"It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
– J.S. Bach
My name is Ronald Jenkins, I’m a bass player. Recently I needed a new bass guitar. Well, I didn’t actually need one, I just loved browsing in pawn shops for second hand equipment whenever I got the chance. I actually preferred looking for good deals on gear instead of practicing my bass, even though I was fairly proficient on the instrument. Anyway, while browsing one morning in Elmer’s Pawn Shop (the best place for good deals), Elmer informed me of a beautiful bass guitar someone had recently traded him for a new refrigerator, and he knew I wouldn’t be able to pass it up. Hold on. Let me tell you the story from the beginning...
I went to Elmer’s Pawn Shop one bright August morning, not really expecting to find anything spectacular, even though I had found plenty of nice items there in the past. Elmer knows me well. I am one of his best customers. He’s a great person too. About 50, always cheerful, a great business man willing to spend a lot of time with each customer, never greedy, always eager to give you a great deal on something if he thinks you’ll really appreciate it. But Elmer’s personal appearance is a little strange. He keeps his head cleanly shaven except for a small cube of fuzz at the very top. I have no idea why he keeps it there, I’ve never asked him. I suspect he may have the cube because of his membership in a strange science fiction cult, but I mind my own business and don’t concern myself with anybody’s personal beliefs. Usually I visit Elmer’s shop about twice a week, scowering the place for any band related equipment and asking him what has arrived since my last visit.
"Has anything good come in lately, Elmer?" I asked on that nice August morning.
"You bet there has, Ronald. You’re gonna love this. I knew it was perfect for you the minute I saw it. Step right this way, son."
We went over to the north wall where numerous battered guitars, basses and even a few violins were hanging from long black hooks. Elmer lifted his hands and moved them around in a kind of showy "Price is Right" way, the thing models do when displaying products, and I looked up to see one of the most beautiful bass guitars I’d ever seen. A Yamaha RBX375 Bass guitar. Deep metallic blue with silver and orange lightning bolts cascading across the body in every direction. I fell in love with it instantly. It looked incredible and also seemed larger than normal with the top "horn" especially long and slender. It also had two big humbuckers and a huge tremolo system that I’d never seen on any other Yamaha RBX375. Many bass players don’t like whammy bars, but I’ve always enjoyed using them.
"Elmer, this is a freakin’ beauty." I said, reaching up to take it off the hook.
With my peripheral vision, I noticed Elmer grinning. He knew my taste well and it gave him great pleasure to satisfy his customers.
"Plug it in over here," he said. "I’ve already got a practice amp set up for you." He klopped over to a corner, picked up a cord, and I went over and plugged in the bass. After turning on the volume, I started slapping and popping out a funk-jazz rhythm. The feel of the bass was perfect in my hands, the neck was beyond comfortable and the tone fantastic with bright trebly pops and booming volcanic lows. I played on and went into a brief solo, manipulating the whammy bar a little. My God. It was the greatest bass I’d ever played in my life. I didn’t know basses could be so well made and comfortable and sound so spectacular.
I had to buy it.
Didn’t matter what the cost.
It would be my new number one instrument for gigs. Every other bass I owned would be "backup" only. I unplugged the Yamaha, held it up to examine the gorgeous body once more, looked at the pickups and the bridge, ran my fingers down the neck. "How much do you want for it, Elmer? I’ve got to have it immediately. Go ahead, name any price."
He chuckled. "Well, you know you’re my favorite customer, Ronald. But as you can see this is a very special bass. Worth quite a bit of money. The original owner obviously didn’t know what a great instrument he had. I’ll have to ask $500 for it."
"You’ve got a deal, Elmer. I can pay you $250 now and have the other $250 for you next Friday. How does that sound?"
"Perfect."
I shook Elmer’s hand and put the bass in its case, still in awe of my good fortune of finding such a perfect instrument. I payed Elmer and he wrote out a receipt and then I headed toward the door grinning.
