Print Edition Vol. 11 - Twist of Cain

Twist of Cain

by Michael J. Stiehl

November, 1988

Sure you can record this, officer, I don’t mind. You’re not going to believe me anyway. You wanna know what happened tonight?  Okay, I’ll tell you, man, chill out. I’m the only one who can, you know, because I was there for all of it. But I told you, you won’t believe me. The person responsible for everything that happened tonight is Donnie Lamb. I know he’s dead.  God damn, we used to be best friends, okay?  But it was him, I swear to God.

Start at the beginning? Okay. 

I guess it all started a while ago but I didn’t get dragged into it until last Thursday.  I was in science class with my lab partner Emily Hoskins.  Who’s she?  She’s Tina Mueller’s best friend and it was Tina’s house where everything went to shit tonight.  We’ve been lab partners ever since we were both late to school one morning and Mr. Trainor, my dick science teacher, put us together.   Trainor probably thought it would be funny to punish the preppy by partnering her with the burn out but the joke was on him.  See, he figures I’m a dope because of my long hair and leather jacket but I’d already read way ahead in his class so Emily and I crushed that lab.  Took the wind right out of his sails and put a grin on my face.

After we aced that lab, Emily stuck with me as her partner. Now normally the idea of having to deal with a stupid preppy on a regular basis would be, like, right out for me but Emily’s not like that.  She wasn’t stuck up or stupid or anything. Of the preppy girls, I always thought she was the least annoying and easiest to look at. There were even days when I wondered about her, you know?  Like once, I swear I saw her outside school wearing a Def Leppard shirt.  You know, not exactly metal, but close enough.

Then, last Thursday, we got to talkin’ during class and she told me about Tina’s party. She tells me it’s going to be killer and that I should go. I looked at her all skeptical and said, “Thanks but no thanks.” She got annoyed. She’s was all, “Oh, sorry it’s not metal enough for you,” and I almost took the bait.  Normally I’d go off on a preppy that gives me shit about metal, but I could see she was upset so I let it go. 

I told her that maybe I’d go, knowing I wouldn’t. I’d rather be in detention with Trainor than spend a Friday night at a preppy party. Besides, Friday night is Shock Theater on Channel 18, no way I’m missin’ that for some shit party. But then she says I’d better show up because Lars was going to play a copy of Donnie’s last mix tape, the one where you can hear him die.

Who’s Lars?  He’s our foreign exchange student this year, a total ass from Sweden or somewhere.  He’s still got that weird feathered hair that was big like four years ago, with those frosted tips.  Like a reject from that a-ha video.  

I didn’t have much to do with Lars. He mostly hung out with the A+ crowd, you know, all student council and prom committee. The kind of people whose idea of good music is Rick Astley and Phil Collins and shit. A punch in the nuts is better than listening to “A Groovy Kind of Love.”  God damn, that song’s a bag a dicks.

Lars is one of those guys who’s always tryin’ too hard. He was always making wild claims about stuff and having his bluff called. Like once, at lunch, he claimed he had Walkman that didn’t need batteries, you could just plug it in when you got home and it’d be ready to go in no time. Yeah, right. Brad Johansen called him on it right there in front of everybody and told him to bring it to school the next day. Man, Lars was out sick for a week after that. What a turd.

So after class I can’t stop thinking about Lars and that mixtape. See, sometimes my brain grabs ahold of a thing and won’t let go. Walking home I kept running it over and over in my head. How could Lars have gotten a copy of Donnie’s last mix tape?   Then I remembered this incident with Lars about two weeks ago at Donnie house.

What was I doing at Donnie’s?  I already told you, he and I were like best friends until 4th grade, okay?  But then his parents split up and he got weird. Weird how?  Weird like I caught him carving up the neighbor’s cat once in his back yard after school weird. Kid had smile ear to ear while he was doing it. Man, that shit put ice in my veins. 

Rumor was that Donnie was into all kinds of dark shit but I think people only thought that because he looked so weird.  On top of being near sighted as hell he also had some gland problem or something.  It made him really short and skinny but also kind of smelly.  Plus he always blamed his zits and greasy hair on it, I think that was bullshit though.

Anyway, I do know for a fact his Mom put him in some kind of asylum for a while. That really big one out by highway forty-five I think. How do I know?  Okay, look, I can tell you this now, because you can’t bust him anymore, but I used to buy bootleg albums off of him and last June he went missing for almost a month. 

See Donnie might have been a creepy weird kid that everybody avoided at school, but he was also kind of a genius. I don’t know how, but he was always scamming Columbia House for free records and tapes.  He’d sell you an album outright for half price if you wanted it, but he also made these sweet mix tapes. He’d sell those for a couple of bucks. He usually did a good job cherry picking the best tracks, so I used to score a tape from him every couple of weeks. 

I’d just go on by, knock three times on the second basement window from the front and wait. There wasn’t any point in calling ahead because Donnie’s family didn’t have an answering machine and his room was in the basement where the phone’s extension cord didn’t reach. He always came out after a couple of minutes though and had something new to sell.

He started the whole mix tape thing a little while after I stopped hanging out with him for good. We had this argument about Black Sabbath. It was nothing major. I was just saying that I kind of liked the Dio version of Sabbath and he said I was an idiot, that the only good Sabbath was the Ozzy Sabbath. Finally, we agreed to disagree and Donnie went off to the bathroom. I was reading through the liner notes to a Helloween album when he put his pocket knife to my throat. 

