Today, we at 1325 are proud to present “Paunch N’ Trudy,” a short story by Cesare Weltschmerz. This is the first time that Mr. Weltschmerz has seen his work published. We at 1325 love it, and want some more of it.
The fog is so thick that it changes the whole city.
I look out the train window to see streets and buildings I don't know anymore. All the shapes out there mutate in the rolling fog.
It makes me think of how the city's been in my dreams, when I'm walking along streets that have become rivers of black bile, and the buildings are living things I can feel watching me. I'm always looking for her, but instead find something that wakes me up with my heart banging in my ears, and all I can do then is wait for the sun to come up.
I avoid sleeping as much as possible. The only problem is staying up gives me time to think. Then I worry that one of these nights, the city from my dreams is the one I'll be trapped in after the fog clears.
The three years I spent with Natasha were the best and worst thing that ever happened to me. We were awful for each other, and we loved it. Then she started using H again. Then I found out she was fucking one of our coke dealers, so I dragged her by the hair out of my apartment. That night I passed out against the front door, pounding a bottle with Sarcofago fully cranked, trying to ignore her crying and begging on the other side. At some point she gave up and left. Nobody's seen her since.
Tonight, I'm visiting Danny, the guy who put on some of my first shows. I hadn't talked to him in a few years, but when he called to invite me to a show, I figured why not. He always had good coke and no problem sharing. Any reason to stay up and not sit at home, thinking about her, and how the city I've lived in for years no longer feels welcoming or familiar.
The show's at an abandoned warehouse in the old meatpacking district. It's cool to see Danny's still doing gigs there—I'd played a few myself. Even though it's November, it's not too cold, and there's only a light drizzle. A few blocks from my stop I'm there, and it's the same as always.
Electronic music blares when I walk in and see the stage is empty. I figure I've missed a few openers and the guys playing next haven't started setting up. It's an average crowd for a show like this. People are separated into a few groups. On the wall behind the stage is the same mural that was here that last time I was: the city's skyline, with Cthulu towering over it under an orange and purple sky.
On my way to the back of the building, this haggard, scraggly crust punk locks eyes with me. His mouth widens into a mossy-toothed grin, like we share some dark joke I've forgotten. I keep moving, badly shaken, telling myself I'm just paranoid thanks to the bad dreams and lack of sleep.
Danny's in the back of what I'm guessing used to be a loading dock. He's sitting at a picnic bench with a bottle of Wild Turkey. Like this place he hasn't changed at all: a chubby Mexican with a patchy beard, ponytail, and dark gray denim jacket; all the same down to his long, coke spoon pinkie nails. He grins and raises the bottle.
“So he decided to show up after all! I was starting to think I'd have to drink this by myself.”
After exchanging handshakes and pats on the back, I take a seat, then a nice long pull from the bottle. Through an opening where an overhead door used to be, I can see train tracks, and beyond that the skyline suspended in fog. Around us are other tables, tall ones with people passing bottles, joints, and pipes.
“Thanks for having me out.” I try yelling over the music.
“No problem,” Danny shouts back. “I know shit's been rough. It sucks to hear you quit Idiot Sect, by the way.”
I wonder how much he knows about me leaving my last band. How during our last rehearsal, a few weeks after Natasha left, I had a meltdown, smashing my drum kit, then leaving without a word.
“Yeah, I don't play anymore. I know how pathetic it sounds, but after what happened it's like my muse is gone. I just don't feel it anymore, man.”
“It is what it is. Still a shame, though. You're one of the best I've ever seen, no bullshit. I still brag to people that I put on some of your first shows.”
It's nice to be hanging with Danny again, and the whiskey's already got me relaxed. That's when the local fire dancers—the Nympyromaniacs—start. A chick with a mohawk and electrical tape x'd over her nipples shoots sparks out of her crotch with a sander. Two other girls dance with torches. I'd met Natasha back when she performed with them. Danny picks up on my train of thought immediately.
“My bad. I should've given you a heads up. I know you miss her, dude, but at some point you gotta move on. Sure, she was hot, but she had a lot of baggage. We all tried to warn you.”