Earlier, two small pieces of gold had fallen to the floor next to the practice amp. I didn’t see them at the time, and Elmer found them a couple of hours later. He was quite shocked since they seemed to be worth a lot of money. He didn’t know what had produced the gold nuggets, or if someone had simply lost them, but he put them in his safe, to hold for awhile to see if a customer might enquire about them.
Nobody knew exactly how the gold nuggets had been produced.
But I would soon find out.
* * *
I couldn’t stop playing my new bass. It felt so great, sounded so good.
I played it before work, on my lunch break, even while sitting on the shitter.
I knew I was going to be a Major Rager with the help of this Four-String Mother Freaker.
I even attempted to practice my bass while watching television, but my fat-ass demonic girlfriend would always start screaming that my scales were breaking her concentration, my pops and slaps pulling her out of the movie.
I loved it though, greatest instrument I’d ever played.
But then I noticed something strange.
One Saturday morning, I didn’t have any work to do or any errands to run, so I stayed home and played my bass all morning long. I had been practicing some new advanced techniques, soloing with staccato phrases, adding in natural harmonics in different positions of the neck, using the tremolo bar and wah pedal simultaneously with an abundance of distortion, and after playing part of Cliff Burton’s "Anesthesia" solo and a little bit of Eddie’s "Eruption," I noticed two diamond rings laying on the floor next to my feet.
"What the hell are those." I said out loud in a deadpan voice like a lunatic. "Diamond rings? Where did those come from? Did my girlfriend sneak out and buy those with my hard earned money. I can’t afford any fuckin’ diamond rings. Who the hell does she think she is, the Queen of Sheba or something."
I took off my bass and picked up the diamond rings. They shined and sparkled, seemed authentic and highly expensive. I dropped them in the front pocket of my faded Wrangler jeans, then started looking around the house for other luxury items she might have purchased behind my back. When I returned, my bass was leaning up against the amplifier, the back facing me.
That’s when I saw it.
A small mouth protruding below the plate that covered the electronics.
An orifice on the back of my bass.
I stared at it.
Squinting.
I realized that was the first time I had even looked at the back of my bass. I stayed a few feet away examining it, afraid to get too close. The orifice was about the size of a half dollar with two ridges of thick pink lips. That is, the mouth had 4 lips, and they were vibrating and moving in different directions independently. I stepped closer and saw tiny green dots on the lips with thick translucent slime hanging and big ugly orange coils encircling the mouth where the flesh segued into the wood. The orifice on my bass was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen.
Suddenly the mouth yawned and I looked deep inside to see maroon ridges and corrugated folds with long jagged teeth sticking out like a piranha. The teeth looked sharp and deadly and I felt they could extract every ounce of my plasma in milliseconds.
Jesus, I thought, here I am playing this bass with this deadly thing pressed against my body close to my genitals. This can’t be real.
I stared at it some more and the orifice seemed really old, almost ancient. Hundreds, no, perhaps thousands of years old. The mouth was smacking its four lips and they were still vibrating. A real live fleshy mouth embedded in my bass. I was examining it so intently I didn’t realize I had crept dangerously close. So close I could detect its horrible breath. A smell of rotting mackeral and moldy garlic with sweet peppermint on top. I backed away shaking my head.
"Hello?" I said, "Are you a real mouth? Can you speak? What are you doing on my bass guitar? Say something. Hello?"
But the orifice didn’t respond.
Then I realized the thing had no ears so of course it couldn’t hear me. It was only a mouth with no other body parts. Gross. I started feeling nauseous. What the fuck was I going to do now? How could I get rid of it? Should I try to cut it off? I didn’t want to ruin the best bass I’d ever owned, I couldn’t start altering the body. I was playing solos and bass lines too well. And the mouth hadn’t hurt me yet.
So I decided to simply leave it alone, although I’d definitely keep a close eye on it. Wait a minute. Did it release those diamonds earlier? Is that where they came from? Hell, I didn’t know.
