you for admittance.”
Wes had brought his, and now he stood, watching the black-haired skank walk away, in the low light of the golden-wood bar. He waited to meet the band.
While the ad had said that drinks and hors d’oeuvres would be served, Wes had avoided the snacks. True to the band’s crawly affectation, the silver trays on the side of the room were brimming with French-fried roaches, candied locust and honey-coated raisins…the raisins each gripped by an amber-coated giant black ant.
Wes ordered a Jack and coke and waited.
The band was fashionably late. But they were also fashionably dressed. Arachnid wore a skintight black body suit, and a web of chains jangled from his arms to his chest. When he held his hands up above his head, it looked as if a web of silver joined him to himself. The other members of the band had their own style; Cicada, the drummer, was literally shellacked in black; Wes struggled to ascertain where his painted skin ended and his shiny black clothing began. He suspected there was very little clothing attached. And the lead guitarist, Scorpion, wore an atomic orange bodysuit, and silver dangled from his ears like wind chimes. When he smiled, Wes could have sworn he saw fangs.
A creepy little man in a Metallica T-shirt slid up next to him, and grinned…with the left side of his face. His right seemed as immobile as granite.
“You gonna spread the word?” he asked. Wes saw a trickle of sweat slip between the kinked and wild hairs of his mutton chop sideburns.
“Word?”
“You gonna sell the Buzz?”
“Yeah,” Wes said, and moved away as quickly as the skank had ditched him just minutes before. “Yeah, I love ‘em.”
“We all do, yeah,” the man laughed, nodding, and flashing a row of yellowing teeth. “Love ‘em to death we do, hmmm.”
Wes slipped back to the bar and ordered another Jack and coke.
Arachnid appeared, as if from nowhere. He put two hands on the edge of the bar and pulled. In a flash he was standing on the bar; he raised a bloody red glass to the room and toasted.
“To the Swarm,” he called, and a dozen glasses raised in answer. “I love each and every one of you.”
Someone yelled back “We love you!” and Wes found himself raising his glass in answer, and downing a cool draught of liquor and fizz. He swallowed and felt the warmth in his gut.
“Buzz,” called Arachnid, holding his glass high.
“Buzz,” answered the small crowd, and downed another gulp.
The creepy little Metallica man—who was also bald as a cueball—sidled up to Wes and held out a bowl of fried bugs. Wes wasn’t sure what they were, exactly, but he noted a lot of crusted golden-fried legs protruding from each of the inch-long, worm-thick forms.
“Brood,” the man said, and Wes raised his hands in passing.
“Naw,” he said. “I’m full.”
“Brood!” the man said louder, as Arachnid raised jangling chains again on the bar.
“Take our communion, if you will, and we will be your sponsors to the church of insectoid. With our music, and these children in your belly….our word will spread for miles and miles and miles.”
“I don’t think so,” Wes waved the offering away. But the man didn’t relent. He pushed the bowl insistently and then the goth-skank came back as well.
“Chow down, baby,” she whispered. Her eyes seemed to glow ice-blue in the dim light of the room. She put two long fingernails into the container and then held a crusted insect to Wes’s lips.
Maybe this was some kind of a hazing. A test, he thought. As the woman crushed a warm fleshy chest to his side, pressing closer to breathe on his neck as she held the French-fried bug to his lips, Wes felt his jaw drop. She dropped in the crunchy insectoid morsel, at the same time leaning in to whisper, “It only hurts a little,” she said. “And then…you
Wes could have sworn she spit in his ear, because he felt a cool slippery feeling in his ear canal as she bit at his lobe and hugged him. But then, as he turned to face her, she giggled, and planted a kiss on his lips, forcing him to swallow the salty bug before she backed away to fade into the small crowd. Wes noticed that the girl made a few stops in the crowd, sidling up to people and then slipping away with a whisper. He didn’t think much of it at the time, only shook his head to clear away the whiskey blur. Shit, he was fuck-faced and the concert hadn’t even started yet. Hell, he hadn’t walked up and introduced himself to the band.
He moved towards the bar and Arachnid, and held out his hand. “Hi,” he said, trying to make an impression on the singer. “I was a fan before you guys even thought of flying.”
The singer opened his mouth to laugh, revealing a row of jagged, jewel-crusted teeth. “And I sucked blood before I was a vampire,” he laughed, leaning forward to stare eye-to-eye with Wes. “Bring me more Brood,” he whispered.
“I’ll spread the word,” Wes assented, nodding vigorously. “I have been already.”
* * *
In just minutes, the private party was over, and a door was opened to the main floor of the club. Wes pushed for a spot at the front of the stage and held it, turning to put his back to the stage monitor as he watched the club fill. The alcohol settled in his eyes, and the room swirled for a moment like a bad ride on a merry-go-round as he, and the crowd, waited for the band to take the stage.
By the time they did, Wes was slumped against the black fuzz of the monitor. The liquor had hit him harder than he’d expected, and the vibration of the lead guitar jolted him upright in surprise. He hadn’t even registered the cheer of the crowd as the band strode onstage. But with the jolt of electricity in his spine as Scorpion chimed out the intro to “Fly For Your Life,” Wes threw himself into the frenzy and jumped up and down like a pogo stick. The band accommodated, dealing out one manic anthem after another.
Wes sung…or screamed…every word for the next hour and a half.
At the end of the night, Wes went outside of the club to hail a cab. He hadn’t driven; he knew that it was likely to be a buzz night, and he lived close enough that a cab ride was far more desirable than the chance of a DUI.
When he climbed into the yellow car, the cabbie asked “good show?” and Wes could only mumble, “Yeah…it’s all a blur…and a buzz.”
“A buzz?” the cabbie asked.
“Yeah…my ears feel like they’re in the middle of a hive,” Wes grinned. “Everything’s buzzing.”
The cabbie grinned. “You better get some sleep.”
In moments they’d pulled up to the curb of his place. With an unsteady gait he approached his front door and remembered the cabbie’s advice. “I intend to,” he mumbled. “I intend to.”
* * *
What he hadn’t intended, was to be awoken by the buzz in his brain. He’d barely gotten his clothes off before falling onto the sheets, but within minutes the alcohol blur shifted, and Wes found himself staring at the ceiling as in his head, a drone whined like wind through a tin whistle. The noise in his head shimmered and buzzed like a living thing, sinuous and insistent. It didn’t let up. And it wouldn’t let him fall asleep.
At one point he rolled over and stared at the blue LED of his clock radio. 3:34. “Fuck,” he moaned, rolling over and punching a pillow over the offending ear canal. “I’ve gotta be up in 3 hours.”
* * *
“How was the show?” his workmate Trent asked, as Wes slouched down the hallway to his office.
“Loud,” he complained, holding a palm over his ear. “I can still hear it.”
“Kiddin’!” Trent laughed. “Oughtta wear earplugs to those shows.”
Wes nodded. “I know.” He stopped a moment at Trent’s doorway and shook his head, trying to clear the still annoying hum from his eardrums. “I’ve woken up with my ears buzzing from a show before, but never this loud still. I should have stuffed some cotton.”
Trent shrugged. “Hindsight and all that.”
“Yeah. Ears are old. Can’t take rock and roll the way they used to.”
“You call that rock ‘n’ roll?” Trent shook his head. “I call that shit…shit.”
“Bite me,” Wes said and stepped past the doorway and into his own cube. He punched the computer on-
