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It’s midnight in Monaco and the concert lights have gone out, and as he stares down the label’s ruinous contract with its blank space for five signatures, Skwisgaar thinks: Nathan will save them. Not because Skwisgaar believes it, but because he wills it to be true.
It’s midnight in Florida and Skwisgaar is lead guitarist in a band whose name he can barely remember, a backup plan for his backup plan after the group he came from Sweden with broke up. They can’t stay in tune and their singer is tediously suicidal and they play opening acts at shitty clubs where girls don’t even come. He’s so bored he’s started counting the crowds while he plays — which is how he first notices Nathan, because the man’s twice the size of anyone else there.
Nathan’s standing in the center of the mosh pit, a bunch of pimple-faced teenagers colliding around him, immovable like a stone spire in a storm. His long black hair drapes around his muscled shoulders, his green eyes are on Skwisgaar, and his expression is a challenge. Show me what you can do.
The solo starts, and Skwisgaar curls his lip to show a hint of blunt white canine. He draws the first chain of knife-sharp notes from his guitar. For a second, as he comes down on a tritone, the teenagers pause their fighting. The too-cool-for-school types in the back stop sipping from Solo cups; the crusty old guys at the edges drop their joints. Because it doesn’t matter that the drummer won’t keep a beat steady and the singer’s stuck himself with broken glass again. Skwisgaar Skwigelf doesn’t play a bad show.
Then, when he releases the chord and continues, he feels a stirring of potential energy inside his hands that almost scares him. He’s the best guitarist that he’s ever met, but under that hulking stranger’s hard gaze he knows he could be the best who ever lived.
It’s time for the next verse and the now-bleeding vocalist tries to shriek his entrance, but Skwisgaar shuts him out with a fresh lick faster than anything he’s played before — keeps the solo going for another twenty minutes, watching the man watch him. He plays till the main act chases them away, and the booing as he cedes the stage wires him better than any drug.
Skwisgaar knows that then-stranger from the crowd will catch him after the show. He plays coy. Loiters behind the bar sipping a beer he snuck out, at the edge of the streetlights, the background noise of a few late-partying college kids drifting from nearby.
“You’re pretty good.”
He turns, and the man is looming at his shoulder — the rare person, it turns out, who can face Skwisgaar without looking up. Skwisgaar favors him with a glance and a hint of rolled eyes.
“Ja. I knows.”
It’s only about the fifty thousandth time he’s heard it. There are a few ways to go from here. If the guy’s a guitarist, he’ll want lessons. If he’s in a band, he’ll worshipfully ask Skwisgaar to join. Tell him he’s too good for those idiots inside, that he’s the most incredible guitarist he’s ever heard. In the process, he’ll make clear Skwisgaar is too good for whatever that new act is, too.
“Maybe almost good enough to play with me.”
Skwisgaar raises an eyebrow. It’s not the first time somebody’s tried that on him either. (The term negging will come around years later with something called a pickup artist — Skwisgaar, by then Dethklok’s resident lothario, will regard those desperate tryhards with disdain.) But this is the first time anyone’s made it sound believable. He feels the cool perspiration of his beer against his calluses and remembers that electric sensation like a fading dream; it gets his hopes up, and that’s what truly frightens him. Because other people, in his years on Earth, have only let him down.
As he hesitates, the college kids round the corner — clean-cut, party-school meathead football types. Skwisgaar pointedly ignores a few sudden murmurs as they reach earshot. They walk closer and the words gradually become decipherable, syrupy with southern-American drawl.
“Which one’s the chick?” one of them says, to snickers from the rest.
“You think either of ‘em looks like a guy?”
Another round of drunken, sniggering laughter. Skwisgaar suppresses the wish he’d stayed inside.
“Hey — hey!” One of the boys — Skwisgaar and his companion are probably only a few years older, but these are boys, with the vacuum-sealed look of children who’ve never seen the real world — shouts in their direction. “Hey, make out for us, huh? Girl-on-girl action? Show us your tits? Um…” He’s apparently already running out of ways to imply they look like women. Skwisgaar resists pointing it out.
