Daikaijuzine

My son’s brain tumor has disappeared, defying any medical explanation. "Did you visit a saint?" the wide-eyed Dr. Kirin whispers to me. "It seems like a miracle."

"Not exactly," I say. "But we did go to Ozzfest."

She tilts her head, questioning. I take her arm and lead her to the little lounge, where it’s just the two of us. She’s pretty, and my wife is at home rolling around on the floor and crying and praying. But it’s not God that did this; it’s metal, noise, unrelenting electromagnetic force at various destructive frequencies. I keep my hand on her thin arm as I talk. I talk loudly, I think, because it was two weeks ago and I still haven’t recovered.

"Maybe you can get money to do a study. It was his last request, this big rock concert thing. You know, Ozzy Osbourne."

"I’ve seen his wife on a show."

"Right. Well, we didn’t get to see him. Turns out he was sick. The Judas Priest guy did his set. Quite disturbing. He’s bald and fat but still wears leather. He looks like a dancing turtle."

The doctor just shakes her head. "I don’t know much about music. I studied all the time."

She has long black hair, a little hook nose. Despite being a doctor she seems so naïve. I’m quickly falling in love with her.

"Anyway, we were right up at the stage all day, getting creamed in the mosh pit." I show her the bruises on my knees and elbows and ribs.

"Goodness," she says, so beautifully, in her mysterious accent.

"It’s the opposite of goodness. My wife says it’s pure evil. Screaming devil music, strangers trying to crush one another. But if you live through it, you reach some kind of understanding. You become part of some brotherhood. And his tumor’s gone, right?"

"Your eyes," she says, reaching and touching my eyelid. "They’re mesmerizing."

"What?"

"Shhh." She lifts my shirt and touches my bruised ribs with her lips.

As she’s at it I see Kevin zoom by the window in a wheelchair, wearing his Ozzfest 2004 t-shirt, giving me the thumbs-up.

* * *

"I can control people," Kevin says, and shrugs. "I just figured it out."

"You did that to Dr. K?"

"Sorry. I thought you’d get a kick out of it."

"She could have lost her job, or her license."

"She’s hot, isn’t she?"

"Kevin, think of your mother."

He puts his hands behind his head and closes his eyes. I’m sitting on the side of his bed, in awe of what a different person he is now: headaches, dizziness and nausea gone, complete thoughts coming from his mouth, limbs all working confidently. And now this other thing. "No, Mom’s definitely not hot."

"I still love your mother. We can’t hurt her."

"But what if Dr. K. falls in love with you? We don’t want to hurt her, either, do we?"

"Kevin, don’t piss me off."

It hurts to say that. A month ago I felt guilty for being angry at him. Now he’s apparently not dying anymore, and I still feel guilty.

* * *

I’m getting into my car the next morning when someone pops from the hedge. It’s her, picking leaves from her tangled hair.

"Doctor?"

"I’ve been here all night. I watched you peeing around three."

"Oh, god. Listen, my son…he’s got some kind of a hold…"

"This is about him. Come, I’ll ride with you. Let’s get some coffee."

"I should get to work. Aren’t you working today?" I glance back nervously at my house, checking windows for any watchers.

"I’m on a special assignment, thanks to you and Kevin." She hops into the car, and when she leans and pecks me on the cheek and digs her nails into my thigh I give it too much gas and squeal in reverse into the street. I duck my head until we’re around the corner.

"You know, I’m married," I say, and it sounds so lame, like I’m making it up.

"Of course. Anyway, look." She holds out her hand, filled with tickets.

"What’s this?"

"Rotting Corpse. Kevin said these were the ones to get. We’ll be taking four of our brain tumor cases. With complete permission. Pull in here!"

I turn into the Donut Hole. As I’m ordering she straddles me and starts kissing. The Indian donut guy is screaming from the speaker, "Pool up! Pool up!" "Look," I say, speaking around her wiggling tongue. "I have to pull up."

I see something flash by. It’s Kevin on his bike, smiling.

* * *

"I have to do it. It’s medical. It’s research."

My wife sniffs me. "I smell someone on you. The devil."

"It’s Ted from the office. He wears this new cologne. Awful."

"You should not do this. It wasn’t Satan’s music that saved Kevin. It was me praying to God." She falls to her knees and raps her forehead repeatedly on the hardwood. "He told me to do this."

Kevin zooms by the window on his skateboard, waving.

"Damn that kid," I say, under my breath.

* * *

She’s rented a van.

The four brain tumor guys don’t look that sick to me. Not like Kevin was. He was mute in a wheelchair two weeks ago. These jokers, who range in age from maybe fourteen to eighteen, are throwing themselves over the seats, hooting and twisting their shirts in their teeth like crack monkeys.

"Where are their tumors?" I ask, ducking from a flying shoe.

"Guess," she says.

"Amygdala? Monkey brain?"

"Close."

I narrow my eyes at Kevin, but he plays dumb and hands me a CD to pop in.

Dr. K. flexes her brow at first, but soon is headbanging with the rest of us, bouncing perilously down the Philly expressway. She places her little hand in my lap, discovering wood.

* * *

The Factory is surrounded by a fence topped nicely with barbed wire, to keep the freaks out, or maybe in. On line the fashion runs from ripped denim to animal skin to chained-up deathcore. And there’s Dr. K. in her silky blouse and skirt and conservative jacket, like someone’s lost mother. At least she has flat shoes.

