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  As the first song drew to a close, the lights went dark, and the band was now dimly lit by the glow of the amplifier lights behind them. The crowd roared, and Lena was honestly relieved to see a blood-covered Vivika still standing next to her.

  “Germany?” Lena howled, and the crowd roared in response.

  “GERMANY?!” she howled louder. The crowd stomped and roared louder as well.

  At that moment, Lena felt something. It was something different and hard to describe. It felt like violence—the insatiable desire to just absolutely wreck something. Yet it also felt like invincibility, as if she was free to commit any atrocity she wished, in full view of everyone. Perhaps it was the ‘full view of everyone’ part that really fueled her up. Not only was everyone hinging on her every word and every movement, but they were giving their energy to her—using her as a siphon. She was now the avatar of the moment. A unique creature with the responsibility of converting the crowd’s anticipation into a release of orgasmic catharsis.

  Words welled up inside of her then like divine poetry, with neither thought, consideration or intent. She wasn’t putting a phrase here, a stanza there, or cobbling together a cogent theme to haphazardly express the general feeling…no. Every utterance was already written for her, as if burned into the lining of her soul, ripe for the taking and begging for the reading.

  “Here we all are!” she began, “All one people…one strong and resolute family, all on one side of that little Wall over there: an utterly meaningless symbol of oppression. Utterly meaningless, just like every symbol the world over. They all lay under our feet, trampled, like filthy napkins discarded after a glorious meal well-devoured. ‘They’ have many things to say. Things about ‘falling in line’, or ‘doing for your country’, and threatening us with retribution if we don’t. All empty threats, like ashes falling on a lonely desert road…all empty threats, like empty magazines loaded into toy rifles.”

  “Like the Wall…like the bomb…like the cell…like the shackle…they aim to oppress; to silence; to beat down into submission. But we will not submit, and we will not be silenced. The oppressors oppress no longer. For it is here that we shall make our stand…it is here that we shall make our voices heard. It is here that us—the chosen few, the miscreant youth, the resolute unwanted and the utterly incorrigible—it is right here that we make our case.

  “To the Stasi, to the Politburo, to the Soviets, to the Americans, and to all forms of oppression the entire world over, hear our words, so that you may understand our thinly-veiled threat: no matter where you are, or how you try to enslave us with your guns, or your bombs, or your riot sticks…we the people have a simple message for you, and our message is simply this: you can fuck right the hell off.”

  “Mad Bunny! Mad Bunny!” the crowd answered, “Mad Bunny! Mad Bunny!”

  As Lena looked about the crowd, simultaneously filled with the fluids of victory and exhausted at the effort, she chanced to look over at Vivika. Vivika simply stared at her, wide-eyed, as if seeing her for the first time in her life. She didn’t say anything out loud, but Lena recognized the impression that she had just seen the real Lena. Vivika was awe-struck.

  “Where the fuck am I?” Jakob whispered to himself as he curled up into a ball, holding his head.

  The alleyway was dark with night and filled with the stench of rotting garbage from the nearby dumpsters. Fluids and grime of unknown origin clung to walls and asphalt alike, with various microbes finding a new home in his various wounds. Jakob was covered in cuts and bruises. Minor though they might be, they had begun to disturb him. He didn’t remember how he found his way here. Truthfully, he didn’t remember much of anything. He simply clutched his head, trying desperately to massage the searing headache that had formed only minutes before. “The hell…where the hell am I? What the fuck is going on?!”

  No matter how hard he tried to find his voice, though, it proved to be as futile as finding his feet. He was stuck here, shivering with cold and weakness alike, as if all the energy had been sapped from him in the previous hours of…whatever had happened.

  Incongruent images flashed in his mind’s eye, with large groups of people laughing, a fist fight he thought he had been involved in, loud music coming from absolutely everywhere, and chairs being thrown every which way. He couldn’t figure out which parts were real, but he legitimately began to hope that the more violent, chaotic parts were more a creation of his addled imagination than actual reality.

