---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v101) (the December 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Perfectly Imperfect” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

Order this writing in the book Bleeding Heart Cadaver (a Down in the Dirt collection book)		get the 320 page September-December 2011 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

27

Mike Brennan

    According to musician mythology, Robert Johnson started it all. Eternal recognition is fantastic but hell is a motherfucker, and you can take my case as a road starting from a much different time and place.
    Son of a slave Johnson walked down to a Mississippi cross-road, couldn’t play a lick on his guitar, and sold his soul to the devil who met him there in human form, gave him a contract, and then tuned his second-hand acoustic instrument to the key of legendary. He could suddenly out play anyone and everyone, and died a blues legend at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. He allegedly met his maker barking like a dog on the floor after imbibing some poisoned whiskey spiked by one of his many women’s jealous lovers.
    Several more followed his tragic lead. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was found face-down in his swimming pool, Jimi Hendrix choked on his own vomit, Janis Joplin shifted off the mortal coil in a hotel room with a body chocked full of smack, Jim Morrison met his end in a Parisian bathtub, and Kurt Cobain blew himself away with a shotgun shell to the brain. There are about a hundred more cases that aren’t really as worth mentioning, yet, they all experienced phenomenal fame and all expired at the age of twenty-seven.
    I didn’t realize I may have had made the same decision until it was too late. It was too easy to ignore fate when you have so much money and fame and women and of course all the chops to back up the fact that you have everything any warm-blooded man could ever dream of. I didn’t until I died.
    I made my sale when I was twenty, yet the uncertain circumstances were always marred in the unknown. All I wanted my entire life was to become a rock star. I took lessons with several adequate and noted players, but despite everything, and no matter how much I practiced the music just wouldn’t come to me the way I so desperately desired. Unlike Johnson, who supposedly met the devil in the flesh, I suppose I made my sale with the accidental assistance of a Ouija board given to me as a gift on my thirteenth birthday. The LSD I was on at the time probably left me open to all sorts of possible spiritual contact. It also probably helped that I was playing with the eerie children’s toy alone in my bedroom at three o’clock in the morning.
    After about an hour of inane questioning, I asked the board, “Will I ever be rich and famous?”
    Instead of moving towards the Yes or No responses, the marker spelled out, “If you so will.”
    I was amazed with how quickly the marker moved beneath my hands.
    I moved the marker to spell out, “Yes, I do.”
    The marker spelled out, “I’ll see you soon and we’ll seal the deal.”
    I was entranced by the board’s swift replies, but as the effects of the acid began to wane, I gradually felt myself fall into a fitful state of semi-sleep. I felt my eyes open to a sea of shadows swirling around my bedroom. The darkened shapes all came together into one huge formation that stood in the corner besides my bed and formed into a figure before my opening bedroom door.
    The shadow had no features asides from looking vaguely human and about the size of a large gorilla, it spoke in a deep baritone: “You desire wealth and fame, but do you know the price that those who are willing to play will wind up having to pay?”
    “No, but I would do just about anything if I could greatly play and receive everything of which I dream,” I replied, semi-mocking his syntax.
    “If you desire a complete conquest of all your worldly goals, I’ll suffice with a gift of your immortal soul?”
    “What if the goal I seek, is fame, fortune, and immortality?”
    “Sign my deed and soon you will see.”
    A sheet of paper appeared and floated over towards my bed as if tossed away by an invisible pair of hands.
    I read, “When the clock strikes 11 on the 27th day of your 27th year, you will no longer receive the welcome of heaven. In exchange, you will obtain unlimited wealth and fame. Are you prepared to play this game? If you so agree, than just sign your name.”
    Once I had finished perusing the document, a raven flew into the room and presented me with a jet black quill with a tip as sharp as syringe that it swiftly pulled from its left wing and handed over to me between its beak.