“Say the Dio version of Sabbath is shit,” he said.

That knife had an almost four inch blade and I could feel it pressing against my throat. I looked sideways at him and I saw that horrible smile on his face, the one he’d had with the cat, and I swear to God I thought I was going to be next. Just as suddenly as he’d put the knife to my neck he took it away. I was freaked out, but he tried to play it for laughs. Like, “Man, you should have seen the look on your face.”   That kind of shit. I don’t think he was foolin’ though. That’s why I never went back.

Two months later I got this mix tape in my mailbox. It was labeled “C.J.’s mix.” Kids used to call me C.J. in grade school. That shit came to a stop after Dad left and I started middle school. My Dad and I have the same first name which caused confusion. No Dad, no confusion. No more C.J.

Anyway, the tape was pretty killer, I loved everything on it. He included this note that said I could buy another mix from him in a couple of weeks. For old time’s sake I did. It was weird though. He’d changed in just those couple of months, he looked older and more distant. He didn’t want to talk about the tape he made me either and he never made another like that, not one with my name on it anyway.  He never really reached out to me like that again actually.  

After that, I knew we weren’t really friends anymore, but I kept going by. You know, in part for the cheap tunes but in part because I kind of worried about him. I guess you could say I still cared even if he didn’t.

Then, of course, he killed himself. 

Not long after a rumor started going around. Rumor was, that Donnie had been making a mix tape the night he died. Some people said it was just him talking crazy for 90 minutes or that he broke into songs and babbled about the Devil.  Other people said it was just a normal mix tape but that it ended with the sound of his body hitting the floor, you know, real Faces of Death shit.  People even started saying that if you listened to it all the way to end you’d go crazy like Donnie and kill yourself too. They even blamed Missy Baumgartner’s breakdown in school on Donnie’s mix tape, but, damn, that happened months before Donnie died. Naturally, everybody wanted to hear that tape but nobody had a copy of it. 

I figured the whole story was bullshit but, like I was saying, then I remembered this incident with Lars at Donnie’s house a couple weeks ago. I was walking around the neighborhood blastin’ Seventh Son of a Seventh Son on my Walkman after a blow out with my Mom when I saw him.  He was looking into Donnie’s basement window. I stopped and watched what he was up to. He kept looking back over the front gate to the street to see if anybody was around but I guess he didn’t see me in the dark.  After a minute, he reached down and tried opening Donnie’s basement window. When it didn’t budge, he went around back and I figured he might be trying the back door or another window or something.

I wasn’t about to watch Lars rob Donnie’s house, so I walked up, caught him standing in the yard and said, “Hey, what were you doing with Donnie’s window?” You know, letting him know I’d seen him. Lars was scared, and for a moment I thought he might run anyway, but then he calmed down and told me it was none of my business.  So I grabbed him by the shirt and asked him if he wanted me to make it my business. 

That got Lars to change his tune.  

Suddenly he’s really friendly and he starts explaining that he’d paid Donnie for a mix tape the week before he died and had never gotten it. He asked if I could help him get it.  He said he’d heard I was friends with Donnie and that maybe I could ask Donnie’s Mom about it.  I reminded him that this probably wasn’t the best time to ask Donnie’s Mom for anything.  

Then I asked him how he even knew that Donnie had finished the tape.  He gives me some story about how Donnie called him and said it was ready right before he died. Now I know that’s bullshit because, like I said, Donnie didn’t use the phone and he sure as hell didn’t make custom mix tapes for people. At least not after the one he made for me.

I said all that to Lars and he got huffy. He pulled away from me and started yellin’ about wanting his money or his tape and I told him to fuck off. I told him I’d better not see him around Donnie’s anymore or I’d kick his ass. Lars took off and I didn’t give it another thought until Emily said what she did about the party.

So as I was walking home that day after school I began to think what if Lars did break into Donnie’s house and steal his last mix tape when I wasn’t around?  That would be the only way that loser could get a copy.  If he really had that tape, and played it at Tina’s party, it would cement his place with the preppies for the rest of the year. 

I headed over to Donnie’s right away. I rushed into his back yard and started looking at his basement windows, you know, to see if any of them were broken or boarded up. Everything looked fine. Then I went and checked the backdoor and didn’t see any sign that someone had broken in. I figured they could have fixed he damage but that seemed unlikely. I was stumped. 

That’s when I was surprised by Donnie’s Mom.

She was walking out of the garage and toward the house when she saw me. She was holding a bag of groceries. She said, “Chris?” as though she wasn’t sure it was me. I said, “Hi.” and then she asked what I was doing there.  I didn’t see any reason to lie. I told her I was worried that somebody from school might try to break into her house and I wanted to see if everything was okay. She said everything was fine and that no one had broken in. 

She looked so damn sad, you know. So I said, “I’m real sorry about Donnie,” and she just stood there like she didn’t know what to do. I’ve never seen anyone look that lost. Then she walked up to me and gave me this huge bear hug, like crushed her groceries and everything, and said, “Thank you Chris,” and started to cry. She just buried her face in my leather jacket and let it all out. I just lied and told her everything would be all right.

