Yet another four o'clock beat its entrance into the band room beneath Bethany High, the fluorescent lights glaring a hole into the retinae of one Harold Hiller, Bachelor of Music, sipping the dregs of his Irish Teacher's Room Urn coffee. The rejects, retards and renegades of the school, the ones who could find no other extracurricular than band, slowly made their way through the standardized manufactured wood door with the chicken-wire screen slit window into the overlit, sparsely furnished band room, which, despite several million candela, still had the sepulchral pall of the Haley suicide hanging around, the spirit of Steve "Scherzo" Haley clearly palpable, though his lanky body with a ruptured abbreviated head, K-Mart grey chinos and faded white, light yellow and brown striped button up next to the splattered bits of grey matter, blood and bone, topped by the over-sized gold-rimmed aviators he habitually wore, had been thoroughly cleaned, and the area incensed and cleansed by several dozen clergy members. Turned out, the spirits of people who blow their brains out with a zip shotgun disguised as a clarinet are had to remove.Harold did not mind Scherzo's presence, as it meant at least one member of the band was present, if non-corporeal. The second to enter the room was Mazy Van Leeuw, a timid-seeming, conservatively dressed young woman with a long skirt and shirt, lugging her backpack and a flute case. She tripped over the strategically placed music stand Hank Hiller (no relation to Harold) kept leaving after practice. From her backpack flew several dollar store composition books, the cover of each decorated with a different hand-drawn pinup person, as well as a mesh zip bag filled with stick and poke tattoo supplies. The trip had been so bad her skirt fully inverted, revealing the immense mandala of ink on her legs; sex acts, violence, several passion scenes, they were all there, done by her coterie of simps from the adjacent junior high.
"Eh, eto, sorry Hiller-sensei."
"Look, as long as you have my uze, I don't care about what the hell your doing."
"But of course." A cheap pillbox was produced from her left bra cup.
Hiller rattled it, popped it open. Inside was an adequate supply of adderall, xanax and pure morphine.
"Well, maybe we'll get through this semester 'til homecoming alright then." He set aside one of each pill on the stool Scherzo had blown his brains out upon, a libation for the most loyal member of the band.
At half past, the rest of the reprobates arrived. Hank Hiller, the band's erstwhile trombonist, arrived first, noting that his stand had in fact caught its quarry. His massive gut sat on its stool first, then the rest of him.
"Hi Hank."
"High Hiller."
Next was... Cymbals, the band's percussionist. He was less selectively mute than selectively speaking, though apparently of genius IQ. He was also very clumsy and incapable of keeping a rhythm, which made him the band's second most valuable player.
Tsh, tss, bo-ong Cymbals greeted all with.
"Yeah, just set up on the floor there. Don't bother picking your stuff up."
Next were Tweedle and Tweedle, adoptive brothers sharing a foster mill and likely the dumbest kids in school. Tweedle Dflat was black and allegedly on a half-dozen medications to help with his various developmental conditions, but as the Tweedles were the town's one stop shop for stimulants, only the stupefying beta-blockers and anti-psychotics crossed his lips into his gullet. Tweedle C Sharp was twice Dflat's weight, and not markedly ill except for being really, really fucking thick in the skull. Both had recurrent sinus problems, which of course meant they'd get to play rhythm tuba.
"You guys just... yeah, right there."
Finally came the one person who's only issue was severe ODD and ASPD, most likely due to having been kicked out of her house at ten for preferring black clothing. Liza was the band's trumpeter, which would be fine if she was capable of following sheet music as written.
VOCÊ ESTÁ LENDO
The Movement, and other bowel-shattering tales of terror
TerrorA man meets God when his asshole shatters after a long shift, a school marching band summons up forces from beyond, and a member of a church that believes Jesus Christ was supermorbidly obese gets a heart attack... these are some of the selected vis...