Marty Drexell: Witness To The Endtimes in "Boozed Up And Rioting"

Marty Drexell: Witness To The Endtimes returns in his third tale, connecting The Big Rusty Lie to Ryan Speck's next novel. Marty's new assistant drags him out on the town and gets him involved in an all-out war.

          Marty did not go out to clubs. It had been several years since he had bothered to follow the music scene and had no real inclination to do so again. His last brush with the music industry had left a bad taste in his mouth. But the very public, violent self-destruction of a boy band will have that effect on you. Not that boy bands were his musical taste by any stretch of the imagination, but most of modern music had lost its charm after going through that f*****g circus. So he just dragged out all his old vinyl and relied entirely on the classic albums, things that couldn’t be soured by one really bad experience, and he forgot about music in general, leaving behind his days of writing for indie music ‘zines and putting all his time and interest into writing fiction.

          He had written an article about the boy band blow-up that had gotten him more notice than he really deserved and he had segued that unwarranted fame into the creation of a literary fiction magazine called Scottish Todd’s, which had gotten its own level of unnecessary attention and acclaim, drawing more than its fair share of submissions from the best and brightest new lights of the literary fiction world. It made Marty feel like a pompous a*****e, but that feeling came with the territory and he had made his peace with it. It beat having a day job.

          But he was in a club again, despite all the promises he had made to himself in the past, and he had his assistant to blame for it. With the new magazine to run, he had decided it was in his best interest to have some help, so had hired Paul Ende to help him. Paul was a fairly normal guy, somewhat loud and decently excitable, who was glad to do the job for minimal pay, which was just the kind of credential Marty was looking for. That he was competent was just icing on the cake.

          The stout and swarthy man had towered next to him in his “office” for many months and talked loudly about his ambitions and desires and, having gotten to know him, Marty seemed somewhat obligated to bear witness to the fruition of those less-than-lofty aspirations. And, as such, Marty had spent the night in this smoky club on Oberwalz’s less-than-prestigious Southeast side, not terribly far from his apartment, listening to someone known as “DJ Kranial Shok” who claimed to be spinning “the very best in hellektrocore, hardfloor, darkwave, and gothic trance” or some such bullshit, all of which Marty parsed as “crap”.

          A band had played earlier, billing itself as Chaindrive, delivering a sort of electronic/noise combination that had Marty’s head pounding from the sheet metal pounding that had ensued on stage. Realistically, he probably should have showed up later and skipped the earlier sets. He had sadly come to find that this is often the trap you fall into when you try to be a good friend.

          Paul’s set was coming up, in which he was fronting some sort of noisy electronic project that he was always babbling about at work, supposedly rather ironic and tongue-in-cheek in its deconstruction of the typical industrial-electronic clichés and subject matter. If he hadn’t mentioned it every day for weeks, Marty would be at home, reading over a new book or watching a film in the solitude of his apartment. Instead, he was watching colorfully-coifed kids in vinyl get sloppy on shots and stomp around in their expensive club wear.

          The crowd was growing steadily, which Marty felt was strange for a few local acts, though Paul had said in the past that he’d gotten something of a reputation for his showmanship. Marty didn’t exactly know what he meant by that, as this was far from the major leagues and he doubted that Paul would whisk onto stage via wires and pulleys or appear in an explosion of flash pots, so it was obviously something much more mundane or disturbing.

          Marty had once seen a gig where a sadly talentless band had made up for their musical ineptitudes with a stage show that involved tying a man to a large wooden cross and sewing his lips shut with wire. He so very much hoped that Paul hadn’t torn a page from that playbook.

          The crowd clustered in and suffered through more of DJ Kranial Shok’s mediocre and repetitive set. Through the haze of cigarette smoke and the press of bodies moving back and forth to the bar, Marty could see a few members of Chaindrive lazily removing their gear from the stage, an indignity left to local bands and music scenes too insular to warrant the illusion of bands as vaunted artists who would not deign to move their own equipment.

          A somewhat confused and annoyed soundman smoothed the process by helping the band finish moving their equipment offstage before he started to check the microphones for Paul’s band with a loud series of “hey”s and “yeah”s, getting virtually no noticeable response from the man operating the sound board in the rear. After some time, he seemed satisfied and moved on.

