Tevun-Krus #66 - Satanic SF

Satanitech - A Short Story by @MadMikeMarsbergen

In retrospect, it was like the forces of good and God had been working against him the second he stepped out of his house to go purchase Happy Funtime's new album, Life's a Peach. Apparently it was a satanic piece of music, imbued with pure evil in bizarre and sadistic rituals involving lots of slashed wrists, screamed words, dissociative drugs, upside-down pentagrams and nanites patrolling the bloodstream.

But he didn't know that, not then.

Billy Gardner had never shown any real interest in Satanism. Who gave a shit if you worshipped the devil, the Bible, or a dreadlocked midget with a twenty-three-inch cock and a cape? Live and let live, motherfucker. Happy Funtime's brand of trippy, grin-inducing psychedelic rock was the only great work he believed in. Fuck Gutenberg and his printing press, and fuck Michelangelo and his giant painted dicks. Happy Funtime was the only art he wanted and needed.

And the new album was supposed to be an amazing return to form. After Enter and Exit's weird additions of gospel choirs and synthesized didgeridoos proved to be a miss, it was good to hear that the bullshit was gone. He was pumped. That's why he skipped out of the house. That's why the angels of God conspired against him.

He didn't know they were angels, though—not at first. They just looked like people to him. Ordinary. Walking to and from wherever, seeing friends and acquaintances, shopping for things, living their own lives. But when he entered the scene, then things changed. People got aggressive, with him and each other. That sweet old lady who smiled and said hello to everyone she passed was walloping Billy with her handbag and bronze-eagle-handled cane. Some little kid riding a trike and sporting a mullet attempted to run him down. Road rage surrounded him. Cars crashed into streetlamps. Girl scouts pulled out guns instead of cookies and started shooting everyone in sight.

Billy ducked for cover behind a crashed car, cranked open the dented door and used the unconscious driver as a bulletproof vest. He knew getting into a proper workout regimen had been a good idea. He made it a hundred feet before he dumped the bullet-ridden corpse in a sewer. It was amazing he'd survived without a scratch, considering the hundred-ten-pound woman he'd used for protection was as thin as a leaf.

Wandering out of the city centre and into the outlying suburbs, chaos still reigned supreme. But at least there was room to breathe. Less drivers, less foot traffic. Still a hell of a lot of angels with fucking guns. Who knew so many Canadians owned high-powered assault rifles and carried them wherever they went?

Not him, that was certain. But shit, the world was changing.

The HMV's distinctive logo—literally just the letters HMV in bold pink—beamed out at him from behind a Canadian Tire. He raced towards it, dodging a cannonade of fresh fruit, bouncing car tires and careening shopping carts. One glance behind him and it was obvious the angels weren't eager to let him get away. A whole mass of lunatics chased him, panting and salivating, golden halos over their heads.

Fuck. That.

But he was almost there. Almost at the entrance. He saw another guy his age sprinting towards him from around the corner. Towards him or towards the store, just like he was? He didn't know. Didn't care, either. Billy was prepared to barrel through the cunt if he, too, was an angel with a mission from God.

But the guy stopped and started crying before he made it to the automatic doors.

A fat dude in overalls and a glowing tinfoil hat galloped onto the scene, rolls jiggling beneath his scant attire. He snorted and sniffed at the air, and Billy realized fatso was blind.

Billy grabbed the other guy and pulled him through the automatic doors and into the HMV.

"You, too?" Billy asked him.

The other guy didn't speak, still too winded. Just nodded.

HMV employees rushed the doors from inside, locking them up, barricading them.

"What the fuck is happening?" asked a pimple-faced boy with a squeaky voice. His name badge read TRAINEE.

An older, wizened man with long grey hair and multiple cigarettes hanging from every orifice came out from the maintenance room alongside a cloud of marijuana smoke. His HMV uniform was wrinkled and stained with an array of colours and odours. His name badge read ANGUS. "God is getting desperate, trainee," he grumbled, staring out into the abyss outside. "Old fuck knows he's losing his flock to the powers of kickass fuckin' music."

Angus gave the horns to the angels pacing around outside and they hissed, reeling away like a forefinger and a pinkie directed their way was physically painful to them. "Smell that?" he asked Billy and the other guy.

Billy took a deep whiff and gagged.

"That's angel piss, mate. Mostly made up of diarrhea and ginger root, their dietary staples." Angus nodded, satisfied, and lit up another smoke. "I best mop up the puke next to the Slipknot CDs. I hope you boys find the satanic tunes you're looking for. 'S'all we got, in times like these."

Shrugging, Billy went in search of the new Happy Funtime CD. He didn't know anything about angels or Satan. He knew good music. And Happy Funtime provided that. There were a dozen copies, a dozen beautiful copies of Life's a Peach.

The cover art: The giant peach floating out in space had oceans and continents and all that other kind of Earth shit that Earth had. But it still looked like a peach with all that peach fuzz and yummy peachy colour. Shit was weird. Then, to top it all off, floating out in space, no spacesuit, just wearing some regular hippie clothes, was some dude soaring in with his eyes wide and his mouth even wider. Ready to take a big bite out of life, that fuckin' peach, man.

What an album cover. He hoped the music was just as awesome.

Billy took one of the plastic-wrapped jewelcases and went to go pay for it.

The cashier glanced out through the windows behind her and said, "I suggest you listen to track six before you leave."

"Why?" Billy asked, tapping his debit card on the terminal.

"For protection. Trust me." She handed over his receipt, her cellphone and a pair of earbuds. "It's the only way you'll make it home."

Nodding, Billy plugged the headphones in, put them on, and found the album's sixth song—Gross Old Dude—on Spotify. He sat down against one of the far walls and hit play.

Flanger-laden power chords flooded his central nervous system. His pupils dilated. His body was wracked with all kinds of crossed signals. He saw a mess of colours in his mind's eye, and through the murk appeared a horned entity, grinning sharp black teeth. The pentagram on its forehead glowed yellow, sliced into its flesh many times over. The vocals chimed in, droning on about who knew what, and he felt a hook behind his nostrils jerk him backward.

Suddenly it all made sense.

The angels were lost and confused souls, slaves to God. The music would free them. Satan would free them.

He set out into the world with the cashier's cell phone, ripped out the headphones and cranked up the volume to max.

Billy Gardner would convert the masses to the views of Satan.

One day the world would know no evil. One day they would be truly free.

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A/N: Come check out Satanitech Part II via the external link!