Bubblegum Vignette
by Shawn Hagen
You could feel the driving bass lines thumping through the big subwoofers. It vibrated in the chests of the audience, in a strange way that was pleasurable even as it was a little disturbing. Far away from the stage, at the bar, the liquid in people's glasses would tremble slightly.
The air-conditioner was broken, or had not been turned on, and the place was hot and it smelled. It smelled of a mixture of stale beer, vomit, sweat, and tobacco. It was an almost heady mixture that Priss found herself welcoming. It was a familiar scent that she had long ago associated with a feeling of freedom and satisfaction.
She slammed on the strings of her guitar, playing a hard riff, making the audience jump up and scream.
Priss could feel beads of perspiration run down between her breasts, the small of her back, between her thighs, making them slick, making her clothing stick to her in a obscene embrace. She had to be precise to make sweat slippery fingers play the proper notes, to avoid having her fingers slip on the steel strings.
But she did it. She did it with a skill that made it look effortless. She stood on the stage, playing and singing, and making her audience hers. An extension of her music. She fed off them, off their emotions and then fed it back to them. It was good.
And then in a flash of light Priss saw her, out in the audience, looking directly at her, and Priss' fingers faltered. A discordant note rung out through the room and she could see the way the people flinched at it. She could have just continued on, letting is slide, but she would not. Not that night.
Instead she hit another bad note, and another, filling the club with disharmonious noise. Her band followed her, trusting her, weaving in their jarring music with hers, creating a wall of noise that was painful to listen to. Priss watched and saw some of the audience actually lift their hands to cover their ears. Her pick hit the strings, pulling tortured sounds from her axe, raising up into shriek of sound that bordered on painful.
She saw it, heard it, sensed it. The eye in the storm that she had created. Sliding her hand up the neck of the guitar she found the sweet spot and played a perfect melody that she sent out into the maelstrom of angry noise for which she was responsible. She let it build, pulled her band back into perfection, and then pounded on her strings, driving the harmonious music out.
The audience began to cheer. She had taken them on a rough ride and then bought them back safely.
They loved it. The loved her.
A string snapped on her guitar, one end whipped back and cut across the top of her thumb. Priss let the instrument swing back, out of her way, reached forward, grabbed her mike, and continued to sing. Blood mixed with sweat and dripped down to the floor.
Priss looked out into the audience, but she did not see her. Perhaps she had never been there.
She did not worry about it, did not focus on it, instead she just sang. There were no breaks, not for her, not for the band, and not for the audience. She held them there, would not let them go.
Her throat began to hurt, but she did not stop. As some time she grabbed a bottle of water, poured most of it across the cut on her hand, drank the rest, and kept on singing.
And then at some point, late into the night, the power went, plunging the club into darkness and silence, but for the ringing in everyone's ears. And out into the darkness and silence came Priss' voice, rasp with over use. "Looks like that is it for tonight. Go home."