Metagoth

Rosa pinioned her hands against the cubicle as her bowels jetted a red-brown soup into the porcelain. Her stage fright always started in the gut, though Rosa would never have admitted that's what it was. And it never got easier. The tension of stepping out in front of a crowd of unimpressed, unenthusiastic punters caused her gastric contortions she was unable to contain. Fortunately, the smell of some agoraphobic chemist's notion of a pine forest covered up her own colonic aromas.

The cubicle door rattled on its hinges as the sound of the preceding support band reverberated through the venue. She'd be on that stage herself in a matter of minutes, fronting her own band, Stab Him In The Eye, aka SHITE. She took several deep breaths and a shiver ran the length of her body. Her brow felt clammy, but at least now her poor tattered arsehole was recovering its normal proportions.

She relaxed her grip on the stall walls and gazed around at stickers for bands like Unsanitary Napkin and Ménades and some QR logos she was in no fit state to pull out her phone for.

Then she noticed on one wall was a bunch of lines scraped deep into the plaster. The lines were arranged in a tight circular nest. They surrounded a central symbol which looked Greek, or Cyrillic, or maybe something else. The wall was too hard to scratch with fingernails, even with Rosa's lacquered tips. (Rosa had a specialist nail technician who reinforced her tips, strengthened for more aggressive guitar picking.) So these deep striations in the wall had been made with something hard, like a tool or a claw.

She ran the calloused tip of her right index finger along the lines. She traced them gently like they were braille, or scars.

Then her fingertip snagged on the sharp edge of something in the wall – steel? flint? She felt a chill run up her arm. She squeezed her finger and a ruby droplet appeared at its tip and ran down her to her knuckles. She flicked it against her thumb and a shower of blood drops scattered across the floor.

She didn't feel any pain, it was just annoying, right on the tip of her most important finger. She sucked it off, then looked at the strange markings on the wall. She tried to see whatever had cut her, but beyond the gouges themselves, nothing was obvious.

Time was running out. The band was due on in a few minutes. She grabbed some toilet roll and wiped off her bloody finger and arse, then flushed it all away with the simmering bowl of her recently-produced mingestrone.

She felt cleansed and primed for the gig.

*

'Evening cunts! I'm Rosa Razor and we are SHITE!'

The band's first blistering dischord shook the venue. Everyone put their hands to their ears. Noise limiters flashed red. The sound tech snatched his faders. The crowd had been milling about with not much expectation for her band of relative unknowns, so it gave Rosa some satisfaction to observe the chaos they unleashed.

The venue was a classic south London corner pub. Outside, the tall windows still had flaking metal filigree on the upper panes. Inside, the walls were painted black and red, and the floor had been swabbed with the same beer-based adhesive common to indie rock venues the world over.

This was Stab Him In The Eye's thirteenth gig and the line-up remained unchanged: Rosa Razor on lead guitar and vocals, Psycho Delia on bass and Violet Delight on drums.

Their intense doom/punk crossover was matched by their presence. Rosa's slim physique belied the churning chords she could grind out on her Stratocaster; her delicate high-boned face and pale skin belied the guttural screaming she produced. She bellowed out their opening track, Flaccid Attack, with primal ferocity:

You can't rape me with that wet slug.

You can't fuck with that pistachio.

You can't choke me with that acorn.

I've seen bigger cocks on Lego.

Flaccid attack.

Flaccid attack.

The lights picked out the purposeful pandemonium glinting in both her eyes. Strobes freeze-framed her headbanging long black hair with its signature green tress, carving spirals in the air.

Delia's detuned five-string bass was an incarnation of herself: tough, relentless and absolutely uncompromising. Her sternum tattoo read She somehow avoided snarling her swinging braids in the strings. She saw with satisfaction each thumb-pick of precision-tuned low-B caused a soundwave which actually ruffled the hair of the crowd.

Violet's percussive precision was a barrage on the ears and skin. Sweat dripped and flew from her toned physique. Her sticks flailed like a vindictive multi-armed buddha. Her drum platform shook with every double-kick of her Ludwig maple bass heads. Her focus was total. She liked to pick out one face in the crowd with an unblinking stare which suggested her violence was driven by madness.

The crowd were, however, largely bemused.

They consisted mostly of black-shirted middle-aged men. It seemed to Rosa like they weren't expecting SHITE to challenge them with razor-edged lyrics or intense but well-considered songsmithing. It seemed like they wanted SHITE to be a skate-punk band of waifish models who would fulfil their male gaze High Schooler fantasies, while cavorting in butt-cradling raggedy jorts. Rosa had never worn jean shorts in her life. She stared back at the crowd with an acid demeanour, sharing without quarter or prejudice a uniform expression of antipathy and disdain.

Out of sight from Rosa, below the level of the inert back row of punters, a girl was shouldering her way through the torpid crowd.

The girl was tiny, barely reaching the shoulders of the men she squeezed between. Her hair was an effervescent scissor cut, dyed a luminous neon green. Black mascara tails almost reached her ears. She wore a white T-shirt with a unicorn on it and a short tartan skirt. Her birdlike forearms were tattooed with strange glyphs that snaked and trailed around her wrists like they were alive.

She pushed and barged her way between men twice her mass and width. No one paid her much attention, except for a momentary wonder at her disproportionate will to reach the front.

The band's first song ended after a tight 82 seconds, leaving the room silent but for a tinnitus-like trill in everybody's cochleas. The crowd offered up a few unenthusiastic whoops and a fistful of applause. This was not the night or the venue that SHITE would have chosen, but it was all they were offered.

Rosa scowled through the Parcans and kicked at her monitors. 'Who do I have to fuck to fix these levels?'

The sound tech scowled back, shaking his head and changing nothing.

The girl reached the front row. Her green hair jiggled as she bounced on the spot with manic energy. She pressed her lace-gloved hands together with wide-eyed admiration, grinning because she was now so close to her idol.

She liked the band, but she loved Rosa. She felt connected to her by will, by purpose, by blood. Whatever Rosa wanted, the girl wanted only to give it to her. Anything that stood in Rosa's path, the girl wanted to clear away for her.

She didn't want to be Rosa, she wanted to be with Rosa. She wanted Rosa to be her friend, her guide, her mentor, the Obi-Wanda to her Lucy Skywalker, the Gandolfina to her Froda... Why the fuck aren't there any movies with good mentrix characters?

With a grin on her face and her eyes enraptured, the girl drank deeply from the wellspring of Rosa Razor.

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This is the opening of my novelette METAGOTH, which follows Rosa and the girl's hilarious, disgusting and totally punk adventures in London's rock scene.

You can read the full story now on GODLESS.COM.

Rosa also featured in one of my earlier stories, HEAD CASE, a disturbing, deviant and darkly hilarious tale, which is also available right here on GODLESS.

Watch this space for further adventures of Rosa Razor 🔪🤘🏻