Caught In A Mosh
The most opposite place in the world of where Zach Addy would like to be.
Disclaimer: I don't own Zach, Hodgins, Angela, or the song Caught in a Mosh (that's by Anthrax)
It was Angela's doing. She had set Zach Addy up with a younger sister of a friend, and the girl was really cute. Her name was Erzsebet Kurucz, cellist for the National Symphony Orchestra, composer, and child prodigy, like Zach had been. She was also lead guitarist in a rock band. She called it a hobby. Right now, however, he wasn't thinking about how cute she was. Right now he was wishing he'd asked what kind of music her band played before he promised he'd attend one of her concerts. He stood by the bar looking very out of place in the dark venue. Most of the people there were his age or younger, dressed in band t-shirts and jeans. The stage set up was simple and practical. A banner behind the drum kit read "Lost Cause" as did many of the shirts of those around him. The band wasn't onstage yet, but the house music was already deafening, playing an unintelligible song with loud, fast percussion on the P.A. system. Angela and Hodgins insisted on coming with him. He needed a ride anyway, and they wanted to get out for a while. They headed directly to the bar, leaving Zach unsure of where to stand, but staying as far away from the crowd as he could get. It soon did not matter where one was standing, as the venue filled with way more people than the fire code allowed. The room was stifling hot. Then the low lights were turned completely off, and he was plunged into darkness, which was lighted only by the stage spotlights. The band took the stage to cheers and the raising of fists and "horns". Erzsebet was dressed in a tartan miniskirt, a Venom shirt, and the deepest-treaded boots he had ever seen. As the first heavily distorted chord was played, the room erupted into swirling violence.
Zach could not say that he ever actually saw Erzsebet play anything. It was more like he heard and felt her play. The floor vibrated with a combination of the bass and the running feet of the mosh pit. He stayed as far back as he could get, but did not realize that the pit is in no way stationary. It began somewhere near the center of the crowd, then moved backwards. At the start of the pit, Zach was about seven "rows" away from it. Within a matter of minutes it was right in front of him. The behavior of those in the pit was a picture of irrationality. They ran at each other, full force, colliding with as great an impact as possible. Those around the pit helped push those in the pit towards one another, so the impact would be even greater. Zach stared in a mixture of horror and disbelief that such a thing should exist. At that moment, several moshers collided, sending one of them reeling into a very distressed forensic anthropologist/engineer. He hit Zach hard in the chest with an elbow, then regained his footing and ran back into the pit. Zach stumbled back a few steps into a rather nasty looking biker who grunted a very unpleasant, "hey, watch it, man!" The biker gave him a shove so that he was directly in the mosh pit itself. Zach was immediately hit from the side and thrown to the ground by the force of impact. He got up as quickly as possible and got out of the pit, being hit several times on the way out.
Zach tried to burrow through a mass of sweaty people, moving closer to the stage, further away from Hodgins, Angela, and the mosh. He was safe for a few minutes, then Erzsebet began her solo. It was loud, fast, and virtuosic. Over her rapid arpeggios, the lead singer shouted instructions to the crowd, "Split the floor!" he growled, "No one is safe! No one stands still! This is the Wall of Death!"
Wall of Death? No, Zach did not want to participate in the Wall of Death. He made a move to get out of the crowd and back to the bar, to Hodgins and Angela. However, the density of the crowd was such that leaving was not an option. The mob divided into two halves, lengthwise from the stage. Zach was trapped in the volume of people on the right side. Erzsebet sustained a wailing note on her guitar. The two halves of the crowd faced each other about seven feet apart. Then Erzsebet struck a mass of thundering chords and the two sides charged at one another like a medieval battlefield. Standing still was impossible. The crowed forced Zach forward, into a wall of flailing arms and sweaty, shirtless bodies. He was hit on all sides at once, doing his best to stay standing in the onslaught. A large, beefy guy ran him over, knocking him into the floor. Some random strangers grabbed his arms and shirt, and pulled him to his feet. Lost Cause ended the song they had been playing and started another, one that must have been very popular, because the crowd reacted by surging forward, screaming unintelligible lyrics and throwing horns. "Make this the night of a thousand stage dives," the lead singer growled. Zach was pushed further forward by the dozens of college kids in various stages of inebriation trying to get on the stage. He was almost front row. A very large man made it on stage, among several dozen others, and took a running start into the crowd, head first. He came down hard, squarely on the person of a certain Jeffersonian employee. Zach fell backwards on the sticky, beer-covered floor, winded and disoriented. The large metalhead mumbled an apology, and others helped him to his feet again. It's mosh pit etiquette to pick up anyone who falls down. The music was played faster and faster. The crowd started an enormous circle pit, a swirling vortex of people running as fast as they could go in a circle. Zach had to run, too, to keep from falling. He did not want to fall. He did manage to fight his way to the edge of the vortex, and escape from the mosh.
He found Angela and Hodgins at the bar and sat next to them, paler than he had ever been in his life. "Dude, did you mosh?" Hodgins asked, incredulous, "That I lived to see this day!"
"That was quite possibly the most horrible feeling I have ever experienced. I will never do that again."