“What is this, an interview or something?” Chaos piped up. “Yeah, we’re happy to be here, blah, blah. Come on, relax, sit down, have a fucking drink, let’s just chill and have some fun.”
The door opened and my heart stopped as Balthazar walked in. He was taller than I thought he would be, totally looming over Fern and me, and his hair was wet. He smelled like soap. I gazed up at his handsome face, unable to really grasp that I was standing here, right in front of him.
“I think she likes you, Bal,” one of the guys joked.
Balthazar looked down at me and smiled. I smiled back. “The shower’s free if anyone wants to use it,” he said, and then moved to the table and poured himself some wine. He took a sip, turned back, and surveyed us. I fumbled for something cool to say as they all stared at us.
“Well, this is boring as shit,” Balthazar said to his bandmates.
What did they want us to do? I didn’t understand. Would they prefer the company of the giggling idiot girls? There was a bad atmosphere, a tension.
“We have a band,” Fern said, taking a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it.
“Oh, do you really.” Balthazar yawned. “Why don’t you tell us all about it?” There was a round of chuckles that followed this comment, and my stomach slowly started to freeze up. They were assholes.
“We kinda don’t want to hear about your band,” someone else said. “We kinda just want to get laid. You know?”
I had no idea what to say. I felt stupid as hell. Me and Fern standing there in our stupid outfits, thinking they’d actually care we were in a band too. To them we were no better than the other girls, willing to twitter and fawn and fool around with their fat roadie.
“We’ll go then,” Fern said. There was an urgency in her tone that I didn’t understand. I felt like I was missing something.
Balthazar sighed loudly and slammed down his glass. “No, you’ll sit down and have a drink.”
The next thing I knew, he had taken Fern by the shoulders and shoved her down on the couch between Ed and Sid. Her face registered surprise and fright, and I moved forward towards her. “We’ll leave,” I said, reaching for her. But someone grabbed me. The room spun and something jolted me, hitting me hard in the back of the head. When my eyes cleared I was looking at Balthazar’s fist, clenched around the front of my shirt. I was against the wall. He’d slammed me up against it. “Have a drink,” he said again.
My lips moved as if to talk, but my brain couldn’t find anything to say. I didn’t understand what was happening. I heard laughter coming from somewhere in the room, but I didn’t know from where. I couldn’t see around Balthazar and I couldn’t move.
“We get very tired of boring girls,” he told me. I had no idea what he meant. He kept talking to me in this low tone, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I heard a shriek and I knew it was Fern. What was happening to Fern? I tried to pull away from the wall, but Balthazar’s fist still gripped my shirt. He tossed me against the wall again, bouncing my head off it, and I blacked out for a second. The next thing I knew I was down on the floor on that disgusting carpet. I lay there. Balthazar was standing over me, laughing about something, and I couldn’t get up. I was too stunned, trying to understand what was happening.
I heard another shriek — Fern again. I looked up to the couch where it came from. I was behind the couch and I saw her hand fly up, and a big fist wrapped itself around her wrist.
Were they raping her?
One look at one of the guys standing over the couch answered that question for me. He was watching whatever was happening there and fiddling with his belt.
They were.
I opened my mouth and let out the loudest scream I could, screwing my eyes shut and throwing everything I had into that scream.
A huge rough hand slapped down over my mouth, cutting it short, and I opened my eyes to see Balthazar’s face directly over mine. “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed.