Work Text
https://youtu.be/a-3QpNWCLKw?si=p8rXO0C76NWmsiUb
-Intro Song: "Night On The Sun" by Modest Mouse.
*(Alternate Universe)*
-None of the characters are famous
*Cast:
•Kurt Cobain
https://media.gifdb.com/kurt-cobain-shrug-rbloqlpgyophpl3s.gif
•Axl Rose
https://tenor.com/bDA7V.gif
•Tori Amos
https://24.media.tumblr.com/f2b245e19691da41872e240f2cbfc14d/tumblr_mhx2mlz6RR1s4t08po1_400.gif
•Slash
https://tenor.com/Sxko.gif
•Dave Grohl
https://tenor.com/bEBGO.gif
•Krist Novoselic
https://tenor.com/bGkfZXMbzFh.gif
•Stephanie Seymour
https://i.gifer.com/LoRp.gif
•Steve Albini
https://tenor.com/bVBY8.gif
•Kim Gordon
https://media1.giphy.com/media/POsg3e3gFc0sRbWoDM/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b9522q3l84zs0mrrav624ffk9kaq4i317xvlip4if9tv&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
•Butch Vig
https://tapeop.com/_m/photologue/photos/cache/butch.portrait_segcWwr_display_horizontal.jpg
•David Geffen
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDY1NTYzMTItYWY3OC00YWQzLThiOTItOWEyOGE0NzNjMTVkXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg
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https://youtu.be/8J4KCJ_cuWE?si=BcXaiyRg74nOGGWR
-Song: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane. •PRESENT (90s Seattle)- Friday night *Kurt's POV I make napalm and blow up my condo. Don't ask. I don't even remember doing it, but what is left of the bathtub looks like it's been through an atomic explosion. I have a receipt in my pocket for enough cat litter to supply an animal shelter and there are five empty fuel tanks in the back of my car. More than enough of both to gut a house. More than enough to blast my Ethan Allen couch clear across the street and litter tiny shards of my dishes across the lawn. More than enough to sink slivers of my coffee table into the porch railings and launch my Henkle Harris dining room set high enough that half of it landed in the trees. I tell the police that it was the pilot light, the temperamental flame that regularly blows out and fills the house with gas all day long while I'm at work. The refrigerator must have kicked on. I guess these things just happen... They don't fucking believe me. 💢 This is how I meet Axl. In jail. 💢 Every visit to this place is predictable. Same rotten, pissing drunks. Same crusted, catcalling girls. Same dismal fluorescent lighting that gives everything hepatitis. They toss me into a cell with another guy and my one-free-phone-call has been wasted on my good-for-nothing lawyer. It's probably best that I never sleep anyway, because I sure didn't plan on doing any of that here. "Hey man." A guy slouched against the wall nods at me. "Whatcha' in for?" "I think I blew up my condo." All the hair on my arms is singed and the back of my throat tastes like the tailpipe of a shitty old car. "You think?" he laughs. "That's the kind of thing you probably know for sure, or not." "I don't remember. I haven't been sleeping and I have this problem." "A girl." he smirks and winks at me like I have her goddamn name carved across my forehead. A flashing neon sign.
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https://youtu.be/3U7REVIJacM?si=HSJ8VWI0Mr9B13mm
-Song: "Junkhead" by Alice In Chains. •FLASHBACK My doctor is an asshole. Right up there with my good-for-nothing-lawyer. I haven't slept in fucking days. I beg him for pills. Justify them with endless nights spent staring at the walls and torturous days spent trying to decide if I was a hologram. Most days, everything else is a hologram. Life, as seen through a funhouse mirror. I was desperate. I sit in his shitty little office and my mouth waters for little white pills. Throat burns for pale, pastel blue. The blood-stained red of lipstick. 200 mg, 400 mg. Any dosage, any fucking color. I tell him that it's impacting my job, my sex life, even though both are basically shit and none of that is from the insomnia. He tells me to get a grip. "You should come back tomorrow night. There's a support group for insomniacs, they might be able to talk some sense into you." He hands me a pamphlet and leaves, the giant ass for brains with his squeaky orthopedic shoes and his cheap comb-over. I throw the pamphlet in his trash can, but show up anyway.
💢 The bottom level of the hospital reminds me of jail. Concrete floors stinking with bleach. Watered down coffee and doors that lock from only the outside. More of that hepatitis lighting. I join the huddle of chairs in the center of a great big depressing room with a bunch of others who all look like ghosts. Pallid and practically see through. Holograms. All of them. I write a random name on my name tag, just to throw them off the scent. I'm not signing up for this shit.
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https://youtu.be/8eptioPpo4w?si=0A15xg-XOetHsWoP-Song: "Dead Souls" by Nine Inch Nails. Slash, the big cream puff, hugs me and tells me to cry. I didn't sign up for this. Slash used to be a model. Shoes, socks, underwear, you name it. Jack of all trades. Family themed shoots for major label catalogues before skipping out early to film bondage porn. The high life, until the insomnia hit. Looking like a ghost doesn't go over well in the modeling business. Before he knew it, he was popping any pill he could get his hand on just to sleep. "I lost my jobs. My wife. She took the kids. We don't talk," Slash cries into my hair, crushing me against his chest. He's taken up lifting weights to tire himself out and he looks like a not so big, steroid junkie. Grotesquely muscled and laced with throbbing veins. "I can only sleep after I've heard my muscles tear." When I pull away, there's a blurry wet stain of my face on the front of his shirt and my eyes are burning.
💢 I sleep like a fucking baby that night. A log. The dead. Like I haven't slept in years and I go back to that ugly basement to cry on Slash every time I feel myself slipping. Write that same random name on my name tag. Drink their shitty coffee and listen to others complain about the miseries of the sleepless. Deflect every time they ask me to join in. I didn't sign up for this. I'm not here to share. I'm here to fucking cry.
💢 And just as I thought I was finally in a decent place, she walks in and fucks up everything.
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https://youtu.be/Bg-1scGPyhE?si=ag9VRuLK2dAU3OG6-Song: "Kool Thing" by Sonic Youth. Tori Fucking Amos. The little liar. The heartless fake. "She can't sleep either." Slash - the fucking cream puff - jerks his thumb at her and she smirks at me. Yeah fucking right. That girl is such bullshit. She probably forces herself to stay awake and tells you she does it for her 'art.' She probably paints those baggy eyes on every morning and drinks way too much coffee. Her bones stick out of her face like her skull is made of sugar and her skin is the color of watered-down strong brew. But her eyes and hair are bright and her mouth doesn't sag the way everyone else's does. She can sleep. I know it. She stares at me from across the circle. Gets to me before Slash does when we split for one-on-ones. Prances right over and rubs up against me like sandpaper. Smiles all pretty and throws her arms around my neck. I choke down the shuddering urge to recoil. She licks her lips and for a second I wonder how they'd feel on my cock. Then I imagine her naked. I can't help it. Underneath the too-tight, too-much-mess of her clothing, there's gotta be a decent pair of tits. Her pussy probably tastes sweet and I bet she's the kind of girl who'll just as soon rip your hair out as kiss you when she cums. I know she's the kind that falls asleep afterward. "I'm on to you." I tell her. "Oh, really?" Tori presses right up against me and presses both her hands on my lower back. Her eyes are sunken deep into bruised rose shadows and she blinks five times while I tell her that she doesn't need this. She is vacationing in the mouthwatering tragedy of other people's pain for the pure daytripper excitement, like a kid in a fucking amusement park. "A bad actress, that's what you are." I try to push her away, to put some fucking space between us, but she's impossible to move. Tori bats her eyes and her mouth curls up at the side. "Spot on, Sherlock," she purrs. "I'm just here for the next cheap thrill. And the coffee might be terrible, but it's free." She presses her face to my chest and huffs up a sham of a sob, a badly-drawn reproduction of the tears and the snot and the guilt they say we're supposed to be letting go of. I don't cry. I can't cry. Instead, I let her dance me all around that room like we're royalty at some high school prom. I barely resist the urge to pull her into a dark corner to give her a hard and thorough fucking. That or knock that goddamn smirk off her face. This isn't love at first sight. This is resentment at first glance. 💢 I go home that night and I don't fucking sleep at all. I jack off twice just thinking about her. Thinking about her sprawled out naked on my bed, her silky lips deep throating my hard cock while she fingers herself as I’m standing at the side of the bed and playing with her tits. Or her skinny pale legs wrapped tightly around my waist as I fuck her against my shower wall. One sleepless week later, instead of going to the hospital, I blow up my condo.
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https://youtu.be/HQqjHechnj4?si=6IDgg6qrLbrFabNZ-Song: "Prison Sex" by Tool. •PRESENT "I want to meet this girl." Cell mate has wild red hair and sunken green eyes, wickedly bloodshot, so he must be flying cloud-level on something really good. He's wearing a black leather jacket with a white tank top underneath, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. He's also wearing a blue bandana on his head. "No, you don't," I huff bitterly. "That girl is poison. Besides, I don't think I'm getting out of here for a while." After all, I did supposedly blow up my condo. "I don't know. . . we might get out sooner than you think." he says slyly, as though he's in on a secret that I'm not.I notice the guy in the cell across from ours is shaking his head and staring at us with a look of shock on his face and I'm pretty sure my cell mate must be crazy. I don't ask him what he's in for. From the looks of it, probably drugs. "I don't even know you." He holds out his hand, skin smudged, dirt around his nails. "Axl." I don't tell him my last name either. "Kurt." 💢 He springs us both in less than an hour. Bats his eyes at the female cop behind the desk and promises to fuck her later if she'll just unlock the cell doors for us. She's probably too young and inexperienced to be working here. This guy is so far out of her realm that she's punching numbers before she's even nodding yes. I wait out front and smoke two cigarettes while he fucks her in the back wall of the closet where they keep all the confiscated drugs. He comes out smelling like cigarettes and sex.
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https://youtu.be/BZjP3NaLoCQ?si=r01rWLQzODfmPe8e-Song: "It's So Easy" by Guns N' Roses. Axl steals a car. Not a nice car either. A beat up black Cadillac, seats gone squashy as the upholstery leaks out of the cracked leather. He hurtles down the highway like a bullet from a gun and I'm trying not to think about what the fuck we're gonna do. We have precisely thirty two minutes before the police catch on that something shady went down. I don't know why they had him locked away, but I'm pretty sure I blew up my condo. I still can't even remember why I did it. "You did it to prove something." Axl says and guns the engine. "To who?" "Yourself. Do you ever think about dying?" He flicks his cigarette out the window, a fire wash of sparks exploding behind us. "A lot." I say but he shakes his head. "You shouldn't. You shouldn't waste yourself like that." He sounds disgusted, like someone ran over his dog without stopping and left it all smashed and bleeding in the road. "You can't appreciate life without it." I tell him and his face goes rigid, monstrous with rage. "You really feel that way?" "If you die you're completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I'm not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I've got. Fuck. My life is an inside joke and I'm not in on the punch line. Death would be a relief at this point." "You want death? You've got it." Axl growls at me and jerks the wheel. Spasm, hard to the right. The car swerves into oncoming traffic. I scream. A car blares its horn and barely misses our bumper, hissing as it hurtles by with mere centimeters to spare. Screaming. Wailing within inches of life and death. "This is your life, Kurt, and it's ending! Every fucking second!" Axl yells over the wind and the horns. A second car swerves to miss us and then another and it's only a matter of time before we end up cat food on the freeway. I yell at him to stop, but he just keeps smoking and laughing and daring those other cars to hit us. All I can see are headlights. All I can hear is Axl's manic laugh. All I can see are fiery explosions of metal and shrapnel sprays of glass. Maybe I'm just thinking of my condo. "Think about it Kurt. The special-snowflake lies you've been fed, it's all just for show." He turns to look at me and for a second I wonder just why the hell did I decide to get in a car with a complete stranger. "Death," he says. "Death is the true masterpiece." I lunge for the wheel and try to yank us back but he locks his grip and I'm just pulling on nothing. "Only in death can you finally appreciate joy," he shouts. "Or love or lust or just fucking the shit out of some girl because it feels so goddamn good. Death is the great leveler and life is no good without it." Axl is preaching as though he has an audience. I look in the back seat but of course there's no one there and through the back window I catch sight of the pileup building behind us. Damming the freeway with a warped wall of wreckage. Destruction behind us and turmoil ahead.We are the bright little center of the universe. Untouchable, infallible. Hurtling toward some sort of glory. Everything else is just smoldering shit. ”So never mind the darkness," Axl shouts again. "we still can find a way cause nothing lasts forever!" I try to pull on the wheel again and Axl glares at me, face flashing dark and light and dark from the blazing high beams of the oncoming cars. He sighs over the wind and finally twists the wheel, nearly breaking my wrist to speed off the freeway. Flies the wrong way up an exit ramp. Blows through two red lights and three stop signs, near disaster in every intersection before screeching to halt in a dark alleyway, killing the engine. The silence is deafening. "Was that my near death experience?" I croak, breathing hard enough to punch my lungs right through my ribs and Axl just flashes me a sardonic smile. "No, Kurt. That was your near life experience."
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https://youtu.be/5tABRt9Nu_U?si=5usoXVRWubm4Vy0R
-Song: "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors. We ditch the car and end up at a bar. Some small place called Albini’s Tavern, down the street with a crusted hooker patrolling the pavement out front. Axl struts in like he owns the place but he makes me order for the both of us. He also makes me pay. It takes three beers and thirty minutes for me to really begin to take in the vast pile of shit I was now in. "I had it pretty damn good Axl, but then I went and fucked it up. I bought that sofa, that dining room table with eight chairs, an overpriced television..." I ramble on to Axl who is leaning his jaw on his hand and is looking less and less impressed by my words of sorrow. That damn condo, sixty three square inches, too overwhelming to even look at. Even a thousand-thread-count duvet made by kids somewhere in China that started fraying the moment I opened the box. Even with my shitty job or my fucked up head or my unwavering lack of intimacy with anyone other than myself, I had my comfortable, expensive, boring little condo. Despite everything else, I had that Ethan Allen couch. The Henkle Harris table. My couch now looks like something they pulled out of Hiroshima and my table is somewhere thrown in the trees. "I fucking blew up my condo." I say as I shake my head in disbelief after a moment of reminiscing. "That's all just petty bullshit, Kurt. Your couches and tv sets. Your clothes. Your precious, mundane human crap," Axl huffs. "Stop your fucking moaning. It's time to evolve. You talk like that damn sofa fucking owns you. You should not be owned by your life. You should own it." "You are not your condo." Axl says and I obviously must hate my condo. "You are not your slacks." Axl says and I really hate my slacks. "You are not your fucking job." Axl says and I hate my fucking job. If I had a girlfriend, I would probably hate her too.