I picked up the bass and played a little bit, being careful to keep the back from touching my body. It was a test to see what would happen with the orifice close to me. I didn’t want to get bitten by those sharp crooked teeth. I played some licks but didn’t put as much effort into them as I normally would, too distracted thinking about the nasty mouth back there. After fluffing my way through a few scales, not hitting every note cleanly, I tried to do some tapping phrases on my high G string and missed many of the notes. Next I noticed my guitar was out of tune, so I stopped playing and reached up for the tuners and I smelled something horrible. Looking down, I saw a small pile of dog turds curled up near my shoes, so I jumped back.
"What the fuck is that?" I screamed. "Dog shit? We don’t have a dog. Is it cat shit? Don’t tell me that bitch has a freaking cat in my house now. I hate cats. I’ll be getting rashes all over my body and scratching like a bastard if she’s got a cat in here. Where is that damn fur ball. I’ll choke that sonofabitch for shitting near my feet."
I took off my bass and searched the house but didn’t see a cat or any other animals. Hmm. Something strange was going on. Then I remembered the human-like orifice on my bass. I suspected the shit had something to do with that. I flipped the bass over and held it far away from me and examined the little mouth, but I didn’t see any signs of fecal matter on its four pink lips, although they were still moving around in different directions, and the tiny green dots and translucent slime and big ugly orange coils encircling the mouth were still there. God it was disgusting. I was going to have to watch this orifice closely from now on.
* * *
Despite the disturbing events that had already taken place with my bass, I was still determined to take it to my next scheduled rehearsal and show it off to my fellow band members. But I did decide to cover the orifice on the back so it would be hidden from view. Before I left the house I took a piece of duct tape and put it over the sickening hole. After pressing the tape down firmly, I heard a slight squeal and wondered if it might need water or food. Earlier in the day I had noticed its lips looking especially dry and a darker shade of pink than the day before. Was I supposed to be feeding this damn thing? Shit. I actually felt a little sympathy for this monstrous mouth taking up residence and partially ruining the greatest bass I’d ever owned. The instrument would have been perfect except for the dung-producing hole on the back, I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for it. I needed to cut it off. I mumbled a few curses and slid the bass in its case and left the house for band rehearsal.
I got in my pickup and placed the bass upright next to me with the orifice pointing toward the seat. Then I roared off to band rehearsal at the drummer’s house, about six miles away. It was late summer and I hated the weather. In Texas at this time of year the sun practically bakes your skin to a red cancerous pulp with its powerful carcinogenic rays. Hordes of lucusts can be heard in the trees, their loud clicking calls emanating out in waves. The heat was blasting through my pickup windows and seemed to settle deep in my chest, forcing out every breath of air in my lungs. Along the side of the road I noticed empty tequila and beer bottles strewn everywhere, along with numerous dead cats and possums. Some asshole had been getting his kicks lately by driving around shooting every animal he saw. What a waste.
Finally I pulled up in front of the drummer’s house and parked in front of the garage. The drummer had soundproofed his garage to make it into a rehearsal space. The other guy’s cars were already there. I grabbed my new bass and strolled in the door. The pink carpeting on the walls that absorbed our obnoxious sounds reminded me of the orifice’s four nasty lips.
"Hey Jimmy, hey Mike," I said.
Our band was a trio. Jimmy on guitar, Mike on drums. They were good friends of mine. I had known them for years. They didn’t greet me back or even look at me. They seemed to be in a bad mood, or were just too busy messing with their equipment.
"You’re late," Jimmy said.
"No I’m not."
"Yes you are," said Mike. "By ten goddamn minutes." His voice filled with anger.
"Ten minutes, Jesus, that’s nothing to get upset about." I took out my new bass and sort of held it up in the air hoping they would notice.
"But you’re always late," Jimmy said. "And ten minutes is ten minutes. I could have the best screw of my life in ten minutes. You need to show us some respect, dipshit."
"Chill, man, just chill," I said. "I’ll be on time from now on."