These types aren’t dangerous, ultimately, as long as Skwisgaar ignores them. Part of him seethes at being reminded his power is so limited beyond the edge of a stage. But there are four of them. The smallest has fifty pounds on him. They probably body-slam each other for fun.
Skwisgaar’s reminding himself of all these things — forcing himself to keep quiet — when the stranger steps up and punches one square in the face.
The boy falls to the pavement, his nose breaking like a gunshot. The others cringe and scramble to get away. It’s like watching that vacuum seal on their innocent untouchability crack open in real-time. The man turns back, blood on his knuckles, and Skwisgaar thinks: he’s looking at someone who lives with no limits, anywhere. And if Skwisgaar joins him, he can live that way too.
“My name’s uh… Nathan, by the way.”
“Ams Skwisgaar Skwigelf.” Fuck coyness. “Wants to go somewhere and talk?”
Wind toys with Skwisgaar’s hair in that Monaco darkness, dries the sweaty corpse paint on his face. The adrenalin of the concert — aborted now, stage empty, crowd throwing bottles below — has curdled into fear and nausea. It’s going to be all right. It’s always all right. Something will come up.
Across the table, Damien Cornickelson is grinning. That must clinch it — Nathan will never give that loathsome man the satisfaction of submitting. He’ll tell the label to go fuck itself. They’ll find money somewhere to start fresh. Nathan will look that greedy bastard in the eye and punch another tooth out, and everything will be just like it was.
But Skwisgaar looks at Nathan, and he can’t find any fight in his eyes. His lead singer is staring at the contract, expression despondent, shoulders slumped.
Please don’t sign, Skwisgaar thinks so loud he almost hears it. But what alternative has he got to offer? He doesn’t know where the money would come from. He had Charles to manage all that, and they’re in this situation in the first place because their manager is dead. Skwisgaar plays guitar. Until now that’s always been enough.
Damien makes a show of looking at his watch.
“I’m getting impatient. Do you want to play this show or not?”
Don’t sign it. Don’t.
Nathan picks up the pen. That’s all right. He’s going to stab it into Damien’s smug, puffy face. Or throw it over the edge of the platform. Skwisgaar knows Nathan Explosion, and — occasional terrible girlfriend aside — Nathan Explosion doesn’t let people tell him what to do. He won’t let Skwisgaar down.
“Fuck it.”
Good. Skwisgaar knew he wouldn’t—
Nathan lowers the pen to the contract.
It’s all right; something will happen. The wind will blow the paper away. An eagle will swoop in and grab the pen. Charles will bust the door down, magically not dead after all.
Nathan signs.
In that moment Skwisgaar can feel a piece of his heart snap, sharp and stinging like a steel string, leaving numbness in its wake. He can’t feel his own hand as he takes the pen from Nathan. His signature looks shaky and alien. He gives the pen to Toki and forces himself to meet his fellow guitarist’s eyes, just so he can see all that same bitter, devastated disappointment directed at himself.
“I don’t want to sign it,” Toki whispers to him in Norwegian — after so many years, they know each other’s languages like their own.
He responds in Swedish. “What choice have we got, Toki?”
It’s not a rhetorical question. He’s so desperate he hopes that Toki will come up with something. But Toki couldn’t even handle being head of snacks. He whimpers as he puts his name down — Skwisgaar bites his lip and turns away.
When they’ve all signed Damien gathers the contract in a briefcase. He gives each one of them a lingering glance, almost a leer, to rub his victory in. He ends on Nathan — and Nathan returns it dully, the stare of a corpse.
Damien smirks.
He gestures at one of his assistants to push the power lever back up. The lights above snap on in sequence, bathing them all in a hellish red glow. Far beneath their feet, the fans begin to cheer; Skwisgaar has never hated a crowd more.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Damien tells Nathan. “Now, you long-haired monkey — get up there and dance.”
Nathan doesn’t punch Damien like he ought to. He doesn’t even turn away in disgust. He just stands there, some new, defeated man Skwisgaar has never met.
“C’mon,” Pickles says quietly. “Let’s go.”
