NOTE: I wrote this last year as a submission for one of those science fiction sites that handle pulp-style stories. The pay was crummy, but they published stories like the ones I occasionally write, so I thought I'd give it a go. Predictably, a few weeks later, I received the inevitable rejection letter. Upon reading it, I was convinced (as usual) that I was a talentless hack with no talent who should just give up and blah blah blah (if you happen to be a writer, or you happen to know a writer, then you probably also know the rest of the rant). Upon hearing my 50,000th vow never to write again, my girlfriend came up with the theory that it was actually rejected because of all the fuckin' swearing (as well as the fact that the lead character was a middle-aged, undead lesbian - but mostly, she assured me, it was all the fuckin' swearing), so I choose to believe her version of events instead.
Much of the story is taken from my own experience of being a singer in several dubious punk rock bands as a younger man, as well as my later experiments as an avant-garden-variety folk singer. In fact, some of the songs mentioned here actually do exist in my head. The drum machine was a nod to 'Echo' from 'Echo & The Bunnymen'. Anyway, for what its worth, I really do like this story (gratuitous profanity and all) and I'm actually very proud of it.
Furthermore, as far as I'm concerned (and since we're using so much profanity), that site can go fuck themselves.
Anyway, without further ado and, in all their cellulite-addled glory, here are The Shining Girls, in 'One Night Only'...
What happened to heaven?
Disorientation gave way to a feeling of abject betrayal.
...Then came the cab ride.
We three middle aged Women hadn’t seen each other in half a century or more, but, mercifully, it wasn’t as awkward as I had feared. We got out of the cab, having barely spoken a word to each other during the entire journey, and looked up in unison at the impossibly tall glass monolith before us.
And there we were, Black Fox, Red Panda and me, Blue Lion.
We took the stage names to make a statement about animal rights. Or something. It was a long time ago, we were all a little younger...and a lot drunker.
We stood in the shadow of the great, mountainous building and shivered in its chill. It was a cool, rising damp sensation that seemed to pass from Fox (on the far right) all the way to me (on the far left). The shadow cast by the corporate headquarters was a long one.
Honestly, I didn’t know what we were doing there.
The chill descended upon us again and this time the breeze flew right up my skirt, making it feel as if Jack Frost was nipping at my...Y’know.
It was strange, for an unusually hot summer’s day, we were all feeling abnormally chilly.
Maybe it was just nerves, after all, its not every day that a largely unknown late 21st century girl group gets resurrected from the dead to play one final gig.
“Who gave ‘em your ‘permission’?” asked Panda to both or either of us, by way of conversation.
Fox beat me to the draw; she always was the fastest mouth in the New West.
“My Great-Granddaughter signed the form...But only on the proviso that she could get a percentage of the royalties”, she intoned.
A thin, deadpan Woman with zombie eyes and jet-black hair, Black Fox (Or ‘Kitty’ to her Mum, and only to her Mum) was the punk of the group. Every band has to have its punk, its beating, nihilistic heartpiece that always (and I do mean always) keeps one foot in the real world.
Not that we ever needed much help ‘keeping it real’. We’d had one single, ‘Tick Tock Tick’ that was in and out of the charts like a fart in a sieve, followed by two albums that were about as welcome to the ’18-30 yuppie-punk’ demographic (that we’d been told to target) as that very same fart would be, had it been released in a church.
Panda (real name: Judy) was the glutton of the band, the one who, had we ever made it really big, would have died from an overdose of heroin and ‘gentleman callers’ within about a week. She really lived it, even though she wasn’t at all famous, or even successful.
Nevertheless, she was genuinely hurt when nobody recognised her on the street.
It’s a shame that being dead for half a century hadn’t cured her terminal case of ‘lead singer’s disease’. Panda was chubby, tattooed and dour-faced. She almost always wore sunglasses indoors. If it weren’t for her ridiculous outfits and bad behaviour, she’d never stand out in a crowd.
