“Mic check one, two, one two.”
And then the screaming starts. No one hears it besides MC Stitches.
He sits in his basement cage composing the dopest beats humankind has ever dared to imagine. Deep vibrating organ pipes thicken the rapid pulsing drum n’ bass, adding an element of malevolence and a layer of pure funky groove. Then the first looped scream repeats. The howl of pain is intimate and pure. It is his scream from when he carved out his right eye for its stubborn refusal to look towards the future. It churns an avalanche of regret within his bowels and he smashes his forehead against the cage to retain the focus needed for his opus.
Blood drizzles down from the fresh gash and makes crimson lightning streaks across the over sized lens of his goggles. With one two-fingered hand he cues up the next scream. With his other hand, frighteningly complete with all five spindly fingers, he turns a knob and stretches the beats beyond the intro. The scream set to join the loop n’ groove, he reaches his two twitchy digits and flips the switch to the three hanging 17 inch black light tubes attached to the roof of his cage.
The flood of dark light illuminates the crowd of five corpses littered around his basement stage. The second scream, the first he ever stole, falls into groove after his shriek amidst the pounding rhythm. His audience sits motionless tied to chairs with duct tape and barbed wire. Their mouths hang open, eyeless sockets swallowing the light and drooling it down pale scarred cheeks. The cherry veins across his goggles glow a deep romantic red and his remaining eye tears. Two fingers give the spinning record a quick scratch then cue the next pair of screams. One deep and one shrill, they capture and rape the high and low end of the ever evolving groove in an aural masterpiece. Only MC Stitches hears it.
He grabs the mic with his complete hand and shouts through his spittle soaked bandanna in his broken voice.
“Everybody get up!”
Though his bastardized soundboards could easily replicate and repeat the phrase he shouts a slightly less rowdy echo.
“Get up! Get up!”
None of his corpse groupies move but their lack of devotion to the groove doesn’t deter him any. They each had chances to listen to his epic song. Extraordinary, unbelievably kind glimpses into his terrible towering masterpiece he offered them. Each cowered in fear. Each refused to see the beauty, dark and ferocious, in the gift of groove he offered them. So, he added them to the mix. Each was good for at least a scream or two, a sobbing whine, or a gurgled whimper. Each became a part of the groove. Only MC Stitch hears them.
His head bobs constantly, the groove ringing and throbbing in his ears and soul. He is a constant blur as the song builds and falls back on itself. Within a few minutes there are so many screams looping they run end to end rendering the groove, so tight and so dope, utter chaos. Sweat mingles with the blood drizzling down his face giving him an iodine-colored sheen in the black light. At the thirteen minute mark MC Stitches feels his epic taking shape.
“Can you dig it? Dig it! Dig it!” He screams hoarsely into the mic. Then he reaches his good hand into the blades of the industrial fan perched on his cage to cool him and keep the reek of the corpses away from him.
The fingers don’t cut cleanly but rather break and tear away from his pointy knuckles giving the powerful blades something to choke on. The fan blades stutter against bone and the motor grinds in response. He pulls his hand away and the blades resume full speed and fling blood and pulp across the crowded basement. MC Stitches waves his fresh stump in the air like he just don’t care.
He uses his two fingers (his only fingers now) to play back the sound of his groove-sacrificed-self-mutilation. Louder, slurred like a drunk, and over-lapped by looping screams. He feels it. He reaches up tugs the bandanna from his face. Gripped tight in his two-fingered talon he brings the microphone to his lip-less face.
A shout from above interrupts him.
“Gordon!”
The groove is ruined. Thudding bass is creaking into quick silence and the screams weakening into chuckles. Yet the echo of his living ghost father’s baritone haunts still.
“Ribs could be broken!”
MC Stitches digs his fingers into his lacerated hand and rocks back and forth. His father isn’t upstairs. His father is a wind borne demon forever slipping in, out, gone.
“Everything you do is failure except hurt, boy!”
Two blood streaked fingers tug one plug from an outlet in the wall and plug in another hanging nearby. Black light blinks off. A string of 50 watt bulbs ooze on flooding the room with dismal glow. It the split second of transition MC Stitches sees the roomful of corpses sigh. He’d kill them again if he could, he’d enjoy it because the first time every bruise, every cut, every scream was for the groove. And their squeals and grunts and wails of pain still weren’t enough for his epic. He sulks past his rotting captive audience and up the rotting wooden stairs knowing it needs something more. One more scream, caught from a confrontation that dwells in memories and nightmares, a scream from a wind borne demon. Only MC Stitch hears it.
If you enjoy this story and are that kind of twisted soul you can find more of my work for here.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
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