“But it’s hard to watch you do it to yourselves and not feel sympathy for you poor bastards. We get to know you so damn well. It’s our job. And to understand is to forgive, right? So even while we push you just that final bit it hurts.”
Niko exhumes the Dobro from its case and slides the metal tube over his ring finger.
“You think you need us to keep you angry. Keep you producing. You defend us even when you know we’re out to get you. You think we’re part of you. Somewhere inside. Well, that works both ways buddy pal. Mostly when we feel the urge to help you out we just ignore it and go on and do our job. But sometimes we sink your boat and then throw you a line. We can’t help it. I mean there you are floundering around in hot water you usually boiled yourselves, and we ought to be laughing our ass off at how easy you make it for us, and then this little voice inside us says Hey, why don’t you give the poor schmuck a break, and next thing you know we’ve thrown you a line and we’re hauling you in.” The demon shrugs and looks a little sad. “That little voice is you. Sometimes you’re our demons.”
Still not saying anything Niko holds his empty hand out and his demon wraps the bottle with a tendril and offers it. As Niko drinks his demon watches like a voyeur at an orgy.
Niko holds the bottle out and meets his demon’s eye. His demon takes it back and takes a long hard gurgling pull and then recaps the bottle and sets it sloshing on the clacking floor beside the guitar case. He grins at Niko brighteyed and belches satisfaction. Smells of liquor, lighting matches.
Niko tunes the steel guitar. The watching demon shivers at approaching harmony. Some dread resolution.
Niko shuts his eyes and hears the train. Feels the rocking. Finds a rhythm. Lets it move his fingers on the metal strings. The Dobro cries.
Out there in the peopled abyss demons pause their endless nailgun crucifixions as a dark refrain comes from the passing boxcar rocking gently as it rolls beyond their stations of the cross. Pinioned souls allowed a brief and unplanned respite moan and twist in parody of sexual release as this sad dopplered lullaby weeps out across the neverending night.
As his fingers play the trainsong Niko realizes that the locomotive horn is blowing rhythmic harmony to take the top part of the melody he improvises in a plaintive slow and unarticulated speech from disenfranchised nations crying out its cureless loss.
He opens his eyes.
The trainhorn stops when tendrils lower from a leathern mouth.
Niko mutes the metal strings and lets the train conduct itself to iron down the flattened plain. The demon grins a feral grin and bangs its bony hip to knock hot spit from the harmonica that gleams between its snakelike tendrils. Not a trainhorn then.
Fascinated Niko hugs the Dobro while his demon blows a high downbending chord that finds the trainbeat in its motion and before he knows it Niko’s strumming long and sheeting heartbreak chords above that wailing harp. Chords that hover dip and glide like gulls above a churning ocean. Whiskey humming in his veins. Music’s in your blood they say.
The soultrain groans along its iron fate, tie and spike and rail and wheel. Niko in a drunk duet upon a midnight special of his lost soul’s forging. Who he is has led to where he goes as surely as the route on which he runs, tie spike rail wheel, tracks as damning as the ones that once had mapped his arm and leading to the same conclusion.
He keeps his eyes closed and plays on and while he plays his demon talks. “Here’s the trick, buddy pal, here’s the rub. I remove some obstacles and you think that I’m helping you.” The slide sobs high up on the Dobro’s neck. “That’s why I’m just like you. That’s why I’m torn.” Grounds the crying on the bottom string. “I want you to succeed. See? I want to watch you get away with this.” Arpeggios his doubt. “Because when I help it shoves you right into the mouth of it. You make it easy for me. I want to thank you and I want to kick your ass.” Lets a held chord bleed while reaching blindly for the bottle. Feels it pressed into his hand. Drinks deep and holds the bottle out and feels it taken. Winces not uncomfortably at the little detonation in his gut. Hello old friend. “But here’s the grand prize question. What will you do when you get there?”
Niko mutes the strings and lets the trainsong play unaccompanied. Measure for measure, tie spike rail wheel. “What do you mean?”
“I mean when you get to where you’re going and it’s time for you to walk the walk how are you going to fuck it up?”
A clatter from ahead goes through them and behind them as the train runs over piles of bones.
“Who says I’m going to fuck it up?”
“You’ve never done anything but. It’s the nature of the soul who lives in you. He ruins his life, he comes down here, he screws the pooch. Over and over, life after life. You know why? Cause he’s a fuckup, that’s why. It’s that simple.”
“Fuck you.”
“You fucked up club gigs when you were just starting out because you were using. You fucked up every time you tried to sober up or kick.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“It’s fair to say what happened to your baby brother was a fuckup don’t you think?”
“Shut up.”
“Why? You’ve heard all this for years. I’m just saying it out loud this time. You fucked up every band you were in so much you had to hire session players on your albums and tours. And how about Jemma, old buddy old pal? El Fuckuppo Grande. What, you think being rich and famous keeps you from being a loser? You’ve got assloads of cash, you’re famous as shit, and you fucked up your whole life. You always have. So why in the world should I doubt you’re gonna fuck up again?”
Niko hugs the Dobro with his eyes clenched shut. He thought his demon had defected, jumped ship to help him on his sorry way. Why is he doing this to him now?
But let’s be honest, buddy pal. Something inside you wants to hear all this. Something believes every word this son of a bitch says. Always believed it. Isn’t that why you shot up, why you drank? To shut him up or build a wall to shut him out. But all it ever really did was shut you in there with him. Like you’re in here with him now. Tie spike rail wheel. Soulmates, cellmates, oneman show. He can’t help himself, he’s what he is. We are who we are. It’s that simple.
Niko puts the guitar away and shuts the latches on the case. His demon’s brighteyed scrutiny. He sits there still a moment, sad hand on the black case remembering Jemma’s hand. He reaches for the bottle and the bottle meets him halfway. He sips and cranes his neck and swallows loudly. Lets the bottle go. It doesn’t hit the floor.
Listening to his demon guzzle Niko stands unsteadily. Bends to pick up the case and nearly falls. Stumbles to the door and slides it open and leans the case against the wall and stands with one hand clutching the edge of the door and watches the protean blackness gliding by. That voice inside him whispers Jump. Still inside him whispering even as its embodiment sits drinking across from him on the filthy wooden floor of the clacking train. Like staring at a cancer growth cut from your galbladder yet still feeling its hard protrusion beneath your belly. It doesn’t end, it never ends, it never goes away, however much of it may surface in the world.
“I used to drop acid,” Niko says to the metastasizing dark. “Long time ago. Not really my drug. There’d always be a moment where things seemed right at the edge of turning bad. You’d look at things, even the air, and it all wanted to erupt and decay and rot. Jemma used to tell me you had to remember that you were the one driving. You had to be able to point at something going rotten and say And now it’s not. And it worked. It really did.” He laughs and shakes his head. “And now it’s not. It’s like being a kid and believing you can point at something and make it disappear.”