The next day at school I puzzled over Lars and that tape all day. Everybody was talking about Tina’s party that night and Lars was a total superstar. Even people who never talked to him like were acting like his best friend. It made me want to puke.  

It also made me wonder, if Lars hadn’t broken into Donnie’s house how else could he have gotten that tape?  That’s when Cosmo popped into my head.  If anybody had that tape it was him. No, I don’t know what Cosmo’s last name is, everybody just knows him as Cosmo. If you want his last name ask WYYJ, they were the ones stupid enough to give him his own radio show on Friday nights. That’s probably Cosmo’s only legitimate job. Most of the time he’s a total low life, making money selling pot and Grateful Dead bootlegs to stoners. He also buys beer for under age kids, sells illegal fireworks, can get you porn, that kind of shit.  

So by the end of the day I figure I have to talk to Cosmo. I had to know if Lars bought Donnie’s tape from him. The problem was that aside from his radio show nobody knows where to find him. I mean, he’s probably got some flop house apartment somewhere, but mostly he operates out of this shitty 60s microbus and he’s just paranoid enough to move it around all the time.  

I didn’t know where Cosmo was, but I knew who would—the Dead Heads. It being Friday, they’d be out back behind the school pre-partying, so once the final bell rang, I made my way around to the back of the school to a spot between the dumpsters and the loading dock. There was an alcove back there where people milling around were hard to see.  It was perfect for the Heads. 

There were three of them back there, a short fat guy, a tall skinny dude—I didn’t know either of them—and Doug Tannenbaum. Doug was holding the arms of the tall Dead Head behind his back while the short one was putting the headphones from his Walkman on his head. For a second I thought I saw the tall one struggle, but then he got this really blank look on his face and relaxed before Doug let him go. That was when I noticed that Doug and the other guy had the exact same blank looks on their faces.

I strolled up to Doug and said “Hey,” and as soon as he heard my voice that blank look disappeared. He said, “What’s up?” with a weird spacey voice. I asked him if he knew where Cosmo was and he asked me why I was looking for him. I said I wanted to get a copy of Donnie’s last mix tape. That got their attention. All of three of them suddenly start staring at me and getting closer. Only Doug talked, though. He said that Cosmo was down by the river, parked under the Mitchel Street viaduct. Then he added he could save me the trip, he had a copy of the tape right there. 

Now I was surprised. 

He went on to say that the tape was killer and that I should totally check it out. Then the other two heads said the same thing. I mean literally. They repeated “check it out” right after Doug said it.  I’m feeling a little weird at this point but Doug just goes on talking like I’m not even there. He points to the fat kid and says the tape is right there in the fat kid’s Walkman.  That I should listen to it right then.  Not even waste a minute.

I said, “Thanks but no thanks, guys, I gotta jet,” but then his two friends made a move on me. The skinny one put his hands on my jacket before I could get away. I yelled, “What the hell?” but he didn’t even flinch. It’s like he didn’t even see me getting mad. I knew the fat kid was probably going to grab me from behind if I didn’t do something quick so I kicked the skinny guy in the balls as hard as I could. I wear steel toe boots, so he went down hard. 

I moved forward just as the fat guy tried to grab me, and I saw Doug, Walkman in hand, coming toward me. I spun around and socked the creep behind me in the face, knocking him on his ass. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose; he didn’t get up again.

Then it’s just Doug and me. I backed away, but Doug got this crazy look in his eyes and he lunged at me.  I stepped back and hammered him in the back of the head as hard as I could. He went down in a heap and the Walkman went flying. It slammed into the side of a dumpster and the cassette inside flew free, hit the ground, and cracked open spilling tape all over the place. I looked at Doug as he lay on the ground. He was still mumbling about listening to the tape. 

I got out of there and headed home. There I grabbed my bike, my Walkman and a couple of tapes for motivation. I popped on some tunes and peddled like hell over to the viaduct and sure as shit there was Cosmo’s microbus.

The rear passenger side door facing the river was open with weak ass Grateful Dead music wafting out of it, along with the distinct funk of Cosmo’s premium bud. I walked up and saw Cosmo lying on a cushion, smoking weed.  He was a real fossil with his tie-dye shirt, Lennon glasses and greasy grey hair pulled back in a ponytail.

I’ve probably only met this guy like once or twice before, and right out of the gate he says “Hey C.J., what up man?  What can I do you for?” I mean I get it, part of the whole Dead vibe is being easy and friendly but I wasn’t having it.  I gave him a solid what-the-fuck look for using my old nickname and reminded him my name is Chris.

I asked him if he had Donnie’s last mix tape and he answered by slowly rummaging around behind him until he finally produced a cassette tape. Then he said, “What this tape?” with a big shit-eating grin on this face.  There was writing on it in big Sharpe letters that said “Killer Mix” and a date. Right away I knew it was Donnie’s—that’s how he always labeled his mixes.

I asked Cosmo how he got it and he went strictly business, saying he got it from Missy Baumgartner. He could tell I was confused so he said some disrespectful shit like, “Let me break it down for you, man” and then told me that Missy and Donnie had a thing going. “You know, he was fuckin’ her man,” he said with a real creepy look on this face,

Now I knew he was full of shit, Donnie hardly ever left his basement and Missy hadn’t been in school since her breakdown. Then Cosmo said “A little bird told me they met last summer when they were, like, away.”  I ran that around in my head for a minute, thinking back to exactly when it was that Donnie’s Mom sent him to the nut house on highway forty-five and sure as shit it was around the same time that Missy would have been there.