💢 Axl lets me get through another beer and a stinging shot of whiskey. He's been trying to give me a pep talk but he's the worst cheerleader ever. "Let sleeping dogs lie or lying dogs sleep or whatever. Time to move on. People get divorced. Life doesn't owe you your own personal happy ending especially at another's, or in this case, several others' expense." He says after lighting a cigarette. I stare back at him in silence as I come to realize that everything he's been preaching to me since I've met him is so undeniably and sadly true. "You gotta shake this off, man. You're just wallowing in your own shit right now and your life is so much fucking bigger than that. You are going to waste." Axl tells me. "Shit, tell me something I don't know." I grumble into my beer. Axl shrugs. "Ok. It's possible to create napalm by combining equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate.” He says like it's a well known universal fact. "Are you serious?" “Totally. Basic house objects can be used to create many different explosives.” Why does that sound so familiar? “Am I drunk?” I ask him. “Very.” There's a brief pause between us. "In my entire life, I have never met a more interesting person than you, Axl."
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https://youtu.be/hpmacTukpo4?si=lm0M3iKRfrU1Wu6I-Song: "Cactus" by Pixies. We drink until I'm nearly falling off the stool. I throw up when we finally step out into the parking lot. The cool outside air hits my face, too hot and too cold. It's been so fucking long since I've slept. Axl stands across the lot and smokes while I empty my stomach, acid burning ragged up my throat and coming out nuclear orange. He flicks the butt away after I've wiped my face and eyes me like he's studying me. He probably is. "I want you to hit me." He tells me. "What? No." I roll my eyes. I might be drunk, but I'm not that drunk. "Just do it." "I can't fucking do that. I'm not gonna hit you." "Oh c'mon man, stop being a damn pussy!" He starts bouncing on his toes like a boxer. "Why the hell do you want me to hit you?" "I just -" he pauses. "I just need you to do it. Just do it." He bounces some more and demands again. "Hit me." This guy's fucking insane. "You’re drunk, Axl." I shake my head. "Fine." Axl rolls his eyes and swings. He clocks me in the jaw hard enough to make me see stars and spring that shitty filling right out of my molar. A cheap mercury version and I spit it out in a bloody gob between my feet. "Shit! You motherfucker!" I yowl and clutch my jaw, lunging at him with my own fist. Fuck if I break something on his face.I don’t. I end up hitting him hard in the left side of his neck. "Ah! Fuck, really? The fucking neck?" Axl is half laughing and groaning through his pain. "Yeah, and how the fuck did you think I felt!" I hiss. He looks really happy for half a second before he comes at me again. This time he punches me hard in the stomach. "Shit!" I clinch my teeth through the pain and crouch down on my knees, still gasping for air.And I’m not exactly sure why but I am suddenly hit with a surge of emotions similar to that of when I first let go and cried in that shitty support group with Slash. "You ok, Kurt?" Axl pats me on my back. "I can taste my insides,” I smile at him with blood stained teeth. “Do it again.” We continue to fight. 💢
When we've had enough, we sit on the roof of someone’s car, casually smoking and sharing a beer that Axl put in his jacket from the bar. I keep pressure on my bloody nose and tell Axl. "We've got to do this some other time, man." "Fuck yeah." Axl chuckles through a busted lip.
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https://youtu.be/SLSrnJ4yCzs?si=wT520TD35lrvYfVO-Song: "Dai the Flu" by Deftones. Axl lives in a fucking shit hole. Buried in an unfriendly forest, dark as fucking night. It was probably a nice family home at some point but whoever took care of it had left a long time ago. I was almost sure Axl was squatting. The house smells musty like something caught on fire and crawled under the couch to die. The carpets are gone, wallpaper torched and peeling. There's something that looks like a bloodstain on the floor in my new bedroom. The water runs brown, which explains his ever present grime and careless, worn-through clothing. Only half of the lights work.Honestly, I'm just grateful Axl is letting me to live here for now since I basically have no where else to fucking go. I sit at the kitchen table and hiss through the sting of rubbing alcohol against my broken-open skin knuckles while Axl roller skates through a fine carpeting of pebbled glass from all the broken-out windows wearing only American flag designed biker shorts and a red bandana. 💢 I go to the hospital basement out of habit. It's Monday and nothing has really changed but everything is different. Now, I'm not sleeping because of the pain in my side and the fact that my face feels like the steaming hot end of a nuclear missile. Now, instead of just shitty coffee, I seem to taste my own blood. I spot Tori loitering out front before the group meets to wallow in their collective torment. In twenty minutes we'll be asked to pair up and normally I'd sob my face off between Slash's pumped up pecs, but I can't do that with her here. I can't do what I want to do, which is grab her and scream in her lying, smoke-filled face.
You heartless fake.
You wicked, manipulative girl.
Fucking actress.
"Why are you doing this?" I ask her instead. "What the hell happened to your face?" she snaps, puffing on her cigarette. She's not even listening to me, just eyeing my mouth and running her tongue across her lips, between mouthfuls of smoke. My face is a fucking train wreck. Axl damn near broke my cheek and definitely gave me a black eye. I'm wearing a clown mask of blue and red bruises. "You don't need this, not like I do." I tell her. I want to tell her that it makes her a fucking phony, once again, but instead I tell her the only thing that makes sense anymore. "You sound like a junkie." She blows smoke in my face and I wave it away. "Why do you keep coming back?" I ask her and she ignores me again. "Is that your blood?" She points at me with the smoldering end of her cigarette. I glance down at myself, a constellation of bright red splatters against the fabric, and shrug. The worst crime is faking it. "Some of it."