          A lanky balding gentleman who must have spent quite some time spiking his hair entered from stage left and began twiddling with a keyboard in the rear. He was typical and representative of the crowd, wearing black jeans, boots, and a black band T, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses further up his nose as he adjusted his synthesizer. Whatever he was doing couldn’t be heard well over the drone of the DJ’s latest thumping anthem, the vocalist seeming to be screaming through fan blades and into a toaster oven filled with broken glass and rusted dot matrix printer parts. It reminded Marty of a festival he had covered in Norway and his mind wandered as he remembered long, dark nights, loud music, a bloody nose, and a three mile walk through feet of snow.

          By the time that his attention returned to the stage, the lights were dimming and the music faded away.

 

          “Hello! We are Spooge!”

          Marty thought long and hard, letting the echo of the words roll around inside his brain to make sure that he had really heard them and heard them correctly. His mind wandered back and forth trying to come to a conclusion as to why one would place the word “spooge” into any sentence, found no resolution and returned his attention to exactly what the hell was playing out on stage.

          It had started normally enough, the keyboardist playing the introduction before another band member wandered out onto the stage. And the keyboardist had seemed normal enough for yet another lanky, black-clad loser.

          The next to prance on stage was a guitarist in a pink leotard who began to bash on his instrument, sending a wave of distorted noise crashing over the audience, who seemed entirely intent on taking it all in. His face could barely be seen between his mop of greasy hair and an excess of eyeliner, but he seemed to be sneering and he bounced up and down and strummed at his instrument.

          Another young character, looking far too militaristic and hard for this bunch of losers, sidled up to a set of electronic drum triggers near the back and added a crunchy but consistent beat to the chaos of the noise. He was like a skinhead brown shirt, in riding boots and a uniform that looked fairly fascist while lacking any discernable affiliation.

          Finally, to Marty’s eternal disappointment, a man in a very large and round teddy bear costume stomped out from the left side of the stage, microphone barely grasped in his large, round paw. Marty couldn’t entirely be sure if he stumbled out because of the bulky and uncomfortable suit or because he was already drunk.

          With a howl, he had announced those words that had sent Marty’s brain into a spin, before the music locked into a jarring electronic rhythm and the song began.

          Marty’s assistant was a teddy bear who said “spooge”.

 

          The set went on for forty minutes, but to Marty it felt like an eternity. The kids in the crowd bounced and flailed to the simple beats and churning guitar feedback while lyrics that seemed to be the equivalent of “My Little Pony” porn were explained to the crowd in a gruff, distorted scream.

          Marty wondered to himself what the opposite of a falsetto was. What would it be called to pretend a deeper-than-normal singing voice? That’s what Paul seemed to be doing, underneath all the effects layered on his vocals, making it barely-intelligible. He growled and squealed with excessive exuberance, hopping around and eventually removing his teddy bear head, which he proceeded to dry-hump.

          He was somehow sure that Paul would spend much of the next work day explaining the purpose and art behind these songs, their lyrics, and his performance art, something Marty dreaded with every fiber of his being. Many plans were made as to how he could avoid that conversation, including a wide array of excuses and busywork that could tear him away from anything at a moment’s notice.

          After the set ended, Paul finally met Marty at the bar, where he had milled around, listening to the cretinous club-goers talk loudly over DJ Kranial Shok’s next set while smoking and sucking down shots like babes at the teat. The crowd had cleared out, but there were still plenty of hardcore drinkers left to slap Paul on the back, now free of teddy costume, and congratulate him on another good performance.

          Marty looked away and pretended not to see but Paul was quickly upon him, definitely fully drunk, and he wrapped his beefy arm around Marty’s shoulder, thick beads of sweat dripping from Paul’s bald head onto Marty’s shirt.

          “Hey, man! I’m so glad you could make it!”

          Marty couldn’t be sure if he was excited to see him or just trying to scream over the music.

          “It’s not a problem.”

          “I’m so glad you could make it out tonight… What did you think?”

          Marty had anticipated this question and had practiced several lies in his head, all sounding very political and neutral. “It was very inventive.” Probably not his best choice, but it was the first to pop into his head. “The crowd seemed to like it.”

          “Yeah…” Paul looked out over the people, barely considering Marty’s words. “The suit was hot as hell!”

          “I bet.” It was at least 80 degrees inside, without being under lighting and wrapped in a thick, fluffy covering.

          “It’s going to be hard to top that next time. I’m going to have to come up with something better, right? You can give me some good ideas!” He laughed once loudly and continued. “I bet Totallee 4 Real never played anything like that!”
          “Indeed they did not.” Marty didn’t have to lie. For all the destruction and stupidity the boy band had accomplished, they had never sunk to this level.

