Bloody Fucking Hell #4
Johnny stood at the edge of the stage, legs spread wide, his beloved Gibson slung low, the distortion cranked so hard the sound had teeth.
The lights cut through the smoke, and through those slashes he could see them.
The crowd was boiling, a mass of sweating bodies breathing through gills.
They jumped like something was kicking them in the spine.
Hands in the air. Devil horns. Fists. Jaws wide open.
Screams that never quite reached his mind.
And she — his new/old girlfriend, “from the old crew,” who had survived everything and was now surviving him — gripped the microphone and screamed the final chorus.
Her growl was filthy, full, like an engine turning over cold.
The crowd swallowed every word, even though no one knew what they meant.
They didn’t have to. Meaning lived somewhere deeper, in the subconscious, in the collective unconscious.
Johnny hit the final chord, a sound like a door slamming shut. He let the feedback howl for a second longer, let them drink a little more. Then he cut it.
Silence.
One second. Two seconds.
Then the explosion.
“More!” they shouted. “MORE!”
Johnny stared into the mass, his smile stiff.
No encore this time. Don’t spoil them, he thought.
And it was true — once they taste you, they’re hungry forever.
He’d learned hunger was more useful than satisfaction.
You feed them, and they want more. That’s the crowd.
And that was also the thing somewhere deep inside him, quiet, like noise beneath a fade-out.
He turned on his heel and bolted into the backstage area.
Inside, it felt like the inside of an average groupie’s panties: damp, warm, reeking of sweat, smoke, and spilled beer.
Everyone was talking at once, laughing at once, too alive.
She jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. She kissed him ferociously, like she was worshipping a statue cast in gold, not a creature made of blood and meat.
“You were amazing, baby!” he said, gasping for air.
“It was easy,” she whispered, hot and breathless. “Like you wrote these songs for me!”
Yeah. For you.
Something cold moved through the room, like a window opening in a morgue. Johnny shivered. No one else reacted. They were too drunk on success to feel anything but euphoria.
Then the manager burst in — Mi?ko; always the same: expensive jacket over a swelling gut, teeth white as an ad, eyes always calculating.
“Holy shit, what a show! You’re killing it, boys! Say the word — Uncle Mi?ko’ll get you anything you want tonight.”
The bassist slammed his fist into the wall and shouted something obscene and outrageously expensive.
The drummer laughed like a maniac and was already pouring Armenian whiskey, cutting it with coke.
Someone in the corner played music from their phone — their music — and the backstage became its own echo.
No band in the history of rock had gone on tour so quickly after releasing an album.
Everyone kept saying it, like a prayer. But the audience demanded it.
Metalheads from Serbia, the region, the rest of Europe — they were insatiable.
As if someone had finally pressed a button that had been stuck for years, and suddenly everyone remembered they were starving for old-school metal.
Johnny withdrew into a corner with a bottle of champagne that was there purely out of irony.
Metalheads and champagne.
Like watching a wolf in a silk tie.
He drank in big, greedy gulps — because he could. No one dared tell him “Slow down” “Take it easy,” or “That’s not how it’s done” anymore. Now everyone said “Yes” and “Thank you.”
That was more dangerous than any prohibition.
He went quiet.
While the others relived the show — how the crowd screamed, how someone went down in the pit, how security barely dragged a guy off the stage — Johnny stared at his fingers.
The pads were red, chewed up by the strings.
Black grime clung beneath his nails, even though he’d cleaned them before the show.
The music was staining him. From the inside.
She came over and sat in his lap.
“Hey,” she said, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. “What’s with that face? This is a night to remember. Let’s celebrate properly.”
She leaned in and whispered the things she planned to do to him later — things that once would have driven him wild with joy. Johnny smiled faintly and nodded, as if confirming a tour itinerary rather than desire.
Somewhere behind his ribs, something was counting every heartbeat.
How did it come to this?
The memory hit him like a hoof from the dark: that phone call. Unknown number. He’d answered with a lump in his throat, standing in an apartment that smelled of dirty laundry and depression. The CD spinning in the player. The light flickering. Silence settling over the furniture like dust.