    “Barter in blood and become my brother,” the shadow stated. I scratched my right arm with the quill and signed my name with the minimal amount I drew.
    The Shadow laughed and said, “See you soon, and know that all your wishes will soon come true.”
    I awoke in a toxic sweat that I tried to attribute to my recreational drug use. I believed it all to be a dream but it seemed just too real, too vivid, and too unnatural in comparison to my usual blanked out states of sleep. My arm was definitely scratched, and I was terrified at what I might have done. I had never before remembered my dreams but this one haunted me for years; seven to be exact.
    Within a week or two my playing began to drastically improve. I suddenly could play anything and everything I ever heard or desired; anything from Beethoven to Led Zeppelin, rock, jazz, blues, classical, and flamenco. I had it all effortlessly down. My voice reached a perfect pitch, and lyrics flew into my notebooks as rapidly and as unexpectedly as the shadows and the raven had entered my bedroom. After a few weeks, I was auditioning possible band members, who replied to the many ads I put in local musician rags. In Los Angeles there was no limit on unemployed musicians, so it didn’t take long to find a few that would form a perfect unit. In particular, my bassist, Miguel, could play pretty much anything and was also soft-spoken enough to always allow me the lead. A month or so later, I had the sound, the tone, the rhythm, and the tunes that I required and desired for my ultimate success. It all came together way too easily. I knew that the most vivid dream of my lifetime may have some footing in reality.
    My band, Sunset Babylon, cut our first record in just six days and the album was released after just a month of studio production, polishing, and promotion. We’d only played six gigs before we were picked up by Capital Records, all complete with a six figure advance and a guarantee of total artistic freedom. As much as I enjoyed the sudden success, I always had the sinking feeling that I was damned.
    World tours followed. We conquered North and South America, Europe, and Asia. I felt like a pampered version of Alexander the Great; it was all too easy so I quickly grew bored, tired, and spiritually jet-lagged. I made a game with myself to sleep with every race of women that existed on earth. I conquered that goal by the time I was twenty- two. The company of women became an addiction and my favorite vice. By the time I received my second Grammy, I had done all that and more. Lord Byron and the Marquis De Sade would have been proud of me. I remembered my visions but I also remembered Nietzsche’s Superman, and truly felt I was the poster-boy until I would finally reach the much-debated pit of damnation, that I somehow always knew was just lurking around the corner.
    I tried hard to resist the temptations that doomed my predecessors. I donated money to charities, I wrote a novel, I received a Masters Degree in Philosophy, and yet despite my fame and fortune, it was Miguel that led me on my downward spiral. I had just turned twenty-five and he quickly taught me how and why I was going to die.
    Sunset Babylon had just played a spectacular sold-out show in Tokyo, and decided to hit Thailand for a little rest and relaxation. I’d already done pretty much every drug known to man, even before my dream, but I couldn’t help but give in to the one that would destroy me.
    Powerful women in novels are called heroines, but I fucked hundreds and they never compared to a main-line shot of heroin. Heroin literally became for me, as Lou Reed once sang, “my life and my wife.” I knew I never should have gone there but I feel like I had to.
    I never knew Miguel used smack, but after I spent an afternoon partying on the beach with a couple of beautiful Thai women, I stopped by his hotel room to see what he was doing and what kind of debauchery he might want to indulge in that evening. When he opened his door, he appeared to be in a total state of bliss.
    “What’s up bro?” he slurred, as his glassy eyes drooped to half-mast.
    “Nothing man, just want to see what you want to do tonight.”
    “Well, right now I’m just enjoying some fine, fine China White. Wanna hit?”
    “Sure, but I’m scared of needles.”
    “This shit is so good you’ll get over your phobia pretty quick.”
    I entered the bedroom and saw another attractive and naked Thai woman nodding out on the bed with a half-smoked cigarette smoldering between her fingers. There was an array of needles and spoons laid out around her crossed legs and a large bag of powder placed on the night-stand besides her. I watched intently, as Miguel prepared me a shot.
    “You ready?”
    “Sure.”
