a short story by Michael Aronovitz
They’d been held over a day after selling out The Electric Factory, the prestigious Philadelphia venue crammed to the rafters last night with rockers, stoners, sludge-lovers, and neck-wreckers, those who’d screamed themselves hoarse in the wake of being absolutely bludgeoned by “The Wizard’s” mountain of amplification and bone crushing musical execution. Tonight, the band members were restless, feeling vicious and extreme, and they got a tip that the best underground, high stakes poker game was in South Philly, down by the airport in a cluster of abandoned warehouses in the basement under the basement of a speak-easy members secretly called Mama’s Inferno.
Jus had nine thousand dollars in his pocket, three stacks folded over and rubber banded together. Liz and Simon were loaded as well. Clayton only had only seventeen hundred, but no one blamed him. Before hailing a cab they’d been slumming down South Street, and he’d found a specialty shop with an authentic leather vest worn back in the summer of 1971 by Sabbath’s Tony Iommi on the Master of Reality 4 Tour. It was legit, there was paperwork. There was even a hint of the guitar-legend’s after shave in it if you smelled hard enough.
A heavy-set bouncer with a chin-curtain beard and a neck tattoo trailing off his ear like Native American war feathers, took their names and led them through the lobby to a side door with a red felt rope barrier in front of it. He unhooked it for them and indicated that they should go down the stairway two levels.
There was only one room down there at the bottom, no door, but rather, those long hanging plastic strips you would expect to find in a slaughterhouse meat room. Above them, the mindless pounding of synthesized dance music had slowly receded, and once they passed through the plastic the noise dulled to a haunt.
“So, this is it?” Jus said. It was all concrete with moisture marks webbed along the creases in the ceiling and a contractor’s utility light hanging off a hook. The floor had a rusted drain grate in the middle of it, and the wall at the rear of the space had a man-sized hole knocked through it, temporarily patched with a swath of gauzy material that looked spotted and weathered.
“Is this a joke?” Liz echoed. She was wearing her best long coat, high boots, and the black hat with the floppy brim that made her eyebrows look daring. Jus had picked out the scarf, she looked good. So, where were the high rollers? Where was the rare scotch, the killer sound system, the fancy plate of caviar weed, the Mississippi Sin Dip, or at least a tray of those fucking mini cocktail hot dogs wrapped up in dough?
A light flickered on from behind the gauze, and through the jagged hole in the wall, you could see the silhouette of a tall figure sitting in there behind what appeared to be a large poker table.
“Looking for a game?” he said. It was a harsh whisper with gravel in it, like steam whistling through a rusty valve. Jus took a step toward the see-through obstruction.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re Electric Wizard.”
“I know who you are.”
“Right then,” Jus continued. “We got the tip that this was supposed to be the hottest game of underground Texas Hold “Em you’ve got in this town.”
“You’re in the right place.”
“Don’t look like the right place,” Simon muttered.
“Come in,” the figure said. “Under the fine mesh. Yes, that’s right, lift it up there. It’s not fastened down at the bottom. Forgive me, I’m redecorating.”
There were four chairs waiting for them at the table, the fancy Victorian kind, with cushioned upholstery riveted into the arm rests. Their host was wearing leather gloves and a black sweatshirt with an oversized hood pulled forward over his head so his face was lost in the shadow. Liz toyed with the upside down cross hanging down from her neck.
“So where’s everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” the figure said.
“Then what are we doing here?” Clayton said. “We could take each other’s money back in the hotel room.”
The figure smiled, you could see the teeth faintly glinting from within the shadows covering the rest of his face. From his lap, he drew up something thin and gray, knobbed on one end, splintered at the other. It was a bone, human looking, maybe a femur, and he brought it up to his mouth area. From within the shadow of the hood there were sucking sounds, and when he pulled it out, the nub was slick and licked clean.
“Human marrow is a special delicacy,” he said. “Would you like to give it a try?”
The band looked at each other, smiling. This wasn’t the hottest underground card game in Philly, but a good gag, a custom-made prank celebrating the fact that they were the ultimate gloom-filled, horror-soaked, bad ass doom-metal band on the planet. Simon moved his hair off his face.
“Who put you up to this?” he said. From within the darkness of the hood it seemed the eyes gleamed red for a moment.
“This is of my own invention,” he said. “You see…I am your biggest fan. The new album Wizard Bloody Wizard on Spinefarm Records is magnificent, and the single you put up on YouTube, “See You in Hell” is bone crushing. A stellar choice, though I very much like “Necromania.” I also have a special fondness for cut number four, “The Reaper,” for…obvious reasons.”
“Well, you have our deepest thanks,” Jus said dryly.
“Thanks has nothing to do with it,” the dark figure hissed. “You play hard and slow. Like me, you are startlingly current yet deliciously timeless. You have a “fuck you” philosophy, you want to legalize drugs and murder, and I read somewhere that you play death like a muse.”
Jus stared for a second.
“And so?”
The figure sat forward.
“And so,” he whispered, “I am Death. Play me like a muse. Let’s write fucking poetry.”
They all looked around the table, smiling again, yet rather ruefully. Joke was over. Time to bail. They made to scrape back their chairs.
“If you don’t remain there will be consequences,” the figure said softly. “Stay right where you are, yes, right there, still as stones. You came to play a game with high stakes, and I am going to make all your wishes come true. I am not taking a rake, but there will be a time charge. Twenty minutes, starting now, and instead of Texas Hold “Em, or Omaha, or 7-Card Stud, we play something new. It’s called ‘Pieces of a Dream.’ You all had nightmares last night. Time to share them with the group, clock’s ticking.”
∴ If this newsletter has done anything for you, it would mean everything to me to hear it. Hit reply and tell me what you think. One sentence is enough. Regardless, thank you for reading. Thank you for reading in an age of increasing illiteracy, cultural stagnancy, and attention divestment. You are doing something revolutionary. ∴
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