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https://youtu.be/aqW-VF49Sok?si=YRXJ6xfZiqhmo0Al-Song: "Fell on Black Days" by Soundgarden. We go back to the parking lot every week, Axl and I, and every week there are more of them. Three. Then ten. Then twenty. White collar business suits and blue collar grunts. All of them itching to find release with their fists buried in someone's face. None of them alone in their chaotic flailing and broken bones. Sooner or later this thing moves to the Albini’s Tavern basement, with help from the manager, Butch. We call it exactly what it is, fight club. Axl makes up the rules. He orchestrates every meeting. Names himself the ringleader of this fucked up little circus we're putting on. No shirts. No shoes. Two guys to a fight. If you knock someone out or they quit, the fight is over. If it's your first night, you can't fight. And his favorite rule of all, don't fucking talk about it. I still can't sleep well. I barely go to work any more. I stop going to the hospital basement. I just engage in beating up strangers or getting my ass beat, for the hell of it. The longer the fights went on, the more I got into it. That strange euphoric feeling washed over me. All of my stress rolling off my body with each punch I threw. I felt alive there. Axl hardly ever fights. He just stands off to the side and watches. 💢 "What's this?" My boss for the business company I work for, David, is wearing his precious blue tie, which means that today is Wednesday. I smile at him, sure that my teeth are also stained in wine red. My lip is freshly busted. Part of my face is throbbing hot enough to scald and I think that one of my fingers is fractured to the point of disintegration. If my body is the hourglass, I am the unstoppable drainage of sand. He comes up to my desk holding a piece of paper. Axl's rules. The ones he said no one would remember and asked me to type up. The ones that came out in a glob of meaningless symbols strung together in chrysalis haikus. The kind that wither up and die before they've even unfolded their wings. "What have I told you about wasting company resources?" He asks me and I snatch the paper away and I tell him that it's nothing, a personal joke. I can't fucking talk about it anyway. "You look like shit. Are you on drugs?" He asks. I wish. If I was, none of this would be happening right now. I hope that one day my boss will show up on Friday night so that I can beat the shit out of him. I can practically visualize his blood when his cheek bursts open and can almost feel the gummy give of his bones under my fist. "Of course not Mr. Geffen." He's not even old enough to be my father, but he talks to me like I'm ten. "Pull yourself together, kid. And go wash the blood off your face, you're freaking out the women."
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https://youtu.be/1K9Rf2BkZDY?si=JYu2tKvRkTR8H-0g-Song: "Can You See Me" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It's Friday night. And I lose a fight.
Same old, same old.
The overweight man who works the graveyard shift of a liquor store beats me into the ground like an abandoned rag doll before choking me until I tap out. He's an overachiever and I leave with a slightly broken nose. 💢 I groan in pain as Axl is setting my nose. Every time you try to fix a broken bone, the resistance is magnified and by the time you get to the third or fourth or even the fifth reset, everything fights against you. I can hear the cartilage grind painstakingly back into place, echoing through my eardrums. We both suddenly look up, as the harassing sound of knocking bulldozes through the house. I wave Axl away as I hold my bleeding nose and head for the door. "Stay here." It's the first time I've ever told him to do something and not the other way around. He scowls at me. "Why?" "Just do it, Axl." I bark as I hold my nose in place. I open the door. Fucking Tori. I don't even know how the hell she found out where I'm staying. "Are you ok?" She asks me and I glare at her as much as my broken face will allow. I could tell her I crashed my car. Fell down the stairs. Slammed my face into the wall enough times to crush the bridge of my nose and stain my face with blood red bruises. "What are you doing here?" I ask her instead. "You didn't even come inside last time. Did you find someone else to cry on, baby?" "Fuck you, I found something better." "I can see that. Tell me." She leans in the doorway, trying to peer down the hallway. I know for a fact that Axl is right around the corner wearing nothing but white biker shorts and a pair of kitchen gloves. Covered with splatters of my blood. "I can't talk about it." I tell her, which is the truth. "It's another group, isn't it? The insomniacs weren't pathetic enough for you? What is it this time?" "It's exclusive. Not just anyone can join." I hiss and try to choke down the overwhelming urge to push her off the porch. Axl doesn't have a rule about girls, but I'm pretty sure I could make one up if I needed to. "You look hot, all busted up." She eyes me for a moment, licking her lips and scanning my face in all its twisted, swollen glory. "Come back. It's not any fun without you." "I'll think about it." I slam the door in her face. Not as hard as I want to. Axl is standing in the hall when I turn around. Still gloved and bloodied and he asks the very question I hope he won't. "Is that her?" 💢 Saturday. I got the shit kicked out of me last night and I don't know why, but I'm back at the hospital. "Well, well, well. Look at what the cat dragged back in." Tori drops her cigarette to the sidewalk and grinds the smoldering butt under her toe, again with the lip licking. Again with the tormenting. "My little pep talk must have worked." Axl is taking a piss in the alley and I have about a minute to get rid of her. "I'm not here for you." "Sure." She slips me a smile that is part sweet and part caustic, burning around the edges. As she flounces away, Axl appears from the alley with a laugh under his breath, still tucking himself back into his pants. He's been wearing the same jacket for days now. White leather, roughed up enough that it looks like it's been put through a meat grinder. "That girl likes you." he says, watching her disappear through the doors. "No she fucking doesn't." I huff. "No one is afraid of saying I love you, they're afraid of the answer. This is gonna be fun."Axl rubs his hands together like we're going to an amusement park and he's planning which roller coaster to attack first. Which thrill he's going to stay away from. Which addiction he's going to ride over and over and over again until he's sick with dizzy exhilaration. I know that he'll fixate on Tori. She's the thrill that hoists you high in the air then drops you face first into the concrete on a broken bungee cord. "You have to stay out here." I tell him. "Why?" He looks put out, pissed off that I'm once again telling him what to do. "You really do like that girl." "It's not about her." He doesn't believe me. I leave him sitting on the front steps and wander into the basement trying not to look suspicious. Trying to cover bruises. Trying not to move my tongue too much. The hole in it still hasn't completely healed. Tori just chain smokes and twists her hair with her fingers. Eye fucks me while Kim, a member of the support group, sobs over her hair. Kim looked like the skeleton of Nico from the Velvet Underground if you put her in a dress and too much lipstick. Walking around the party smiling extra pretty at everyone to disguise her slow crumble. I glare at Kim so I won't glare at Tori. Tori usually loiters around the coffee bar and scowls at anyone who comes near her during the one-on-ones. I make a break for her when she invites me with a tempting finger. She whirls out the door and I almost follow, but Slash grabs me. Presses me into his chest and starts to cry into my hair. 💢 Slash cries forever. I don't come home until midnight. Tori's dress is crumpled like a broken bird on the staircase. She probably tripped over Axl on her way out of the hospital so I spend most of the night listening to them fuck each other down the hallway. I delete Axl. Insert myself. Drift off with my face in her pussy, endless dreams of eating her out. It's the first time I've fully slept in a month.
