Strange Poison
The moon rose high above the city skyline, cold white light just bright enough to pick out the silhouette of the jagged rooftops. Some sharply peaked, some high and flat, some artistic architecture with slightly slanted towers. It made the city centre streets look like the teeth of some ancient monster if you looked from high enough.
Mercurio watched from on high. He was a rock star, a prima donna, a visionary, a punk, and a psychopath. It just depended which newspapers you read. None of them were silent on the subject of this new idol. Everybody was talking about Mercurio and his band, the Throne of Lust. Those who weren’t fans spoke out freely about how his elaborate stage shows should be banned, how the guy should be put in jail. They couldn’t stop him, though. The Throne didn’t believe in performance permits. The word had gone out tonight through secret channels, a dozen obsessive fans in the city hearing from a friend of a friend that Throne of Lust were in town, and they’d be playing here. Those girls told their friends, and they invited people they trusted to come with them. It was all word of mouth in a subversive, anti-parenting subculture.
Even if someone leaked it to the police, or was overheard by an older sister or parent, there was nothing they could do. It took the police a day or more to organise a raid on an operation of this size, especially after the rapid responders had rushed too late to a show in Seattle only 2 days ago. Only two hours after the venue was first leaked, this warehouse in the shadier side of town was packed to the brim with twenty thousand screaming fans; the streets for a dozen blocks in every direction blocked by those who had arrived too late to get in.
There was a gig tonight, so Mercurio couldn’t stay up on here forever, as beautiful as the crowd of eager faces was. He looked down at them, and maybe met the eye of one over-excited fan, and a dozen teenagers observant enough to look had a heart attack as it seemed the masked figure might be looking their way. He gave a smile that he knew they couldn’t make up, and turned to descend the stairwell that led to a high, rusted gantry over a warehouse floor. There was no decoration, no seating. Just a high gantry that was being used as a stage, and fans packed as close as they could force themselves in on the floor below. The only equipment they’d bothered to install was a couple of portable speaker racks hanging from the walls. As the floodlights flashed and turned the crowd below into a screaming sea of brilliant white fire, Mercurio felt the familiar compulsion fill his body. He threw back his head and screamed out the first line of the song, booming over the sound of the fans without waiting for their fervour to subside. He strode back and forth on his high catwalk, while secondary lights sought out the drummer and bass player on smaller balconies. Mercurio wore a black and red leather kilt, as well as a top formed of overlapping PVC belts, and a mask of fine porcelain. Nobody could doubt that here was a star of the latest style to be demonised by parents the world over: Blood Metal.
The music was wild, a violent energy combined with complex riffs that would test the skills of any classical guitarist. But five minutes into the first set, the show progressed from the almost-glam strutting and posing towards the antics that made blood metal unique. The catwalk here was connected to some kind of crane, and could roll over half the audience. Mercurio had worried for a moment about screaming fans looking at him from below, but there was no way he could escape it now. When he got to the main event, though, he saw the benefit of his mobile stage.
He cast his gaze across the sea of adoring faces, most of them female. Eventually, he found what he was looking for in the eyes of Julienne Warner. She looked young, barely an adult, and had the bearing and grace of one of the tattoo-clad neogoths who roamed the street these days, though her pale skin shimmered impossibly pure white as the spotlights cris-crossed the crowd. He could see her hunger as soon as he met her gaze, and his own desire must have been reflected back almost as strongly. The girl beside her was beautiful too, but a young lady tainted by the rigours of real life. Her skin just showed the first trace of laughter lines, and her devotion to the Throne had led her to get a tattoo of interlinked teeth around her upper arm; Mercurio recognised it instantly as one of his own designs.
He beckoned to both women from directly above, and kicked down a collapsible ladder, like those on so many of the fire escapes outside. The lowest rung clanged to a halt around head height for the crowds. The two girl grabbed it and hauled themselves up eagerly; they wanted to be his playthings as much as he needed the sweet taste of them. They danced and swayed, two girls so different, but neither would have given up this moment for anything.
Mercurio played the guitar as he sang, a pick like a razor plucking out such beautiful, complex tones. But as the tune reached its frenzied peak, his hand whipped out to seize the blonde girl, Tiffini, by the tattooed ring around her arm. In time with the drum beats, never breaking rhythm as he switched between his music and his art. On the skin of two models, china white and tanned gold, he traced beautiful shapes in the medium of blood. The lines wouldn’t last forever; Julienne’s skin bore the faintest possible white lines from a previous show.
Some of the girls came back night after night, following the secret festival from one city to another. Those whose skin had been marked found themselves addicted to the spotlight, to his presence. Mercurio was charismatic, he couldn’t help it, and he wondered if anyone else ever realised just how many times he had called this one up to dance with him.
The press said that Mercurio was a madman, that his music was poison for the soul. But to him, it was art, the most intimate form of expression. Every partner he performed with was a blank canvas, and every one was able to appreciate his talent. When he had first experimented with paintings of blood, skin, and desire, he had never known it could come this far. But now he was Mercurio, this was his fame, and he couldn’t stop if he wanted to.