          “Dude… You’ve got to come out with us! To the after-party!”

          “After-what?” Marty couldn’t get a straight answer before two women wandered up in their vinyl and latex dominatrix gear and interrupted Paul’s tenuous train of thought.

          “Dude… This is Krys and Danicce! They’re strippers!”

          The two girls nodded and smiled their most plastic grins. Marty had no idea which was which or how their employment was supposed to affect him, but Paul was very excited.

 

          They burst out of the smoky club, Marty being almost physically dragged by the pack of bodies surrounding him. Paul, his keyboardist Charlie, the two strippers, and a friend supposedly named Tracer pulled Marty along with them, pretty much against his will, but the weight of the drunken bodies was too much to tear himself away from.

          “Um… What’s going on?” There was a slight edge of panic to Marty’s voice, though all of them had been drinking fairly heavily and didn’t seem to notice.

          “Totally going to the after-party, man! It’s going to be awesome.” Marty couldn’t be sure who the slurred words came from.

          “Where is this after-party, anyway?”

          Paul’s voice definitely answered this question. “It’s at a small club nearby. They’re staying open after hours for us, just for our private get-together. There should be about thirty or forty people waiting for us.”

          “More music?” Marty asked, expecting the worst.

          “Oh, totally… We got our friend, DJ Dead Zone, to spin for us. Good stuff. Old-school.”

          “I’m sure.” Marty grumbled and was dragged into a car.

 

          They poured out of their cars in front of a small dive called The Switch, which Marty was deathly afraid was some sort of bar for transsexual S&M fans. He was glad to be pushed inside and find that it was yet another dark, smoky, dank, and ugly little club where girls in all manner of shiny plastic and platform boots did some sort of retarded twirling around while men in various states of military combat gear stomped about wildly. And everyone seemed to have some kind of apparatus on their head, be it goggles, gas masks, or some other headgear.

          Most of the group poured toward the bar, Paul dragging Marty along with him, and Marty began thinking of a good plan of escape as soon as the possibility presented itself.

          “You’ve got to meet my friend Chandra! Dude, you’ll love her! She’s totally hot…”

          Marty was no longer even answering Paul, but it seemed to have no effect on his talking, always a stream of drunken rambling, so he just let him go and waited to see how long he could last, talking to himself.

          Paul squealed and yelled to the bartender as they approached. “Johnny, dude! Get my boss a beer!”

          The bartender, obviously Johnny, smiled and delivered Marty a large glass of thick yellow liquid, which Marty held politely but didn’t drink from. It seemed to be enough for Paul.

          “Man, you’re fun to have out, Marty! You’ll have to tell some of the guys your stories about the s**t that’s happened to you, man. That stuff is crazy as hell! You’ve got to tell them about it...”

          Paul’s next sentence was killed by the appearance of several men in the typically black clothes and leather, hair slicked back onto their heads, and sporting lantern-square jaws.

          “Hallo, Paul.”

          Paul’s eyes focused on the men and a sneer crossed his face.

          “What the hell are you krauts doing here?”

          “Ve vere in tawn foor a gig tomorrow nacht and ve thaught ve shoot drop by and zay hallo, zince ve haven’t seen you in a vhile.” Marty got the feeling that they weren’t from Oberwalz.

          Paul frowned heavily. “That’s great. Why don’t you f**k off now?”

          “Ve hert all ze sheet you’re talkink abaht us on ze internet. You think ve a banch of f*****s zhat dahn’t zay noting to you?” Paul, surrounded by his keyboardist and Tracer, stared them down, while the foreigners finally noticed Marty standing by, watching the confrontation. “Who iz zhis s**t staring aht me?”

          Paul stepped forward, bristling, at the insult. “This is my f*****g boss, the writer, Marty Drexell.” He turned to Marty. “This is BereiteSache, a douchebag band from Germany.”

          “Oh, zo you are ze vamous museek writer who veeth blawing-up boys bant? I hears of you. You more vamous dan your sheethet frient. You are… slamming, yes?”

          “You homos are just mad because I made fun of your f*****g album.”

          “Album ees gut and has more fan tan you has! Facking songs for childrens mit stupeed vurds and musik.”