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https://youtu.be/dOQ3_9J43eY?si=kYb-FkI3YHUdtfnj -Song: "How Soon Is Now?" (12" Version) by The Smiths. The next week, out of the thirty guys at fight club, I tap Axl. I instantly regret it. Just because it's all you want, doesn't mean it's all you need. I'm just so fucking angry, it makes me stupid. I'm so sick of listening to him yell her name when he fucks her, it blinds me. The single nights of sleep slaps a flimsy band aid over a big, black hole and makes me think I'm stronger than I actually am. I don't even land a hit. He gives me a fresh ass whopping. Puts a fresh hole in my tongue. I can taste some of my blood burning the back of my tongue as he holds the side of my face into the dirty basement floor. He gives me one more hard punch to my back before he gets off me and stalks off through the stiff, silent group of people. It's the first time since our initial fight that he's actually participated. As I pick up my bloody face from the ground, the first thing I see as I look up is everyone's twisted faces. Why the fuck do they all look so shocked and confused? It's definitely not the first time I've gotten my ass beat here. It takes four days for my bruises to turn yellow and for Axl to show back up again. 💢 I knock on Axl's bedroom door and he answers it naked. His cock is huge. Big the way improbable porn is big. It's standing straight up and staring at me, wet and dripping from the tip. I look over Axl's shoulder and Tori is moaning into the mattress with her ass in the air. Axl's eyes stare at mine for a few seconds before he is laughing with the nearly manic one he saves for fight club. "Care to join, Kurt?" "No," I huff as I pull my eyes off Tori, now spread out on his sheets with her legs wide open. Her eyes still shut tight, coming off her latest orgasm. I've been listening to him plow into her for almost an hour now. "But can you try to keep it down? Shit man." I mutter. "I don't fuck quietly. Neither does she. You should know that." Axl says before he slams the door in my face. Almost immediately, Tori starts moaning even louder than before. I peek through the door's keyhole and find Axl with his face buried in Tori's splayed pussy. She screams and flinches as she cums around his tongue. He licks her clean before he flips her onto her stomach and thrusts his cock up into her, telling her that her pussy is the tightest he's ever felt. His fist grips her hair, yanking her to her knees as she moans loudly again. He whispers filth into her ear and rubs her clit as roughly as he thrusts. Her nails scrape up the length of his thigh and I yank my eye from the keyhole. I go to fight club alone, pissed off. There's a first time for everything. 💢 I go to Albini’s Tavern without Axl and beat the fuck out of some kid. A younger guy named Dave. An angel face with dark brown hair and tanned skin. I press him into the floor hard enough to scrape his cheek and dip-dye his hazelnut eyes in blood. I repeatedly punch him, trying to indent my fists in his pretty, pretty face. I was determined to demolish something beautiful. I let them pull me off of him only when he's damaged enough.
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https://youtu.be/vDgUTnIyDtQ?si=FLKWX-Aa4NFgIan_-Song: "Zero" by The Smashing Pumpkins. The next morning, Tori flounces into the kitchen, too pale and too lively for my taste. Her hair is snarled and her lips are swollen. There's two small red hickies on her neck. Costume jewelry punctures made by Axl's mouth. "Good morning." she purrs at me and pours a cup of coffee. I glare at her behind her back and stab my cereal with my spoon. Her dress is pale pink taffeta and wilted tulle, stained and coming apart at the hem. Axl probably found it in some dumpster somewhere. It looks like the last dregs of someone's cliched prom night. "Your dress should be burned." I tell her. She scowls at me. "Your mood swings give me whiplash." "Sounds like you were thoroughly fucked last night." I grumble around my spoon, her moaning still echoing through the big empty rooms of my brain.
Yes! Fuck me! Harder! Harder!
She probably smoked while she sat on top of him, flicking ashes off the bed and grinding away with practiced ease like she'd been doing it since junior high. "You would know." Tori hisses and storms out the back door, taking our last un-chipped coffee mug with her. She's probably accusing me of leering from the doorway last night. Or staring at the dead jellyfish condoms in the toilet this morning long before I flushed them. I glance at the sweating palm of my hand. Hating myself for picturing her mouth around me instead of my fingers. It felt so real, I was half tempted to ask her if we'd done it before. Axl appears the moment Tori is gone. "Why is she still around?" I ask. Axl eyes me carefully. "She may not be perfect, but at least she’s not fake. I hate that bitch. Without Axl, she would be nothing. Without her, Axl would actually show up to fight club more often and wouldn't be so fucking ruthless when he does. He'd nearly killed me last Friday and my busted lip is still healing. "That girl is something else though, Kurt. You've got some fucked up friends." "She's not my friend. She's your toy," I spit. "I thought we'd be like partners in crime but I guess I need a pussy and a pair of tits for that position." "What the fuck are you talking about?" Axl snaps at me. "Just forget it man." I shake my head. Just as I stand up from the kitchen table to make my way back upstairs, Axl quickly grabs my hand and pins it to the table between us. He leans over and places a wet kiss to the back of my palm. Then he pours what looks like fucking acid on it and it burns like hell is supposed to burn. Right through my skin and into my blood. Through my blood and into my bones. Volcanic pain. A hiss of smoke in the air as my skin starts to bubble. I try not to think of chemical burns. Try not to think of searing flesh.
I am not here.
"Don't do that Kurt. Come back to the pain. This is the greatest moment of your life, the beginning. Everything up until now has been meaningless. This is your nirvana."Axl hisses into my ear.
I am in Brazil.
On some tiny island surrounded by water. Sweet, clean, fresh water and there is so much of it, endless, but not enough to mask the smell of my skin starting to sizzle. Axl's kiss is branding itself into the back of my hand, acid scorching my flesh. An entire forest fire, concentrated into an inch of space. "The pain is the only thing that you have now." Axl grips me tighter when I try to pull away. I have cool blue water. "It is the only thing that proves you are actually alive." I have clean, cool air. "The pain is your salvation."
I am in Brazil and the breeze smells like salt.
"Look at it!" Axl demands. Yells. I try, but my eyes don't work. I'm crying down my neck, the collar of my flannel gone damp. "You can cry, but your tears will only make it worse." I can smell myself, sweating, pissing. Barbequing.
I am not in Brazil.
"Can you feel it? The pain?" Axl asks.
I am not in the ocean.
"Yes!" I groan.
I am being burned alive.
"Good, because one day, you won't be able to feel it anymore. You won't be able to feel anything anymore, so you better fucking appreciate it now." Axl leans over my charred hand and takes a solid whiff off the charcoal steam rising off my flesh. He splashes a large bottle of vinegar over it and the fire is gone. There's a swollen swipe of skin, purple at the edges, puckering the back of my hand. "You fucking asshole," I groan, still burning in pain. "You have no idea how bad that hurt." Axl smiles slowly and holds up his hand, baring the back of it with its own puckered scar. "You wanted it, you got it. You're one step closer to hitting bottom." 💢 Dave isn't so pretty anymore, thanks to me. His lips are twisted off to the side, face misshapen where the bones didn't fuse back together just right. He came back this week and the stitches haven't even had time to set, still pulling at his skin to hold it all together. Cheeks so swollen he can barely see. Nose so big he can barely breathe. He taps Axl for a fight and I wonder if I damaged his brain as well. Even though I think he won't, Axl agrees. It's quick and dirty, literally. Over before it's begun. Nothing but the sad, flat packing sound of Dave getting more than he can take. Repeatedly to his gut. Axl then lifts him upright and throws him against the back wall of the basement. "You crazy motherfucker!" Dave howls, still gasping for air. "You really are just as ruthless as they say!" Axl looks up from Dave and turns to us with a death glare and his fists tightly clenched. "I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for what I'm not!" Axl shouts at us and I can feel everyone around me shuffling their feet, dead silent. Someone in the crowd behind me mutters a "hail mary.” Behind Axl, Dave is pulling himself up to his feet. Small bruising on his torso is now visible. I could tell why Axl didn't go for his face since it was already still badly fucked from his fight with me last week. Axl pats Dave's shoulder and ruffles his hair before hauling away and grabbing his leather jacket. "See you next week boys.”
