Power Trio

“What the fuck is up, Glorie’s!” Thekla yells into the mic. A chorus of cheers greets her.

The opening act never gets the full house, but considering that they’re an unnamed, unknown group, Evan’s grateful to New Laytham for showing out. The space in back of Glorie’s is narrow, as stages go, but it makes the crowd seem bigger. It’s not exactly Samhain. It’s barely even standing room. But Evan thrills at being under these lights again.

“You all here to get wild?” Thekla demands, and the crowd favors her with another cheer. “Then let’s fucking go.”

Kell clicks them in. Evan closes his eyes and feels the steel under his fingers, watches the lights dancing beyond the membrane of his eyelid.

Fossil Fuel was the first tune Evan ever learned with this crew. He’s drilled it into his skull since then. He finds himself humming it under his breath, or tapping its beat onto surfaces, or singing Thekla’s lyrics to himself. But it’s always been caged inside the four of them, like an inside joke.

He opens the cage and the song shrieks to life. Finally, the secret he’s been keeping for over a month is out.

FOSSIL! FUEL! A human hipster’s mouth forms an inaudible “wow” as Thekla screams it.

HOLY! RULE! Some kids up front are really dancing to it, tipping over into a three-person mosh pit. That’s the spirit. Or maybe it’s ketamine, but Evan can hope.

FOSSIL! FUEL! Even the wallhangers with their crossed arms are bobbing their heads.

PLAY YOU FOR A FOOL! The song’s connecting. Evan’s reward is that most priceless accolade for the bassist’s craft: people are moving to it.

They screech to the finish, then drown the premature applause with a thunder roll of drums and blitz through Escalate. He glances at the head of his bass as he moves to the song, sweeping it and his gaze out across the audience like a steadicam. He brings the slightest drag to Kell’s kick, highlights the cocksure swagger in Thekla’s performance.

The last metallic note of Sion’s leadline tantrum fades out. Whoops and applause take its place.

“Thank you!” Thekla fiddles with a few pedals, bringing the distortion down somewhat for Commodity Credit. “And thanks to Shrike for sticking their necks out for a baby band and letting us open for them. Stick around. We got a killer fucking show for you tonight.”

“Who are you!” someone in the audience yells, to a little ripple of laughter and a few extraneous woos.

“We are, uh…” Thekla looks back at Kell, grimacing.

“We are fucking legendary,” Kell roars. “And this is called Commodity Credit! One two three four!”

And the wildfire is burning again. Evan’s ready for his spotlight. He rolls his tone and volume all the way up, plants his feet, and flows. There’s a little divot in the bass’s varnish where he rests his thumb, notched atop his pickup, and he presses the pad against it, just like his grandfather did in the old concert videos. His mother tried to drill him on floating thumb and looser technique, but when he holds it here, he feels the generations pressing back.

They slalom off the chorus into a brief freefall of open air, and he hits one of his favorite fills in the set, a rocketing slap-and-pop flurry. He barely ever slaps, finds it gaudy, but they were horsing around in the studio and Thekla insisted he keep this bit in. Her instincts were right—it brings the house down—and she cries “Evan H, everyone!” into the mic as Sion’s hairpin curve of a riff spins them into the song’s blazing outro.

Thekla steps away from the microphone as another roll of applause crosses the space. More curious listeners, here for Shrike but drawn in by the sound, are filling in at the edges of the crowd.

“Third of the way there,” she whispers. “We’re cooking, guys. I forgive the Finn. You feeling good?”

“Fuck yeah, girl,” Kell says. Evan sticks his thumb up. Sion gives them a curt nod.

Thekla steps up to the mic. “Who’s ready for something horny?”

An enthusiastic ovation. Someone wolf whistles. Thekla rocks her hips back and forth on the count-in. Kell’s eyes follow the motion.

They’re worked Vampire Facial out into a three-instrument arrangement, letting Thekla put her guitar to the side on it. The goblin focuses entirely on singing and strutting her stuff, one hand holding the mic and the other on the graceful curve of her hip. Credit where it’s due to Torvald: there’s no feedback, even in the moment where a crooning Thekla sprawls across the stage on her back, dangling her mic centimeters above her cherry-painted lips. Credit also to Kell, who stays metronomically on-beat all the way through to the song’s slinky conclusion, even as she shoots Evan a look of gay panic.