I asked him how much for the tape. He said it wasn’t for sale, it was too valuable, but that he’d happily sell me a dub. I noticed that behind him there were loads of cassette holders on the wall of his bus. One of them had a bunch of tapes with completely different handwriting on the spine and I recognize it as Donnie’s. 

At first I thought he’d already made a ton of copies of Donnie’s last mixtape but then I saw that the date on each tape was different and I realized it was something else, it was a complete set of every mixtape Donnie’s had ever made. Cosmo must have saw me staring because he cleared his throat and said I could listen to Donnie’s last mixtape before I bought it.  He held out his Walkman with the tape inside, the same creepy look as when he was talking about Missy and Donnie fucking plastered on his face. 

That’s when I heard the sound of feet on leaves. 

I turned around and Doug Baumgartner and the other two Heads charging out of the woods. I knew I’d gotten lucky with them last time, so I ran to my bike and hopped on. One of them grabbed my jacket from behind, so I threw an elbow and heard him make a gurgling noise. I cranked on my peddles and I tore off without looking back. I peddled as fast as I could until I couldn’t anymore, then I coasted to a stop, looked back, and saw the coast was clear.

I needed some thinking music so I rummaged through my backpack and popped Tribute by Ozzy into my Walkman. I pressed play and let the sound of the crowd and that classical music he played before his live shows wash over me. My mind wandered, drifting on killer guitar riffs and Ozzy’s soaring voice.  The thought of Donnie hooking up with Missy sounded like bullshit but what if?  What had Donnie been up to lately?  And what was up with Cosmo and the Heads? Why were they acting so weird? Finally, three songs into the album, I realized I needed J’s help.  

Who’s J?  His real name is John Donkel.  John and his older brother Tom are always together so everybody just calls them the Donk Brothers, or J and T to their faces.  They’re a couple of crazy ass skate punks, I know, but J is also smart as hell. He loves weird shit, anything unexplained.  As a kid he was obsessed with that show with Mr. Spock… not Star Trek ... In Search Of…  Yeah, J told me once he’d seen every episode at least ten times. He’d even saved up all of his Easter, Birthday and Christmas money one year to buy a VCR so he could record them. I think he said he had all but five or six of them on tape.

Anyway, if there was something weird going on, J would help me figure it out. So I biked over to his place and rang the doorbell. J lives in a tiny two bedroom ranch over on 67th Street. Their Mom was home and told me they were “down in the dungeon”—that’s what they called their basement. Back in the 70s that basement must have been pretty groovy, but now all that was left was a bunch of scratched wood paneling, cracked green plastic hanging bar lights and a leather studded mini-bar with tears in it.  As long as I can remember it’s been a club house for J and T. They were always filling it with whatever they were into which was mostly weird books, punk records, and lots of gear for fixing or modifying their boards. 

Even though J is two years younger than T he’s about six inches taller but seeing as how J is about six foot five, T is still no slouch. Both of them have to duck everywhere they go in that basement and given that they both have the same near unibrow over their small eyes it makes them seem like modern day cavemen. The big difference is that T almost never talks and J is charming as hell.  I swear, if J cared about anything other than skating, punk music, and weird shit he’d have a future in sales.  That guy could sell anything, you know?  Also, while J is lanky as hell, T is like 99% muscle; that dude is strong as shit. 

I told the Donk Brothers what I’d seen—Donnie’s death tape, weird Cosmo, the spacey Heads—and right away J got real quiet.  He put on his thinking face and pulled a volume of that Time/Life series Mysteries of the Unknown from his bookshelf.  He opened the book, read through it for a bit and then dramatically pointed to a page.   He said he had a theory.  He thought Donnie’s tape might be a soul jar and I asked him what the fuck that was.  J explained that soul jars are objects where people put their souls for safekeeping. He said it was kind of like that movie Dragonslayer when the wizard puts all his magic in that necklace for that nerd who works for him.  He said, “What if Donnie put his soul into that tape when he killed himself?”  I pointed out that didn’t explain anything about the way Cosmo and the Dead Heads where acting.

Then J went on a riff.  He had this elaborate theory that the tape was like The One Ring, you know, from that goofy cartoon movie with the Wizard and the Dwarf.  The one where Orcs sing that song about “where’s there’s a whip, there’s a way.”  Lord of the Rings, that’s it. Like, maybe somehow having Donnie’s mixtape makes you evil, and the longer you have it the more evil you get.

That’s when T grunted and said “Twist of Cain.” 

I said I had no idea what he meant, but J headed over to his stack of tapes, took a cassette, put it in the player, and tossed me the case. It was all black except for a drawing of a skull with demon horns in white and the name Danzig in blocky letters. The tape started and I heard a single guitar note stretched out until it turned into this wicked evil melody. After the melody repeated a couple of time a rockin’ riff started and then Glen Danzig came in. After some yelling, he started singing and I got the point. The song is all about how murder and pain, or the Twist of Cain, makes some people feel alive. It’s an old evil, the desire of some men to hurt or kill—and it’s from the Devil himself. 

That’s when J said, “I know you used to be friends with Donnie, but he’s always been kind of evil.”  Before I could object J explained that in grade school the Donks constantly saw Donnie doing terrible things to the littler kids. Beating them up was only part of it. He lived to humiliate them too. Near as J could tell, Donnie just liked to see people in pain.

