Discoredia, page 1
Discoredia
By
J.C. Michael
“Discoredia will take you on a crazy ride to hell and back, if you’re ballsy enough to take on this awesome book.” ~ Claire Riley, author of Limerence
- BOOKS of the DEAD -
LOVE READING?
Sign up for BOOK-ie and find the best deals.
It's free!
“In “Discoredia,” J C Michael unleashes upon ordinary, unsuspecting characters a fiendish plot that only maestros such as Bentley Little and Michael Slade could rival.”
~ Dean Lombardo, author of Space Games
“J.C. Michael’s brilliant novel, Discoredia, is a literal trip into the abyss echoing with the screams of those classic movies from the 80s where the big bad was bigger than life, unrepentantly evil, and no one was safe. By the time Michael’s 200 beat-per-minute pandemonium kicks in it’s too late to do anything but keep rolling and pray you make it to the last track.”
~ Bracken MacLeod, author of Mountain Home
“J. C. Michael’s Discoredia is the ballroom blitz from Hell. Michael’s novel of sex, drugs, music and evil pulls you in seductively, then turns the amp up to 11. With a silky, snaky style reminiscent of Clive Barker, Michael weaves a tale that takes recreational drug use to a whole new, terrifying level. The book moves at a terrific pace, to the THUMP THUMP THUMP of dance music. And all the time, in the background, there is an elegant, sophisticated evil DJing the entire rave.”
~ John F D Taff, author of Little Deaths
“Fantastic. Epic. I’ve done a lot of drugs, and wrote my share of stories, but never have they both danced together in the darkness such as in Discoredia.”
~ Mark Matthews, author of On the Lips of Children
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of reprinted excerpts for the purpose of reviews.
Cover Design by Small Dog Design
Edited by James Roy Daley
DISCOREDIA
BOOKS of the DEAD
Copyright 2013 by J.C Michael
For more information, contact: Besthorror@gmail.com
Visit us at: Booksofthedeadpress.com
* * *
CHAPTER 1
He was wrecked, wasted, totally, utterly, and unashamedly, out of his head. God, it was good.
Back home he felt old, past his prime, almost thirty, and the drugs of the new millennium disappointingly failed to live up to the promise of their nineties predecessors. He could remember a time when a couple of good Es––Doves perhaps––were all he’d need for a twelve-hour shift. Nowadays, gobbling down a dozen or more still wouldn’t guarantee he’d last an all-nighter. At least, not without ending up huddled in a corner, wishing it would end. As for the music, to him it increasingly sounded like sped-up pop, the decline in quality seemingly linked to the current rise in popularity. Sometimes, he wondered why he still bothered.
Tonight, he knew why. Tonight was different. It was the payoff, the reward for his persistence. He felt young, a youth in his mid-twenties with his life ahead of him, and he was completely fucked; fucked on a single, solitary, pill. The music consumed him within his personal utopia. It was hard. Fast. Mean. It retained its edge. This was real hardcore, pride of place in the main arena, not shunted off into a shitty side-room to make way for the latest top ten bootleg. A main arena that in itself represented a step back in time to the good old days. An old-school Shangri-La devoid of neon and fluorescents. No bright lights. No inflatables. No fucking foam. This was a proper rave, not a poor imitation like the ones back home that at times seemed more like a kid’s birthday party. The oppressive darkness was a world of shadows, a world filled with smoke and pierced by lasers. A warehouse full of gabbers, not hard house posers. He was overwhelmed. He was loving it. So what if he was abroad? This felt like home should feel.
This was RottRave, billed as Rotterdam’s HARDEST RAVE OF THE YEAR! and the first time he traveled outside of England for a night out. By these standards, it wouldn’t be his last. Gabber, techno, and speedcore, an unholy triumvirate of styles of ultra-hard dance music, each of which endeavored to trepan through his skull and bore into his brain. He lived for this music, so full of aggression and raw power.
He bought his ticket over the Internet; got a cheap crossing on North Sea Ferries with a voucher from the local paper. Made some new friends. Got drunk. Got caned on the best weed Amsterdam had to offer. Yet somehow still managed to get there. He wasn’t certain how. The pill had been purchased off a shady looking guy in a Feyenoord shirt. A bargain at five Euros. The end result? The night of his fucking life. He’d lost his new mates somewhere in the smoke, but he didn’t care. He was rushing like fuck.
This was how things should be, how they were meant to be, how they had been back in the day. The music engulfed him, taking away all perception of when and where. Time meant nothing; only the beat mattered. His hands, and the trails they made as he moved them, mesmerized him. How long had he been dancing? No idea. It must have been hours but he didn’t feel tired, not at all, he had energy to spare. Rushes of blissful euphoria swept over him in waves, swamping his thoughts with ideas of how this was it, nothing else mattered––work, family, life, all a sham, an empty way of existence. This was pure; he was one with the music, one with the crowd, the crowd he could barely make out through the smoke surrounding him. Everyone else just a shade in the mist. Brothers and sisters he knew were there, but by sense, rather than sight. He was lost but he was found, found himself, found a home, found God.