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https://youtu.be/FZp2I3rntWw?si=3dzrczDeCgf6j572
-Song: "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin. Axl is in the bathtub, which has seen better days. Someone must have tried to cook meth in here and everything went horribly wrong. It might explain the smell and the bathtub barely holds water. The enamel is burnt to a heavy grain sandpaper grit. I sit on the toilet and start to clean the blood off my knuckles. I got tapped after Axl left and I did alright, but I was put in an arm lock at the end. "If you could fight anyone in the world, who would you fight?" I ask him. I don't want to talk about what happened anyway. I have no idea where Dave is, but I'm pretty sure he's somewhere close. "Plant." he says. "Robert?" "Who else? His daughter, Carmen, she wanted to fuck me backstage at a concert once. He was not happy about it." Axl isn't cleaning anything, just sitting in the warm water with his skin steaming. There's still a bunch of dried blood caked around his mouth. "When was this?" "Mid-eighties, I think. She got married a couple of years later. Damn, that woman was pretty. . ." He sounds nearly indulgent before he looks at me. "Who would you fight?" "I'd fight Tori." I reach into the back of my mouth and touch a tooth which promptly falls into my lap, gooey with blood and the still-writhing tentacles of tendons. "That's fucked up, man. I think she'd beat the shit out of you." "Thanks for the vote of confidence." I pick the tooth up and contemplate shoving it back into place, but set it on the sink instead. "That girl is bat shit crazy." "She's bat shit and crazy… about you." "She doesn't like me." I shake my head, still prodding at my jaw. I couldn't kiss anyone right now, even if I wanted to. 💢 I go to work with a fresh black eye that just won’t stop throbbing. I write epic diatribes instead of punching numbers and make copies of them while I prod the bruised skin on my face. No one talks to me anymore as I wear a mask of small raccoon eyes to keep them away. Axl does nothing but fuck Tori and show up to fight club. 💢
Axl makes a beautiful tall brunette girl piss herself in an alleyway. Pulls her from behind the counter of a convenience store with a gun to her temple. "The fuck are you doing?" I yell, staring at the crack of her cleavage that's heaving with every gulp of air. She's crying and he's holding her still with a fist through her hair, her neck craned awkwardly. He eyes her pumping jugular for a moment before throwing her to her knees and she sprawls into the gravel, whimpering. "This is Stephanie." Axl strolls around her, still pointing the gun at her head but he's talking to me. "Stephanie here has the kind of body even I get weak over. Perfect tits, nice ass . . . sexy face." He tucks the barrel of the gun underneath her chin and forces her face to the sky. Her makeup is running clear down her neck but he's right. She looks fresh and clean and brand fucking new. Not like Tori. Not like me or Axl. "Why are you working in this shit hole, baby?" Axl sounds sweet, even though I know he isn't. She blubbers, but nothing understandable, clutching her hands together in a delicate lace-up of fragile bones and gooey tendons. I can't even appreciate a girl anymore without thinking about how the human body can be broken. "What did you want to be, when you were a little girl?" Axl tries again. More frantic stuttering. "The question, Stephanie, is WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE?" Axl snaps, voice echoing over and over and over as he stands back and pops the safety, gun pressed firm to the spot between her eyebrows. She's shaking but he's stone still and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd actually do it. Tori must've rubbed him raw tonight and he's unstable at even the best of times. I don't trust him worth a damn and he looks too trigger happy for my taste. "Answer him!" I shout at her. She doesn't struggle, doesn't even try to run, just glances around wildly like someone might be able to save her. There's no saving anything from Axl. "A model." she finally whimpers. Axl clicks the safety back and tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants. "Stephanie, you have exactly four weeks to resume that dead goal of yours. I know where you live. I know where you work. I will check on you, and if you fail . . ." He leans down right into her face and bares his teeth at her, flashing his pearly whites. "Well you and I both know what’ll happen next." He hauls her to her feet, gives her a pat on her shoulder and she goes off like a shot into the night. The farewell wave of her hair and a trailing fog of sobs. "Fuck, Axl." I watch her go and wonder if it could be that easy to just outrun him. Probably not. "What the fuck was all that about?" "Imagine how she feels right now. The adrenaline and the joy and the fear. The relief that she's alive." Axl stares after her, nearly salivating. "That was the most important moment in her whole trivial life." "Her near life experience?" Axl winks at me. "You're catching on." He throws me the gun and walks back over to the car. I flick open the cylinder. There were no bullets. He had a plan. To what purpose? To what greater good? In Axl we trusted.
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https://youtu.be/arL4f_Ok630?si=YCdOWNz_mHTXXCNr-Song: "Blowing It" by Dinosaur Jr. Axl and Tori take the gun to bed with them that night. I can hear them using it to verbally assault one another for hours.
On your back, you dirty fucking bastard.
Take it all the way, you nasty bitch.