“Hoo! All right.” Thekla sits up and shakes her hair out of her eyes as the Glorie’s faithful whistle and cheer. “God,” she says into the mic. “I feel like I need a cigarette after that one.” Laughter as she shrugs her guitar back over her chest. “Okay, Glorie’s. This is Trapped Like Rats and it’s Sion’s big moment. Say hi, Sion.”

Sion does not say hi. He scrapes his pick down the middle of his fretboard, creating a hellacious squeal, and then launches right into the intro. They fall in behind him into that mad-scientist 7/8 swing.

Evan sees a jewel of sweat condense at the tip of his bangs, hanging before his vision. He blinks the sting from his eyes. Until now, the set was easy and instinctual. This song is work. The tide and turn of the crowd’s movement slows and stills, replaced by an enthralled trance as Sion’s song dips from a twinkling string of single notes into a thorny passage of augmented chords and chromatic wizardry.

This isn’t how it sounded in the Shed. Evan has never seen Sion play anything even close to this.

He winds around and between their placeholder parts, binding and twisting them into strange novel forms. His music’s slivery thread pulls taut, yanks Evan along and induces within him a crystalline focus. There’s something forming here: something spontaneous, new, and terrifying, a house of spun glass demanding razor precision. Sion’s eyes blaze as if the ash elf is lit from within.

It happens as Sion is cresting a blues pentatonic up to the highest string. A loud clack, and the stage lights are out. A scream up from the pit, audible over the sudden, jarring silence. The power’s out to the entire stage, and all that’s audible is Kell’s drumming, muffled by the absence of the floor mic. The taut line has snapped; Evan feels them tumbling into the abyss.

Then Sion is before him, eyes vivid red in the emergency's light exit, and a colorless palm pushes into Evan’s forehead, like a bizarre cult benediction. “Play,” the ash elf demands.

And Evan plays.

It shouldn’t be possible. It has to be some kind of freak accident of electronics. Sound is coming from his unlit amplifier, piping through the PAs. He has no time to question it.

He takes a moment to realize what he’s playing. It’s the same melody he played with Kell, the day he met her, just before his life was returned to him. She must make the revelation at the same time as he does, because her cymbals sizzle to life behind him. The rising panic of the audience ebbs again as their sound fills Glorie’s.

Her lift. They’re back inside it together. And Evan feels the turning gear of existence. He can barely see her; the only light left is the emergency exit glow and the string lights flickering on the other side of the venue. It doesn’t matter.

They weave and dance around each other, come smashing back together in thunderous unison. They rise to a frenzied pace, then dive from the bluff, a crashing decent into a flowing torrent. A presence beyond thought moves Evan back into Trapped’s tangly 7/8 time and Kell reads it instantaneously, reintroduces that song’s tribal floor tom groove.

As if on a universal cue the lights snap back on; the amplifiers crackle to life; Sion’s guitar lets out a strangled dragonfire screech. And the song continues.

The rest of the set flies past. The crowd banter is gone, and with it any hesitation or mistake. Evan has been made a living antenna for a fundamental flow.

“Thank you! Thank you so much, Glorie’s!” Thekla’s closing remarks snap him from his autohypnosis. “Shrike is up next! We love you!”

The house lights rise, and the interstitial playlist pipes back into the PA. Evan coils his instrument cable and feels as though he is awakening from a lucid dream.

“What the fuck was that?” Thekla says, furiously breaking her setup down, and Evan is trying to find the words to explain it when she continues, “I am going to strangle that Finn. Did we trip a switch or something?”

“I dunno.” Kell helps them reset the stage. “Maybe? But Evan’s amp kept going.”

“Legendary,” breathes Sion, who’s moving like a sleepwalker.

“Yo!” One of the groupies from the bar has muscled her way to the front of the crowd. “That was so fucking lit. Was that part with the lights on purpose?”

“Thanks,” Thekla says, nodding her approval as the kid’s friend surreptitiously pockets their setlist as memorabilia. “Yeah, that was freaky, right? We didn’t plan it.”

“Well, it was lit,” their newest fan repeats. “You guys were called Legendary, right?”

“What?” Thekla squints. Evan sees her wheels turning. “You know what? Yes. Yes, we are.”