“One of my groupies signed mine in the end” said the heavyset girl; flicking her red hair gracelessly “Poor old thing was so madly in love with me that he spent his entire life savings just to see me one more time.”
I could almost hear Black Fox rolling her eyes. In truth, it was a miracle of 22nd century medicine that any of our friends or fans were still alive to see the show.
“So, lemme get this straight” interjected Fox while picking her nose, “fifty years after the last one of us copped it, our records are finally selling?”
“That’s what I was told” I said, “Somewhere down the line pop culture became so bereft of genuine heroes that even the losers got promoted to godhood”
Fox snorted. “Hm. Sounds like lyrics. Mebbe you should write ‘em down?”
“What for?” Panda retorted, “We’ll be dead again this time tomorrow”.
That low, sunken feeling in my stomach returned. I knew she was right.
I’d died once before. It wasn’t so bad, actually. I remember that it felt a lot like falling asleep, in that you don’t really realize its happening until, well, you wake up. But then, that’s exactly the problem.
The most horrifying thing was not the cancer that ate my body from the inside out, before leaving me as little more than a skeletal house of cards dying gracelessly under an overstarched hospital duvet, as the world paid little or no notice of me. It wasn’t even the fact that the cute nurse who was about my age looked at me as if I was ninety, her sweet smile a mix of pity and kindness, with not so much as a hint of sexual interest.
No. None of the above mattered. It was just that, after I slipped away peacefully into the night, the next thing I remember is being woken up yesterday by a marketing exec with a sleazy smile, blue hair and an iridescent, silvery suit. He looked like an extra from the live-action ‘Jetsons’ movie.
That’s right. I’m glad you read between the lines there. There was no heaven. No hell. No purgatory.
Nothing.
Imagine all the people, living just to die.
I’m sure it was the same for the other two, but frankly, I was too afraid to ask.
Melanie didn’t even make the funeral. I checked. She knew I hated to see her cry; besides, we were truly and finally broken up by then.
I guess she felt like getting a fresh start. ‘Good for her’, I kept telling myself, without really believing it inside.
As I struggled with the existential angst of it all, Panda shuffled on the spot uncomfortably, the victim of a self-inflicted wedgie. Her panties were always at least two sizes too small, even in the afterlife.
After what seemed like an eternity of passers by staring at us, or blasting us with the occasional strangulated car honk (they must have lowered the decibel level of car beepers in the intervening years, because I’m sure I remember them being a lot louder than that), a slick-looking, blonde-haired exec emerged from the double doors.
He was wearing a snug fitting navy blue suit and pushing his red tie (that was horribly adorned with yellow ‘musical note’ patterns) into place with one hand, whilst holding the other out to greet us. He was sweating profusely, like he’d been jogging in a rain forest.
“Hi, I’m Branden Riley. I work for the company. Sorry about the wait, the lift’s out and I just ran down a hundred flights of stairs”. He spoke with a soft, noticeably fake version of a Midwestern American accent. It was truly sickening.
Branden Riley. I may never have clamped eyes on the slippery shitbag until just this second, but I’d already met him a thousand times, with a thousand different faces. In fact, I’d even slept with him during one awkward backstage fumble that had the unforeseen benefit of turning me off of men for good.
“Good to meet you” he said to each of us in the exact same way, as he mechanically offered all of us, in turn, the same cocaine addled, emotionally stunted, overly-practiced handshake.
“You guys look great. Are you excited? We’re excited. Its very nice to have you all here.”
“Stoked” said Fox with a raised eyebrow and half a grimace. She seemed to recognize Branden Riley as well.
We walked through the huge, marble floored lobby with a tiny seeming receptionist at the front end and a series of enormous art prints dominating the walls. The pictures depicted cultural icons of the past like Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Bob Marley, James Dean and Iggy Pop, plus a few I didn’t recognize.
Branden Riley noticed me noticing the monolithic prints. I couldn’t help thinking that they resembled the pre-Raphaelite portraits of feudal lords that I’d studied during my one ill-fated semester as an art student.