Yes. Fuck. Just like that.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
When old dusted cracks from the ceiling of my room downstairs from theirs finally rips through the cement and falls down the foot of my bed, I delete Axl. I insert myself. Pull my cock out and drift off to uncontrollable fantasies. 💢 I don't go to the insomnia group. I just stand outside and wait. I tell myself it's not for her, but I can't think straight when she comes fluttering by. "So Steve Albini letting you guys use his place is pretty neat, huh baby?" She taunts as she walks past me. "How the fuck do you even know him?" I throw my cigarette to the ground and grab her arm to turn her back around then drop it immediately. "What, am I not special enough to be in your club?" She glares at my hand and I shove it in my pocket to hide the scar. Tori pushes herself right up against me, all tits and lips and big beautiful green eyes and purrs like an overfed cat. "Haven't seen you in a while, baby. Did you get your fill of me last time?" "Please. Like you would ever give me what I want." I almost laugh in her face. What I want is her in my bed and not his. What I want is to kiss her until our lips crack. Blood blends. To fuck her and then let her have her way with me. The urge is almost too savage to contain. It makes me feel more like Axl than I ever have before. 💢 There is someone standing on the porch when I come home from work. Slash. With a fresh black eye and a tear in his lip. I watched a new guy beat the fuck out of him last night after I visited the outside of the hospital. He doesn't acknowledge me, even though I stand right there and stare at him. Neither of us have been to the hospital basement in a while and I can't even remember how to cry. I give up and go inside, finding Axl in the kitchen. "There's someone on the porch." I tell him. He sips from his coffee cup and smirks. "He's been there all day." "Tell him to fuck off. Shit's weird." "I can't. It's part of the process." "What process?" "He's here to be reborn. He wants to be part of this." "This?" Axl tips his head toward the back of the house. "The shed." "What the fuck is going on in the shed? "David is out there." "Dave?" "Whatever," Axl shrugs. "He's just the first." "The first of what?" "We're building an army, Kurt." "What do you mean, an army?" "We gotta take fight club up a notch," Axl shrugs again. "This is the dawn of a new era, Kurt. We are ushering in the future, can't you see it?" He waves his hand in the air like I'm supposed to see what he's talking about. I see nothing. "We have front-row seats to this rebellion. Enjoy the show." "You can't create an army of burnouts, Axl. What are you going to do with all of them? They'll run rampant." "Exactly." 💢 I let the phone ring in the living room three times before I decide to answer it. "Is it you?" Her voice hits like a gallon of acid wash to the face. "Who were you expecting?" I know she's calling for Axl. I also know that he's off somewhere ushering in some sort of destruction. Blowing something up. Tearing something down. Guerilla warfare waged with teeth and rage. It comes off him so strong that when he's close by, I get drunk on fury. "I need you to come over." she demands. "Why?" "There's something wrong with my tits." She doesn't sound panicked or fretful. There's no fear. No dread. She sounds bored. Unsurprised, like she expected this. "They seem alright to me." "Just come over and take a look at them, will you?" Axl might be gone right now, but he gets bored easily and I'm sure that his fledgling army of two won't keep him occupied for long. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
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https://youtu.be/SCngPse1iiI?si=f98YVnfcEwzhkzBU-Song: "Piece of My Heart" by Big Brother & The Holding Company and Janis Joplin. Tori's studio apartment is a mess. Just like Axl's, but Axl's is so empty, drained and lifeless. Carcasses of furniture and years' worth of neglect and abuse, piled in the corners like dirt. She has shit everywhere. Colors so bright my head spins. Collections of crap and piles of all those ridiculous clothes. She's in a kimono that looks like it's been stolen from someone's dead grandmother. Frayed, just like all the rest of her pointless junk. Old blankets and old curtains. Beautiful from afar. Fucked up on closer inspection. "So, what's up with your tits?" My mouth is dry and I try not to glance down at her chest. "They just feel weird." she shrugs. "And you think I'm going to be able to tell the difference?" She scowls at me and stomps three steps to her full length mirror, ripping off her sash and throwing it aside. It flutters to the carpet and I'm behind her before I even know it. An inch of space between us. Watching through the mirror as she lifts her hands to the back of her head. The kimono falls aside and her nipples are puckered, pointing right at us. Not fully pink like I hoped, but she does have nice tits. I fold my arms around her and put my hands to her skin, cupping them first for good measure. She doesn't stop me, just squirms into my hands and rubs her thighs together as I begin to feel around. Warm flesh, all rough edges gone. Like she's been rubbed down with fine-grained sandpaper. The freshly burned scar from Axl's chemical burn on the back of my hand is the only thing that distracts me. When I pull my eyes off our mirrored reflections, I move them lower to beneath her jaw. The two hickies on her neck scream at me like a fucking announcement. Territorial pissing.
Property of Axl.
"They feel fine." I wrench my hands off her and stalk to the other side of the room, trying not to get my feet tangled in her clothes, certain that they'll swallow me. She blisters head to toe in rage and follows me until I've got nowhere to go but down. My ass to her bed, which is the last place I want me and my cock to be. Especially when she's this naked. She plants herself right between my legs and pushes the robe off, flashy black lace wrapped around her crotch and see through lace stockings on her legs. She quickly unbuttons my flannel and runs her fingers all over my bare chest. When she moans, I snap out of it. I open my eyes and my lips are pressed to the skin near her hip. "Fuck." I pull away and she goes for the button and zipper on my jeans, frantic fingers and heavy breathing. She kisses me and her mouth tastes like a gasoline fire. Like napalm. I have visions of my house exploding when she pushes her tongue between my teeth. I yank her panties to her knees and touch her soaking wet pussy with my fingers, burying two of them inside her while kissing her thigh. She feels different than I expected. Very soft. The kind of soft that makes every bone ache from the inside out. I try to treat her decently, since Axl obviously hasn't. Try to soften my mouth and hold back my teeth, but she wants none of that. "Come on," she whines as she strokes my now hardened cock with a desperate urgency. "Give me one." "No." I shake my head and grind my jaw around something soft and vulnerable so that I don't tell her to shut the fuck up and just enjoy it. I toss her on the bed and stand up, pushing my briefs and open jeans down to my knees. When her palms hit the mattress, I crawl behind her and slowly push myself into her, well aware of the large size of my cock. "Fuck, baby." She gasps and slightly turns her body to place one hand on my stomach. I bite my lip and stay mostly still for a few seconds, letting her adjust to me while slowly moving just my hips forward and backwards. Sooner than I expected, she drops her hand that was placed on my stomach and starts intensely pushing her hips back into mine, moaning at the top of her lungs. In return I begin to move my hips harder and faster than before while gripping her cheeks to get a better view. Nothing but my ragged breathing and someone's manic heartbeat. "You know you want to." she taunts, still desperately bucking her hips against mine hard and I scowl at her mess of hair. I get a good handful of it and gently yank her head back. Plant my scarred hand in the sheets next to hers and bend down to get near her ear. "No. I don't." I groan as I nip at her earlobe. "Then fuck me like you mean it!" she snaps at me. Fuck it then. If she wants some Axl out of me, then that's what I'll give her. I grunt when I shove. Pant as I ram myself home and Tori moans loudly and turns her head to suck on my wrist, but I don't even feel it. Every muscle from my lungs down constricts and I cum, shallow and sloppy and spilling out of her as I pull free, now standing at the side of the bed. She growls, frustrated, and turns around to dramatically throw her back on the bed. My cock aches like she set it on fire. "That's the best you can fucking do?" she scowls as she puts one lace covered foot on my chest and rubs it up and down. Her fingers slip between her legs, nearly causing my knees to give out. From this angle, I can see everything.The gleam of her skin. Some of the thick white drip on the sheets beneath her ass. I watch her for about a minute or two while I desperately try to pump some life back into my cock. At this point my body is heated up and for the second time tonight, I'm rock hard, only because I want so badly to be inside her again. I quickly discard my opened flannel shirt and take off the rest of my clothes and shoes entirely before lunging onto the bed to shove her hand aside and position my erection at her entrance, slowly pushing it in. Tori gasps and giggles at my sudden actions. It's obvious that she loves this. I give in and finally suck on her neck like she wanted me to.
"Mhmmm" Tori moans with one hand tightly gripping my hair and the other grabbing my ass, urging me even further inside her. Fuck she's so tight. "Ugh!" I groan as I pound into her repeatedly, bending my elbows and placing both my hands flat next to her head. "Oh just like that, baby! Fuck me! Fuck me hard!" Tori yells, arching her back as she wraps one of her legs over my waist and the other over my calf. The feel of her lacy stockings rubbing parts of my body release something primal within me, igniting a rush of heat that courses through my veins. And when her beautiful green eyes begin to look directly into mine with her mouth wide open while moaning loudly, I take the opportunity to kiss her and shove my tongue down her throat. "Mmmmm..." we both moan in sync in each other's mouths. Our tongues begin to move in harmony, creating a complex dance of desire that sparks an explosion beneath our skin. I think to myself, this is the best time I've ever had with a girl in my entire pathetic life... While I'm slightly distracted and my hip thrusts slow down, Tori snaps me out of it as she slightly dips her head and upper body to suck and kiss my nipple. "Ah fuck, Tori." I chuckle as I pull her mouth back to mine. I rapidly increase the pace of my thrusts and she cries out against my lips. I could feel some of her juices dripping down my balls as they slap against her skin. I sigh against her mouth as she runs her nails all the way down my back, enjoying the intense pleasure while the headboard to the bed starts viciously banging into the wall with every thrust I make. Fucking her the way she wants me too. Just like Axl. 💢 I go home after Tori kisses me goodbye and can't help but replay the events that happened tonight in her apartment over and over again in my head. I don't tell Axl about Tori, but he knows. He ignores me. Let's Dave and Slash recruit more guys to the house from fight club that night without even batting an eye.