  “The hell... what the hell did I do…”

  “Don’t try to move.” a voice answered, surprising Jakob.

  “Who the…who the fuck are you?!”

  Jakob couldn’t focus correctly, but as he rolled towards the voice to get a better view, he saw a pair of boots standing impatiently in the soggy grime of the alleyway asphalt. He turned his body to look up, and up, and up…and saw particularly unimportant-looking pants, matched with a nondescript looking jacket. Yet when Jakob looked at the young man’s hands, he managed just a little more focus. The man held a small pistol, and it had a long, slim tube on the end of it.

  “I’m telling you,” the voice said, “Don’t try to get up. Let’s not make this any more difficult than it already is.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?!” Jakob howled, managing to rally his voice.

  “Shhhh…let’s keep our voices down, eh?”

  Recognition dawned then. It was Victor, the mild-mannered tour manager. And he looked…well, triumphant in a way.

  “The fuck is wrong with me? Why the hell can’t I fuckin’ move?!” Jakob cried.

  “Because I laced your beer with PCP.”

  “The hell…why the bloody hell would you do a thing like that?!”

  “Because you needed to disappear.” Victor responded, “You were right about one thing: your band is The Mad Bunny, and you are as unnecessary to that arrangement as a thing could possibly be. Especially since we had a new guitarist in mind.”

  “Oh, what the fuck…” Jakob began to cry, as he clutched his head.

  “We had a purpose for your band, and that purpose required you to run off into the night so that we could engineer a meeting. You performed admirably, and for that I should thank you.”

  Jakob was sobbing then. He felt betrayed, useless and angry; but more than those emotions, he felt afraid…what was their tour manager doing with that pistol in his hand?!

  “I’m not going to pretend I relish this,” Victor knelt down beside Jakob, “This was never my favorite part of the job. I have a female counterpart that would absolutely love this…” then, he added with a laugh, “Of course, she would probably like cannibalism. But no, I try to be decent about these sorts of unseemly things.”

  Jakob cried, fearing for his life. Yet, through his horror, he still managed to hear a soggy plop of a hand-sized cardboard box right next to his head. Focusing in on the source of the sound, he saw it—a cigarette box, with one smoke and a box of matches left in it.

  “Go ahead. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us.”

  “The fuck are you talking about? What do you fuckin’ mean ‘hard feelings’?”

  “Look,” Victor responded coolly, “Either smoke the cigarette or don’t. I’m just saying, if I were you, I would use this moment wisely. You never know what could happen next.”

  Despite his fear, Jakob fumbled for the box, grabbed the cigarette and lit it. He drew in the life-giving smoke, and immediately felt somewhat better about everything.

  “There we go. Don’t you feel better?” Victor said, sweetly.

  “Y-yes…y-yes I d-do…” Jakob said, honestly.

  “Good, I’m genuinely glad.” Wiping his face with a tired fist, Victor continued, “I want you to know that everyone in your band is genuinely looking forward to you rejoining them.”

  “R-really?” Jakob cried, “You fuckin’ mean it?”
>
  “Of course I do,” Victor assured him. “I have some connections in the West. I’ll make sure you make it back into the GDR alright. You will get back to band practice, and maybe your next show in the West will go much better.”

  “Th-thank you…th-thank you s-so much!”

  “I just have one request, Jakob.”

  “Wh-what’s that?”

  “I need you to slow down on the drinking, alright?” Victor stated plainly. “It’s important that we have you in top form.”

  “I fucking promise! I fuckin’ swear it to you!”

  “Promise me again, Jakob.”

  “I do! I fuckin’…”

  Jakob never heard the sound of the bullet exiting the pistol. He never heard the sound of the slide ejecting the spent cartridge before locking another into battery, nor would he hear the sound of the bullet entering his left eyeball to annihilate the complicated matter behind. It takes nearly two seconds for one’s brain to process what the senses are picking up. By that time, any of the previous information would be quite useless to him.

