Sometimes, when you scream really-really loud, you can awaken the sleeping dead. This is the worst possible thing you can do to it. If a woken corpse is notably cranky, it might try to eat your brain to stop you from screaming. If you continue to scream after your brain has been eaten, the corpse will eat more of you until it is absolutely certain that you will not be capable of molesting its slumber anymore. This is how the brain-eating zombie stereotype originated.
Nighttime now, but it still looks like morning outside.
Satan has been playing some music on the stereo system. He calls it Satan Music, because he recorded the songs himself. It isn’t like anything I’ve heard before. Seems more like noise than music, but it is much different than the electronic noise that my band plays. Describing it is extremely difficult. Definitely something to be heard rather than heard about.
Basically, it is described as this: put every sound in the universe into one instrument and play a half-melodic tune, with a female vocalist who is being tortured and sexually gratified at the same time; also, throw twelve thousand stones at a single target without rhythm. The music is very intense and very loud, and gives you a feeling quite similar to the flu.
Before I met Satan, I knew of a certain type of heavy metal that was called Satan Music. This kind of Satan music was created in the eighties to make bands such as Iron Maiden and Dokken look like wimps. One of the first Satan music bands was called Venom. All the Venom fans would dress in black clothes and dye their hair black and let their faces go pale from lack of sun. This was all an attempt to look scary and vampiric, kind of like Vod.
In other words: VENOM = EVIL.
The music is very intriguing at first, but then it gets annoying after an hour and you just want to get away from it. I keep trying to get Satan to turn the music down, but Satan doesn’t ever listen.
I try sarcasm and say, “Satan, can you turn the music any louder?”
And he says, “No, that’s as loud as it gets.”
So I continue with nonstop soul-buying for another hour.
Eventually, business slows and the line thins. Then, all of a sudden, it’s all gone. No more orders. Only ten people left in the store, eating their food and losing their souls.
I exit my post and sit into a booth with a hot cup of orange-nut coffee, creamy blend. The music forces my temples to tighten up solid, vibrating my upper spine.
And then an explosion: “SATAN, TURN THE FUCKING MUSIC DOWN!!!”
A yell.
For the first time in years, I yelled. You could barely hear it over the music, but I yelled.
Satan agrees with my nodding head by nodding his head. He turns it down to a nice background score and says, “You’re right. Silence is in the parking zone again. It might hear us.”
“How do you know?” Christian asks, stepping out of the kitchen with one Newport cigarette on his tongue.
“No more customers,” Satan responds, lowering his Satan Music a touch more. “Silence either swallowed them up or scared them into the distance.”
“Why do you keep playing that music?” I ask Satan.
I drink down half my coffee and go to refill it. The tangy brown fluid whirls from the cup onto the floor.
“Music attracts customers,” Satan says.
“ Goodmusic attracts customers,” I say.
The last of the customers leave, the cigarette machine opens the door for them, to be eaten by the Silence.
“But I do play good music,” Satan argues, almost offended. “I wrote it.”
“It’s not good,” I say. “You’re music scares people. Especially me. The only thing it’s good for is making me sick.”
“Do you really think so?” Satan says, understanding voice. “This is the kind of music I’ve always found most appealing.”
“Actually,” Christian butts in, “I’ve heard some people say that they came here because of the music. They heard it from half a mile away, and they came to see what it was. They seemed really interested in it, until their souls fell out. Personally, I think the music’s unusual enough to be interesting. I think it actually does attract people.”
“Well, it makes me sick,” I say to Christian.
“Really?” Christian sits across from me. “I actually like it.”
Satan is happy with his music and turns it louder again. Not too loud, I can handle it at this volume for now. As he passes me on his way to the office, he flicks my shirt like a little kid, the red Satan Burger shirt, and the shirt becomes a demon, squiggling on my chest. It doesn’t seem to bother me.
I just notice that I’ve been a part of the past conversation. Normally, I don’t speak that much. And I never get into arguments or yell or complain like I just did. Also, the shirt that is now alive and squiggling on my torso usually would have put me in suffering, irritatingly squeamish.
Maybe I’m drunk right now, even though I don’t remember drinking anything. When I’m drunk, I say things without thinking. Drinking numbs you from your ability to reason. It makes you forget your own character and become a crazy. Maybe I am a crazy now; I’m going through so much chaos these days that reality is hard to grasp.
Or maybe all the sillygo, floating around in my oxygen, is making me go silly.
“Well, Gin’s not doing too good,” Christian says to me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Still upset about his hand?”
“Not just his hand. Early today, when they were working, Satan accidentally touched him a few times, made more of Gin’s body parts alive. If this keeps up, Gin’s going to have nothing left that he can control besides his brain.”
I use my God’s Eyes to go see Gin.
He looks the opposite of well, sitting on his bed with Nan, trying to fall asleep, Nan brushing his hair away and holding him, like a concerned lover, something she’s never been to him before. Maybe she’s getting soft.
Breakfast is attacking Gin’s neck, trying to shake him up, but he ignores the hand. Gin’s eyes dribble back into his head, with some white on exhibition for the draft to parch. The room is lit by one candle, which is a symbol for Gin. He’s the type of person that romanticizes candlelit lifestyles, like the people before the electricity days, nights by the fire in the living room and just a candle for the bedroom. He says that candles make the world a droning softness, a falling whisper.
Gin’s new flesh-pets are asleep. They’re more upsetting to him than the hand, because they are more numerous. Now he feels his whole being has basically come to an end. It is just a vehicle for other creatures to live. One of them is his left shoulder, who he named Encyclopedia, another is his little finger, who he named Battery, and his right butt cheek, who he named Selenson. Selenson means Son of the Moon. Nan created this name for Gin; she says it’s never been used before.
Satan also patted Gin on the head, and made eight of his dreads alive. At this point, Gin wasn’t in the mood for naming any more body parts, so he calls them Medusa Hairs.
Richard Stein mentioned the Medusa to me. He said that she was a little woman in Houston, who could turn a little man into her slave, making him work his little butt all day long, just for her, just so she could take his money and buy herself things. This happened every time they stared deep into each other’s eyes. What the man saw was love, what the Medusa saw was money. After the man stopped earning enough money, the Medusa divorced him, leaving him broke and empty. Richard Stein said that his first wife was this Medusa, and she had snakes for hair.