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https://youtu.be/QeglgSWKSIY?si=1eVtN1MgB-79amHV-Song: "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones. Everyday, there's more of them. Soon the extra rooms in the house are carpeted with guys who are preparing to engage in Axl's homework assignments. Numerous acts of vandalism all over the city. As for the targets, they are the rich, capitalist, consumers, corporate materialism... Axl fucking really built himself an army. An army of servants is what he calls them. I find him in the field out back, watching all the guys reconstruct it while giving them a speech. Fight club has turned into an experiment. Participants turned into lab rats with the parking lot as a petrie dish. "You are not special!" Axl screams.
"You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else!"
This isn't fight club anymore. This is total chaos. I stand beside him and notice some guys running quickly in and out of the shed. "What the hell are they doing in the shed now?" "Making napalm. Obviously," Axl shakes his head as though I'm wasting his time. "Gasoline and kitty litter, makes for some powerful stuff." "How do you know how to do that?" I can taste the caustic stench of it, the corrosive wipe off the back of your throat that's almost like unquenchable thirst. Axl turns to look at me, smudged skin glowing in the moonlight with fierce eyes. "Because you do." I don't remember telling him that… "What are you going to do with it?" "I haven't decided yet." "And the guys?" "Burning off their fingerprints." "With what?" Certainly not napalm. Axl smiles to himself before turning it on me, terrifying in its morbid pleasure and extra enthusiasm. He looks downright fucking pleased. "Lye." The moment the word lye slips from his mouth, the back of my hand starts burning. "This is getting too fucking out of control. I don't think you know what you're doing." Axl narrows his eyes at me and they're dark. Darker than they've been for a long time. "I've been doing this for longer than you think." "How long?" Axl lifts an eyebrow at me. "Since around the time you first started going to the support groups at the hospital. Right after you met Tori. I started three assembles around that time." Oh yeah, I remember telling him that story when I met him in jail. "Wait, how many are there?" Axl shrugs. "There's some in California, Oregon, Nevada. The newest is in Olympia." "Newer than this?" I wave my arm at all the guys working in oblivion. It felt like Axl and I had been rushing headlong into the burning eye of god since the moment we met and I could barely believe he had time for anything else. "Their inaugural session was last night. Decent turn out. Looks promising." I shake my head, stupid and scratchy eyed. Axl rolls his eyes and looks bored with me. Snaps his fingers in my face and makes me blink. "Focus, Kurt. I was just there." "When?" "Yesterday. Don't you remember? I stayed at the Hilton." Loud cheering and clapping from the living room suddenly distracts me from my thoughts and I walk over there to see what the fuss is all about. I stare at the tv, which is now displaying a Channel 4 breaking news broadcast of a fucking smiley face on outside of a credit card company building. Must've been one of the many homework assignments drafted up by Axl. "Did you guys do this shit?" I yell in disbelief. They all just look stare at each other for a brief moment and go back to laughing hysterically. "Sir, if you erase the debt record we all go back to zero, Sir." Krist, this new tall guy says. I turn my head and see Axl standing there in the hallway watching as well. We lock eyes for a moment before he smirks and turns and wanders off into the kitchen.
This shit has gone way too far.
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https://youtu.be/q90DPCu_-zk?si=UCfR2mhzJaiWeC-O-Song: "Even Flow" by Pearl Jam. She doesn't pick up until the fifth ring. Not until I've just about given up on her. "Is it you?" she exhales and my insides boil. "Who were you expecting?" I fume. Tori sounds half in the bag and fully pissed off, which is normal for her. "The wild guy who fucks me senseless and tells me that I'm the best fuck he's ever had. Obviously, I got the other one." "I have to go out of town for a few days. Just . . . stay away from the house while I'm gone, ok?" "Like I'd go there. That place is a shit hole." "I'm not interested in your opinion. I'm telling you what to do." "You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me." she hisses. "You sure about that?" I think about her chewed-on chandelier earrings and ruby red chokers, gaudy gifts from Axl. I can't tell her that there's an army of Axl's little servants in the basement. Can't tell her that they're mixing napalm and burning off their fingerprints. I can't tell her the future plans of destruction they have for the city. Can't tell her that I'm afraid of what he'll do to her. I can't tell her that he just disappeared two days ago. "Listen, I'll call you when I'm back. Just stay low until you hear from me." "Why are you doing this?" She asks the one question she shouldn't. "I think I like you."
I'm such a fucking jackass.
"Not love?" she giggles. "Don't push it." 💢 I fly to LA. Eat their prepackaged airline meal and throw it up in the tiny airplane bathroom, practically standing up. Stumble into the Hilton and throw myself against the counter. A black eye is visible on the right side of my face from my fight with Axl, but the guy in company polyester doesn't even blink. "Good evening, Sir," he says blandly. "What can I do for you?" "I'm looking for a basement at a bar." I cough. "There are several down on Aurora Ave. Clean girls, but I didn't tell you that." The guy licks his mouth, probably tasting hooker on his tongue. I shake my head, the bones in my neck grinding. "Not that kind of basement. I'm looking for the kind you're not supposed to talk about." His eyebrows rise clear into his hair. "I don't know what you're talking about." "I think you do." I growl, trying to sound and look like Axl and it must've worked because he widens his eyes and gulps. "You might find what you're looking for at Linda's. It's a bar on the North Side. Friday nights, Sir." He looks nervous and tugs at his tie. That's more like it. "Last week, there was a man here. Probably looking for the same thing I am. Name of Axl. Mid twenties, wild hair, bright eyes." The guys' eyebrows tuck together momentarily before he smears a bland look across his face and shakes his head deliberately. "You haven't seen him?" I hiss. "No," he says. And then he winks at me. "Sir." 💢 Linda's turns out to be a fucking disaster. I arrive when the basement is in full swing and some scrawny guy is beating the fuck out of a bigger man. When he's put in a chokehold, the man is making strangled noises and trying to fight back, but he's failing. I storm into the middle of the crowd and yank them apart. Pull strength from nowhere and toss the one with the fists aside. The man is moaning into the pavement and when I roll him over and grab his hand, he has a kiss scar. They're all servants and they're all looking at me like I'm insane. "Who's the head around here?" I ask and all of them shuffle, silent fucking servants with burned off fingerprints and lip-stained scars on the backs of their hands. No one comes forward. They all just stare at me.