Why do they call him that? Part 2

A punk show in the southeast in 2015 was a church service. Not to any God. Something older than that. Something that didn't ask for belief. An untamed spirit that resides in everyone to some degree.

 

It lived in the chest. In the tightening of the jaw. Between the hackles along the neck when a man feels watched but no one is looking.

 

Call it tension. An anxiety. An unease. Lack of belonging. Neglect. Trauma. Impulse. Indulgence. Some amalgamation of feelings that well-adjusted individuals share only in scarcity. This formed the deity of their worship.

 

They didn't bother naming it. They just fed it. It was a rite of passage for the misplaced youth.

 

The buildings were the same in every city. Some half-collapsed room pressed between better things. Four walls that had forgotten their purpose. A stage built wrong. Wires exposed. Broken glass underfoot. Old blood gone black in the grain of the floorboards.

 

The air inside thick enough to drown in.

Sweat.

Mildew.

Beer gone sour in the wood.

And beneath it all the iron smell. Always that.

 

It's where they chose to perform their rituals. Among the not quite yet ruined.

 

They would go on in the dusty clockless hours of twilight. The music was no different than the people inside. Discordant. Messy. Shifting masses of bodies crying out in tongues. Dust from stamping feet hung still in the beams of streetlight that bled through cracked windows as worshippers twisted beneath.

 

They moved without agreement. Without pattern. A compression and recoil of flesh and bone. Elbows thrown. Boots planted. The crowd folding in on itself and breaking apart again like something breathing.

 

No one spoke.

 

Not in any way that could be understood. But it spoke to everyone. Yet somehow they did understand. In music and in words that demanded to be felt.

 

A congregation was held there a few nights a week and it baptized them all alike. The bruised and the lonely. The angry and the drunk. And in the thick dark heat of that room where sweat rose from bodies like steam from fresh blood, Nate and William formed the bond of their friendship by way of collision. Fists clenched. Bodies thrown hard into one another beneath the screaming of amplifiers. For a few brief hours they were free men and moved less like dancers than combatants set loose upon the earth. And then as sudden as the first guitar had split the room with its blazing chords it was over again and the lights came up on the wreckage.

 

Holy shit, Nate said. I ain’t felt that alive in a long time.

 

William lit a cigarette and looked back toward the venue doors where kids staggered out half laughing and half wounded.

 

There were four bloody people in there after the first song alone. Did you see that?

 

Yeah. I was one of em. You caught me on that stage dive.

 

They stood there afterward beneath the buzzing streetlamp with a girl they’d met sometime between the second band and the violence of the last set.

 

Will, this is Becca. She’s hanging with us tonight.

 

William took a pull from the brown paper bag in his hand and nodded once.

 

Pleasure.

 

Nate kept glancing toward her and everybody there knew what sat behind a look like that.

 

You mind taking her back to the house? I’m gonna run down to Waffle House and grab us something. Make sure she’s comfortable. Take care of her.

 

I can do that. But if you’re already making the pilgrimage then get me an All Star Breakfast. Bacon. Hashbrowns scattered and covered. No waffle. I’ll repay you with that bottle of Rumple in the freezer.

 

Done deal.

 

William and the girl disappeared off together into the dark beyond the streetlights while Nate headed the other direction toward the Waffle House sitting in the middle of the entertainment district like some fluorescent sanctuary for the damned.

 

What Nate had failed to account for was the hour.

 

The second-floor nightclub nearby had just thrown its drunken congregation back out into the street and all of them had descended upon the restaurant at once. The place was bedlam.

 

Every castoff from every bar within ten blocks ended up there eventually. Drunks. Lovers in the middle of ruinous arguments. Men with blood on their shirts and women crying in bathroom mirrors. Some laughed too loud. Some stared dead ahead as if awaiting sentencing. The air smelled of grease and stale liquor and sweat cooked into old tile.

 

By the time Nate placed the order he’d already seen more fighting than at the show itself.

 

One waitress was near tears. Another looked ready to stab somebody with a fork.

 

He laughed quietly to himself.

 

When the cook finally shoved half the order across the counter in cheap plastic containers the waitress waved him off before he could pay. There was no hope of finishing the ticket anyway and the mob pressing through the doors only swelled larger by the minute.