The monkeys break away and climb the fence. A security goon yanks at them. "Monkey brain experiments!" I yell at him, something I’ve never had the chance to yell, feeling suddenly exhilarated, and he shoves me against the brick.

Dr. K. gets on her cell phone, and shortly a guy pulls us out of line. He has weapons under his suit jacket. He hustles us down an alley and through a secret door. I’m expecting a tiny interrogation-torture room. Smoke pours into our eyes from the poorly lit, purplish interior. Fat couches are spread with long-haired, long-legged gents holding drinks and cigarettes. One of the scariest men waves his cigarette in a long holder which looks like a bone. I can see that these are not young men. They’ve been around. They don’t wear their tattoos, the tattoos wear them. Their eyes are hollows. A couple of them do appear to be rotting.

This is the band.

Suit guy paces and glares at us, but then breaks into a huge smile. He hugs Dr. K., lifting her off her feet. "Natasha!" he says.

Natasha?

"This is my brother," she says to me. And I see it: same little hook nose and dark beauty. "The bodyguard."

"Will you watch the show from the side of the stage?" he asks her.

"No, we will have to be right up front. That’s how it works."

"I’ll look out for you."

"Not too much, though."

Someone hands me a beer in a skull mug. The monkeys scrabble around and through the legs of groupies, raiding chips and coldcuts. The band guys move so slowly, they might be wax figures with clotted internal gears moving in reverse.

I look over some of the CDs, review lyrics. There is much talk of skulls with maggots, mutilated and violated corpses, intestines strung around phone poles. Gravediggers bashed to death with their own shovels. Zombie fetuses ripping open ribs to chew on human hearts. Excellent. The kind of material that eats cancer. Eat your heart and brain out, Benny Hinn. The monkeys will be healed.

* * *

My heart is in some kind of ventricular craziness. Some of it’s from the beautiful Natasha, her hair and blouse sucking the beautiful sweat from her skin, but mostly it’s the bass piercing my chest. I pass out, come to, pass out. But no one lets you fall. Your brothers and sisters keep you up, pass you over their heads. Natasha breathes life into my mouth many times. "Did you bring the paddles?" I scream, but there’s no hearing words. Words are smashed like atoms by the amplifiers. "Fuck you, Benny Hinn!" I scream, just because.

Half of Natasha’s blouse has disappeared. A bald guy with steam rising from his head has a piece of it in his mouth. A second later a big hand clutches the bald head and tucks it like a fumbled ball, twisting it through and away from the mob.

The words from the band are incomprehensible, of course. It’s just scream, scream, longer drawn out scream. Then the guttural gurglings of throats being slit, evilly undertaken whisperings, the rasp of someone drowning in dirt. The double bass drum pedal is like Riverdance of the Dead on your coffin.

I see an old guy in a wheelchair sail overhead, propelled by a hundred lunatics, and I’m waiting for the witch on her bike. The monkey boys are having seizures as they pass over us, and Natasha is trying to follow their progress, but it’s impossible. They seem to levitate above the sea of hands, backlit by stage lights, held within a glowing aura and suspended on a layer of smoke soft as a heavenly cloud. Maybe my wife is right. And Natasha, during a break in the noise, shouts into my ear. "God is in here." Then she plunges her tongue into my ear. Or maybe she said, "God is an ear."

* * *

When it’s over we find the boys, holding their heads, cowering, clothes torn, caps and wigs gone. They are calm, and so dazed and wobbly that we have to take their hands and lead them out. If this hasn’t worked, they might die tonight. That’s how different they look. For the first time I worry about my part in this.

Near the exit one of the headbangers leaps before us with a wig in his teeth, shaking it like dead prey and growling. He looks at Natasha and growls something like, "Show us your tits!" Kevin and the newly healed turn to look at her. They narrow their eyes, concentrating, waiting. Before long she shrugs and says, "Why not?"

* * *

Two weeks later all five of them are outside my bedroom window, moaning like cats, singing, making the crab apples fly off the tree and into the window with just their willpower. They’re trying to make me leave my wife and go to Natasha. Their combined powers are great. But I look at my wife as she pretends to sleep. She’s not happy with all this, with me. I have to stay and make her happy again. She needs me. I do love Natasha, in a way, but…

"Go with that doctor." She murmurs into the pillow.

"I never slept with her."

"She calls here. So brazen."

"She’s not really like that. Look, she’s under their power."

"Oh, right. Good one."

I get up and yell out the window. "That’s enough! Go home! Kevin, get in the house!" They laugh at me and say, "Oooooh, we’re scared."

Natasha is swinging gently in the glider behind them, patiently blowing me kisses. She’s told me she can wait forever.

It’s hard to even get back to the bed, their gravitational pull is so strong. But I make it, and wrap the sash of my robe around the bedpost. I hang on.

---

About the Author: Gary Moshimer lives in Pa. with his wife and two sons, where he works as a respiratory therapist and spends a lot of time writing weird little stories which he hopes will amuse someone besides himself. His other stories can be found in TQR, Antithesis Common, Green Silk Review, the Flash-Flood, and Flash-Flooding, and soon in Dark Energy, all in their varying degrees of weirdness.