It’s been a month since Travis and I agreed to rehearse with Charlie, the school janitor, every day in exchange for him being our bodyguard demon drummer, and it’s already proving to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
Although Charlie said he would keep up his whole “demon” act, that also meant he had to agree to keeping his real identity secret. If any of our peers got a good look at him and realized this abnormally-sized eastern European janitor resembled this so-called demon we summoned, our charade would be up. But despite being the size of a tank, he has done a shockingly good job of avoiding being seen, or at least being noticed, by other students. I’m not entirely sure how he does this while still accomplishing his job, but the school hasn’t gotten any dirtier in the past week. It was never exactly clean in the first place, but Charlie has somehow managed to keep up the same mediocre cleaning job without drawing attention to himself.
But since there haven’t been any “demon sightings” in a while, our peers are starting to act the same way they did before. I totally called this. They haven’t completely made the switch yet, but they’re not terrified to go near us or talk to each other while we’re around anymore. I give it a couple more weeks until they forget about the “demon sighting” entirely, and Jeff Hennessy or one of his ilk will try some funny business again. If they do we’ll just call on Charlie to fulfill his duties, reminding our peers who we’ve got on our side. We can’t be too predictable when summoning our “demon,” part of our image is the uncertainty of when we’ll summon it. Kind of like how when you go to see Shining play live, you don’t know if they’re actually going to play their set or if the lead singer is just going to try to beat someone up.
Our agreement is not without its flaws, however. Obviously Travis and I had to make up an excuse for why we were staying late after school every day and why our parents now had to drive to pick us up. However, that didn’t end up being as hard of a conversation for either of us as we had expected; we just told them we had joined an after school music program and were rehearsing after classes every day. They asked surprisingly few questions about this, probably because they were keen on anything that meant they didn’t have to hear us rehearse in their houses anymore.
But there have been a few other unexpected drawbacks. Ever since we first made our agreement with Charlie I’ve had this terrible, weird shaped rash on my left arm. I have no idea how I could have gotten it, and it seems to have come out of nowhere. One day my arm was fine, I made a deal with Charlie, and the next day I had an enormous, sort of diamond-shaped rash on my arm. What’s even weirder, Travis has one just like it in the exact same place on his left arm. Part of me wants to think it’s more than just coincidence how the rash showed up once we made our deal with Charlie. The more rational side of me says it’s just some form of acne that ended up on my arm instead of my face.
But back to the positives, Charlie is a great teacher. Travis and I have both improved a ton since we’ve started rehearsing with him. Charlie must have been playing metal for decades, since he can play almost every single metal band we’ve wanted to cover on multiple instruments. Not only does he know the classics like Slayer, Venom, and Celtic Frost, but he also knows plenty of songs by lesser-known black metal bands. He can play Gorgoroth from memory, even though you can’t find the tablature for their songs anywhere!
But today he decided we needed to expand beyond covering other bands’ music. As we walked into the band room after classes let out, we found the usually relaxed Charlie pacing around the room impatiently. When he heard us step in, he exclaimed “Guys! You’re not going to believe this! I was in downtown Sturluson last night and saw this on a bulletin board. Check it out!” He handed us a crumpled-up piece of paper.
“We could open for Lamashtu?!” I asked incredulously.
“That’s what it says,” Charlie’s eyes beamed, “All we have to do is audition for this battle of the bands and win it.”
“Let me see that,” Travis grabbed the flyer from me, “It says we have to play an original song for the audition, and if we’re accepted we’ll have to play a 10-minute set of original material in the battle of the bands itself. All we’ve done is covers so far. How are we supposed to write an original song? The audition is in two weeks!”
“All the more reason to get started now,” Charlie replied, “Two weeks is plenty of time, especially when you’ve got me.”
Travis looked skeptical. “I don’t know, man. I’m just here to jam, I don’t think I’m cut out for any battle of the bands. Much less opening for up-and-coming legends like Lamashtu. Would we even be allowed to audition? Eric and I are just thirteen.”
I was glad Travis said it and not me. Don’t get me wrong, the prospect of having our first gig when we’ve only been a band for a month sounded pretty tantalizing, and opening for Lamashtu sounded incredible. But now that I knew these concepts weren’t just fantasies and could actually be real, they seemed a lot more intimidating.
Charlie wasn’t having any of it. “What? So you agreed to learn to play the most brutal type of music just so you could sit around and be a wimp?”
Travis meekly tried to defend himself. “All I agreed to do was practice every day with you. I didn’t sign up for any battle of the bands. I didn’t even know Sturluson was cool enough to have stuff like that.”
“Neither did I!” Charlie exclaimed, “But I know now, and I’m not about to let this opportunity slip just because my bandmates are a couple chickens. You two both agreed to play extreme music with me every day. You agreed to get better at your instruments. I can tell you now that rehearsing covers alone will only get you so far. I can teach you to cover every metal song ever written in this band room, but until you write your own music and play it to an audience, you’ll never truly master your instruments. You’ll never truly understand how powerful metal can be. I thought that’s what you wanted, but if I’m wrong I’ll have to reconsider this whole ‘demon’ act.”
He had a point. We agreed to learn to get better at playing metal, not just cover “Raining Blood” a gajillion times. And we couldn’t give up our “demon” bodyguard, either. One of these goons at school was going to test us again eventually, probably sooner rather than later.
“But…” Travis began to talk back.
“He’s right, Travis,” I cut him off before he could object any further, “We agreed to jam with Charlie so we could become harbingers of brutality and evil. How are we supposed to do that if we never leave this band room? Besides, there might even be cute metalhead girls from other schools at the show.”
“Right, we just had the misfortune of going to the only school in the greater Sturluson area without any cute metalhead girls. Other schools must be totally different,” Travis said as he rolled his eyes.
“So, we agree then?” I ignored his sarcasm.
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s start writing some facemelters,” Travis replied. We must have been excited, because we found our guitars strapped over our shoulders and plugged into our amps almost instantaneously. I don’t even remember taking mine out of its case.
“Well, how about we start with something like this?” I asked as I began tremolo picking.
Before we knew it, we were shredding.