I wanted to tell J he was crazy, that I’d played hide and seek with that kid, had sleep overs at his house, and that Donnie had been as normal as any of us, but then I started thinking about it.  I started running over all those times I’d hung out with Donnie and I began to think that maybe what changed about Donnie after his parents’ divorce wasn’t that he got darker or more troubled. Maybe he just stopped giving a shit about hiding who he really was.

Anyway, knowing that Donnie was a bad person didn’t really explain anything. Whatever was going on, listening to the tape was the key. Why else would Cosmo and the Heads be so on it about that?  That’s when it dawned on me, if listening to the tape made you evil then Lars playing it at Tina’s party was a real problem. Like, what if the evil possessed everyone there?  And that’s when I thought about Emily. At the very least, I thought I should go over there and warn her. You know because she’s pretty cool and shit.

The problem was that to get to Tina’s I would need a ride.  I didn’t want to drag the Donks into this, but they practically lived on the other side of town from Missy and T did have a van.  I mean it’s barely road legal, what with its broken seat belts and two smashed out windows that T screwed pieces of sheet metal over, but any port in a storm.  Also T drives like he skates; like a fucking nut. Getting in T’s van was like taking your life in your hands.  But I was desperate, so I explained about Emily and they agreed to take me.
T took off down the road by pulling a killer brake stand and leaving two feet of tire marks in front of his house. They blasted the Circle Jerks or some shit the whole way but fuck if I could hear it over the noise of the wind whipping over those sheet metal windows. Twenty minutes later, they stopped in front of Tina’s. I asked them if they wanted to come in, but they took one look at the preppies hanging out in front and J said, “She’s your girlfriend man.”  Before I could protest, J said they’d hang around for about twenty minutes, in case shit didn’t go well, and T jammed the van into park. As I was walking away J added, “Good luck with the preppy fox!” just loud enough for the people out front to hear.

 I went up the front walk and the first person I recognized was Emily waving at me. I’ll admit I was embarrassed by J, and hoped Emily hadn’t heard him, but I shook it off. A fox is a fox right?  Who gives a shit if she’s a preppy?

Emily smiled and said, “You made it!” before I could even get a word out. I asked her what she was doing out front and she said she was sick of the party but couldn’t leave.  Apparently, she had lied to her Mom and said that she was sleeping over at Tina’s and now she was stuck. Then she added that she didn’t want to hear Donnie’s tape, she didn’t want to hear somebody dying. I asked her if Lars had played it yet and she said she didn’t know. She’d only left the party about fifteen minutes before and he hadn’t before that. 

I knew I had to hurry so I asked her where they were going to play it and she said in the basement because that’s where the stereo was set up. I told her to stay put and that I’d be right back, then dashed over to T’s van. I snatched my bag out of the back, rummaged through it, and grabbed my Walkman. I didn’t know exactly what Donnie’s tape did but I was sure I didn’t want to hear it. The only way that was going to happen was if I blocked it out by listening to something else really loud. I only carried two or three tapes in my bag, you know, in case some dipshit stole it, and while normally Tribute could have been a good choice I had a better one. Judas Priest’s Ram It Down.

I popped it in, slammed on my headphones, cranked it up and ran back to Tina’s house. There was that glorious moment of tape hiss that only happens when what you’re about to listen to something really loud and then, like a bolt of lightning, Rob Halford’s wailing voice burst from the headphones. It made the hair on my arms stand up. Then the guitars started riffing and that galloping beat came in and Rob started telling me how it was going to be. I was pumped. I was pissed. I was going in that house and I was going to wreck anyone who got between me and that fucking copy of Donnie’s tape.

I burst through the front door. The living room was a wasteland. A sea of empty glasses, paper plates and trash thrown all over the floor.  There were still a few people who were either too drunk or too busy making out to go to the basement. Judas Priest continued to pummel my ears as I found the stairs leading down.  Standing at the top, I could feel the heat of the bodies below and smell teenage boy B.O. and stale beer.  I took a gulp of fresh air and went down.

The basement was a rec room where the old furniture and Missy’s dad’s neon beer signs went. It was packed. At the far end of the room, Lars stood behind the bar with a pair of speakers on either side of him.  He was holding a tape in his hands and it looked like he was shouting something. When he finished, I saw everyone start yelling but I didn’t know what because all I heard was “Ram It Down” roaring through my headphones. 

With everyone in front of me there was no time to be nice, so I started pushing my way to the front. When I got within ten feet of the bar Lars saw me. When we made eye contact, he froze. There was something familiar about the way he looked at me. Then a real know-it-all smile crossed his face and he quickly removed the tape from its case and put it in the cassette player behind the bar.

I started shoving real hard then and surged toward him. On my headphones, the second song on Ram It Down was starting. That song is nothing but a guitar solo for, like, almost one whole minute before the band comes in, and in that minute it was like time slowed down. I could see myself moving but I knew I’d never get to Lars in time. He knew it too. His eyes never left mine as he pressed play. The room went still. Absolutely still. Like somebody had flipped a switch that made everyone freeze in place. I could still move though. Whatever was on that tape I couldn’t hear it over the booming noise of Judas Priest. I tried going around the frozen people to get to Lars but then his mouth started moving and he very clearly said “You’re next.”

