Max turned his back on the three people giving him the finger. He couldn’t make out their faces anyway, with them being backlit in the noisy Baltimore club as Steel Panther blasted from the loudspeakers. They’d been flipping him off all night while he was on stage with his band, Burp the Worm, cranking out 80’s metal tunes on his axe-shaped guitar. It wasn’t the first time the flip-off fest had happened. Sometimes people accosted him after a show, too. He shrugged it off better on some days than others. Today he wasn’t in the mood for the haters. It was time to go home.
With his final glance at the stage to ensure he’d grabbed all his gear, he climbed down the three steps to the dark, linoleum floor. His black leather pants stuck to his thighs so that it was hard to crouch enough to pack up his shit on the floor, but he looked great in them. Sweat still trickled down his back under his AC/DC shirt, his necklace of the Judas Priest razorblade logo for their British Steel album bouncing off his chest. A few girls tried to catch his eye, but he just wanted out of the stuffy club air. The cool spring night air outside the door ten feet away beckoned. He strode over to his guitar case and crouched down as much as the pants would let him.
Before closing the case, Max took a final look down at “Kat,” the prized electric guitar he’d personally built. He’d crafted the body into the shape of an axe, just like Gene Simmons of Kiss, except that where Gene’s was a bass, Max’s was a six-string electric guitar. Kat was all silver hardware and black paint except for a silver area on the bottom, where it looked like a blade. She was the only guitar he owned and the only one he needed. She was badass. And she meant more to him than he let on.
She’d been causing jealousy for years. The first time he’d heard someone express envy, he knew he’d done a great thing in crafting her. Max was no luthier – someone who excelled in assembling and tuning guitars – so he’d gotten help from a local guy to make Kat sing like she was supposed to. When he’d been done assembling her, the action had been too high, and some of the electronics had crackled when turning knobs or flipping the pickup switch, so he had someone fix his mistakes. But he didn’t go around telling anyone that. Let them be jealous. What could it hurt?
But he already knew the answer to that.
He zipped closed the case and rose, casting a last look at the club where drunk people were wobbling into each other and slithering out into the darkness. Last call had come, and he felt a little inebriated himself from the shots two hot girls had bought him while he was onstage. He stood up and slung Kat over his shoulder in the black, soft gig bag he used, the stage nearly clear of his bandmates as they finished breaking down their gear. His was already loaded into his Dodge Charger’s trunk. A couple girls were still looking his way, but he decided to just get out of there, rather than risk another rude encounter. He’d never thought of himself as a virtuoso, but other people called him one, and sometimes the jealousy got to be too much.
The three people who’d been flipping him off had disappeared, and he stepped out of the club with a final glance at his bandmates, who were busy with their own gear or hanging out with people. He still felt like the odd man out, even though he’d formed the band. He was never going to shake the feeling of being a loner that a lot of people didn’t really like.
He was a little awkward. That had made him standoffish – a lame attempt to ward off more clumsy interactions – and that had made people think he was arrogant even before he became a good guitarist. Some were nice enough to his face, like his bandmates, but he always had the impression they were talking shit about him behind his back and didn’t really want him around. That he might’ve just been insecure only made him feel more irritable about it.
And so he’d spent most of his time playing guitar, hoping being good would maybe earn back some of the friends and respect his awkwardness had cost him. Instead, it had made a lot of people hate him. Sometimes there was no winning. Some days he laughed about it. Other times, like today, it just got on his nerves.
Maybe he should turn around and go flirt with those girls, but the idea made him flush. A few times, pairs of women had pretended to be interested in him before rejecting him and revealing that they were just toying with him, putting him in his place because he was supposedly an arrogant musician. It had just happened again a week ago. And now he couldn’t trust it when a girl acted interested. People could be such assholes.
Sighing, he stepped onto the gravelly asphalt of the parking lot, his black leather boot crunching with every step. No one seemed to be outside as he strode toward his car, the night air cool on his skin. The kind of beat-up or old cars 20-somethings drove dotted the lot. His red machine was one of them, the front fender painted grey because he couldn’t afford to get it repainted after some body work had taken the dents out. One of these days.
As he neared it, three figures stepped out from behind a van parked past his car. They took up positions to either side of his Charger and blocked the way to it. The blonde one held a hockey stick, but the short one and the overweight one had nothing in their hands. With the streetlight above them backlighting them, Max recognized their silhouettes from inside and stopped where he was. They weren’t really going to attack him, were they? This was getting out of hand.
“Hey dickhead,” the blond one called out, his voice echoing off the stone walls of surrounding buildings.
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“Give it a rest, guys,” Max said, suspecting that was the ringleader.
“We’re gonna give you a rest,” said the chubby one, the voice revealing she was female.
Max replied, “Clever. Maybe you should be a poet.”
“You got a smart mouth,” the blond observed.