“Ah yes, Bob did a set for us last year. We had a Reggae-themed Christmas party. He was wonderful. Such a sweet, sweet man. At the end of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ he looked up, just for a second and, it was as if he couldn’t believe we were watching him. He was obviously very honoured to be here.”
“Uh huh” I muttered, feigning interest.
Frankly, I’d have preferred to be with Melanie. That is, if she’d even want to see me after all these years. I looked her up on ‘Citizenbase’ (imagine Facebook’s big brother and you’re getting there) when I was back at the hotel. I was amazed and delighted to see that she was still alive.
Unmarried, even.
If only I had more time...
“And then of course we had Jim Morrison back for a one night only show, he wouldn’t perform with the rest of the Doors, so we booked him in for a spontaneous poetry reading. It was...Interesting.”
God, he’s still talking.
“The Sex Pistols broke up. Again. In this very building. Halfway through ‘God Save the Queen’ if you can believe that...Of course, I felt cheated that Mr. Rotten never asked if we’d felt cheated, but then, you can’t have everything!”
Somebody please shut this fucker up.
The lobby was oppressively long, lined with memorabilia on all sides. A guitar, apparently once played by Chuck Berry, was in the same case as the Turin Shroud. It was like ‘Planet Hollywood’ might look if it had been reassembled by dimwitted, malfunctioning robots in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war. Maybe it had? I don’t know.
A framed snapshot, apparently from ‘COMIC-CON 2099’ was captioned ‘Phillip K. Dick debates Grant Morrison’. The picture was tacked up, almost apologetically, by the entrance to the fire exit. It was miles away from the rock Gods who dominated the office pantheon. I stopped slightly to look at the faces of the crowd; maybe there was someone I recognized in there. A lot of my mates were into Sci-Fi way back when.
“Comics? That’s not really my thing. It’s all a bit old fashioned, don’t you think? But then, look who I’m asking” said Branden Riley derisively, as he marched past the photo without waiting for a response.
At last, we reached the clean, marble staircase. It glistened in the sun. The handrail was fashioned from crystal quartz. Wearily, we climbed the first flight. Ninety-nine to go.
“I’ll tell you this for toffee, I’m not climbing up a hundred flights of stairs” said Panda flatly, taking out a cigarette and sliding it between her lips.
She could have smoked outside, but I know Panda, she was testing her limits.
“We, uh, actually don’t allow smoking indoors, Miss, um, Panda” he said.
“Well, now you do” she responded, taking out a zippo and firing it up, looking every bit the rebel without a clue.
Fox and I exchanged weary glances.
Rock and/or roll. Please delete as applicable.
At that instant, a security guard tackled the first flight of stairs with relative ease and approached us. He smiled and requested the cigarette.
“Ma’am. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for that cigarette now. Kindly wait here while I write you a citation” said the guard in a soft (yet clearly fake) American accent.
“You’re avvin’ a laugh ain’tcha?” said Panda. “I’d knock your bloody nice boy ‘ead off, I would”
Branden Riley was still smiling his idiotic smile, this time directing it at the guard. “Yes, well, perhaps we can, uh, make an exception for these lovely young ladies, Jimothy? These are the Shining Girls, they’re tonight’s opening act.”
“Opening act?” spat Fox, as if the words were venom sucked from a fatal snakebite. “Nobody said we were the opening act!”
Branden laughed sheepishly “Yes, well, we have a variety of acts planned for tonight and...uh...”
“Never get to fucking headline anything...” grumbled Panda, morosely sucking on her cigarette and glaring at the Guard as if he alone embodied everything bad about ‘the establishment’.
I had to laugh. This was my scheduled afterlife, all 24 hours of it.
Rebirth. Maturation. Orientation. Soundcheck. Gig. Encore. Re-death.
All in a day’s work.
One gig before oblivion, then never again.