That’s when all hell broke loose.

All at once, people started grabbing at me. Fortunately, the people closest to me where all dweebs so I popped one of them right in the face before I elbowed another one behind me. I shoved the guy I’d punched and when he fell on his ass he took two or three people with him. That opened a path toward the back of the room and I’m not too proud to say I walked right over those idiots to get out. I crashed through the herd of people and slammed my shoulder into a wall.  Hands came at me, trying to grab me, trying to hold me, and I nearly fell over. I smashed some guy in the side of the head and saw a thick, glass ashtray on one of the side tables brimming with used butts. I twisted toward the ash tray, snatched it, and spun back just in time to smack that jock Chad Lightner in the jaw. Cigarette ash went everywhere. 

I was just to the left of the stairs leading out of the basement. I grabbed hold of the kid in front of me, hurled him out of my way and booked up those steps as fast as I could. As I bust through the basement door my shoulder started throbbing and I could feel blood pump through my body.  I bolted through the kitchen toward the backdoor but it was locked. As I fumbled with the latch, I looked over my shoulder and I saw a couple of jocks bursting out of the basement and running full blast at me. I managed to fling the backdoor open and take a couple of steps outside before one of them grabbed me and started dragging me backward.

I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. The hands holding me let go and I fell forward, crashing into the grass. I rolled over and looked up to see Emily standing above me holding a kid’s aluminum baseball bat, a fierce look on her face. One of the jocks was on the ground, screaming, holding his broken arm. Emily started talking to me as I got to my feet, so I decided it was safe to take off my headphones. “I found it laying in the yard,” she said explaining the bat. I told her to run for it and we took off toward T’s van.  

We got to the van and I flung the side door open so Emily could climb in, then I yelled at T to get us out the hell out of there. As I was hauling myself up, Emily told me to duck and brought the bat crashing down on the hands of some slack-faced creep who was reaching for me. As we tore off I could see at least a dozen people running after us full blast and not a one of them had an expression on their face.

After T had driven for a bit J asked “Did Lars play the tape?”

“Yeah and everyone went bat shit.  Their after me for some reason.” I answered.

Emily asked how a tape could even do that and J filled her in on our theory.  Then I explained to her what I’d been up to all night and told T to pull into the first gas station he could find. It was a rundown old Citgo and once the van was in park I ran over to the pay phone and rifled through the White Pages. J yelled at me, asking me what the hell I was doing, and I told him I was looking up Missy Baumgartner’s address. I knew her Mom’s name was Bunny—no shit, her real legal name—and that there couldn’t be that many Bunny Baumgartners in town. Sure as hell, there was only one. I tore the page out, jumped back in the van and told T to take us to Missy’s. J asked why we were going there and I told him, “We need to talk to Missy.”

Fifteen minutes later we were in front of her house. Before I was even halfway up the front walk she came shooting out the front door. She barreled down the steps, not even stopping to lock the door, toward a car parked in the driveway. I yelled to her and as she swung around I saw she was wearing a back pack and caring an overstuffed duffle bag with a shirt sleeve stuck in the zipper.

She asked us what the hell we wanted with a defiant stance as the tight curls of her perm bounced up and down. Missy is not a large person, I swear she’s barely five feet tall, but people stay out of her way. She has these fierce blue eyes that look right through you, and her mouth is always squashed in an expression that made it clear that she had no time for you.  But right then I realized that her normal look was missing, replaced by fear. I asked where she was off to in such a hurry and she told me to get lost. I told her I knew all about Donnie and her hooking up and I accused her of stealing Donnie’s tape and selling it to Cosmo. Then she let loose this big ass belly laugh like I’d said the funniest shit she’d ever heard.

She walked over to the car in the driveway like we weren’t there and put her stuff in it. Then she turned around, took a deep breath, and told me I was a moron.  She said selling the tape to Cosmo had been Donnie’s idea.  She explained that she and Donnie had met in the nut house out on highway forty-five and that, after spilling their guts in the same group therapy day after day, they realized they had a lot in common.  She figured that, even though Donnie was funny-looking, the more she was herself around him the more he seemed to like her, and she liked that.  After they got out, his Mom was thrilled he had a friend, even if she was crazy, and let them hang out in his basement all the time. 

At first, they just sat around listening to music and talking. Donnie showed Missy all of his records and tapes and explained how he made money by ripping off Columbia House.  Then things got serious and they started hooking up, at least until the day she saw one of his mix tapes and, after looking at the song list on the sleeve, asked him if he’d recorded it off of Cosmo’s show.  Donnie flew into a rage, grabbed a knife, and started waving it around, demanding to know who Cosmo was and what show he had. She ran out of his house terrified, but the next day, after school, he was waiting on her front steps. He apologized, she forgave him, and the two of them started hanging out again, but things weren’t the same. 

 She said after that every time she went by all he would talk about was this crazy shit he was getting off his Commodore 64. His Mom had bought it the year before, hoping maybe computers would be his thing. It was a really nice one, with a floppy drive and a modem, but Donnie only screwed around with it a little bit before getting bored. Missy claimed that Donnie had found this add in the back of Fangoria for a BBS chat board that was all about the paranormal and witchcraft and psychic powers and shit. After that, he’d dusted off that computer and got obsessed with it.

