Cord should have been sleeping off the previous night’s overindulgence. Instead he slouched over the bar, his clingy black T shirt felt too small and his jeans were tight enough to feel like they played an integral part in keeping him upright. He only had to nab a few photos then he’d go home. His feet pushed onto the chrome edge of the bar stool for balance as he listened to the bass line of the third song in the Gatekeeper’s set. Listened was an understatement. He felt it vibrating up from the floor through his seat. He set his right foot down on the floor and felt the surge ripple up through the thinning sole of his faded black converse and move up from his leg to his stomach. Pounding. Maybe the pumping line of pure rhythm would give him the energy to get up and snap some shots.

Cord inched up onto his elbows, raised his head like a sleepy dragon, and peered out from beneath a messy clump of thick brown hair. He felt like puking. His head dropped back onto the counter, and he braced himself with his hands. Swallowed hard, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and wished he’d gone somewhere else tonight. Or nowhere. He sat up slowly, determined to take the shots from here, seated. He needed the money. And besides, he’d already dragged his ass here.

“Shit” he mumbled to himself when he saw Laney, his stupid ex girlfriend show up with her new girlfriend, Quincy. Hasn’t even been a week. Not in the mood for that. Sigh. He was hurt when she dumped him for a girl, and a little turned on. The though of slapping her across the face popped into his mind. So did the thought of them kissing. More. He noticed he wasn’t too hungover for everything and shifted a little on his stool. Grinder was crowded as hell tonight, anyway. Maybe they wouldn’t notice him.

“Get the pics and get out” he said aloud.

“Need something else?” the bartender asked.

“No,” he tried to smile. “No. I’m good.” Cord sipped his club soda and breathed deep.

Fourth song of the set and the gatekeepers were picking up momentum. Grinder packed in 500 at most.  Tonight looked like more than that. The second story was jammed and the floor was standing room only. The stage was maybe four feet higher than the floor and crammed with hot goth chicks whose expression wavered between a carefully honed presentation of disinterest and honest lust as they watched the band. Dark, draped clothes, bodices. The androgynous girlboys, grrls, boyz. Every version of genders quite unique in the making: derbies and caps, suspenders, spats, boots and miniskirts, skirts over pants, and anything pinstriped that ever existed. And good looking gang of misfits, at that. No matter what you were looking for, you’d find it. Cord wondered if maybe he’d find someone new tonight too, and straightened up with his camera in hand. Tried to look cool and professional. The crowd swayed a little as the band revved into high gear.

The lead singer went by the letter “G.” G’s voice was ragged, low, and full of smoke. He snarled and raised his right arm up over his head; as his sleeve fell back it exposed a long, tribal looking tattoo that traced the muscles of his forearm, maybe all the way to his shoulder. A roar welled up from the crowd as G jumped onto the amp and howled.

Nice work if you can get it, Cord figured. Click. Cord got the shot. “Perfect” huffed to himself and inched off the stool into the crowd. G was in excellent form tonight. Cord shot a few more pics of the stage, capturing just the top of the fans at the base, their mussed hair and pounding fists.

The bassist wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, with the hood tied tight around his face, only his gloomy hazel eyes peering out like a pair of tarnished nickels. He leaned into the mike and started saying something. Not the lyrics. Cord couldn’t make it out. G held his mike in both hands and started talking, too, but with the screeching guitars bringing the song to a close, he couldn’t understand the lyrics. It didn’t matter. Gatekeepers were the new thing. Their tune “Corpse Walk” went viral two months ago. Every gig since went wild, and every one of them had been packed. Just like tonight.

Cord smiled. “Timing.” One perfect picture of the night and maybe he’d edge out another local photographer for a better spot of his own. He looked around. Grinder was a total dive. Busted tables, dinged up bar. Whatever. Most of the freaks that turned out tonight probably originally bought tickets to see the next band, Creepy Jesus. Since the gig was announced two months ago, Gatekeepers blew them away. This was the band to shoot tonight. He had no good reason to stick around after they finished. At least not for long. And two very good reasons to leave: Laney and Quincy.