“So sick. Do you have socials?”

“Not yet,” Thekla says. “But we’re playing Ringside soon. So keep an eye out, okay?”

She’s in full frontwoman mode, absorbing the adulation from their small-but-satisfied audience. Evan feels a tug on his wrist.

“Come on,” Kell whispers. Her hand is sauna-hot. “Please. Now.”

She pulls him off the stage, back into the green room, and into its broom closet-sized bathroom. She shoves in Evan, whose brain and heart rate are just now beginning to catch up with what is happening. Then she joins him, locks the door, plants one boot on it for good measure, and leans on its claustrophobic back wall. She gathers him into her arms, her body trembling with need. “I want to kiss you,” she says, throaty and breathless. “Can I kiss you, Evan?”

“Yes,” he says, without hesitation, and she pounces, yanking him forward almost off his feet. He stands on tiptoes as her lush purple lips press against his and lever them open. Her tongue shoves forward with sloppy desperation, nearly fills his mouth with the size and power of it. She writhes against him, and he clings to her, mirroring her need to maximize their physical touch.

He yelps into her mouth as she plants both hands on his ass and lifts him, spins him around and pushes him up against the wall, never breaking contact, kissing him ferociously. A thin line of her drool runs down his chin, but he’s too far gone to pay it any mind. It’s like Kell is some kind of wild animal, like he’s being claimed.

His hip bonks into the sink. “Sorry,” Kell murmurs, pulling away for a second, leaving him heaving and gasping as she repositions them, and then she’s kissing him again, cradling him against her, and she’s so fucking strong and solid and beautiful, and he relaxes his grip, knowing she won’t let him fall. He lets his hands free to run through the raven waterfall of her asymmetrical hair, the fleshy amplitude of her back, her powerful arms like steel cables wrapped in silk, flexing as she holds him up. He runs a thumb along her jaw, and she eagerly pulls her tongue back to let his explore, letting out a muffled giggle as he discovers the marvel of her tusks, prods the stud set into the left one. He wants to go further. He wants to feel more of her skin against his. But the drummer sets the pace, and the bassist locks in.

She pulls away, plants kisses on his neck and jaw and ears as she deposits him back onto his feet. He feels dizzy, drunk on the bliss of her.

“I was wondering what your beard would feel like,” she whispers.

“And?”

“It’s nice. It’s scratchy.” She nuzzles her face against his like a cat. “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“I can tell,” he says.

“What if it was all three of us?” she says. “What if we were together?” She traces a triangle in the air. “I saw you look at Thekla. You looked how I look. Am I wrong?”

“No.” Evan realizes how much he means it as he says it. His fingers travel a slow circle across the uncovered violet sliver of her side, left bare by her overalls. “She’s… passionate. Intense. I think she might run this thing, whatever we’d call it. But in a good way. I’d try it. I don’t know if she would, but I would.”

Kell leans in and kisses him again, slow and gentle this time, and he luxuriates in the immensity of her, of this sensation. He feels hollowed out when she pulls away, like he’s been remolded to fit her. “If she says no,” Kell begins. “If she needs me to choose, or if—”

“Don’t think about it yet,” Evan says. “Don’t borrow pain from the future. I trust you, okay? Whatever happens next.”

Kell plants a kiss on his forehead. “God, you’re so good. You’re really good, Evan.” She buries her face in his hair, inhales him. “And sweaty as fuck.”

“So are you, dude.”

“What can a girl say? Being the best fucking rhythm section in New Laytham, that’s putting in some work.” She readjusts his clothes. “I’m sorry, baby. I went overboard. Your mouth is so red it looks like you made out with a freaking vacuum cleaner.”

“I loved it,” he says. “Whenever you want to kiss again, I’m here for it.”

Kell giggles, and then curses as she nearly trips on the skeletal toilet seat.

“Well, maybe not here for it.” Evan glances around the cramped bathroom. They’ve fogged the mirror. “Go get out there and network. I do actually have to pee for real.”

“All by yourself, handsome?”

“Get the fuck out,” he laughs. “You’re so weird.”

She slaps his ass and leaves the bathroom. Evan leans back against the wall she pinned him to and tries to restore feeling to his legs, the taste of her lips etched into his brain, hope burning in his chest.