"Yeah, sure you will," Mike said, tightening up his snare drum with a small silver wrench. "I hope you fry in hell for being late so much, Ronald."
"What did you say, Mike? Damn, that’s a terrible statement to direct at your bass player. You hope I fry in hell? You don’t really mean that, do you?"
"No, not really, but you are wasting our lives by being late so freakin’ much."
"Forget about it already. I’ll be ten minutes early from now on. Hey, I’ve got something to show you guys."
"Not now," Jimmy said. "Let’s start playing. We’re already behind on our practice schedule."
Mike counted off the time and we went into Metallica’s "Master of Puppets." Then we played a couple of Slayer tunes, a Nuclear Assault tune, and a Megadeth tune. We were a thrash band. Had a pretty good reputation in the area, we even opened up for Striper once when they came through on tour. But Striper hated us and our music. Anyway, we got a fair number of gigs around the county and were doing fairly well for our style of music. But after the Megadeth tune, I heard a noise coming from the back of my bass guitar and I could feel the body vibrating. While playing I had totally forgotten about the orifice on the back. If the thing required air, it had to be getting sick from the duct tape covering its lips. Although no one could see it, I imagined the mouth back there shaking and struggling to uncover itself.
Then the orifice must have broken through the tape. Maybe the mouth spontaneously formed some kind of tongue, or it had one already that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Maybe it pooched out its lips to release the tape, I don’t know, but after the Megadeth song, I bent over to pick up a box of Jimmy’s picks that had fallen on the floor, and when the back of my bass came in direct line with the drummer’s head, I heard a deep wretching noise and the orifice released a thick stream of green vomit that bolted through the air at tremendous speed, hitting Mike smack in the face. The puke shot out for a long time, probably releasing more than a gallon. The vomit was thick with bright yellow chunks of corn and little red globs of weenies dotted all through it. Mike screamed and his face was totally covered with the stuff and he seemed to be in shock, moving off his drum stool in slow motion. The puke splashed off him and hit the floor and its consistency was so thick it sounded like vegetable stew clopping on the carpet. All over his face, in his hair, running down his clothes, saturating his drum kit. He was gagging and spitting out chunks of weenies and little pieces of corn.
So that’s where the diamond rings and the dog shit came from, I thought. The orifice was releasing things based on its opinion of whatever I had previously played. Either the orifice must have hated thrash music, or it couldn’t breathe with that duct tape over its mouth and got sick. But a lot of puke came out of it, I know that.
"Eeeaaccghghgh! Fuck! What was that!" Mike yelled, still in shock, wiping the vomit out of his eyes and spitting out another weenie.
I pulled my bass closer to me, not wanting them to see the orifice on the back or the tape hanging. "Man, I don’t know," I lied. "Wow, a huge stream of green shit appeared out of nowhere and flew all over you. What the hell was that?"
"It came from your direction," Jimmy said. "Did you throw a bucket full of something at him?"
"Hell no, I didn’t."
"My God, it smells awful," Mike yelled, the foul goo dripping off his eyelids and cheeks. "It feels like it’s scalding my skin. This puke is hotter than hell. Where did it come from?"
If I would’ve told them about the orifice on my bass I knew they would think I was totally insane. They might even report it to the police.
I noticed Jimmy smiling. He always gloated over people’s misfortune. Jimmy had a thin goatee and grinned arrogantly most of the time, his face making him look like more of an asshole than George W Bush. He also had tiny deformed ears but could still hear excellent with them, and when he walked he held his arms cocked out to the sides like he was a badass. I wondered what Jimmy was thinking as he smirked and watched Mike brush the vomit off his clothes. Then Jimmy spoke up: "Boy, Mike. You sure are smacking your lips a lot. What does that stuff taste like anyway?"
"Well, it has a lot of umami to it, I can tell you that. God you’re an asshole, Jimmy. This shit is sickening. It’s all over my clothes and everything."