About six people shoved their way to the front wearing homemade t-shirts with lyrics painted on the back and The Gatekeeper’s emblem, a large “G” with a small “k” and a row of lines like a little iron gate between them on the front. Got to love a band that either sells or inspires homemade shirts. No cross marketing for Gk. They didn’t look bad. The lyrics were from that viral YouTube hit, their minor popularity amidst the margins of goth scene made them a minor big deal. That kind of popularity is as hidden as veins, and just as forceful. No gleeful little babysitting brats or tweens would show up here popping bubble gum at these shows. This show, and pretty much every show at Grinder was for the other people. The ones who were lonely kids and grew up knowing better than to care or hope for anything. In high school they would’ve been alone at the lunch table. Now in or out of college they were just always alone. Except here. That’s why Grinder was always packed. Every night. No matter what band they dug up to play from some bumfuck town. They needed to be here. Together.

Cord thought about his last conversation with Laney. He’d told her his heart was a cavern where the devil lived. He was trying to sound poetic, eccentric. No wonder she dumped him.     Cord glanced toward Laney. She was offbeat, random, spontaneous and adorable. Long sandy brown hair always pulled back in a loose pony tail. She was adorable. He still loved her a little he thought, but not enough to whine about it. Just enough to be pissed knowing she was screwing someone other than him. He looked around but didn’t see them.

G cut into their best tune. They hadn’t even written it. Genius. It was a bunch of lines from a book. Cord couldn’t remember the lyrics. Something Nietzsche wrote about the last man and having chaos in yourself. It was dark, cruel, and ugly. He noticed his head bobbing to the driving bass line, and liked the song as much as he had the first time he heard it, maybe more. He popped out his camera and started shooting. Lighting was a perfect clean stream onto G’s face and the smoke in the room was just opaque enough to infuse an odd mood. Cord smiled thinking he may not have to adjust the images too much digitally when he got home. “One good shot” he mumbled to himself as he clicked.

“You still have chaos in yourselves” G growled, the lyrics pounding around them, everyone chanting and bellowing the underdog’s anthem. Cord started snapping pictures as fast as he could, tried to capture the energy in the room, in G’s voice.

“We have invented happiness, says the last men, and they blink” G crooned. Crowd surged wild, really let go. Cord looked around and noticed something else. Strange. Changes happening to them, within them. To their expressions. Too intense. This he hadn’t expected. The general enthusiasm of the audience seemed too focused, too wild. Weird. Loud murmuring swells of agitated voices buckled up under the bass line, like the crowd took over the song. Cranking, snapping sounds crashed around him as he saw the crowd knocking over chairs and tables, anything in the way of being a few feet closer to G.

“Shit!” he mumbled. The show in Dover two nights ago went berserk and got busted up after Gatekeepers played, and most figured it was drug induced. From the looks of things, Cord started to wonder. All the underground reporters kept using the term “cult following” to refer to G, but this gave it a whole new meaning.

The whole crowd looked dim-eyed, dull as the song tripped into an improv jam. The hoard of voices swelled in the sweaty crowd, still chanting, “the time is coming, the time is coming.” They started to move almost in unison, continuing their grunting chant. It freaked Cord out more than a little as he looked around and saw the movements become bumpy and disjointed. People jostled into each other numbly, mindlessly, and everyone focused on G like he was more savior than rocker. As he motioned his arms, the crowd followed, clanging and slapping into each other like they couldn’t help it, couldn’t even control themselves.

Mesmerism, hypnotism, incantation? Cord couldn’t figure it out, but he’d been spared. He never made any eye contact with G or anyone on stage, or anyone else in the room for that matter. Too busy fumbling with his camera.

Cord kept clicking, but he now looked at the crowd instead of through the lens. He caught his breath when he saw more than chairs breaking. Some dumb kid got shoved down to the floor, arm bent back as he slid slowly beneath a pair of chunky combat boots. Cord watched it snap. The kid didn’t even wince, he just pushed himself up against the wall and kept bobbing his head to the beat. His arm swung around him like an unattached branch snagged on his shirt.

The raw brutality of the injury made Cord wince. Worse than that, everywhere he looked there was a mobbed mass of people throbbing and pushing like a fleshy frenzy. They responded to G instantly with his every gesture and utterance, yet they hurled themselves around with a disjointed insanity unlike anything Cord had seen. They moved too fast, backwards, arms jutting out and grabbing each other in a fury. Like a backwoods religious revival. Cord imagined it must be like speaking in tongues or something as he watched the crowd gyrating and twitching. A few of them landed into each other and looked to be having some pretty intense enjoyment with it all.

