He was one step removed from a bastard child, different only because his father had, once upon a time, acknowledged him. Often, though, he wished he had been a bastard. Perhaps if he didn’t know anything about his patronage, he wouldn’t be filled with the constant desire to kill his father. Now, though, the way it was in his twenty-third year alive, Trent Fallgood felt no stronger yearning than that.
It didn’t help that he saw his father’s face everywhere. Daniel Fallgood: pure, revered, god-like in his public perception. God-like, too, in the loyalty of his followers. The wrinkled, powdered face with its sunken cheeks was everywhere. Billboards. Posters. The screens now built into the sides of churches. The old man would smile and shake hands with other old men. His kindly face would grow weary and serious when he stepped behind a podium or into a pulpit. From there he would preach about the Order of Tetra and his sheep would hold hands and cry and nod. Between his eyes was always a black circle of make-up, four beams coming from its center in thick lines like straps across his lips and into his white hair.
Trent wondered if Daniel ever thought of his dead wife up there. He doubted his father could even picture her beautiful, often bruised, face anymore. Daniel never spoke about her. He never told the story of her disappearance. Trent could remember. He could remember fleeing in the middle of the night, a string of dirty apartments that smelled like piss and booze. He could remember watching the blood drain from her body as the shadow of some monster stepped out the door. Watching her dark skin grow pale as she grazed his chin with her finger a final time.
Now, standing on a sidewalk in the dark of the city, Trent took a long drink from the bottle in his hand. The taste didn’t kick as hard as it used to. His body was adjusting to a constant state of buzz. The wet blacktop of the road reflected the faulty screen of the church across the street. Daniel’s rigid face spoke, though no words came out. His image would flicker in and out of existence, puddles near the sidewalk blinking like the strobe lights that would later surround him at the show. The booze only stoked the fire of hatred he felt for Daniel. The man dedicated his life to saving the souls of others, yet thought nothing of his own child, nothing of the hell in which Trent now found himself.
The first sounds of the audio check erupted from behind him, a long, steady bass line. He had time to finish the bottle, then. Trent stumbled backward and pressed his back against the brick wall, sliding into a sitting position on the wet cement. The bass began to strum and he closed his eyes. Long, black bangs tickled at his eyelids, the surrounding mane oily around his ears and across the nape of his neck. He let forth a small belch and tilted his head up toward the slow-falling mist.
They would find him again tonight. He knew it. The Order was tracking him closely now and the police showed up toward the end of nearly every show. Soon, they would be smart enough to shut them down before the first song. After that, nobody would book them. And then where would they go? Abandoned warehouses, maybe, like all of the others. All of the artists and musicians who fled when the President declared anti-Order music illegal. Eventually their drummer left, but he was easy to replace. Every night, there were dozens of adolescents and young adults eager to join them on stage, jumping up and down in the throbbing, sweating mass. Rubbing skin-on-skin as he sang to them and they felt things that were beyond explanation, their limbs lighter, their pulses faster, their fists in the air. He would sing about his father, sing about the Order of Tetra, and they would sing with him. They validated him, and though many didn’t know it, the feeling was mutual. Faces turned pale when Trent Fallgood walked on stage. The guts he possessed to use his true last name made the club owners uncomfortable, but the young people before him were in awe. He was the face of their resistance now that the others were gone. His band was playing to hundreds of people in crowded, musty basements alongside the rats and the cockroaches. But it was better than the others, once great artists who now sang their castrated music to crowds of ten or fifteen. Some kind of resistance, he thought. Scurrying away the moment they catch up to us. It was enough to make a man drink. And so he did, every night.
It would eventually go away, he thought, taking a long gulp. All of this. The Order would crush him and once again he would be left alone by Daniel Fallgood, a nothing on the cold streets of the city.
He could feel the bottle getting light in his hand. With a weak laugh to himself, he hoisted it up to the flashing, cracked image of his father.
“Here’s to you, Dad,” he said before downing the rest of it in a single drink. There was more than he realized and this time he did scowl, pulling his lips up to his gums and letting out a harsh ahh. Trent tossed the bottle across the road. It made it only halfway before falling in a stunted arc and shattering on the street. He was getting weaker. Thinner, too, if that was possible. His diet consisted of little more than booze and the kind of noodles that came in boxes.
From inside came the shred of a guitar. Zakky would be out soon to check his sobriety. She didn’t care about his health as much as the state of the band. No matter how drunk he got, though, he would never forget a lyric or slur a line. As soon as he stepped on stage, he would imagine Daniel standing there at the nearest table. Watching him and judging him. And when he needed that extra fire, when he began to sing out against the President and the military and the Order, he would imagine his brother. Matthew. His twin. The good son who stayed with daddy and now, at such a young age, was leading troops of his own into combat. The poster child of the Order’s growing strength and aggression. Matthew, with his bleach-white teeth and sculpted black hair. Matthew, who stood up straight and always laughed at the reporters’ stupid jokes. Matthew, who looked so much like Trent from an alternate universe in which he could afford to eat a full meal and sleep in a bed. The handsome one. The strong one. The one who never spoke about his rebellious brother.
Zakky stepped out from the side door of the club. Her skin-tight denim ended at the waist, giving way instead to a pinstriped black-and-white shirt. She jerked her head to the side, moving her seafoam green hair out of her eyes. She pulled a gray, metal tube from her pocket. When she pressed a button on the cylinder, the end lit up in blue. After taking a drag from the device, she let out a long stream of blue smoke.