I light a smoke, then take another swig and force a smile.
“I don't know what to tell you. Shit, man, I can't even look at a bottle of this without being able to smell her. You have any clue what that's like?”
“I'm sorry to hear that, but listen, there's all kinds of pussy out there. Talent like you got on the other hand is rare. Just seems like a waste to give that up, but it's your life, I guess.”
“So who's playing tonight, anyway?” I ask, looking to change the subject.
Finally, Danny busts out the coke.
“Oh, you're gonna love this. You ever heard of Paunch 'n Trudy?”
After he does a few bumps, I take some off the back of my hand.
Of course I'd heard of Paunch 'n Trudy. They're local legends. They were like Sid and Nancy gone GG Allin and then some. Paunch played guitar, Trudy played bass, and they switched off on vocals. Their revolving door of drummers always seemed to wind up dead—very Spinal Tap. They came out to the city from some Rust Belt shit hole, and took punk rock very seriously. Their songs were short, fast, ugly, and violent, really getting into territory closer to noise, or death and black metal. There were only a few bootleg cassettes and some low grade footage online to prove they'd ever existed. This was all before my time, back before this kind of music was established and mostly safe. But for all their notoriety, I'd never met anyone who'd seen them live. From what I'd seen and heard, they could only get through a few songs before they started beating the shit out of each other, then turning on the audience. After a while, they couldn't get shows anywhere in the city, and then it gets really weird. Supposedly, they took off to San Francisco, met some whacked out occultist types, and started making a name for themselves playing all over South America. Their last show in Brazil was a bloodbath, they say; a drug-fueled orgy gone horribly wrong. By the time the cops showed up, Paunch was the only one left alive, naked and covered in blood. They found him eating Trudy's lungs, and when he lunged at the police, he was shot dead.
At least, these were the stories you'd hear in a crowd like this any time Paunch 'n Trudy came up, but who knows?
“How'd you get them?” I ask. “You summon them through a Ouija board or something?”
Danny's smile reminds me of the crust punk's from earlier. The more I talk to him, the more I realize he's not the same after all. His nails are long and gross, and the skin on his face is cracked and yellow. Despite his grin, there's an unfriendly glint in his sunken eyes. He folds his wart-covered hands.
“I know all the stories,” he explains. “Most of 'em are bullshit, but there's still some truth there. They did meet some folks in Cali that taught them all about the true nature of Chaos, that was always their thing. Finally, they could tap into that energy that'd give their music the edge they'd always wanted.”
I light another smoke out of sheer nervousness.
“You're talking about some occult shit. Sounds pretty esoteric for some scummy punks from flyover country, doesn't it?”
A single note from a bass reverberates through the building.
My bladder instantly feels like it weighs a ton. A few more notes follow, and the dread courses through me in nauseating waves. The Wild Turkey begins to lurch back up when the bass is joined by the shrieking of a guitar—and I do mean shrieking.
I've loved this kind of music since I was twelve, and I've been playing it for almost as long. I thought I'd heard it all. Now I realize we were posers this whole time. Our pitiful attempts to be “extreme” were just the klutzy fumbling of edgy teenagers. What radiates from that stage delivers on all of our half assed promises.
“What's wrong?” asks Danny, his grin showing teeth gone black and jagged like broken glass. “You never heard a soundcheck before? And to answer your question, Paunch 'n Trudy were always seeking Chaos in Its purest form. Rock 'n roll was only a gateway drug—that sort of anarchy got stale for them fast. They've learned to channel the real shit now, though.”
Now the drumming starts.
I can feel it in my rib cage. The jelly of my brain quivers with each pulsing beat. The crowd starts to liven up, but it doesn't sound like the usual antics of a punk or metal crowd. Their chanting sounds more like something you'd hear during a bad night in the psych ward. The drum beat quickens until it's a blur, a stampede that loud as it is fails to drown out the roar of the crowd.
The drumming stops, and the crowd stops with it.
A piercing scream shreds the air only to be cut off. The crowd responds with something like applause.
