QUARTZ EYES, per ohlin

highway

Faust pointed the camera at Pelle as he played the drums, after a few years of few moments playing Jan's drums, Per could be considered a reasonable drummer. Snorre was sitting on the couch helping Alex not skewer herself as she switched the strings on her guitar.

"I don't know why this damn string breaks now", Alex grumbled.

Øystein was sitting on the floor, he was spinning the empty beer bottle on the floor in front of him and listening to Pelle play.

"At least it blew out at the end of rehearsal", Jørn said as he reentered the room, kicking Jan's legs to get him out of the way, he retaliated with a slap on the bassist's legs.

"Are you excited for Germany?", Snorre asked, Alex ended up pricking her finger-again-, wiping the blood on the floral dress he wore over his ripped pants.

They had a week to go. Øystein was betting big on these shows, but they didn't even have the money to buy the train tickets, the idea would be to go by car, but it would be cheaper if they went by train.

They would take a train out of Norway, through Sweden, Denmark, then arrive in Germany, stop in Berlin, where they would meet Abo and finally, the last train to Annaberg; just thinking about this entire journey made Alex feel like throwing up: It would be more than 15 hours in trains.

"Pelle keeps talking about it!", Øystein replied with a laugh.

"You didn't do any different, Aarseth," Pelle replied, rising from the stool.

"Oh, shut up!"

"I fixed it!", Alex lifted her guitar with a cheerful face. When she went to try to play to test the new string, another one popped. "FUCK!", her friends laughed as she angrily switched the other string while cursing.

"Where will they play first?", Faust asked.

"We'll play Zeitz", Øystein replied.

"Actually, it's Annaberg", Jørn said, Aarseth looked at him with a look of one who didn't like being corrected at all.

"Uhm...Zeitz", he scratched his throat.

"It's Annaberg! Zeitz stands in the way of Annaberg and Leipzig!".

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!", Øystein raised his voice, Jørn didn't like it at all.

The two began to argue like children, trying to prove the other wrong. Snorre and Faust were silent watching them, probably embarrassed by the situation.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! BOTH OF YOU!", Pelle yelled, surprising everyone. His cheeks were red and his hair messed up, he was tired of all this shit. "You look like two fucking spoiled kids!", they were both silent, looking at the ground, no one expected Pelle to scold anyone, least of all Aarseth and Stubberud.

Silence hovered, the tension was almost visible.

"Annaberg. We're going to Annaberg", Alex said, still concentrating on the string, the phone ringing from upstairs and Pelle got up to answer it without speaking.

"Well... So, Annaberg, Zeitz and Leipzig. Aren't you going to pass through Berlin?", Snorre tried to lighten the mood.

"Abo will meet us there", Alex replied, finishing up the rope. "Ready!".

"Alex, it's for you", Pelle said from the basement entrance, she left the guitar carefully in its place and climbed up two steps at a time.

Pelle took the girl's guitar, sitting in place, holding the guitar in his lap as he listened to the tepid conversation of his friends.

"So... Let's eat?", Jan offered the idea, hoping they would respond positively, luckily for him, they agreed.

They arranged everything before they left, Pelle was silent all the time, he felt tired about everything, he hoped that Øystein would at least take a break a few days before the trip, but he knew that just a few days would not be enough to cure the tiredness that he felt.

Per noticed, on the nights he sneaked out of his room to bed Alex, that her fingers grew more and more callused, he was worried the day he saw her wiping blood off her fingertips.

"Oh yes... Of course", the girl was on the porch as she spoke on the phone, the cigarette was dangling from her skinny fingers and the phone was leaning on the wooden rail of the balustrade with her arm on top to hold it. "We're playing in some East German cities", she sighed, then friends of hers came into the girl's field of view. "I know it's the socialist side... Look, I need to go, alright? I'll call again later", there was a pause, she exchanged glances with the group watching her. "Tell Melina to call me later, bye."

She slammed down the phone and placed it back on the wooden table beside the sofa, took a last drag on her cigarette before stubbornly stubbornly out in the ashtray.

"Let's go eat", Jan stepped forward to speak.

"Shall we drink?", Alex asked, remembering it was Friday. They looked at each other. "Please!", they accepted the idea.

This resulted in, a few hours later, everyone drunk at a bar table, talking and laughing out loud. Øystein decided not to be an asshole to his bandmates that night, everyone seemed to be have so much fun that they felt special. It was a bar, almost a club, underground in Oslo, it had been Snorre's recommendation, the place stank of beer, cigarettes and mold, but they didn't care.

"Cheers to us and everything we've done so far and are still going to do", Aarseth raised his beer mug in the air, Highway to Hell played in the background.

It was definitely the effect of alcohol, but when Bon Scott sang that he was going down the road to hell and his friends would be there too, it made them forget they were in yet another one of the thousands of bars in tiny Norway, they felt on top of the world.