Mike jiggled his legs and tried to brush off his pants. I tilted my bass forward attempting to see what the orifice on the back was doing. All I could see was the duct tape hanging and its four lips moving as it breathed heavily.
I felt kind of sorry for Mike, who was a much better person than Jimmy, who was basically a whitetrash scumbag. Mike was mild-mannered and quiet, very detail oriented and precise, which helped him with his drum playing. He always kept our rehearsal space clean and tidy, which I liked since I hated to clean anything. I wish the puke would have nailed Jimmy instead.
"Hey, you got a new bass," Jimmy said.
"Yeah, that’s what I wanted to show you guys earlier. I found this baby at Elmer’s Pawn Shop, can you believe it?"
"Looks pretty sweet."
"The action is incredible. The whammy bar stays perfectly in tune."
Mike was getting more pissed. "Goddamn it! Where did this puke come from! Did you puke on me, Ronald?"
"No way. I don’t look ill, do I? I can’t puke that much and from that far across the room. It’s physically impossible."
"Well, I’ve gotta go take a shower. When I get back I want some answers as to where that stream of vomit came from."
"Okay," I said.
I watched Jimmy light a cigarette and then strut over to a white plastic grocery bag in the corner. He rummaged around, pulled out a CD and carried it back to me. "Have you seen the new art work for our demo?"
"No. Let’s have a look."
He handed it over. The cover showed a dark cemetary with a huge owl-like creature flying above a dead tree. The creature had the head of a wolverine and leathery bat wings with a lizard’s tail and a long serpent’s tongue, blood was shooting from its eyes. The name of our band, Dead Bladder, was at the top of the CD and our three names were running down the left side. A small dwarf with a top hat was huddled near the bottom of the picture, spraying piss onto my name at the top, with urine dripping off the letters and running down onto the other names below.
"Hey, what’s with all the piss coming from that dwarf?" I said. "Is the artist trying to insult us or something? Why is he pissing on my name only?"
"It’s nothing personal against you. I think that part of the cover is hilarious."
"Yeah well, I’ve always wanted to recieve a golden shower – although not from a man – but I never could talk my girlfriend into giving me one, or any of those other floozies I was with before I met her."
"So the piss is a dream come true for you then," Jimmy said.
"Sure, whatever." I threw the CD back to him hard and he tossed it onto a nearby sofa that our friends used whenever we’d occasionally force them to listen to us.
"So check out my new bass man, you want to play it?" I said.
Jimmy blew three huge smoke rings and studied they way they dissipated into the air. "Nah, not really."
He was always in a bad mood, despite his constant smirk. He only got happy when there was women or a lot of dope or booze around. I went over and stood in front of him, stuck out my bass and played the riff to one of our original songs. "Come on, man. It’s really sweet. Check out these humbuckers. Look at the fine tremolo bar, it never goes out of tune. I’ve been playing a lot of solos and using my wah and whammy bar together lately. The action of the neck is so smooth with these frets man, my fingers circumnavigate the fretboard so fast it’s like they’ve been soaked in grease. You wanna play it?"
"I said no. I hate basses. Only six-stringers for me." He took a drag off his cig and sucked a barrage of smoke up both his nostrils like an expert.
"Well, how about I play you a little solo while Mike finishes washing all that vomit off himself?"
"All right. Hey where did all that puke come from, anyway?"
I still didn’t feel like revealing the gruesome mouth on the back of my bass. He wouldn’t understand and would probably wig out.
"Forget about the puke. Let me play a solo for you, Jimmy. You may get a few ideas for your own stuff after hearing it."
He groaned and rolled his eyes. "Go ahead, play your damn solo."
I started off with a new slap and pop groove that he hadn’t heard before, then went up to the 12th position and rolled off some nice arpeggios, plucking as fast as I could with the first three fingers of my picking hand. I executed them cleanly and was feeling quite proud of myself when I heard Jimmy yell above the intense volume of my amplifier:
"I ALREADY KNOW THAT STUFF, RONALD. I’VE SEEN IT A MILLION TIMES, PLAY SOMETHING I’VE NEVER HEARD BEFORE, LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD!"