“Is this Johnny?” the voice on the other end had asked. A voice he didn’t recognize — but one that sounded interested.
“Yes.”
A brief pause, as if checking the line.
“We’ve listened to the material you sent,” the voice said. “And I have to tell you — this is something special.”
Johnny stayed silent. He felt that if he spoke, he’d tell the truth — and the truth was poison on the tongue.
“I own the studio,” the voice continued. “I think we can make a powerful album out of this. Not just by Serbian standards. Worldwide, man. This is insane. I don’t know how you did it, but I haven’t heard metal this good in years. The guitar… the riffs…”
The words kept coming, dissolving into praise, disbelief. As if the man on the other end already saw the covers, the festivals — Budapest, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague.
“We need to meet. Kid, you’re going to be famous.”
Johnny closed his eyes.
And then the CD stopped on its own. It didn’t skip. It didn’t slow. It just stopped. As if someone had said: enough.
Silence filled the apartment — thick, heavy. Something deep within that melodic universe was waiting for an answer. The phone wasn’t the only line Johnny was plugged into.
“Okay,” he said, and hung up.
Then came the explosion.
New calls. Dozens. Hundreds. Messages. People from the scene. People he hadn’t heard from in years. Guys who owed him money. Guys who’d trashed him on forums. Suddenly everyone had time for him. Suddenly everyone respected him.
And what hurt the most — they were all suddenly right:
See? You could have done it. You just didn’t want to.
The band reunion felt like a funeral turning into a wedding.
The drummer cried — actually cried — hugging Johnny and repeating, “Brother, this is it, this is the real thing.” The bassist brought out an amp he’d been saving “for something big.” She showed up first, before anyone else, as if her place had always been wherever smoke and spotlight intersect.
They played together like never before. Ten years of practice had led to those three days. It finally paid off.
In the studio they recorded the music again, properly this time — with real instruments, real drums, real microphones, real sweat. Johnny watched the riffs leave his fingers and enter computers, cables, hard drives, the world.
They named the album something that sounded like a punch — short, hard, without poetry. Metal doesn’t like too many words when it wants to be remembered.
They signed with a Belgrade label representing the biggest rock and metal distributor in Europe. Mi?ko appeared out of nowhere, like a parasite that always finds warm blood.
And then — the shows.
Small at first. Then bigger. Then sold-out halls.
Word spread through Belgrade like fire through dry grass.
Their music played on the radio, on TV, in the cars of kids who’d just gotten their licenses.
People wore their shirts like they’d always existed.
They even recorded a disc in English — because the market demanded it, because the dream demanded it.
Johnny watched as the life that had been empty just days before filled up like a glass.
***
But his body didn’t follow.
At first, he thought it was exhaustion. The tour.
The studio. Adrenaline. That kind of life drains you.
Then the energy started leaking out of him in a strange way — it wasn’t physical fatigue so much as a battery slowly bleeding dry.
He woke empty every morning, as if something had been sucking straight from his bones all night.
His arms felt heavy. His fingers cold. His vision dull.
At one show — the first big one after those early triumphant days — while the crowd jumped and demanded more, while she screamed the chorus like her life depended on it, Johnny felt everything narrowing. The light turned into a tunnel. The sound collapsed into a single note stretched into infinity.
His knees gave out.
He went down like he’d been cut at the ankles.
He didn’t remember much after that. The ambulance.
The smell of rubber and disinfectant. Harsh lights.
Someone taking his blood pressure. A nurse with long legs and a chest that made him briefly, stupidly aware of being alive, pushing a needle into his vein.
Someone asking how much he’d drunk, how much he’d used, how much he thought a life was worth if he could throw it away so easily.
She sat beside him, holding his hand. Her eyes were wide, wet, sincere.
“What would I do without you?” she said, like a prayer.
He didn’t know what to answer. Probably nothing. Probably everything.
He spent nights alone in that quiet, sterile hospital room. Johnny began to have visions. They weren’t dreams or memory flashes. At times he saw that bloody hand again. The worms. The eyes. And he heard the noise beneath the noise, the rhythm beneath the rhythm.