The last thing Skwisgaar wants to do is take the stage for their selfish, ravening followers. A bunch of parasites who wouldn’t care if they were all dead, as long as they could still play a set. But he adjusts his guitar and sets his face in its best expression of arrogant disdain. In his peripheral vision, Nathan lifts the mic. Skwisgaar remembers what song they were on, and he wants to throw up.
Their setlist’s been so tightly choreographed that they can’t change it without throwing off the whole performance. There has to be a way out of that, but, yet again, Skwisgaar can’t find it. And apparently neither can Nathan… or maybe he just wants to punish himself.
Crush the industry! Nathan howls. And the show goes on.
This song was supposed to be triumphant. A fuck-you to the label, to guys like Damien, to all the rich bastards keeping them down. (Skwisgaar and the rest of them were multibillionaires until recently, sure, but they’re not anymore — so fuck those guys.) Now, it sounds petulant and toothless. An empty boast from a bunch of men stuck firmly under somebody else’s thumb. Nathan’s humiliating himself with every line he delivers, and all Skwisgaar wants to do is throw off his guitar and disappear.
From the energy on stage, the rest of them are close to giving up already. Pickles’ beats are slow. Toki’s sound is faint and feeble. Murderface doesn’t seem to be touching his strings at all.
But Skwisgaar Skwigelf doesn’t play a bad show.
He blinks hard and ignores the dampness on his face as he throws himself into the first verse. No need for a bassist or a rhythm guitarist, he can work anything important into his own part. Skwisgaar isn’t going to disappoint Nathan. Even if Nathan has disappointed him.
And right now, Nathan’s singing like the events of the last hour never happened. He’s glaring down at the crowd, his voice booming through the night. Brutal, dominating, merciless.
Watch it fall before your eyes, Nathan growls over Skwisgaar’s guitar. The line wasn’t supposed to be talking about them.
If Skwisgaar thinks about that he’s going to break down. So he tries to remember Florida. That moment when he’d first understood when he could unleash on the world. The first musician who’d ever equaled him, watching him in awe.
The song’s over, the loathsome crowd cheers, and the last of the energy from that night long ago is spent.
As they board their copter home Toki starts sobbing silently, paint bleeding down his face. Pickles finishes two handles of rum and passes out. Murderface outright disappears. Nathan might as well have — he withdraws to a corner and stares out the window, refusing to so much as acknowledge any of them. Reluctantly, Skwisgaar sits beside Toki as he cries in jags the whole way back to Mordhaus. In one of the calm stretches, Skwisgaar gets a rag and wipes both their faces clean. His Explorer rests against his heart the whole time, but he can’t bring himself to play.
Their floating castle is still in ruins, its renovations uncompleted. Nathan heads off to put the unconscious drummer he’s carrying to rest. Skwisgaar’s almost to his own room when he understands Toki is following and realizes he doesn’t want to be alone.
“We aren’t Dethklok anymore, are we?” Toki asks as he curls up on Skwisgaar’s bed, speaking Norwegian again.
“Don’t say things like that.”
They are Dethklok, technically — but they no longer own Dethklok. Or their masters. Or Mordhaus. They don’t have final say over their producer, or their concerts, or what’s on their own albums. They’ve probably lost more stuff Skwisgaar doesn’t even understand. It all belongs to the label, now and forever.
“What’s the point of any of it anymore? Should we just…”
Toki can’t finish the sentence, only buries his head in his arms. Skwisgaar knows what he’s going to say, because he suggested it back in Ikea, even before they signed the contract. Should we just kill ourselves?
It doesn’t matter, part of Skwisgaar responds. Without Dethklok, he’s not alive anyway. He tries to tell himself something will come up; he’s not delusional enough to say it aloud.
“We’ll go get some hamburgers tomorrow and you’ll feel better.” That’s a lie too, but small enough that he can stand it.
“I’m gonna have to keep being a stripper, aren’t I?”
It does, Skwisgaar supposes, make Toki the only one bringing in any cash. The whole idea used to seem funny — but Toki sounds too miserable for Skwisgaar to try and make a joke.
“Of course not. We’ll start getting royalties again.” Not quite a lie — but he isn’t sure the contract even gives them that.
