Rock The Bells

Posted on April 18, 2011 by - Fiction

The rain was beating down.  It had been for awhile.  Hunched up against a chain link fence, the boy – he couldn’t have been more than 20 – shivered.  It was actually more than a shiver, incorporating both trembles and slight spasms.  He was wearing a white ‘beater and brown shorts.  The ‘beater was closer to the color of the shorts than its original white.   Mud was abundant at Rock the Bells.  So were substances.  The boy blamed both for his pathetic state.  He staggered to his feet and relieved himself against the fence, still shaking.

Two kids came up to the chain link, looking for a way into the concert.  They were trying to rip apart the chain link, but then they saw him pissing on the fence and lost interest.  He slumped back to the ground – in his own piss, he realized.  “Fuck!”  But he was too out of it to care or move.  At least it was a little warmer than the cold mud.  He remembered getting some fun-looking pills from someone a few hours – or was it more than that?  Days? – ago and taking them.  The only things he really remembered since then were hazy sequences in the mosh pit.  People falling over.   Crowdsurfers.  A boot coming at his head.  He rubbed it, it hurt a lot.  At least it wasn’t bleeding anymore.  Soon he passed out in the mud, still shivering and soaked as the concert went on around him.  He dreamed strange, terrible dreams.

Hours later he woke up coughing.  It had stopped raining.  A bit of blue sky was poking through the steel-grey clouds, streaks of mercury floating on a stormy sea.  Flava Flav was yelling at some girl to show him her titties.  She did.  The late evening sun came out through the clouds.  He felt better.