‘The Drummer’ by Stephen Myer

I lost count how many times my fist slammed the door before I heard his body swish. The Drummer weighed a thousand pounds and had a face like a trout. I looked through the peep-hole. A great fish eye stared back as his voice oozed through the thin slit at the bottom of the door.

‘What’s the password, Jack?’ That could have been my name. It didn’t matter.

The password—some line from a song that didn’t come to mind because my brain was chasing an itch.

‘Come on, Drummer. You know me. Let me in!’

‘The word, Jack. Last chance,’ said the fish-faced Cynoscion nebulosus.

The same old shit called memory. I became despondent. This auto-da-fé of Junkman Trout scrambled my cool and sent me into a vengeful reverie, the dream already in progress.

A mermaid writhed in pain giving birth to the Drummer—that oversized Salmo. The fishmonger father crouched beside his suffering mermaid lover with a fillet knife in his hand and waited in ambush to slice up the tumorous troutchild tearing through its scaly-hipped mother.

The curvy octave of Lady Day’s voice slid beneath the door and wormed into my ear as I fell out of one dream and into another. Lady’s a real woman and not a fish. I’d get the word for the reasonable price of a listen as I stood before the Drummer’s gate.

Grab your arm and pull that strap.

Leave your money on the table.

Just direct your beat,

‘To the sunny side of the street!’ I shouted as I swerved across a narrow strip of the Medulla Oblongata Highway.

Deadbolts unlatched and a slimy eye slithered around the door. The floodgate opened and creekish water cooled me as I entered the sacred pond.

‘About time, Drummer.’

‘Hey Jack, you need to pull yourself together. I run a reputable business here,’ said Salmo platycephalus.

His sanctum was small, but the only hole in the city sans roaches and rats. I recognized the smell of his tank. A marinated stench of pesticide and fish perspiration. Every client knew his stink and that he had an elephant’s memory. I visited him a hundred times and he never forgot to treat me like a stranger.

I headed for the sofa where dusty prophets sat silently in small bags: The Professor at the far end, Madman at the other, and between them The Vestal Virgins.

‘Give me the rap, Drummer.’

He didn’t hear me, or didn’t bother to answer. He took a seat behind his snare and started the stir with his brushes.

Shsssssssh, chickkuh- shsssssssh, chickkuh- chickkuhdeedum- chickkuhdeedum.

The ostinato stopped me in my tracks, orbiting my brain as it swept across the gritty terrain of Microcosmic Drumlandia. I was trapped in the stir, wandering through The Valley of Red Devils whose denizens called my name as they danced crazylike upon a burning groove.

The trout swam in his own watery world. His eyes bulged with desire as he stared at the crimson thighs of Oncorhynchus mykiss Mars while his tongue wiggled in the opposite direction, tasting the Oncorhynchus mykiss aguabonita lips of furry Venus. He had one thing in mind wherever he went—seducing the stars with his stir. Man, those straws were a hit as he headed supersonic toward the Galaxy of Bliss.

I hopped off the soundtrack, recalling why I came. There wasn’t much time. Under the revelations of his brushes it was all business—and strict as hell. If you didn’t pick up your score and leave your bread on the table before he finished his stir, the Drummer dismounted his throne buried deep in his ass and grabbed you by your scabby arm and threw you out of his Sistine Shrapnel where you’d choke on the cigarette butt of someone’s blue afterlove tossed into the gutter of this defiled city years ago by some subterranean suicidal window jumper. And if that happened you were done, man. You could never come back.

His scaly skin glowed like a rainbow as he controlled the sound and the fury. Here, in his Holy of Holies built circa 19Forevermore, The Grand Vizier sustained his sick believers.

I picked up The Professor.

‘No,’ he said, navigating the stars. ‘You don’t want to spend time with yourself.’

‘I tried Madman last week. Not crazy enough.’

‘The Vestal Virgins, Jack. Straight from their engagement on Olympos.’

His brushes returned from the heavenly oceans of Outtahere and he looked at me with flaming eyes that could turn back an army of dark angels.

‘Put your bread on the table and split.’

‘Can I shoot up, here?’

‘That shit is highly frowned upon.’

‘Please. Lay some pity on me.’

‘Pity don’t come cheap, Jack.’

‘Your stir is out there, Drummer, the best there is.’

‘Yeah. Tasty, ain’t it? Exception made—a Jackson and this vial of pity is yours,’ he said, holding out a slippery fin.

The donation supported a worthy cause. Me. He took my bread and stuffed it into his gill, then pointed to the launching pad at the back of the flat.

‘Hurry up,’ he said.

The Drummer returned to whatever planet he had been trying to slip his slimy phallus into.

Shsssssssh, chickkuh- shsssssssh, chickkuh- chickkuhdeedum- chickkuhdeedum.

I buckled my seatbelt and slapped myself three times until the snake in my arm hissed. Feeding time for vipers. Fangs pierced my skull. The Drummer’s stir went quiet and everything turned black.

‘I can’t see. What the fuck did you sell me?’

‘Man, give them gals time to get here,’ he said.

The clock struck one minute past sidereal time and my sight returned as the Vestal Virgins appeared high over the tarmac in their heavenly chariot. The horses took a hard right and the ladies tumbled down. I asked them to remove their gowns while I hopped out of my trousers. They looked confused, then opened some codex of curses and began chanting. These sexy incantations drew the attention of Mother Vestal who made her way to the front of the line.

She went junkie penis hunting and squeezed until I genuflected, then delivered a short but disappointing sermon.

‘Sorry, Jack. Today is Saturnalia Eve in the Roman Empire. The Virgins have the day off. We were headed for a sacrifice when the Drummer called in a favour.’

‘I don’t dig, Mater.’

‘You’re out of sync. Look, but don’t mingle.’

‘Please, Mother Vestal. Get with the groove and make it happen. Release my testicles and give up the ladies. It’s not my fault. The Drummer lost his time.’

‘No one except you cares and, by the way, your private parts are nonrefundable. Read the fine print.’

‘What’s to become of my hard-earned coin?’

‘Listen, Jack. What do you hear?’

‘Only you.’

‘Right. The Drummer beat it. Swam away with your bread.’

‘He wouldn’t do that. I’m one of the faithful.’

She picked up a cigarette butt from the gutter and lit it with her breath.

‘Here. The Drummer wanted you to have this. It’s a parting gift, Jack. He split for a gig on the West Coast of the Milky Way and won’t soon be back.’

I was in a tough spot, choking on some stranger’s blue afterlove, squirming like a fish out of water. Mater squeezed harder. The darkness returned—and I was gone, man. Gone.

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Stephen Myer is a writer and musician based in Southern California. His stories and poetry have been published in online and print journals, such as Tales from the Moonlit Path, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Grand Little Things, Roi Faineant Press, JayHenge Publishing, The Avenue Journal, The Quiet Reader, Close To The Bone, Figwort Literary Journal, and others.