Hey, Lex, I'm gonna tell you a story.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Note:  Yeah, I called you Lex.  You asked me a difficult question a few years ago, so I'm gonna take liberties.  You asked me once to explain a comment I made about once having been so scared so badly that I've never been scared again.  It's been gnawing at my guts ever since, and I can't stop dreaming about a calendar page...December 1989, to be exact, and that calendar page is huge, wait, no it's not a calendar page is it?  No, it's a stage curtain, and behind that curtain is an Awful Thing, something so awful that I had to take extra pills this morning before I could write it down.  So this is your fault, dammit, and I'm gonna call you anything I like.  Anyway, here goes.

Lex, I bet you didn't know that I used to be a musician.  I don't want to discuss the exact instrument I played, because I don't want this to devolve into a technical discussion about tuning instruments or percussion or muzzle velocities or any of that shit. 

Anyway, I was down in Panama, on a tour, and our manager sent us to a gig in an old sanitation district, you know, some kind of rave.  We were essentially supposed to check the place out, see if it was going to be a potential regular thing, you know?  It was kind of embarrassing, but we got lost finding the stage, like in Spinal Tap.  Took fucking forever, until we finally walked out of one of the tunnels into a large room that used to be a pump station, and that's where the audience was.

They were a strange bunch, Lex, they were really a kinky crowd.  They were all standing around tables, sewing bags about the size of baseballs into what looked like little dolls.  But they weren't dolls, Lex, they were something else and that's not really important, and I don't want to talk about it.

We looked at them.  They looked at us.  We looked at what was on the tables.

We started playing. 

I think it was a death metal tune, because all of our lyrics sounded like howling.

And just like one of those good gigs, the moment we started playing, they started dancing.  They danced and they danced until I guess they got tired and fell down.  I'm not sure, but I think one guy actually danced his leg off.  But it was like one of those bad gigs, because the audience started throwing shit at us, you know, and we didn't even have chicken wire in front of us.  One guy threw something at me and it carved a great big fucking gouge in my helmet.  Another guy thew a bunch of shit that hit Guerrero right in his chest.  He went down, kicking and cursing.  Thankfully, Kevlar flak jackets are good for dealing with beer bottles or whatever it was they were throwing.  Guerrero played a special solo, just for that guy.

But like all performances, this one had to end.  We were exhausted, and the audience had all passed out or something.  We walked around for a minute, and we saw what they'd been stuffing bags of "party favors" into.

We ran.  Some gigs are just too much.  But we sang an encore on the way out, Lex, you'd have been proud.  It sounded like Danzig and Ramstein's weirder shit and maybe a little Rolling Stones, you know, Gimme Shelter.  We ran until we hit daylight, and our manager was waiting for us and he kept telling us to stop singing, the gig is over, but we couldn't stop singing Lex, it was very strange.  We kept singing and singing until they brought the Limo to take us back to the hotel.  No, scratch that, it wasn't really a Limo, only the government has Limos, it was a helicopter with some other band's logo on it, a big cross.  And we sang and sang all the way to the hotel.

I guess we pissed off our manager, Lex, because pretty soon I had a new manager, we called him Doc.  Murph and I had stopped singing by then, but some of the other guys hadn't.  As I understand it, Guerrero is still singing an aria, somewhere.  Anyway, Doc told me that they found the dolls - only he didn't call them dolls - and how did I feel about that?  I told him that it was a funny place to make dolls.  He looked at me, and - here's where it gets really strange - he started to cry.  Then he left, and one of the roadies took me to another room and gave me a vitamin shot that made me feel lots better.

Eventually, it was determined that I was fit to join another band, and life went on.  I stayed in the biz til a silly rehearsal accident broke my knee, and I was forced to find a straight job.  Rock N Roll involves a lot of jumping around, you know, and there's no room for a man with a gimpy leg.  But I was a little different about things after that, Lex, I don't get scared anymore.  I get mad, or I start laughing, but I don't get scared.  And I don't like dolls much, you know?

But now I live in Tucson, and this town suits me.  This town knows Rock N Roll, Lex, it understands what Bob Seger meant, you know, back in his glory days.  Fact:  Nothing Bad can ever happen to you, as long as Bob Seger is playing.  I like Bob Seger, Lex, I like him a lot.  He knows Tucson, just as it knows him.  And he knows The Truth, Lex, The Truth that is the punchline to all of this rambling, the end of the shaggy dog story, the gotcha line, the end of a joke that sometimes still makes me laugh at night:

You can come back Baby, Rock N Roll never forgets.

Or Kill Me.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Damn!  

You know when you read something and you really want to find the words to say how awesome it was, but then again it practically made you cry and piss yourself out of fear at the same time so you're not sure what the fuck you need to say?

Yeah, well this is one of those times for me!




edited because my thoughts came together after I left.....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There is no fucking answer.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

 

[LMNO]

Honest, genuine applause. That is awesome.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I got nothing to say to this. It's all just awe!

[Captain Utopia]

Part of me wants to curse at you for sharing, part of me is impressed that you managed to keep it in your pouch for so long. Pass the pills, please.

[Jenne]

Mr. Roger. You go! And damn, just, FUCK, but DAMN. Eta: love you Man.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

ffuuu....

[Triple Zero]

damn.

[BabylonHoruv]

I am in awe. 

However I still can't figure out what the dolls are.  Lacking the proper referential I think.

[Template]

I am in awe. 

However I still can't figure out what the dolls are.  Lacking the proper referential I think.

It looks like an infant and it's not artificial...

It's just as well you don't understand.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am in awe. 

However I still can't figure out what the dolls are.  Lacking the proper referential I think.

They were yanking the guts out of dead infants and stuffing drugs in, to smuggle them.  The worst part is, they only have about a 48 hour window between the time the baby is dead and when it's too smelly to travel with a "mother" to the USA, etc (I have never since been comfortable around babies that DON'T cry during flights).  So how do you make sure you have enough absolutely "fresh" babies at the right time?

Oh, yeah.

Your parents told you there aren't any monsters.  Your parents lied.

[Triple Zero]

No.

[Scribbly]

The first post was literally breathtaking. An amazing piece of writing and I just had no idea how to respond to it. Brilliant, but at the same time, horrifying.

Having the horror spelt out like that, though.

...

Fuck.