The panic I feel isn't the coke. It isn't the booze or lack of sleep. All I know is that I don't want to be here when the show starts.
“Hey man, I gotta piss right quick,” I tell Danny before bolting for the nearest exit.
I go through a door into the alley, trying to ignore how people look out of the corner of my eye. The same crust punk is out there, leaning against a dumpster. The sores all over his face are green at the edges.
“They're about to get started in there,” he says, his left eye sliding out and hanging against his cheek. “I saw them in Belo Horizante back in '93. Trust me, you won't wanna miss this.”
I turn around to go back inside, hoping Danny will tell me how he laced the coke as a prank. I'd be pissed, but at least that would be an explanation I could live with.
Instead of the warehouse, it's the train platform by my place. Cops have the area blocked off. EMTs walk down the tracks with bags, another guy is hosing blood off the walls. One EMT puts a sheet over something. I catch a brief glimpse. Goddamn, there's—
“—no fucking way,”
It all comes rushing back, but I refuse to believe it. I won't.
“Why not?” says Danny. He's sitting on a bench behind me. No one on the platform notices us. I don't know why I keep thinking of him as Danny. The resemblance is hardly there at this point. The thing wearing his jacket has a black bag full of gray dust. He takes out a human skull the size of an orange, crushes it in his fist, and snorts it all up. With both nostrils caked, he looks up at me and smiles.
“You're not the first musician to off himself. You've been fucked up for a while. First, your career never takes off, then you kick Natasha out after humiliating you. But what a way to go! We've had our eyes on you for a long time. This town wasn't ready for Paunch 'n Trudy before, but they will be now. They just need the right drummer. The last few haven't worked out—the drum kit didn't like them. So whaddya say?”
We're back in the warehouse. The skyline is now the one from the city in my dreams. A city with dreams of its own that are black and poisonous and always hungry. A city groping its way into the world I used to know.
Natasha's performing with the other Nympyromaniacs, twirling flaming batons like on the night I met her. She has no eyes to see me with, so she smiles through a gaping wound of blood and hypodermic needles.
“We're gonna find a way in with or without your help,” says the thing I thought was Danny. “So you might as well make it easy on yourself and cooperate. “
He holds up the bag.
“Care for some powdered courage?”
I shove my whole face in and snort away. Things don't seem as bad now.
I make my way to the stage, not even bothered by the crowd or how they look. They've grown restless waiting for the performance, and are taking it out on each other in every way imaginable. One guy has his head thrown back in ecstasy, letting his date gnaw on his face. Her teeth wriggle from side to side as they tear into his cheek.
On the right side of the stage is Paunch, as morbidly obese as he was in life. His gut is an open pit of fat, glowing worms that illuminate him from the inside out. He has a second left arm that's been flayed open. Flies buzz around the dripping fat. Fibers from his bicep have been stretched out and tied to the rigid bones of each of his thirteen fingers. His legs are fused together, trailing back like a slug into the drum kit.
On the left side of the stage is Trudy. Her legs are also fused together and attached to the drum kit, but she has a third leg sticking out in front of her. The leg is flayed open like Paunch's arm, and fibers from her hamstring are stretched out and wrapped around each of the thirteen toes of her stiff, pointed foot. Under her thin, elastic skin, you can see glowing maggots squirm, making shapes like living tattoos. Her rib cage is split open, and her lungs balloon out like filthy pink parade floats. Her exposed heart is a strobe light that throws insane colors all over the room.
They stand facing each other, only moving their eyes to follow me as I approach the drum kit.
It's a living thing of bone and sinew, covered in spikes and horns. A beast towering above everything else. The skin of each drum has a face with the eyes and mouth sewn shut. I start climbing, cutting and tearing myself the whole way up. When I make it to the top, a set of jaws open up and clamp around my waist. The pain fades quickly, and I know I'm stuck like this unless I fail the audition. If that happens, I'll be added to the drum kit. With my strange new limbs, I have no need for drumsticks.
Somehow, I know exactly what to play, and how to play it.