

“Sleeping,” he murmured into her
shell-toes.

“HEY, DEATHSKULL BOMBSHELL!” someone yelled,
and he opened his eyes.

“I gotta go,” Elizabeth said. She crouched
down next to him, then tousled his hair. “You have fun, kiddo.”

“If you want,” he said, but she was already
descending the staircase.

Fuck. She still smelled like vanilla perfume.
He wondered how a girly-girl like that ever got into drumming.

He closed his eyes. So much beer.

When he woke up, the music was already
started. Alone in the kitchen, he listened for a while, feeling the
cool kitchen tile beneath his warm face. The music was muffled, but
he could feel the drums and bass beat through the floor. He closed
his eyes, letting the booze slosh in his stomach a bit. After a
while he stood up and headed downstairs.

Deathskull Bombshell had a harsh sound, fast
and discordant, unsettling. It was an old-school garage band sound
fused with emo-screamo-hardcore. Short songs, fast tempo, simple
lyrics, politics, cusses, screaming. Trevor sang lead.

Elizabeth was a drumming maniac. She thrashed
her hair around crazy like she belonged to an eighties hair band.
She could do a lot of in-depth stuff like military taps and drum
rolls and weird things with cymbals. Long ago, Austin took up a
drumming class, but he gave up after only a few weeks. He wondered
how long it took her to learn to drum like that.

Parker played bass with his eyes closed,
clutching the instrument for support. Probably had stage fright.
Austin worried he’d fall over, but he managed. Being the youngest,
he had a high-pitched singing voice. You could tell he hated it.
Eventually he just gave up and started yelling the words, avoided
singing altogether.

The female guitarist, the red-head from the
basement, did backing vocals. When Parker started with the yelling,
she rolled with it, sometimes shouting along, other times singing
in a more melodic way. Her voice was low for a girl, maybe a
contralto. She wasn’t as good with the guitar as she was with her
voice. Austin noticed she watched Trevor a lot, probably looking
for cues.

Trevor, predictably enough, introduced
himself to the audience as Bjorn. His guitar was an electric,
covered in stickers. He screamed obscenities between songs just for
the hell of it, insulting the audience, pretending like he was
going to spit on them and sucking the loogie back into his mouth
last-minute. At one point he even threw his sweaty black t-shirt
into the audience, revealing stomach muscles and the beginnings of
a tattoo.

“Put some clothes on, Trevor.” One of the
guys in the audience threw his shirt back onstage.

Trevor wiped his armpits with his shirt, then
whipped it in the guy’s face. “No.”

Some greasy guy with stringy pink hair in a
The Exploited t-shirt and torn pants shoved Austin. He ignored it,
not wanting to fight.

The guy shoved him a second time. Austin
didn’t do anything then either.

A petite girl in a mohawk shoved him,
then.

He turned to face her, irritated. “What?”

“Moshpit’s starting,” she said.

He nodded, looking up at the stage.

She scratched the side of her head. Beneath
the mohawk she had a sweet smile. Her lip was pierced and she wore
a military jacket. “You’re supposed to shove me back.”

“Do I have to?”

She shook her head no. “No, of course not.
Everything’s optional. But the front’s for moshers. We get pretty
crazy, so you might wanna head to the back if you want to get home
in one piece.” She pointed with her thumb to the back of the
basement. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Austin thought about it. He had such a nice
view here, and the beer felt good.

The girl glanced at him, then at the stage.
She took a sip of her beer, then crushed the plastic cup in her
hand and set it on the ground.

Austin shoved her.

Some random guy hit him with his shoulder,
banging into him like a spiky leather-studded truck, a gesture
Austin returned with great enthusiasm.

Thus began the first moshpit, but not the
last.

May 2002

Nick stood in the back of the basement, beer
bottle in hand, watching the show. He didn’t actually drink, but he
needed something to do with his hands. They seemed like birds these
days, about to fly away and leave his brain behind. Emotion bubbled
in his heart like witch-brew. Watching Parker up there on stage was
like – well, there was no accurate comparison really, having
nothing to compare it to.

Nick smiled into the mouth of his empty beer
bottle, feeling more than a little stupid.

The band was on their last song of the night.
“Cupcake Wolverine”. Nick helped write that song, right after his
Confirmation thing. He was surprised and a little flattered they’d
learned it so fast.

Both of them were raised Catholic, sort of.
Parker liked the idea and found it romantic, but he believed more
in nature than in any sort of creator. Nick was Buddhist. He saw
common ground between Buddhism and Catholicism, both postulating
guidelines and stipulations for morally sound behavior. He
suspected that was most religion, anyway, stipulations, but somehow
Buddhism seemed more lenient.