    I presented him with my right arm and looked away as he pierced a vein in the crook of my elbow. It didn’t hurt at all and I immediately felt my body overflow with a warm inviting glow. It felt better than sex, an instant orgasm, which accompanied the image of the gorilla in the corner of the room. It was smiling at me.
    Over the next two years, heroin became my life’s focus. I couldn’t play music unless I had a fix. I couldn’t even get out of bed unless I shot at least a hundred bucks into my arm. My mansion in the Hollywood Hills quickly became a seedy drug den, but my albums still continued to sell and the money and adulation kept pouring in. I tried to keep a squeaky clean public image as well, donating money to this foundation and that, but while I was lying in bed at night the gorilla would still be lurking behind my eye-lids. I knew I was fucking up. I just couldn’t stop.
    After an all-night party celebrating my twenty-six birthday, Miguel fatally overdosed on smack and crack in the backroom of my guest house. He had just turned twenty-seven. As I was being arrested for possession and furnishing narcotics, I couldn’t help but wonder if he had made the same deal that I believed to have done. He was now a member of what many called the “27 Club.” I would soon learn he made a similar deal. I knew my turn was coming all too soon.
    I avoided jail-time and wound up on a celebrity addiction rehab television special, where I realized that I also had a knack for acting. It was all too easy to act repentant and all so sorry for my sins and discretions. The tabloids believed in my new image and ate up my desire to change. Maybe, somewhere in my soul, I kind of meant it but I already knew I was doomed. I quickly and quietly relapsed with an ounce of smack and a couple grams of crack six days after I was discharged from rehab, and six days after I went into the studio to record my first and only solo album. It debuted at number six on the charts. It was my swan song; melancholic, introspective, and a poetic examination of a life lived on the edge. Hell was definitely waiting in the wings, and I began to prepare for my fate.
    The days leading and following my twenty-seventh birthday were an absolute blur of unbridled excess. I shot and smoked and popped anything anyone made available to me. I was a doped-out zombie shuffling around my mansion in a tattered Japanese silk kimono, staring off randomly into space, mumbling incoherently, hardly eating anything other than pills, and just waiting for the absolute worst to happen.
    The dream constantly haunted me, as did the time described- eleven o’clock on the twenty-seventh day of my twenty seventh year- I knew the clock was rapidly counting down on me, but was there anyway to beat this curse?
    I spent my last day of life, barricaded up in my private office and library with only a suitcase full of several Class A Narcotics and a .38 Special for company. My last album was laid out in front of my face, the cover riddled with lines of cocaine, methamphetamine, and ketamine, and several syringes littered my desk like baby rattlesnakes. I waited and constantly wrote in a notebook, although I can no longer remember the words. The clock on the wall kept ticking. I kept nodding and contemplating on all matters of life and death.
    By the time of my scheduled appointment, I was far passed the realm of oblivion. I was in another dimension. All the better for spiritual contact. At 10:55, I prepared a shot mixed of heroin, cocaine, ketamine, and methamphetamine. I issued it into my left arm, savored the rush, and fondled my handgun.
    As high as I had probably ever been, I decided to take matters into my own hands. At 10:57, I loaded one round into the chamber and spun the cylinder. I placed the barrel against my temple, sighed, and pulled the trigger. Click, nothing, nada- it was all in my mind.

    Suddenly, I saw the large gorilla shadow appear against my wall in front of my locked doorway.
    “Time to collect,” the shadow spoke, in a deep baritone.
    Fuck you motherfucker,” I yelled, while placing another two rounds in the cylinder and firing in his general direction.
    Before I could blink, I felt my limbs ripping apart from my torso, and looked down to see my body fully intact with a bullet wound in my brain.
    With the force tearing away at my soul, I felt myself quickly tugged downward into a fiery whirlpool that appeared in the floor.
    Indescribable demons began to claw away at my flesh, as the shadow drug me down.
    I have been here ever since, but I made a deal to make my situation down here a bit better. So has Miguel.
    Would you like to make a deal?

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...