He stumbled, a momentary sickness coursed through him, but it passed, to be replaced by a glimmer of clarity as he remembered where he was. He wondered if he’d been tranced out for a matter of seconds, minutes, or hours, but when he tried to think about it, the concept of time eluded him. His mind raced. Had he been dancing? Dancing like a shaman caught up in the rapture of ecstasy, or stood, barely moving, like a rock buffeted by the power of an angry sea, a violent ocean of beats and bass. He thought about it. He didn’t know. His thoughts moved on and someone spoke in his ear but the words were lost, drowned out by the sped up chorus of a track sampling one of the classics. Eezer Goode, Eezer Goode, He’s Ebenezer Goode. He began to dance and lost himself once more.
A melody swept around him, lifting him like an eagle on a thermal, before the percussive bass thundered in once more. Occasionally he thought he recognized a tune, but before he could be sure, it disappeared. The mixing was tight and fast, each song replaced no sooner had it started. It was how DJing should be––a skill, an art. Not one record played for three minutes forty-five before having its outro mixed with the intro of another mass-produced, music by numbers, piece of crap. He could barely tell where one track started and another ended; the changes so rapid it all merged into one, but he knew that although it sounded like a single tune, it was many. He tried to concentrate, to focus, but his head span, his attempts to think requiring too much effort when conscious thought was merely a distraction from the instinctiveness of being high. He closed his eyes and opened his mind, letting the music take him yet again.
Another stumble. He was at the front. Had he just got there or been there all along? He didn’t know. He turned his back to the stage and looked into the crowd. He raised his hands, and they raised theirs. He was a king. He turned. And saw his queen.
* * *
The MC surveyed the crowd before him. It was a good night with the DJs in top form and those packing the dance floor seemed well up for a party. He took a drink of lukewarm water and looked around some more. What the hell was Ruud doing? He recognized the girl as a regular at gabber nights in the area, but why Ruud would be helping her up onto the speakers, he had no idea. If he wanted a gabberinnen to put on a bit of a show there were plenty to choose from, the vast majority of which made this one look like the trash she was. Scrawny with greasy lank hair, and wearing the same grubby pale blue outfit and beaten up trainers she always wore, she looked terrible. Part of him hoped she would fall off the speaker stack; her attempts at dancing were an embarrassment, although there was some nut gazing up at her who looked positively besotted. He heard rumors that the bitch was anyone’s for a line of coke or a hit of crack, but Ruud wasn’t into that kind of thing. It didn’t make sense, but so what? Ruud seemed more interested in the guy dancing like a lunatic in front of the little skank anyway, though God knew why. He put down his bottle and raising the mic to his lips, berated the crowd for being too quiet. He could quiz the Ruudster later.
* * *
He heard the MC on the stage demand that the crowd make some noise but he was too engrossed in the divine image of the goddess in front of him to care. She was beautiful, and had been placed on a pedestal just for him. As she danced atop the speaker, he felt himself imitate her movements, first in canon, then seemingly in unison. He stopped imitating when she looked at him and smiled. He was transfixed as she raised her hands above her head, clamped her fists together, and danced as though performing for his own, personal, enjoyment. Performing a sensual, sexual dance around an invisible pole.
As the lasers on the stage behind her penetrated into the darkness they lit up the blonde streaks, which shimmered as they shot through her long hair. Hair which was so luxurious it belonged in a shampoo advert. Hair which was held back from her face by a thick, pale blue Al
Reaching out, he touched the pure white Nike trainer that, despite the writhing of her body, remained rooted in its spot on the speaker before him, level with his own shoulders. He felt the vibration of the bass through her foot and ran his hand over her ankle to her calf, the nylon of her tan tights sending a tingle of static through his fingertips. The tingle was matched, and then exceeded, by a jolt of electricity he felt rushing up his spine to the base of his neck. He tilted his head back to gaze upon her. His whole body rigid. His penis erect.
Her foot pulled back and he looked up. Looked into a pair of ice-cold eyes above a sneer that demanded, “Who the fuck are you?” How could she not know he was her King? He smiled to bring her out of her confusion. She showed him her middle finger. The sign was universal and it was treason. A blatant act of treachery compounded by the audacity to bring a smile to her face.
The rage that exploded within him saw the tingle within his spine vanish, its replacement feeling like a column of molten lava erupting upwards and into his brain. He lunged forward, sinking his teeth into her calf, his incisors biting through the nylon and puncturing her skin. The coppery taste of her blood excited his tongue, and as he pulled away, the nylon of her tights stretched and then tore into ladders running up toward her thigh, like a damaged spider-web. The fabric snapped as he ripped away a mouthful of flesh. His Queen fell to her knees, falling where she stood to bow down in supplication before her Lord, but her obedience had come too late. With her face only inches from his he paid scant attention to the wide-eyed terror that consumed her, for he could see her for the hag she was. The music pounded in his head, beating upon his brain. What trickery, what witchcraft, had she used to deceive him so? She looked at him, her eyes pleading for mercy, but nevertheless, she disrespected him and must pay.