 

Nate carried what little they’d managed to give him through six blocks of humid night toward the house.

 

The place was near a hundred years old and rotting slowly into the earth but it served its purpose. It kept rain off them.

 

Mostly.

 

William would be disappointed about the breakfast but Nate figured the Rumple Minze would soften the blow some.

As he approached the house he heard shouting from inside.

 

ALL STARRR BREEAAAKFAST.

 

Nate climbed the first set of stairs toward the open front door.

Again it came echoing through the old house.

 

ALLLLLL STARRRRR BREEEEAAAKFAST.

 

Nate stopped at the foot of the second staircase holding the sweating takeout bags in his hand like offerings before an angry god.

 

ALL STAR BREAKFAST MOTHERFUCKER.

 

He climbed slowly.

 

At the top sat William’s bedroom door cracked open just enough for television light to spill across the hallway floor in pale blue flickers. A muted streaming service danced along the frame of the door.

 

ALLLLLLL STARRRRR BREAAAAKKFAST.

 

Nate took a breath and pushed the door wider.

 

Dude I couldn’t get—holy shit.

 

William was underneath the girl on the mattress moving with slow relentless force while she writhed beneath him laughing in delight. He reached for a blanket and managed only to drape it across the small of her back while the rest of the act continued unbothered beneath the dull glow of the television.

 

William looked over calmly without slowing.

 

It’s cool. Where’s my All Star Breakfast.

 

Nate held one hand up before his face as though that might somehow preserve dignity for everybody involved.

Man I couldn’t get it. The place was completely fucked. Dude can you stop for one second?

 

All Star Breakfast.

 

I’m serious man. They were overflowing into the parking lot.

 

ALL STAR BREAKFAST.

 

William’s rhythm never changed.

 

Nate looked down then and spotted the empty bottle of Rumple Minze laying on its side beside the bed.

 

Did you drink the whole fucking bottle?

 

All Star Breakfast.

 

Nate pointed accusingly toward him.

 

God damnit man fuck you. If you weren’t built like a goddamn grizzly bear I’d whoop your ass myself.

All Star Breakfast.

 

Come see me when you’re done in here.

 

All Star Breakfast.

 

Nate backed from the room and slammed the door hard enough to shake the whole dying house though the place had already been trembling before he touched it.

 

He sat on the edge of his bed afterward in the dark with the sounds of laughter and pounding still carrying faintly through the walls and he wondered how exactly a man arrived at such company in life.

 

How had he chosen a villain for a friend.

 

And what sort of man did that make him.

 

The door swung open. And William stood there. Bare. Glistening. Naked as a jaybird. Steam seeming to rise off his body. His silhouette glowed blue in hue. Nate noticed him holding a full bottle. And nothing but loose tube socks slipping over the edge of his toes. William was smoking a cigarette.

 

No dude, I didn't drink that whole bottle. Well I mean yes we did finish A bottle. But not this one. This one's for you. I'm not inconsiderate.

 

Are you serious, bro what the fuck do you think you're doing?

 

What? You said take care of her.

 

I meant like make her feel comfortable. Make her feel at home.

 

Oh I don't think she's going to want to leave, Nate.

 

Fuck you!

 

I mean! Dude… don't be mad at me. She said she was down to share.

 

William sat next to Nate and threw an arm around him, the bottle in the hand of his draped arm. He held the cigarette to Nate's lips for him to drag.

 

Look man, what's mine is yours. See?

 

Bro… you fucking reek. And what's with these god damn socks? They're like rotting off your feet! Are they grey or… green… or what?

 

Well they were white at one point… but whatever! They're my lucky socks! Look how lucky I was!

 

They laughed together and shared glugs from the bottle.

 

William fucking rotten socks.

 

Welp… you're up kid. I need a break. I'm going to do a line and chill in here for a minute. You go finish up. Wake me up in the morning. I got a fight tomorrow… Also dude… please don't ever threaten me again…

 

…Don't ever say shit like that to me.

 

His eyes were beady and void of humor for just a second. The look of a shark that just caught the scent of blood in the water.

 

…You know how I get.

 

And from then on nobody called him William much anymore. The name stayed with him long after the people from that house were gone.