All right, I thought, this prick is definitely gonna see something new now. I dropped down to the 7th position and went into a gruesome string skipping pattern I had never played outside of my bedroom. First I executed three wide interval notes on the low E, then jumped up to the D string for two notes, then back down to the E for four chromatic tones, up again to the high G for 6 diminished notes that ascended the neck, tremolo plucking the last one, jumped back down to the A string for four brief staccato notes, then added a long legato crescendo up the neck to the 22nd fret.
My phrasing had been perfect, my articulation precise, my fingering pristine. If the orifice on the back of my bass guitar was actually giving me rewards based on how good my playing was, I should definitely receive a fantastic and lucrative prize for how well I played the solo. I ended with a little A minor flourish down to the open E string and whammied the hell out of it with my tremolo bar. Then I turned my volume knob off.
I don’t think he would ever admit it, but I could tell from the look on Jimmy’s face he was quite impressed. Before he could comment, I noticed the chord to my bass was all tangled on the floor and I bent over to try and work out the kinks. When the back of my bass came in line with Jimmy’s chest, five black throwing stars shot from the orifice and hit different portions of his body.
When I stood up from untangling the cords, I saw Jimmy lying on the floor.
Dead.
One throwing star sticking out of his throat, one stuck in his cheek, one in his crotch area, another in his left eye, last one in his forehead. He was flat on his back on the floor, blood leaking from each place where the throwing stars had struck him.
The orifice has killed him, I thought. This thing really is deadly. The mouth must have sensed how much I despised Jimmy and that I’d had many desires to murder him in the past, so the orifice sent out five throwing stars to do the job. Now I’m going to be blamed for the murder. Soon I’ll be in prison.
I stared down at Jimmy and the throwing stars and the steadily growing puddles of blood. I examined the throwing stars more closely (I remembered they were called shurikens), black and menacing with 6 points in the shape of tiny daggers, they were made of pure stainless steel. Looked like ninja throwing stars, which I loved back when I was ten. Could the bass orifice have known that? I reached down and tried to take Jimmy’s pulse, but felt absolutely nothing. Then I noticed one throwing star had cut off Jimmy’s left hand, completely severing it at the wrist. So if he had managed to survive, he would have never been able to play his bass again. The orifice definitely had bad intentions, just like Mike Tyson. I took off my bass and placed it in the case. I was going to vacate the premises before somebody noticed he was dead.
But I knew I was screwed when I heard Mike coming down the stairs. I tried to make it out the door before he saw me, but I wasn’t fast enough.
"All right," Mike said, turning the corner. He was wearing a fresh change of clothes with his hair still wet from the shower. "Somebody needs to explain where that stream of vomit came from. Was it a fucking practical joke, or what?"
Standing at the door holding my bass with the deadly orifice uncovered on the back, I said, "Yeah, Mike, it was only a practical joke, so you can just forget about it now."
I turned and ran out the door and got in my truck. I jammed the accelerator and sped off.
Driving home, I envisioned Mike freaking out over Jimmy’s corpse with the numerous throwing stars sticking out of him. I imagined him calling the police. What was I going to do.
When I got home I vowed to keep the bass away from all other people. I would play it only for myself and never let another person see it or hear it from now on. I couldn’t trust it. I mean, the orifice, and I also couldn’t cut it off, since I was convinced doing that would destroy the sound.
There was one other thing: I couldn’t trust my own feelings about other people, which the bass might pick up on, then act out my subconscious intentions. The orifice might destroy based on what I thought of a particular person. And if the bass ever happened to kill another human, I promised I would burn it or throw it in the river – I knew I would have to destroy it in some fashion.
Actually, I wasn’t quite sure about that last part.
After all, it was the best bass guitar I’d ever played, even with the deadly orifice on the back.
-end-
Jason Earls is author of the books Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, Cocoon of Terror, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283645567... available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Swallow’s Tail, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
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