“I may have a bit of a pervert streak, but I can’t watch that . . . “ Cord muttered to himself, glancing away to find another group shoving and punching each other wildly. “It’s like the whole room gave way to some primal instinctive . . . “ he stopped. Suddenly thought of Laney. And her damn girlfriend. “Shit.”

Cord looked through the thick mass of mounded bodies pumping with the rhythm into whatever version of fantasy they manifested. Everywhere he looked he saw ugly, sexy, violent bodies thrusting. A few bits of wall had blood splattered on them from God knows what. Cord felt a little queasy again and became acutely aware of a stenches permeating the room. Something tinny, something sour. He didn’t want to look at the floor as he felt something squish and snap as he stepped carefully around the bar. Whatever energy permeated the room, Cord seemed well insulated from its infectious spark, for whatever reason.

Cord snapped a few pictures as he nudged his way back toward the bathrooms, but he decided this was a night he didn’t want to document. Whatever he had, he’d delete this shit and stick to the concert footage. No one needed to know what was going on here. He imagined a flurry of concerned parent groups flickering in internet chatrooms if his photos went public. The hot glare of their judging contempt would spill onto him. Get him 15 minutes of fame maybe. Well, he’d have to figure out later if it was worth it. Right now he had to find Laney.

“What if she’s in there?” Cord asked himself, looking into the thick crowd of orgiastic overindulgence. His eyes landed on a single face: her open mouth a bloody smiling smear, eyes glazed, thick black eyeliner smeared, nose looked a little busted, but still that awful crazy smile. The face turned back into the crowd and he watched her biting into the people around her as they pushed around her in a swirling rhythmic motion. No way this was drug induced. There wasn’t a drug he could name that did this to a person. Cord couldn’t figure anything that would make a person let go of themselves this way, of their inhibitions and taboos. They all just went crazy.

“Laney!” Cord yelled out. “Laney!” he pleaded to no one. He stood outside the bathroom, then decided maybe he should see what was going on for himself. So what if it was the women’s room? Not like any rules mattered right now. He shoved open the door and flung himself in. “Laney, you in here?” he looked around nervously and saw only a few closed stall doors and two people in the corner. Sandy brown hair. That pony tail. She lifted her chin up as Quincy lowered her head onto her throat. Shit. Laney was even hot zombified.

“Laney!” Cord yelled again.

“Shit, Cord. What the fuck are you doing in the women’s room?”

Laney answered. Normal. Thank God. He felt relieved, but didn’t want to look like a stalker. Too late for that probably. Besides, bigger problems waited for them out there.

“You’re fucking in the women’s room . . . ”

“We’re not fucking, asshole.” Quincy was so charming. Lucky and charming. Lucky Charms sounded good. Maybe I’m, feeling better, Cord thought. Focus . . .

“Look, this is going to sound crazy . . .”

“Already passed crazy, Cord. You’re in the women’s room watching me,” Laney said.

“No, seriously. I’m not. Something’s wrong out there. Remember what they said about Gatekeeper’s show in Dover? How everyone went nuts? It’s worse than that . . . worse than you could imagine. Everyone’s” Cord paused, not knowing how to explain the frenzy he’d witnessed out there. “everyone’s real fucked up. Bat shit crazy. I’m not kidding. I don’t think it’s safe. We have to get out of here. Look for yourselves,” he motioned to the door.

Laney and Quincy straightened out their shirts and headed toward the door, pushed it slightly ajar just enough to see the foggy air filled with arms and legs. The sound of groaning pleasure and pain filled the bathroom. They let the door slam shut.

“H-holy shit!” Quincy stammered.

“No shit,” Laney stepped back from the door.

“Right. Now what are we gonna’ do? Is there a way out from in here?” Cord asked.

“No. Window’s too narrow. We’ve got to go through them” Quincy pointed to the door and looked down at her boots. “Think we can get out the front?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen any of the staff for like five minutes. It just, everyone just freaked out when they started the jam session. We have to stick together, OK? If we link arms, tight, maybe we can avoid being pulled into their mob.” Cord shrugged. It wasn’t much of a plan, but what else could they do?