A BBS?  Beats the fuck out of me man. I guess it’s some kind of way for nerds to talk to each other over their computers. Sounds sad as fuck to me.

One night, Donnie said he’d figured out how to make Cosmo pay for stealing his mix tapes and playing them on the air.  Missy wanted him to let that go and tried to change the subject, but Donnie just kept ranting.  He said there was a way for a person to put their soul into an object and possess anyone who used it.  He described it like shoving a person out of their body for good and moving in. Donnie explained that he was going to put his soul into his next mix tape and Missy was going to sell it to Cosmo. Once Cosmo listened to the tape, Donnie would take over his body and then they could steal his pot money and microbus and run away together. He even said he could put Missy’s soul on a tape and that whenever the two of them got bored they could just keep stealing new bodies and start over.

At this point, J started to freak the fuck out.  This was like all of his wildest dreams come true.  He was asking all kinds of questions about how stuff worked and got all excited about the possibilities of switching bodies.  But Missy shut him down real quick.  She said there was a catch. In order to pull off the transfer, the person performing it had to kill themselves. It was the only way to free their spirit. 

Missy said she first thought there was something romantic about them running away together and living forever, constantly as different people. But as time went by, and Donnie seemed increasingly serious about his plan, she realized she didn’t want to do it.  She had no interest in killing herself based on some crazy shit he’d found on a BBS and she pleaded with him to let it go.  Donnie couldn’t, so she broke up with him.

Two days later he was dead. 

Not long after, she got a tape in the mail from Donnie’s Mom with a note saying Donnie had wanted her to have it. Missy said she was crushed.  She felt so guilty that she decided to do what he wanted. She started by spreading rumors about Donnie’s mixtape around town knowing that after a couple of weeks they would get to Cosmo. Then she went to his microbus and sold him the tape for top dollar.  Two hours later, Donnie called. 

It was Cosmo’s voice but everything he said was from Donnie.  He explained that it had worked and that she should get her things together and come to the microbus right away. Apparently, he found a pretty big stash of cash in the van along with some pot. Between the cash and selling the pot, Donnie figured they were good for quite a while.

Despite being scared, she went. When she got there she saw Lars handing Donnie some cash and Donnie giving him a peace sign. Missy waited until Lars left before approaching the microbus, then she asked Donnie what he’d wanted. She said it was weird hearing Donnie use Cosmo’s mouth to explain that Lars had just paid one hundred bucks for thirty copies of his last mix tape.  Donnie figured it was easy money, so he took it.

Donnie intended to rip Lars off, to leave town before he came back for his dubs, but then he wondered what would happen if other people heard a dub of this last mix tape?  If listening to the original let him take over Cosmo’s body would a dub do the same?  Could he take over multiple bodies at once?  Would a dub even work?  He had to know. Since Cosmo had a primo tape-duplicating machine, he tried it out. 

With high-speed dubbing he had the cassette copied in no time. Then some stoner showed up. Donnie sold him some bud and told him he had some new tunes that he should check out. Donnie watched as the guy put the dub of his last mixtape in his Walkman and pressed play. Missy said that Cosmo’s body started jerking around instantly while the stoner stood perfectly still.  After a while, the stoner lost all expression on his face and Cosmo’s body stopped shaking.  Then both the stoner and Cosmo turned their heads and looked at her at the same time.  Cosmo said, “It worked,” while the stoner mumbled “worked” in a flat tone a second later.

Donnie was thrilled.  He wanted to test his limits so he used that stoner do all kinds of crazy shit.  He waved the guy’s arms, made him talk, had him do jumping jacks.  It all worked but always in a clumsy way. It ended when Donnie made the guy run head long into a tree. After getting up with a broken noise, the stoner freaked out and ran off.

That’s when Donnie got his big idea. He told Missy that they should wait to leave town. That Cosmo had his radio show at WYYJ in just a couple of days and that he wanted to play the mix tape over the air, not just a dub, but the real thing. He figured, if he could control a person with just a dub of his tape that with the real thing he could be in hundreds of bodies at once. He’d be unstoppable. He’d be everywhere. 

Missy told him he was nuts and that she never wanted to see him again. That everything was too weird. Then he told her that he’d only done this so they could be together. She knew he was lying so she told him to get lost. It was clear to her that this was no longer about getting back at Cosmo, that Donnie had a darker plan.  He had a chance to hurt everyone and he was going to take it.  

Once Donnie realized she was serious, he started yelling about how she would never get away. That with his tape he could become anyone, everyone, and she realized he was right. That once he played that tape on the radio he’d be all over town. If he wanted to get to her, she’d never see him coming.  That’s why she was running away.

Getting into the car, she said that since she’d broken up with Donnie she’d been stalked by a bunch of Dead Heads—all controlled by him. Fortunately, if she hurt them enough, Donnie lost control. She said she’d kicked so many Dead Heads in the nuts the last couple of days she’d lost count. Then she shut the car door, turned the engine over and drove off. 

As she drove away, I made up my mind. If what Missy said was true, then Donnie was about to do something horrible. It was hard to imagine the kid I’d played G.I. Joes with was capable of that. I asked the Donks to take me to the radio station. I told Emily and them that I was going to try to stop Donnie from playing that tape on Cosmo’s show. I said they could just drop me and take off, but they all insisted on helping.