As violent eruptions in his brain demanded retribution that be both swift, and brutal, he knew if he didn’t succumb, if he didn’t obey and deal with the slut before him, his head would crack open like the slopes of a volcano. He showed her his own middle finger and then thrust his head forward, straining his mouth open so wide that his jaw cracked, and bit her again, this time her neck. His teeth were clamped down––the jugular, yes. He remembered the vein’s name from the vampire films he’d watched in his teens. His memories had a fleeting clarity that had no business interloping on the fury that devoured him. He felt her pulse with the tip of his tongue as she tried to pull away, and bit down harder. The vein was severed and as the lava continued to erupt in his brain, her blood pumped onto his face from the fissure he had torn in her flesh. His vision was gone, a thick red curtain brought down over his eyes. He swallowed a mouthful of blood and reveled in its richness.
* * *
“Security to the front of the stage. Fuck. Fucking Security. Down here. Now.” They were words he barely registered.
* * *
He wiped the blood from his brow and the vision returned in his left eye just in time to see the MC, microphone still in hand, jump off the stage and run toward him through the meter-wide gap between stage and stand-off barriers. He guessed that the muscle-bound skinhead bearing down toward him, with what looked like a boot print tattooed on the right side of his face, was a fighter, and that was one skill he never had, but the explosions in his head opened up his brain. Areas previously inaccessible became swollen and burst, releasing the suppressed knowledge of ancestors forgotten by time, but who had existed through eras far more warlike than the twenty-first century Europe he knew. He was suddenly aware of his bloodline, the warrior DNA that had been hidden for so long, and he had nothing to fear. The right hook, which MC Bootface probably thought was a dead cert to break his jaw, came at him and he ducked it with ease. Now it was his move.
Throughout his act of aggression toward the innocent young woman, who was collapsed and twitching on the speaker before him, and the attempted retaliation that followed, his middle finger had, unlike his manhood, remained rigid. In the absence of any weapon, other than his own body, he plunged the digit into Bootface’s right eye socket as hard as he could. He felt the eyeball push back and then ride up over the finger that he curled and hooked into the socket, before yanking back and simultaneously launching his head forward. The resulting collision shattered Bootface’s nose and hearing the crack, he realized that the music had ceased. Cries, shouts and screams had taken its place but he didn’t care, the music was still there for him, there in his head. The red curtain descended again as more blood spilt over him. Act Two was complete. He felt so alive. He wiped his face clear on his sleeve. Adrenaline coursed through his body like never before. Then another crack, this time from himself. Cheek? Jaw? He was unsure. His conviction began to falter as pain muscled into his thoughts. He fell to the floor and rolled to his right, looking up just in time to see the boot of a bouncer stomping down toward the side of his face. He moved. This time his reactions let him down. The boot connected, mashing his cheekbone further and leaving an imprint eerily similar to that etched on the MC’s face. The red curtain dropped for a third time and the fire within him began to subside, the lava within the column of his spine and crater of his brain cooling and solidifying into paralysis.
Grabbed by the arms he found himself being dragged away. Through his court. Through his subjects. What happened? Wasn’t he their King? Or was he a usurper whose rule was coming to a bloody end? Confusion drifted upon him, the rush of adrenaline spent. Where was he? What were these people looking at? Looks of horror and disgust contorting their faces as he passed. Dragged further now, beyond those who had bore stunned witness to his madness, and to those unaware of what had transpired and who seemed only to care why the music stopped. Past more who looked at him with a morbid fascination. Why? He could taste blood. Was it his? Someone else’s? A cocktail of both? Did he have a fit? Collapse? Been attacked? He felt sick but was unable to retch. Dragged further. He could see a light; a side door opened.
Hauled toward the opening, he spotted a guy in a Feyenoord shirt standing out in the crowd. Did he know him? He thought so but the jumble in his mind failed to either confirm or deny. The man was talking into his mobile, but as he passed him he lowered it from the side of his face and looked straight at him, smiling as he did so. Who the fuck was he? Did it matter? And then he was gone, lost back into the throng of gabbers as he himself was hauled through a door and into the light. A pulse of nausea convulsed his stomach, creating an unsettling feeling that something intangible had been torn from deep within him. He was beginning to lose consciousness, but a voice pulled him back, someone saying someone had been assaulted, killed, could it have something to do with him? He didn’t know. He felt drowsy. He felt himself being dropped on the floor, but his eyes were closed. Oblivion demanded him.
CHAPTER 2
Grey sky over choppy grey waters, a red light blinking in the distance, perhaps a fishing vessel, perhaps an oil rig. The four of them sat around a table laden with a quartet of full English breakfasts. Sausage, bacon, black pudding, hash brown, fried egg, fried bread, fried mushrooms, fried tomato; a plate full of cholesterol. Between them a plate of toast, each one had a cardboard cup of steaming hot tea to wash it down with. Three of them added sugar. The fourth was watching her weight. They ate in silence, looking out of the window and watching the cold North Sea as the ferry gently rocked like a cradle. Even the lazily rising sun on the horizon could do nothing to brighten the scene.
Eventually one of them spoke. “Do you think he was involved last night?”
