by
This is how it begins, how it always begins.
You’ve lost the others, somewhere, back there. You didn’t stop to ask which way they were headed, nor did your eyes, the edges of your peripheral vision blurred beyond any precedence, register where they bolted to, where they sought cover once the fire fell like hailstones. It was coming from all angles; you were right to run whichever way you could; they should have followed you. Yes, they should have followed you. You’ve done no wrong here. You’re safe in your hiding place; you could live here forever if need be, anything to maintain refuge from that onslaught; although, it subsided minutes ago...
Perhaps it’s safe. Perhaps the others fell, and whoever was out there, above there, under there, over there, has gone. Gone back to whatever godforsaken place such merciless men call home, where the cowardly are considered champions of a cause that others – you – can’t condone. Yes, the noise has faded. You grasp your rifle, tight; the square’s before you, no sign of movement. No life, just decaying structures toppling slowly into piles of dusted masonry. Yes, they should have followed you, then everything would be fine, now...
...Now you’re in the open, again. Your eyes still aren’t quite up to speed, which seems odd as your heart is pulsating at a rate doctors would surely disapprove of, that your doctor at home would prescribe some pill or other for; a little something to take the edge off the everyday, only the everyday is so far away. You consider calling out, but the words stick in your throat. Are they around? Are they okay? You were never the bravest; they probably stood their ground. Fools. But you’d give anything to see their foolish faces, right now. Right now… you’re alerted by something. Something on the left, out of sight, just; something moved you’re sure…
The first two don’t register but the third cuts clean, into your shoulder. Spinning, suddenly dizzy, you point your weapon – unfired, until now – toward the source. Your shoulder’s bleeding; a closer inspection conducted in a second reveals that one of the two earlier shots grazed the skin of the same arm, and already blood from the brace of wounds is mixing, steadily making tracks to your elbow. Fire: one, two, three. But at what? You’re seeing nothing, hearing nothing, smelling nothing but the sweet smell of your own well-maintained firearm. Then, a crack...
You look down, assuming a twig had been crushed underfoot, but no: the pain’s not immediate, not until you see the shot that’s pierced your lower left leg, clean and true. Just below the knee. You fall, immediately crippled, firing off another few rounds into the clouded sky above; then, a shadow looms, a blade catches the single beam of light that’s navigated the cover overhead. You reach for what’s fallen from your hand and landed a yard too far away; it’s out of touch, you’re out of luck. Then, a sharp intake, and…
And you awake, your destination of choice two stops in the other direction; drink and merriment has seduced you into a deep slumber, one you’ve been having too regularly. The dream, too, is a constant; ever since Todd’s Comes To Your House came to your house, you’ve found yourself engulfed by its relentlessness, consumed by its feverishness, duty bound like a soldier to sing its praises to all and sundry. But now the tables have turned, the roles reversed: it’s not a record you own, but a record that owns you; it possesses a force never experienced before now, as if the tiny, microscopic pits on the compact disc’s surface house intelligent bacteria, living organisms that tunnel their way into your system, from fingertips to the deepest synapses, each and every time you handle this album. Of course, this is nonsense, you know as much; yet why, then, does the same dream haunt you so?
You reason, unconvincingly: “Todd are the war, I’m the enemy, their enemy. I’m what they seek to eradicate.” But why? Bombast is one thing you’ve heard a thousand bands before this one implement in such a way that your five senses shake ‘til they’re irreparably damaged, yet never before has such a sizeable lasting impression been made. There are craters in your skull, circling your headphones; there’s a dryness in your mouth born of fear and pure awe, not thirst. Todd aren’t the war, per se, but the absolutely final death blow, the closing chapter of a series of skirmishes: rock versus pop versus this versus that. Nothing matters, not now: Todd have re-written the rulebook on compositional etiquette, they’ve torn the spines from hairy rockers archaic and made racks for their tank-sized amps from them. They’ve ground the bones of a billion pretenders – those fashionable sorts that loiter about the edges of the right shows to be seen by the right people so they can hand them the right demo recorded by the right producer with a stamp of approval from the right band – snorted them and shat them back out like pepper spray in the eyes of the establishment. Their guitars are the guns, their drums the bulldozers that sweep away the limbs and bricks and brains and dreams that lay, broken, before them.
You change platforms, wearily. A ten-minute wait; you buy a bottle of fizzy drink from the vending machine. It slips from your hand as soon as you take it, rolling away from the platform’s edge, thankfully. Foolishly you allow it no time to settle, and duly cover your white shirt in brown stickiness. Kicking yourself, you slump in a wooden seat. Nine minutes. Your headphones rumble again; repeat was engaged when you set off, remember? The noise comes again, and although it’s recognisable to you now no degree of preparation ever renders you strong enough to withstand its multiple waves of undiluted aggression. It is a killer, a savage, drooling beast from another age, an age we’re yet to live through. It knows no age, perhaps? It just is, now and forever, then and tomorrow. “This is how it begins,” you think, sipping the still-frothing drink you paid too much for. “How it always begins.”
You drink, you drift, you dream.
You die all over again.
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10Mike Diver's Score