Turns out the Donks knew right where the radio station was. WYYJ was housed off campus from the college in a small industrial park not far from where they lived. They knew all about it because a few years ago the parking lot for the building was resurfaced and it was a killer place to skate. Over the years they’d mixed it up with the security guards at the building plenty, even having the cops called on them and their boards confiscated. 

When we got to the station, T parked his van on a side street and we worked out a plan. The doors to the building would be locked that late on a Friday. J said that people who had a show at the station pushed a buzzer to get in. The Donks were betting that once a guard saw them skating around he’d come out and lose his shit, and then Emily and I could slip in before the door closed behind him.  

Sure enough, once they started skating, a red faced guard came storming out and Emily and I dashed inside. With the guard outside chasing the Donks we had the run of the place. Emily figured where the radio studio was by looking at the building floor plan at the front desk. It was only a short elevator ride and walk down a hallway to get there. We pulled open the door to the studio and entered this cool lobby area with lots of beat up old furniture and band posters all over the walls. We saw some kind of studio space for bands to play in directly in front of us and on either side of it were two different radio booths, whose walls were glass halfway up.  The band area was empty, but in the booth to our right we saw the DJ who was currently on the air. To our left we saw Cosmo setting up. 

Right away, I recognized Donnie’s weird slouching posture.  Everybody was always telling that kid to stand up straight and he never did.  Donnie didn’t see us in the dimly lit lobby so we made our way over to his studio as fast we could. I pulled the door open and walked in just as Donnie had placed his mix into a cassette deck built into the soundboard. A huge digital clock above the board showed it was five minutes to ten. 

Donnie unloaded some hippy outrage on us about barging in but I said, “Cut the shit Donnie. We talked to Missy, she explained everything,” and that shut him up. We stood in silence for a moment and I could see the clock getting closer to ten. I told him he didn’t have to play the tape and he said he did.  He said he finally had a way to hurt the whole town the way it had hurt him and he was going to take it.  He said I could never understand because I wasn’t a weirdo like him.  People didn’t hate me like how they hated him. He said I had no idea what it was like to have everyone be afraid of you. Even your parents.

The DJ in the other booth waved at us.  The ‘On Air’ sign was lit up so I guess dead air must have been going out.  It was two minutes past ten when Donnie reached for the play button and I tackled him. I managed to knock him backward but Cosmo’s body was tougher than I thought. Maybe it was all the sprouts that dude ate, but under that baggy tie-dyed shirt was a wiry body. Donnie used that to his advantage by giving me a shove so hard I nearly fell over. Staggering backward, I had a clear view of the room and I saw Emily charging at the soundboard to grab the tape out of the cassette player. She nearly got it but Donnie backhanded her like a dick and sent her crashing to the floor. 

That pissed me off.

I lurched forward and punched Donnie right in the ear. It must have hurt like hell because he grabbed it right away. Then I kicked him as hard as I could into the soundboard. He flew backward and smashed into the knobs and buttons. I lunged at him but he rolled out of the way, popped up and smashed me in the face with his fist. I stumbled backward and fell. 

Donnie pressed play and in an instant he was live to high school and college kids all over town. As I got back on my feet, I heard the opening notes of some song I didn’t recognize and then the sound of Donnie’s voice. He was saying something faster and faster in a rhythmic language I didn’t recognize. I wanted to plug my ears but I couldn’t move. Donnie turned and smiled an evil smile with Cosmo’s face and I realized that T was right. Donnie never was a normal kid. He might have looked like one, he might have even acted like one, but deep down he had the Twist of Cain in him. 

I tried to fight against the tape but I couldn’t. Something was entering my head, like another set of thoughts were trying to occupy my mind.  I knew it was Donnie and I saw him right in front of me enjoying every moment of it. But then that evil fucking grin on this face changed. He looked worried and his mouth opened and he started screaming.

That’s when I saw Emily, she must have plugged her ears with her fingers before Donnie had pressed play because she was on her feet.  She was moving slowly, fighting against the sound, and finally, with a leap, she crashed into the soundboard, took one of her fingers away from her ears and slammed it down on the stop button of the cassette deck. 

Everything was suddenly quiet except for Donnie’s screaming. Behind Cosmo’s now broken Lennon glasses his eyes were wide and darted around the room as though he could see things we couldn’t. I got to my feet and punched him squarely in the face. He went down like a sack of shit and laid there, out cold. 

That’s when the DJ in the other booth came over and asked what the hell was going on.  . He took one look at Cosmo laying on the ground, drool running down his face, and froze.  I yelled at him to call an ambulance and he ran off. I guess that’s when he called you guys.

What?  Donnie’s in a coma?  I guess that’s for the best.  We’re all probably safer that way. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s all true. Donnie Lamb caused a house full of kids to riot, and who knows how much other shit, by playing that tape and he’d do it again if he had the chance. If you ever find Missy, she’ll tell you I’m right. 

Where’s the tape?  I’m no shit head. As soon as the DJ left I crushed it with the heel of my boot. I squirreled the loose tape into my pocket before you got there and when I went to the bathroom just now flushed it all. Nobody ever needs to hear that shit again. If you guys had any brains you’d find all the dubs and burn them too. 

So, now then if you don’t have any more questions, can I go?  I’d like to get home and grab some shut eye. I’ve got a big date tonight with Emily, my preppy fox.

END