I hadn’t answered Panda’s earlier question (and by now there were bigger fish to fry), but if I had, I would have said that my agent’s half-witted Great Grandson had signed the papers on my behalf, probably swindled out of any potential profits he could have secured from the deal. I spoke to him briefly via some sort of 3D videophone. He seemed the dumb-but-happy type. To tell the truth, I’m 99% sure that he had no idea who I was, but I signed an autograph for him anyway.
Dumb as he looked, he was smart enough to ensure I didn’t personalize it.
You only come back once. I knew that the time limit on my artificial body was already ticking away. Wasting time is a funny old thing, isn’t it? You know you’re doing it and yet you can never seem to stop yourself.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
One night only, in this context, really means what it says on the tin. I don’t understand the science behind it, but apparently the 24-hour time limit is something to do with diminishing cultural capital after an act becomes ‘overexposed’. Essentially, it maximizes earning potential for the ‘Reanimation Records’ company.
...And we can’t have that, can we?
“I’m not going on first. That’s bullshit.” moaned Fox, while Panda, who I could tell had no real emotional stake in the decision, backed her up defiantly.
“I’ll see what I can do” shifted Branden Riley awkwardly, “but this is most irregular”
Panda fixed him with a hard, council-house stare “You want irregular? I saw an advert for them 22nd century remote-controlled boobs. That’s bloody irregular, mate”
“Hey, I was gonna get a pair of those!” joked Black Fox, darkly.
I decided to change the subject, even though it meant talking directly to Branden Riley. “So, our records sell well in the future?” I quizzed.
“Oh yes” he smiled, relieved to have been removed from the wrath of the two undead middle-aged ladies. “That first single you did...The, uh, one about the clock...”
“Tick Tock Tick?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes, that one. Well, it was used in a dog food commercial and a lot of people lolled it. Then it got re-released, along with both your, um, albums. There was a wave of nostalgia for Post-Everything-Noise-Pop-Indie-Glam”
“I’ve never ‘eard it called that before!” jibed Panda, dropping her fag end on the marble floor and making sure the Guard watched her squish and desiccate it under her red PVC heel.
“We did those records when we were in our twenties, so why have we been resurrected in our forties?” I asked, “The only show we did at this age was that reunion gig we did at the Queen’s Head”
I still shiver when I recall that particular gig. If there had actually been a hell, I’m fairly certain I’d have ended up playing that particular show for all eternity.
“We really must be getting along, we have a lot of stairs to climb” noted Branden Riley, fussily.
We stayed rooted to the spot. Three steadfast older ladies, dressed up like cyberwhores. We were a nightmare for somebody like Branden Riley.
“Why are we so old?” asked Fox, her dark, piercing eyes practically boring a hole through the man’s waxy head.
Branden Riley attempted a false laugh.
“Well, actually, its quite funny. You see, there was a comedy sketch that was all about, um, ‘mature’ ladies who still tried to be sexy. They were all fat and haggard and everything, but they still acted as if they were 20 or so. They were based on you guys. Your reunion gig, in fact. It was a big hit on the W.E.B”
Scratch what I said before. There is an afterlife. This must be what hell feels like.
“You mean to tell me that we’re a joke!?” shouted Fox, once again breaking her evergreen cool.
Branden Riley squirmed, the way I’d seen him do a hundred thousand times before. “Well, not a joke exactly, more like a sort of, uh, parody of a genre...Its Pre-Modern, Post-Ironic, Proto-Slapstic...”
“Stop throwing useless labels around” I snapped at him.
“We thought that, if you knew about it...You might play up to your image and we’d lose the irony...”
Panda was considering violence. I could tell.
For my part, I was just sad. I wrote the riff to ‘Tick Tock Tick’ when I was waiting for Melanie to call after a big fight. I felt awful, but I was too proud to phone back (and so, apparently, was she). I could hear nothing except the cold, sterile ticking of the hotel room clock. It acted like a metronome.
