La Sala Rossa
Mr Fingers
The doctor looked horrified. Nurses turned away in disgust. The cries of children who had seen me enter the emergency ward could still be heard. The ambulance had been slow to arrive at the hospital. Weighted down by its cargo.
The night began well. I was drunk by dinner time and had a full pouch of American Spirits Dandy had brought back from the desert. La Sala Rossa was relatively empty as the opening band played. About the best thing going for them was the series of projections of the amps. An otherwise uneventful affair. I ordered another stout. Had my back turned to The Fucking Champs as they took to the stage. My biggest mistake.
And then it happened.
The Champs opened with some riff-raving mad, yet tightly knit guitar harmonies held together by Tim Woete’ s head-banging prog-inspired drumming that made my beer bottle shatter in my own hand. But that was the least of my worries. I felt it happen about four bars into the first song. I made nothing of it. Focused on the Manley guitar harmonies and Green riffs, but the feeling intensified as the band continued and the once empty floor began to fill up. I was waiting for vocals, for something that would quell the ferocity in my pants which was getting worse by the moment. I tried to ignore it but by now it was too hard to hide.
“Jesus Christ!” said Dandy. “What the hell is that?”
It was out of control. Like some Dirk Digler Pinocchio experiment gone awry. It was huge. I couldn’t stop it. It started ordering shots, drinking straight from the bottle, then smashing the empty bottle over its head as the Fucking Champs brought an eager crowd to fist pumping applause. It was pushing people around, starting fights, stealing cigarettes. It was oppressive.
I could see the look of concern on Dandy’s face as it pulled me around the room, and then outside. I screamed at it, threatened it, but it threw me up against a wall, whispering sweet terrors into my ear, things I can’t repeat in the printed form.
I tried to fight it. I wrestled it. Choked it. Punched it. I screamed for her not to do it but Dandy smashed a bottle over its head and kicked it a few times but it was no use. It threw us both to the ground and took off. Darted into traffic with me still attached to it.
The last thing I remember was the headlights and sirens before passing out on the street, waking to the flash bulbs of a hospital photographer recording for posterity the freakish enormity of an organ enlarged beyond recognition by the sounds of The Fucking Champs.