“Ready?” she asked. He said nothing, only closed his eyes again.
“We need to run through the three new ones, you keep missing that high note.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I know.”
Zakky gazed up at Daniel’s towering face. Without looking, she held the tube out to Trent. He took it, his eyes still closed. The smoke was cool and refreshing in his lungs. It tasted slightly burnt, slightly sweet.
“Think she’ll be here tonight?” Zakky asked. He took another drag and then handed the tube back to her.
“She’s here every show.”
“She’s here every time they shut us down, yeah.”
“She isn’t ratting on us. They’re just getting better at finding us. It isn’t that hard, we’re the only ones still playing. You hear an electric guitar anywhere near downtown in this city, it’s probably us.”
“Somebody’s telling them,” Zakky said, putting the tube back in her pocket.
“Probably. But it isn’t her.”
There was a silence between them. Trent thought he might nod off for a second. Then she spoke.
“Well,” Zakky said, “if she doesn’t show up, you know where my dressing room is.”
Trent smiled.
“Yeah.”
The sound of the door closing again told him Zakky was gone. He opened his eyes, watching the alley dance before him. The unmistakable sound of tipsy teenagers echoed around him. The audience was on its way. The teens came first. Then the older people. The last to show were always those somewhere in between. By the end of the night, they were the ones shoving their way to the front, screaming the words back at him. They were the ones who saw the oppression, who mistrusted the Order. They were always the ones to get arrested as they blocked Trent and his band from the police.
With a final glance up at his father, Trent went back inside.
The show neared its encore before they were busted. They hadn’t gotten that far in a while. It was funny, too, because the most political songs were already out of the way. The new drummer was working out well that night; a longtime fan, he knew exactly when to emphasize Trent’s words with a smash of cymbals or thump of bass. Zakky was on point, too, growing more and more confident when she saw that Trent’s newest girlfriend was nowhere to be seen. By the end, they were leaning on one another, shoulder-to-shoulder as they screamed with their respective instruments. The scratchpad was squeakier than ever, twisting and turning with discomfort in their ears as they riled up the crowd.
The final songs were old ones, written by Trent when he was little more than seventeen years old. They were political only in the most shallow sense, a string of empty threats and fuck yous to the establishment. They were trite and inconsequential; he was almost embarrassed by them now. But the fans, especially the ones who were there in the beginning, when the government first grew less discernible from the Order of Tetra, ate it up. Just as Daniel to his flock, Trent was their God when those trashy songs burst through the amps.
Then it all went the usual route. A single man, this time the club’s security guard, ran up to the owner. The owner’s face grew pale and worried, his gaze moving from his customers to the band. Trent saw it immediately. He continued to sing until the owner dragged his fat thumb across his pudgy neck. The kill gesture.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled into the microphone, “welcome the Pigs to the stage!”
The crowd reacted with no hesitation. They turned their backs to the band, who frantically grabbed whatever they could, their instruments and little else. New amps would have to be ordered through the black market. New wire and lights, too. A new mic. The wall of people turned to the front door. Some began to shake, but many had seen this before. Those who weren’t prepared to fight the police moved toward the walls, some resigned to their quick arrest. Mostly, they stood still as the officers, dressed all in black with the insignia of the Order newly pressed on their chests, burst through the door. Trent looked back as he rushed through the backstage door. The batons, aglow with green currents of electricity, came down hard on the heads of the crowd. The cursing and screaming began.
Zakky’s hand fell on Trent’s shoulder and he turned toward the black tunnel of the backstage area. It was humid there, ripe with the smell of sweat and body heat. They stumbled through the darkness, her hand on his shoulder, until they were greeted by the sound of a door being thrown open. A cool breeze blew through the hallway and they ran out onto the pavement, which was still damp. They turned right, toward the main street. A group of officers appeared from nowhere, wrapping their gloves around the arms of the drummer. He struggled. One of the officers activated his baton. The crackling green swirl ran up its length. When he hit the drummer across the back of the head, the jolts ran down his body and met the rainwater on the ground. There was a smell of cooking flesh as green smoke rose from the young man’s nose and ears. They had time to see this before they turned and ran the other way. Footfalls chased after them, sometimes splashing in the puddles. The other two members of the band ran straight down the alleyway. Zakky grabbed Trent’s wrist and pulled him into shadow. They darted down a gap between rundown apartment buildings, meeting a fence and climbing over. Only a pair of officers was still in pursuit now. Zakky found a low-hanging fire escape and jumped forward, gripping its platform with her fingers. She hoisted herself up. Trent wasn’t strong enough. He could reach the platform if he jumped, but his arms were too scrawny to lift himself. With a curse, Zakky reached for him. He took her hand and pressed his feet against the wall of the building, walking up toward her with his back parallel to the ground. Zakky pulled him up through the gap in the escape’s railing. They pressed themselves into the shadows and sat perfectly still, barely breathing. The officers ran past and turned again at the end of the alley.
The world was suddenly quiet. The only sound was Zakky’s breathing. Her breast was pressed against the crook in his arm. He looked up, seeing a white streak of stars emblazoned across the sky through gaps in the fire escape. Not even the lights of the city could drown them out in this system.
Her lips pressed against his.