The lyrics came to me the next morning.
Every time Panda sang the words,
Tick Tock Tick,
I wish the time was quick,
It’s a lover’s lonely trick,
To make me want you like I did,
...It would cut through me like a warm knife through butter.
To most, it was mundane, disposable, pop. But to me? To me it meant something, something far more important than dog food and cheap comedy. For years after, whenever I heard that track on the radio, I’d be back there in my hotel room, staring at the phone.
Please dial nine,
For an outside line,
I’m lonely and I’m cryin’,
Wishing you were mine...
I won’t do the rest, but that stupid song meant a lot to me. I was delighted when it charted. We all were. We thought we’d made it, but now I learn that it’s an advert for dog food. It seems that the critic who chided us as “Abba without the talent, or The Spice Girls without the fans” may have been on to something after all.
It was with a heavy heart that I ascended the staircase, leaving the Guard behind me and allowing the others to follow in my wake.
In an act of petty rebellion, Panda lit another cigarette and shot the Guard a daring glance. A maid was already on her way to clean the fag end as she disappeared out of our sight line. Viva la revolution.
I thought we’d finally caught on. I thought we’d finally made it to the dance, as they say. I thought, at long last, that ‘cool’ had relaxed its notoriously rigid definitions just enough to look our way. Just for a fleeting fucking second.
No such luck.
One hundred flights later and my mood hadn’t improved. I just wanted to die.
...Again.
Branden Riley showed us into a large auditorium. There were a few other bands milling about backstage, but I didn’t recognize any of them.
A plastic-looking Woman with a thousand-yard stare and a Barbie doll smile approached us, holding out her hand for the same mechanical, Branden Riley-patented hand-hug.
“Hi, I’m Melonee Ramirez, I’m a big fan of you guys. I always feed my dogs ‘Trust’, like in the commercial. Whenever they hear ‘Tick Tock Tick’ they come scurrying in, all excited. I love my dogs. I have two boys and a girl, they’re soooo cute!” she beamed. “After the show, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to autograph their biscuit bowls. Maybe you can even meet them!”
Oh, joy.
She looked like a Hentai starlet after a bad facelift.
“Bitch” said Fox, blatantly.
“I’m sorry?” said the Woman, bemused.
“Its what you call a girl dog.” explained Fox, with a scythe-like grin.
“Oh...OK” said Melonee Ramirez, smiling cluelessly.
“Anyway, you guys will be first on. We’ve prepared your set list and your encores. If you can shake your bums together as well, like on the video, that would be super! Anyway, delightful to meet you, but I must dash, Madonna will be arriving soon”.
Fox looked as dejected as Panda and I felt.
We got one gig. One last show. And we were a joke. In a very literal sense, we existed just to be laughed at. They didn’t even want us; they wanted a living, breathing meme.
“This lot are a bunch of dipshits” said Panda matter-of-factly, flicking the Vs to a watching Guard as she extinguished yet another fag underfoot. I guess lung cancer takes a back seat when you’ve got less than a day left to live.
“Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon.” I said to the others, as confidently as I could.
Panda was rummaging with a bit of paper.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Our setlist” she said, “We’re only on for three songs. And, according to this, the dog food advert is gonna be playing whilst we’re playing. I’ve never been so depressed.”
“Fuck sake” said Fox. “I say we just don’t do it. Its not like that ‘Melody’ or whatever her bloody name is can kill us, is it? We’re already dead as Dada and frankly, even endless nothingness is preferable to this shit.”
“Melonee” corrected Panda in a rare act of sensitivity.
Melanie.
Melan-Eee
You make me feel...Like somebody.
“Can I borrow that paper?” I heard myself asking.
Panda handed it to me, it had only been in her possession for a few minutes and already it looked like it had been put through hell. I pulled my lipstick out of my handbag and began scrawling madly on the dog-eared paper.
“What are you doing?” asked Fox, her voice low and suspicious.
