The painkillers his brother Terry slipped him on the way to the ER took effect before Kory Peat got to the ER in Little Bend.
Terry made sure the triage people knew he had drugs already in him.
The doctor who stitched Kory’s face gave him a lecture about taking non-prescribed pills.
Before those painkillers wore off, Terry’s girlfriend Geri texted with a message:
If you’re feeling up to it, I got you a present. Actually work did. Geri punctuated that with a clown face. And then nothing.
What kind of present? Kory texted, a bit woozy but relieved he wasn’t bleeding everywhere anymore.
UR gonna freak. But T isn’t sure if the docs will recommend going.
Going where, Kory texted back, curious and annoyed and so rushed he didn’t add the question mark.
He was going to send a question mark when Geri texted back: Its general admission ,might get pretty rough up front.
BOMBSCATER??? Kory texted back,hurried and high enough that he left off the second T in his favorite band’s name.
He put his hand up to the bandage on his face.
Bedard, the mean next door neighbor had bitched about his mom’s noisy wind chime, so she finally relented and asked Kory to take it down for her.
Kory hadn’t been a big fan of the noise the thing made, but it was beautiful to look at. Until it fell as he took it down and the abstract metal dangles sliced the crap out of his cheek, right below the eye.
It could have removed the eye and he wasn’t gonna miss BombScatter if Geri really got tickets, which had sold out within hours of going on sale and which Kory couldn’t afford anyway.
Geri texted back.
For Real. If the docs say OK, Kory will drive you down to Detroit.
Kory laughed, and it hurt. He had no reason to mention a general admission concert to the doctors, no matter how nice or how hot they were. No. Screw that. He was going.
Geri scouted Kory a little spot by a garbage can near the emergency exit that looked safe from the predictably rowdy crowd, and Kory semi-reluctantly stayed there during the opener, Fuzzathon, who had only one song he liked.
Bombscatter came on to their signature Hammond B3 horror dirge riff that blistered right into the million mile an hour guitar attack of Psych Oil.
And Kory was gone.
Into the pit, the mash of shoulders taking his bandage off within seconds.
Twenty minutes later he was on a stranger’s shoulders hollering the chorus of Bloodletter’s Riot, making direct eye contact with Winston Brydle, the best front man, in Kory’s eyes, who ever lived. Win seemed to stretch the mic out farther toward Kory for the very last word: Tonight.
An hour later, the encore started with Pig’s Mistress, and Kory rode the crowd, singing along, blood streaming from his ripped stitches.
MegaBeef security guys behind the stage barricade tried to grab him, but Kory flailed away from them, twisted his body and landed on his feet, immediately getting knocked sideways and falling until a friendly hand grabbed his elbow and raised him.
Bombscatter then turned their backs to the crowd, did their signature British two finger “fuck off” salute and walked toward the back of the stage.
A girl in a sports bra handed Kory a sweaty t-shirt, pointing at his bloody face, giving him a nod that seemed to say “it’s ok, get it bloody.”
He dabbed at his cheekbone,and could feel it swelling. The blood on the shirt was worse than he expected.
A yellow windbreakered security officer started wading into the pit, with two EMT’s behind him.
Kory was about to acquiesce and meet them halfway when her heard a murmur and the sound of one single bass string note.
Bombscatter had not left the stage, they had swapped instruments.
Guitarist Phil Durr began to bang out the intro to Cave on the borrowed bass and the pit swirled into ecstatic mayhem.
Kory pressed forward, joining the rest of the crowd in screaming the first line “Frozen country, forgotten man.”
Kory thought he saw one of the uniformed EMT’s go down in a mash of bodies and he pressed further forward.
Keyboardist Eddie Harsch seemed content to let the crowd sing the song, dangling the mic over the edge of the security barricade as dozens of fans leapfrogged each other for the chance to sing “I’ll be happy breathing my last days in a cave”.
Kory grabbed shoulders, did his best skater vault , but fell off the side of the pile and hit his chest on the accordion fold metal barricade that separated the crowd from the stage.
Four enormous hands grabbed him and yanked him over.
Kory went freely-what else could he do?- but as the last Goodnights, thanks Detroits reverberated through the theater, he felt his arms being pinned to a gurney and resisted.
“For your own safety bro,” one of the EMTs said. The other EMT, who had some sort of disinfectant wipe in his hands leaned and wiped Kory’s face and Kory felt like fire ants were dancing on it.
Kory got pushed onto the side of the stage and into a hallway, then a small room that had a plain white piece of printer paper with a red cross on it that said Medical.
A man with a bolo tie and some kind of futuristic watch peeked his head into the room.
He heard an EMT say “It’s already stitched so it was a pre-existing injury. Relax. Yes. We always take photos. Yessir.”
When the man left, the EMT who wiped Kory’s face said “Dick.”
He looked down at Kory. “Go ahead and sue him, kid. Just don’t sue us.”
Then the other EMT said “We’re gonna have to transport you to get your face restitched.”
Kory just nodded quietly.
When Bombscatter had sold out he had resigned himself to not seeing them, and had tried to accept it. Almost no one in Colbridge would understand his love for Bombscatter anyway, they either worshiped Kid Rock or Taylor Swift.
Kory stared at the yellow ceiling of the medical room. They could take him anywhere. This had been both the thrill and surprise of a lifetime.He would owe Geri forever and in his head he started thinking of nice things he could do for her to thank her.
A dark spot entered his vision from the right. Kory blinked, and standing over him was Winston Brydle.
Kory wasn’t sure if oxygen could leave your body through your feet, but that’s what it felt like. He bit his lip. He had to say something –he had thought of dozens of things he would say in the unlikely chance–
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.