“I hate the way they look at me.”
“We’re famous. People look at us all the time.”
Skwisgaar knows what Toki means, though, because he felt it in Monaco. A crowd’s ecstasy was like worship when he could walk away any time he wanted. Knowing it was their only shot at making back some money, that they were under that punishing contract, that they had to get through the night no matter how much it hurt… that was like being consumed.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Toki.” He starts to suggest another topic, only to realize he can’t think of one that’s not about the band. “I don’t want to talk about anything.”
Toki’s already lost in another bout of crying. It’s uncanny how quiet he can be while his body shakes with sobs. Except that dimly, Skwisgaar remembers he developed that talent too, when he was young. His mother always had men over. A child sniffling too loud from schoolyard bullying would have ruined the mood.
For so long Skwisgaar hasn’t really been afraid of anything but his own failure. Now the life he took for granted has evaporated. He’s powerless in a way he swore he’d never be again, owned by a man who wants them to suffer. There are no more escape hatches, no miracles left to will.
Toki reaches for Skwisgaar’s arm, and Skwisgaar lets himself get pulled to the mattress, not bothering with token resistance. He allows Toki to nestle against his lax body, staring at the ceiling, mulling relearning that old skill.
In his ear, Toki whispers.
“Do you think things would have gone better if I’d known how to make snacks?”
Skwisgaar’s eyes follow a crack in the stone. He wonders if the whole place is falling down around them. But they no longer own it — not his problem anymore.
“I don’t know, Toki.” He sighs, feeling Toki’s weight shift on his shoulder. “I don’t know.”
Toki goes catatonic after that, and soon he whimpers in his dreaming, drifting off somewhere Skwisgaar can’t follow. He finally disentangles himself and pulls his boots on, leaving Toki on the bed.
It’s first light in Florida, and Skwisgaar and Nathan end up on the beach.
The two of them have been circling around anything important for hours now. They started off doing the usual: bragging about concerts they’ve been to, bands they’ve played in, bodily harm they’ve suffered for the scene. At some point they fell into silence, sharing only the mutual experience of the city at night.
“Fuckin’ hate sand,” Nathan remarks offhandedly, skirting a garbage-studded pile of it. “It gets everywhere.” (Years later there will be a movie with a monologue about sand. Nathan will shut up about his own feelings on it after they’ve all quoted the scene a few times.)
“Ams the worst. But salt air does a good hair texture,” Skwisgaar replies back then. He brushes a boardwalk bench clean and sits, staring out at the coastline. Takes a deep breath. “So, you gots a demo?”
Nathan pulls a Walkman and thin earphones from his pocket. “My last band. Broke up a few weeks ago.”
Skwisgaar would usually make a show of deigning to waste his time by listening. Right now, he doesn’t bother. He takes the headphones and lets Nathan hit play, and…
Well, breaking up is about the only smart thing the band’s guitarist and bass player ever did, is his first thought. The drummer’s a little better but not by much. Skwisgaar’s ready to write the whole thing off, feeling silly for being taken in so easily, but he waits a few more seconds, figuring he’ll at least give this stranger a chance. Then, when Nathan’s voice cuts through the music, the doubts vanish. And that strange energy itches in Skwisgaar’s hands again.
For the first time in his life, Skwisgaar thinks of another person: you’re too good for them. He can’t understand a single word Nathan’s saying, yet somehow it all makes perfect sense. He can feel immediately how that savage, tar-thick voice would fit around his own sound — and after years of failed bands and broken partnerships, he knows that this man would complete it.
Skwisgaar can’t stand most other people’s music these days, but before he knows it, he’s listened to the whole thing and the demo tape is fading to a hiss of white noise. A last, vicious growl echoes in his ears, but he tries not to look impressed as he removes the headphones — he isn’t easy.
“Who ams in your new band, den?”
“Uh…” Nathan looks down. “Just me.”
“Dat don’t sound like a band.” Skwisgaar says it like he’s not already imagining both their names on liner notes.