          “Yeah, like your album is so f*****g great… ‘Rain Of Death’? ‘Skull Smasher’? ‘Blood In Your Eyes’? All that s**t is f*****g retarded… You’re just a bunch of makeup-wearing losers playing the same song over and over again to fourteen-year-olds.”

          “You ar zo jealouz ov our bant, mit all your beetching. No one like your musik, loser. If ve so sucking, vhy ve sell thausands of albums?”

          They were inching closer and closer, drunken spittle flying at each other over the din over the ever-more-silent club.

          “I assumed it was because BereiteSache means ‘free blowjobs’ in German.”

          The German doing all the talking, Horst, was the first to make a move and responded to Paul by throwing a beer in his face.

          Paul took it badly and punched Horst in the face and, before much of it could even register with the nonplussed Marty, the other Germans were tussling with Tracer and Charlie. One threw himself at Marty, who was toppled to the ground by the man.

          Marty was still holding his beer, though, which sloshed a blast of hopsy liquid into the German’s eyes on the way down. Marty, having been in these situations with bands before, did the smart thing and smashed his glass into the German’s face, spraying the rest of the beer and shards all around him. The man rolled off with a scream and something muttered in German.

          Marty jumped up and backed away from the growing disaster, about ready to exact his escape.

 

          The police were called fairly quickly, all things considered. Adding to the speed was the bored patrol car sitting just six blocks away from the club, killing time. When they got the call that there was a brawl at The Switch, they were on the scene in minutes.

          Marty saw them show up firsthand, stumbling from the door, arrhythmic noise blasting out the building’s orifice behind him.

          The nonplussed patrol officers slowly stepped from their vehicle, inserting their nightsticks into their belts and wandering toward the dented black metal door in the side of the old building.

          “Is there a fight going on in there?”

          For a moment Marty was thrown by the question and, not really caring what happened to anyone inside, answered honestly. “Definitely.”

          They paid no further notice to Marty, who wasn’t disheveled, drunk, or bloody other than some spilled beer and some bits of glass clinging to his clothes so was of no use to them, and headed for the door.

 

          Bloodied and frightened, the two officers crouched behind the doors of their patrol car. They had been inside only two minutes before erupting back out the door, nightsticks drawn and hands on their sidearms, nursing wounds and definitely not so keen on trying to reign in this bar brawl any longer.

          “Dispatch! This is car fourteen! We need backup!” There was a squawk of radio static and the voice of the dispatcher saying something garbled. “No, the fight has broken out into a full-scale brawl! A dozen people are involved! We’ve got officers being assaulted!” There were more squelches of noise and the policemen drew their guns and sheltered themselves by the car.

          It took a few seconds before Marty realized that their next words were aimed at him. “I’d get out of the way if I were you! Things are about to get really bad here, buddy!”

          Marty was not going to argue with them and headed for the opposite side of the street.

 

          The bodies piled out of the bar, drunken lunatics running out into the street waving their arms or whatever they could grab in their hands, bottles, glasses, and anything else they could find held over their heads. They screamed as they ran out towards the police, a second car implementing the first, though the effectiveness was negligible, given that the police weren’t exactly going to shoot a bunch of drunks, at least if they wanted to stay employed, and they had far too few men to take them on hand-to-hand.

          Given the futility of the situation, the police looked at each other long and hard and, panicking in unison, got into their cars and backed away very quickly, screaming into their radios and taking up a position at the end of the block.

          The people were drunk, loud, and rowdy at this point, carousing in the street and screaming at the police, probably obscenities or heckling, though you couldn’t tell through the drunken slurring and overlap of voices.

          They threw any object they could get their hands on at the police, laughing and mocking the police. Finally, they broke out into dancing.

 

          The line of police cars at each end of the street made Marty very glad that he’d gotten out early. He had no desire to spend any time in jail tonight and, from the looks of the riot gear the cops were putting on, was glad to avoid getting struck in the face by any cops.

          Marty kept an eye on the situation from the end of the block, very little taking place in a while. Some had begun to sober up and become alarmed by all the police, while others just drank more. The Germans had even stumbled from the club and got into yet another fist fight with the angry crowd, which, of course, went very badly for them.

          As the cops began to line up, the situation became very tense for everyone. Objects began flying again and Marty readied himself for the violence and arrests that would follow.

 

          When the riot finally began, as it was inevitable it would, Marty was watching. Some short man in black with a flat top and goggles was goading the police and finally managed to hit one in the faceplate of this riot helmet with a sizable rock. With a look, the police started closing in, plexiglass shields and cudgels at the ready. The crowd took this badly.