  Komplikation

  The club smelled worse than it looked, which was hard to fathom. Considering the many denizens of the arena had been fully-charged humans only minutes before, the mere shadows of their former selves were a true testament to energy discharged. To the casual onlooker, it looked like the aftermath of a carpet-bombing. Bloody folks raised bloodier fists in a half-hearted signal of triumph that wasn’t really theirs to display. Truly, as the night waned and the wax of poetic finally melted into a singular pool of gristle on the floor, only one person stood victorious. In reality, only one person could. Only a single champion was allowed in the gladiator pits, and this champion’s reputation was far beyond contest.

  It wasn’t Lena, by the way—it was Matt. Oh yeah, and if it hadn’t been mentioned before, the place also smelled terrible. It was like a gym, but with rampant drug and dietary issues. By the time the Mad Bunny’s set was complete and The Dead Weights were setting up, she had already done more than her fair share to further the sacred interests of the pit. Applause met aplomb as she had smashed, brawled and caterwauled her way through the slag-pits of the wayward ones, paying her own humble homage to her foremothers and faith-keepers. Understandably, she had needed a beer and a rest afterwards. Thus, she had made her way to the bar near the end of the venue.

  Doing so was no simple task. Sweaty malcontents with the best of intentions met her hand to hand, fist on fist, and mutual to the embrace—doing so with such religious voracity that it took nearly ten minutes to walk one-hundred feet. By the time she had finally received the nearly ten drinks purchased for her, and shot-gunned an entire three (much to the delight of her onlookers), the familiar wooziness intermingled with the delightful remnants of the ‘other’ wooziness from the fateful safety meeting, and the high of bloodlust satiated. Thusly affected, she had resolved to allow herself the coward’s way out and simply watch The Dead Weights from her current vantage point, with Vivika standing nearby in much the same state.

  “This man is a god.” she thought to herself as she stood in awe. Matt was perfect. His movements were perfect. His energy was perfect. It was almost aggravating how at-home the bastard truly was onstage, and how clearly comfortable he was in his element. The Mad Bunny had always been lauded as a legendary force even back when she was just an unknown nobody performing in churches. But this was something else entirely.

  The man would do backflips, only to land flat on his back…while still playing! He would sing with a cigarette in his mouth. He broke a guitar after half of his songs. He would stand on the drum set and jump headlong into a patron that had smashed his or her way onstage. He started fist-fights and won every single one. The man was a fire-starter—an absolute powder keg of energy—and he looked to be having so much fun while doing it, too. The Mad Bunny herself wore dour, moody faces to express concentration and devoutness in her beliefs, yet Matt beamed cheek to cheek, as if he was content in the chaos. He wasn’t just brawling with competitors and rivals. He was hanging out with old friends, and he legitimately wanted to take a personal interest in their enjoyment. It was just so very genuine that it made her want to be a better performer.

  By the time The Dead Weights had concluded their performance, Matt didn’t look any worse than when he had started. He still stood there, grinning from ear to ear, ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. The same could not be said for the crowd, however, which was now beginning to show its age. At first, they had needed a show. Now they needed orange juice and medical attention. Yet there he stood…just…unaffected.

  “How in the world does he do it?” Vivika asked admiringly, as she stood drinking next to Lena.

  “Drugs? Maybe?” Lena responded dreamily.

  “No…that man isn’t high. That man is hiii-ii-iiigh.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, not ‘high’-high…that man is plugged into something else—some sort of life shit that makes him impervious to…to…whatever.”

  “Yeah…drugs,” Lena replied with a laugh.

  “Yeah, probably.” Vivika laughed as well, before being interrupted by the voice of Matt over the loudspeaker.