“Look — I’ve got ideas, okay? I’m talking to a couple guys, it just hasn’t come together. But I’ve heard your tapes. I’ve seen you. And I’m pretty sure…” He pauses awkwardly. “We would.”
Skwisgaar hands Nathan back the headphones, resisting the impulse to ask him to rewind and play the tape again. Their hands touch, and Skwisgaar thinks: when was the last time he touched someone he cared about? A split second later he thinks: what the fuck does he mean, care about? He’s known this man a single night.
“Yous be givings me your number, and I thinks about it. Maybe calls you back.” Because, again, Skwisgaar isn’t easy. No matter how much he wants to be right now.
“Heh. Sure.”
With the hint of skepticism and the way Nathan looks at him, Skwisgaar suspects his cool front isn’t working. For once, he isn’t sure he cares.
It’s probably first light outside Mordhaus, but the only dawn Skwisgaar gets is the glow of a sign that reads tits.
The kitchen’s lonely without Jean-Pierre now. Skwisgaar misses the yard wolves if he goes outside. So he’s wandered the halls until reaching the tacky, neon-lit sandscape that used to be their living room — is ready to walk past rapidly when he spots a mess of black hair.
“Nathan?” he asks.
Nathan’s surrounded by beer bottles that sit half-buried in the artificial desert. His head is tipped back on a large, rhinestone-studded animal skull. At first glance Skwisgaar thinks he’s drunk himself unconscious, which is a pretty good idea, actually. Then, slowly, he opens his eyes and sits up.
“I guess.”
The words are slurred. His green eyes are bloodshot. His corpse paint’s only been half-cleaned. Skwisgaar won’t disrespect him by pitying him — but he senses that he knows exactly how terrible Nathan feels.
“Whats you doing here? You hates sand.” The giant dreamcatcher and tits sign and imported cactus aren’t doing the room any favors, either.
“I dunno. I mean… it is in a scape.”
Nathan wilts under Skwisgaar’s dubious gaze.
“Fine. I wanted to feel bad, okay?” Nathan picks up one of the bottles and inspects it for the dregs of lager. “I wanted to feel how many goddamn stupid decisions we made. How we fucked everything up.”
Skwisgaar’s chest goes tight and his stomach goes sour. Practically every room in Mordhaus should be reminder enough of that, though at least the repo men stripped out Skwisgaar’s platinum practice chamber. And after every mistake… they could have stopped. They could have reconsidered. They could have made a plan. Done anything except ended up here, now.
“We didn’ts understand.”
“We should have understood.”
If only Charles were here, he might still pull them out of this. But Nathan, Skwisgaar, the rest of them… they just play death metal. The best damn death metal anyone’s ever created. That used to be enough.
“You know I was reading the news,” Nathan continues. “They said we were the world’s seventh-largest economy. Before all this.”
Skwisgaar’s vaguely heard something about that. Didn’t pay much attention to it.
“What’s that means?”
“It means a bunch of horrible shit’s about to happen to… world finances, or something. Cause we spent too much on sand.”
Skwisgaar sinks down beside Nathan to sit in the sandscape. He sifts a handful of it through his fingers, watching grains slip out till he’s holding nothing again.
“The band amn’t dead, Nathan. We’s still Dethklok.”
“Damien held a grudge our entire goddamn career. He put billions of dollars on the line just to screw us over. Think it gets any better from here?”
And Skwisgaar still wants to think Nathan will save them. That he’ll solve everything by writing the right lyrics or punching the right person in the face. But everything’s too complicated for that now. They’re a million miles and a million years from that night in Florida when their lives were ahead of them. They got their shot to change the world. They did it. Everything ends.
“We… gets some hankboigers tomorrow. We’s feel better after that.”
Nathan finds an inch of beer in another of the bottles and swallows with a grimace. He kicks the sandscape futilely with one booted foot.
“You sounded fuckin’ incredible tonight, by the way.”
Skwisgaar tries again to hold a handful of sand. The inexorable force of gravity wants to take it from him. But if he stays perfectly still, he can balance it precariously on his callused fingerpads. Can examine it grain by grain, taking stock of what he has left.
“Ja. I knows,” Skwisgaar says. “So did you.”