The crowd didn’t seem to mind. Everyone was throwing their hair around and tossing their fists in the air, but there were so few people there, the whole thing seemed slightly ridiculous.
“Did you notice the chain?” Fern said into my ear over the music.
One of the stock-still guitar players indeed had a length of metal chain attached to a dog collar around his neck. The other end of the chain fastened to his amp.
“I guess it’s so he doesn’t get out of control,” I observed, and Fern and I laughed.
The song ended, and the crowd cheered sparsely. “Thank-fuckin’-you!” Paul shouted into his microphone. “You guys are the fuckin’ best.”
“Yeah, all thirty of you,” I muttered under my breath.
“Sometimes, when the moon is just right, bad things happen in the night,” Paul rhymed, glowering at the crowd. I drew my breath in sharply in surprise as the crowd actually cheered. “Killers come out in the moon’s dark glow. And the killers are people you sometimes know.” His voice sounded thin and melodramatic, like a grade-school kid at a recital, reading off cheesy lines that echoed through the somewhat empty room.
“Are you scared?” Paul demanded of the crowd. They clapped in response.
“I said are you fucking scared?” he repeated, his voice rising to an embarrassing shriek. The crowd cheered. “Fuck yeah!” someone called.
“This is awful,” Edgar murmured to me.
“Blackskull!” Paul commanded. What the hell was he talking about?
I heard a thin, weak wail, and my eyes flicked to the chained guitarist, who had thrown his head back and apparently roared. But because it was not into a microphone, it sounded flaccid.
“Blackskull — are you ready?” Paul addressed the guitarist, who was, presumably, Blackskull. He walked to the guitarist’s amp and unchained him. The crowd cheered weakly again. I noticed that Kate and Jennifer were still gyrating for some reason — even though there was no music.
As Paul unchained the guitarist, he spoke into his microphone. “It is time . . . to unleash the beast!” And Blackskull let out another thin howl.
I couldn’t help it. A shriek of laughter erupted from my mouth, louder than I had intended it to be — a resounding, echoing honk. Everyone in the room heard it and looked back towards us. Paul and Blackskull faltered onstage for a moment, but then Paul glowered. Their next song began. The guitarist moved to front and centre of the stage, bobbing his head a bit more than he had been and letting his tongue loll out of his mouth. Presumably this was the beast . . . unleashed.
“I can’t believe you laughed like that,” Edgar leaned in and said. “They all heard.”
“Who gives a shit?” I replied. “This whole thing is a joke. I’ve seen enough. Can we leave?”
“Not yet,” Socks reminded me. “Let’s just sit back and enjoy the show.”
xXx
Eventually the beast was chained back up, and the set continued without much more hilarity. I knew Edgar was worried that I had offended them by laughing, but I honestly didn’t understand why he would care if we’d hurt their feelings. This whole night was a joke. Sure, maybe the crowd hadn’t cared who we were — but they liked Heathenistic Bile. I was totally fine if their fans disliked us. If this was what they thought was cool, I wanted to be the exact opposite of it.
And so what if Paul and his moron bandmates had heard me laugh? They were pricks and had been from the get-go. I knew we’d had a lousy performance, but we didn’t have ridiculous dancing girls onstage. And we certainly hadn’t unleashed any pathetic beasts. They were embarrassing.
After their set ended, the crowd filtered out after high-fiving the band, and their “helpers” started tearing down the equipment. I couldn’t resist approaching Paul, who was sitting on the edge of the stage with his two girlfriends and a few other girls who’d come to the show and were now fawning over him.