“This is going out live, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because we’re not gonna fucking do ‘Tick Tock Tick’ – That’s why” I said decisively.
In the background, two bricks in boiler suits set up a pretty flawless reconstruction of our 1980’s-style drum machine, which we’d always called ‘Poppadom’ after the (‘poppa, poppa, poppa, dom’) noise it made.
We were good little girls all through our soundcheck, although, as usual, I messed up the riff to ‘Hired/Fired’ because I was following Poppadom 2’s lead instead of Fox’s bassline.
We spent the next couple of hours laughing and chatting over everyone else’s efforts, incurring many an angry look from various executives and our fellow undead pop stars. We actually had a pretty good time. Those girls were OK, and, as it turned out, I’d genuinely missed them.
We got as pissed as we possibly could on the free non-alcoholic champagne.
Eventually the curtains came up, after Branden Riley had given us a truly horrific introduction, with the emphasis firmly on weight-gain, the ‘quaint’ times we lived in and how ‘thrilled’ we all apparently were to come back and shake our collective cellulite for an anticipatory crowd of yuppies and overpaid idiots.
One.
Last.
Time.
This was it. The last thing I would ever do. Next stop – oblivion.
...It was time to make it matter.
“1234!” shouted Fox, typically tuneless.
We ran through the first two songs ‘Don’t Make Me Love You’ and ‘Hired/Fired’ (which I didn’t actually mess up this time) and then we stopped before breaking into the third.
The audience barely noticed us. They were chatting amongst themselves, waiting for Madonna.
The insipid, syrupy visuals of the dog food advert had begun; we were already badly out of synch. I pulled the lipstick-scrawled setlist from my push-up bra, like a closely guarded secret.
From both sides of the stage, I could see Melonee and Branden smiling falsely and urging us to keep in time. They were patronising, like parents watching a five year old’s nativity play.
“Hey, you know what? Fuck you all.” I said into the mic, surprising even myself.
There was a collective gasp. Now they noticed.
I started playing a little riff, something really obvious, in ‘E’ of all chords. The E chord, when strummed, is the musical equivalent of the sluttiest little number in your wardrobe. You know you shouldn’t love it, but you also know that you always will.
Nobody can ever turn away from a good E-chorder, even though they’d like to think they were better than that. Thank God they aren’t, or I might have lived a normal fucking life.
Ew.
Then, before anybody could quite grasp what we were up to, I tossed the lyrics to Panda. She took a few bars to read, and, as she did so, I spoke again. It was absolute and from the heart.
“Melanie. God, girl, I really hope you’re not watching this piece of shit...But in case you are: I remember telling you once that I’d love you until the day I died...”
I could feel the little wells filling up around my eyes.
“...Well, it turns out that I did. And then some.”
Nervous laughter. I ignored the visuals of the hungry dog and wiped my arm on my sleeve.
“Whatever else went on in your life, whoever else was around, I want you to know that I always loved you. Nothing life ever offered even came close to your gorgeous smile, or the simple beauty of your companionship...Fuck this gig; fuck these people (if you can call ‘em that) fuck this eternity, because nothing ever made any sense without you. I was so disappointed that there was no such thing as heaven...”
The young and affluent looked legitimately upset and confused by what I was saying. They probably deserved to. Yeah, fuck ‘em.
“...Until I realized that I’d already been to heaven. You don’t have to die to find that place. I was waiting for it after I died and, as a result, I squandered it. I missed out on it...Because my heaven was you.”
Brendan Riley was looking upwards and giving some sort of ‘cut throat’ sign. I didn’t care.
“...I’ll always love you, Melanie. You and no one else”.
I paused slightly, before adding, “Play the damn song guys, play it fucking loud”
The brand new, totally ad-libbed, song (which I’d privately called ‘Melanie’) never made it to the air, but who gives a shit? The message did.
And as for us? Red Panda, Black Fox and Blue Lion?
The Shining Girls didn’t suck. For one night only.
Heaven.