          There was a roar, as if the whole crowd let out a single scream and the bodies started flowing like waves as some people tried to escape from the oncoming police and others worked themselves into a frenzy. It looked like a giant mosh pit that had erupted into the middle of a city street.

          On the other end, the opposite line of police responded to their brethren’s move and started forward as well.

          The crowd thrashed and cried out and jumped up and down like some horrible gelatinous entity. They quickly started a counter-offensive, tossing anything that wasn’t tied down at the police. This, of course, was their fatal error.

          With a cry into a radio, the police lines halted and, from behind each line, a man fired off canisters from each side, the devices they used looking like grenade launchers in a Hollywood action flick.

          Tear gas spilled out over the crowd and, panicking, the group of drunken fetish bar patrons split down the middle and headed in opposite directions, directly for the police, a very few actually thinking to run back to the shelter of The Switch.

          The police lines moved forward to meet them and there was a clash of bodies, screams and beatings. The police were overwhelmed by the superior number of club-goers, outnumbering them three-to-one, and tried their best to force the drunkards to a standstill. Fueled by beer and shots, they didn’t give in and, instead, fought back even harder.

 

          It was a deadlock. The police wouldn’t let them through, but were forced back again and again by the large pack of young people in the street. Their club-wear was actually surprisingly effective in protecting their bodies and offering an offensive edge that counteracted the police riot gear.

          So, Marty watched the people scream and yell, goading and expressing extreme distress, as 3 AM rolled around, staring out the surrounding police.

          Marty had no assumption anything would change as detectives showed up on-scene to provide leadership and support. From the looks of the disheveled sedan that pulled up and the motley gang of three men that exited the nearly-dead vehicle, Marty was sure they would provide no significant impetus for this ballyhoo to end. Marty found out quickly how wrong he was.

          While the young blonde man and older flat-topped detective stayed back and leaned against the dilapidated car, talking amongst themselves, their sinewy compatriot wandered out toward the leader of the riot squad. He seemed already intense and angry as he walked toward the man, slicking back his greasy pompadour fruitlessly with one hand, before yelling out a stream of obscenities that seemed to have something to do with his annoyance at being summoned to the incident. After some arguing and threats, the detective took off his second-hand blazer, showing off his shoulder holster and excessively large revolver, and dug through a squad car, finally producing a bullhorn.

          Walking up to the line of faceless riot cops, the man tugged at his ragged tie and raised the bullhorn to his mouth. “Attention, freaks, homos, and douchebags! It would be in your best interest to lay down any implements on your person, lay your a*s down on the pavement, and put your hands behind your head! Failure to do so will prevent me from leaving here immediately! Preventing me from leaving the scene as soon as possible will result in me shooting you in the face and f*****g the hole! Do you understand?”

          There were chuckles and derisive laughter from the gang of rioters. Catcalls flew back. Obviously, the man couldn’t be serious.

          “You assclowns are about five seconds away from a shooting! Give up and lay down or I’m going to shoot you in the face and f**k the hole!”

          The laughter came again, but it was less sure as the doubt crept in and they began to wonder if this fucked-up cop could be serious.

          He called out the numbers “one” to “five” as he walked out from the line of riot police. Once he reached “five,” without another word, he snatched his revolver from its holster and put a round through a man’s calf, Marty swearing it was Tracer, splattering gore from a hole in the rear and sending him toppling to the ground, shrieking.

          The rioters laid down and put their hands behind their heads.

 

          Marty saw Paul a last time, being forced into a police van, still drunkenly arguing with the officers forcing him in. He’d spend the weekend in jail, being bailed out in time to return to the “office” on Monday and regale Marty with tales seeming much more exciting and triumphant than they actually were.

          Tearful and frightened club kids were loaded up and carried away as sunlight peeked above the horizon, throwing their look into a rather silly contrast with morning in the city. In the light of day, they looked like survivors of a Halloween party gone wrong.

          The detective who shot Tracer returned to his partners and milled around for several minutes, having a heated discussion, before his superior arrived and screamed at him for quite some time. Finally dismissed, he got his wish and happily left the scene.

          The riot squad packed up and went home and the police cars unblocked the street, leaving nothing but the detritus of broken bottles, empty tear gas canisters, and a blood stain on the pavement.

          The world returned to normal.

          Sometimes Marty wished he was a newspaper reporter again. It didn’t come very often, but occassionally it happened.