  “...like to thank everyone for coming out tonight and showing support for our scene.” What was left alive of the crowd cheered as loudly as they were capable while he continued, “I’d especially like to give a special shout-out to the Mad Bunny and her band of idiots for letting me jam out a song or two. We’re gonna be hearing a lot more from them in the future, I’m sure!” The crowd cheered again at the mention of her and her dipshits, and she had to smile.

  “He really likes you,” Vivika teased.

  “I think he really likes our band.”

  “That’s why he mentioned you and us.”

  “I think he just...”

  “No, Lena,” Vivika said with a newfound serious note, “he separated us for a reason. It’s plain as day: he’s scoping you.”

  “Scoping? What do you mean?”

  “Oh come on. You don’t think everything happened a little too perfectly?” Vivika laughed, “Misfortune befalls us. There we are, in an entirely different country, unable to play a show because our idiot guitarist bailed. Suddenly, ‘Mr. Gorgeous’ flies in to save the day...by playing in our band? He’s into you, sure. Hell, he probably wants to sleep with you, too. But he has some ulterior motive that goes even deeper. He’s trying to recruit you. Either way, he wants you.”

  “How do you know that?! And what do you mean he wants me?”

  Lena knew perfectly well what Vivika meant—she had just spent the last few seconds explaining precisely that—but she was still stuck on the ‘sleep with you’ part.

  “Yes, Lena. He wants to screw you. And why wouldn’t he? You’re gorgeous, talented...”

  Vivika said many other words that followed “gorgeous” but none of those mattered, “Gorgeous?” she thought to herself, “She thinks that I’m gorgeous?!” It’s not like Lena thought she herself was unappealing, per se…just, it was never really the focal point of her existence, you know? Ok-looking? Sure…maybe even pretty (in an underweight, acne-covered sort of way), but gorgeous?

  “And yes, I meant what I said,” Vivika reiterated with a note of jealousy, “You are a gorgeous woman, Lena. You really do have it all. The entire package.”

  “Well, so do you!” Lena gushed, but Vivika was having none of it.

  “No…no, I don’t. I have the looks, and a little bit of talent, but you have everything in this band—we’ve all known it from the beginning. And while Jakob and Vortecx are too dumb to see what’s going on here, I’m not going to be fooled so easily.”

  For a brief second, Lena’s heart skipped. How much did Vivika actually think she knew? She was perceptive, of course. And it’s not like Lena’s life for the past few months had been anything but profoundly s
erendipitous. It was pretty obvious, honestly, for anyone that was truly keeping track. But it could all be explained away as…I don’t know…maybe exactly what it was designed to look like? She couldn’t possibly know the real reason behind the band, could she? Then again, did Lena even know what the real purpose of the band was?

  “Wh-what do you mean?” Lena asked, cautiously.

  “Ever since we met you, it’s your way that has been paved—not ours. Oh sure, we’ve got new instruments, our little passports, and everything else…the studio…but let’s be honest, you’re the show. Not us.”

  “That’s not true! You...”

  “And while the others just ignore it, I’m not going to pretend that we don’t live where we live. The State owns us, just like the State owns everything.”

  “That’s just stupid, Vivika! Can’t you…

  “I’ve been in the black cells, Lena.”

  Oh this changed things. Maybe not extremely so—many punkers had spent time in the black cells—but, I mean, you figure that Lena would have at least known that about her band-mates. She had spent a lot of time with them, after all. You would think significant details like that would have made it into a conversation by now, if not earlier on. And if she hadn’t known a fact like this, well, what else didn’t she know?

  “You’ve...” Lena started, but Vivika ran her over.

  “Yes. We’ve all been in the cells. Me, Jakob, Vortecx…I’m assuming you…and you know I’ve been spying for the Stasi, right?”

  “You...”

  “Yes, Lena. I’m a spitzel. A damn, rotten spitzel.”

  “B-but...”

  “Half of us in the scene are. You should already know that by now.”

  “Well, I…I assumed that it, I mean…but...”