“Right, right. We should keep our backs to it if we can, maybe. Avoid looking in at . . . at whatever the hell is going on in there.” Laney looked at Quincy, who nodded back at her.

“Good idea, Laney” Quincy said. “Do we have any room at the bar? It looked like they were all grouped toward the stage.”

“Maybe a little. And they’re pretty much in their own world, man. I mean, they’re not interested in much outside themselves, at least from what I could tell. It’s just all moving pretty fast, pretty wild. So we have to move quickly,” Cord’s voice shook, but he tried to keep it together.

They grouped together in a row, Laney in the center, clasped both their forearms. Cord stood in front and gave the door a nudge with his shoe. It opened slowly, silently. He reached back with his free hand and gave Laney’s hand a little squeeze.

“Im really glad you’re OK. Both of you. Hold on to the bar with your free hand when we get there,” Cord said back to Quincy. She nodded.

They pushed out into the smoky room. Stage lights still blinked up at the Gatekeepers. G bounced around the stage like an insane conductor, pulling the crowd together in their frenzied festival of flesh. Maybe he’d seen them, maybe he hadn’t. Not one of them felt capable of looking directly up at G. they shimmied close against the bar, working toward the front entrance. Twenty feet, fifteen. Feet shuffling. A stray hand grabbed at Quincy’s hip, clenched it tightly. She felt her leg give way beneath her and the clutch tightened. The fingers pressed through the fabric of her jeans, into the flesh. Little welts moistened with blood as it puckered up beneath the pressing hand. Quincy didn’t dare look at the face connected to that hand as she tried to pry herself free from the grip. She knew it’d be a wild-eyed monster or worse.

“What’s wrong with them?” Quincy quivered.

“Just keep moving,” Laney said.

Quincy’s jeans tore off at the knee as the hand slipped way, maybe moved to more welcoming flesh. Her stomach turned.

“Almost there. Through this door,” Cord pulled them through the sheer plastic inner door that marked the ticket entrance. It was a small room, but seemed safe enough for now. No one had leaked through here. They looked out the glass doors. Normal. No one out there either. At least not yet. The Gatekeepers earned their name.

“Just think, they used to say ‘backmasking’ inspired demonic possession. What would they say about live shows?” Cord smiled.

Quincy and Laney looked at him flatly. “Too soon to joke?” he asked.

“I’d say. Hey, we’re parked right there” Laney pointed to the second car in the lot. Her beat up hatchback never looked better. Can we drop you somewhere?”

“That’d be great. I walked from the transit. You mind taking me all the way home? I don’t feel like . . . like dealing with any more public. Or crowds.” Cord blinked at them, hopeful. He lived in the opposite direction of Laney’s place.

“Sure” Quincy chimed instantly. “You saved our asses in there, man. You’re like . . . like the best stalker ever” she nudged his waist and smiled.

“Oh sure. That you can joke about . . .” Cord smiled.

Thudding at the plastic door startled them.

“Shit. Let’s go!” Laney bolted for the door, dragging Quincy and Cord by their arms. They dashed toward the car and piled in before the crowd muscled out of the front, but they were coming. They all knew it. Laney swerved backing out, tires screeched. They hit the road, safely distant from the mob. They drove in silence, mostly. Catching their breath as Laney sped through the town, still remembering the way to his apartment. She pulled into the parking lot and reached her hand to the backseat to squeeze his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Laney said as Quincy stepped out to pop up the seat so Cord could get out. He smiled. “No problem. I’m just glad we all made it.

Quincy grabbed Cord around the waist and gave him more of a bear hug than he would’ve expected in any other situation. “You’re All right, man. I mean it. You’re really a great guy,” she said.

Laney smiled, glad. Thinking maybe they’d all find a way to be friends now that they’d survived something like this together. “Secret’s out, Cord. You’re a nice guy!” she yelled out the window to him.

“Yah, yah. Settle down. You guys drive safely.” Cord smiled, closed the door after Quincy got back in the car. He watched them drive off. “Nice guy” he kicked a pebble in the parking lot. “Rather be a fucking zombie.”