Max didn’t really think so but drawled, “Well, at least one of us does.”
“Fuck you, dude.”
The short one finally spoke. “You think you’re so much better than us.”
Max sighed. “Maybe that’s because I don’t go around flipping people off or accosting them at their car. Come on, guys. They just did last call. Go get another beer and see if you can get laid before it’s too late.”
The blond guy said, “The only thing I wanna fuck is you, and I mean fuck you up.”
“Well shit,” Max began, forcing a laugh, “for a second there, I thought I was gonna get laid.”
“Fucking faggot!”
Irritated by the homophobic slur, Max said, “Guys – ”
“Get him!”
They rushed at Max, who stepped back and saw from their body language that they weren’t kidding. He turned a little too late and ran, but they had a head start and were closing fast. The guitar case bounced haphazardly on his shoulder. He lost a precious second getting it into one hand, where it was almost as awkward. Running from these bozos irritated him, but 3-on-1 and unarmed wasn’t good odds. With the footsteps closing in, he risked a glance back just as the blond with the hockey stick swung it as his legs and tripped him.
Max fell too quickly to break his fall, one knee slamming into the asphalt painfully as his hand slid through some of the loose gravel. The guitar case fell to one side. As he reached for it, the short one kicked it away. The girl stomped on his other hand. Pain, anger, and fear of broken bones tore through him. As they laughed, he rolled onto his back to see the three of them surrounding him. He held up the injured, bloody hand and saw it shaking, whether from adrenaline or pain.
“Get the guitar!” the blond one in front of him hollered.
“No!” Max yelled, struggling to his feet. He moved left toward the short one who’d picked it up, but the blond one swung the hockey stick to keep him back. “You’ll never get away with stealing it. Everyone knows it’s mine.”
The blond one sneered. “We’re gonna smash it to pieces, not get caught with it. This is what happens to arrogant motherfuckers.”
A jolt of shock tore through Max. After all of these years taking care of Kat, her being destroyed was the worst thing he could imagine. To think he’d gotten upset when he’d scratched the back of her on his belt buckle until learning to pull the front of his shirt over his waist. And now three dumbasses were gonna break her? Over his dead body.
“Leave the guitar alone,” Max demanded, as the short one pulled it out of the case.
“Leave the guitar alone!” the girl on his right mocked.
The short one dragged Kat across the gravel, likely scratching the paint.
“I’ll give you whatever money you want,” Max pleaded, cradling his injured hand. “Come on. That guitar is priceless.”
“It’s about to be worthless,” said the blond one.
The girl laughed. “Hey! We are poets!”
The short one lifted Kat into the air by the guitar neck as if she was an actual axe. Then he raised it over his head – and dread filled Max at the impending motion of it slamming into the ground. He lunged forward. The blond one jabbed him in the chest with the hockey stick hard enough to make Max gasp at the pain. With his good hand, Max yanked the stick, which came out of the guy’s grip. And suddenly Max was the one with a weapon. He ran toward the guy holding the guitar and cocked his arm back to swing.
Pain exploded across his right temple as flashing light blinded him. He never saw the ground as he fell hard to his left and slammed headfirst into asphalt, which stunned him. His ears rang. A punch. From the blond one. Max hadn’t seen it coming and now couldn’t see anything. He dimly heard the crack of Kat being smashed into the ground. Once. Twice. And the sound of wood tumbling. Laughter. He tried to lift his head but couldn’t. Or his arm. His legs wouldn’t move and felt impossibly heavy.
Crunching footsteps neared him and stopped. Max feared what they were about to do to him.
The girl said, “Shit, dude. I think you hit him too hard.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. We better get the fuck out of here before somebody sees us.”
“Let’s go.”
The footsteps rapidly faded away. Max blacked out with a groan of pain, despair, and helpless fury.
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Max opened his eyes to see tall trees just feet in front of him, a rocky dirt path leading between them and through a forest with low bushes scattered throughout. A glance around revealed more of the same, the trail behind him, too. The turning motion caused coarse fabric to rub rough against his skin. Looking down, he saw a plain, long-sleeved brown shirt that was belted at the waist with a rope. He also wore similar pants that reached his ankles, and it felt like he had no underwear; a quick touch down there confirmed it. His feet wore brown fur boots. He otherwise had nothing with him.
He’d never been much of a nature buff, but the air smelled pristine, with a pine scent. His sinuses hadn’t felt this clear in forever and he took a deep breath. He felt relaxed and rested, as if after a good night’s sleep. A slight breeze felt good against his skin. Everything seemed almost too vivid, his vision even clearer than before, even though he hadn’t needed glasses.
But he had no idea what he was doing here.
Confused, he tried to take a step forward, and while he could lift his foot, it went back on the ground in the same place instead of forward like he’d intended. He tried again with the same result. Was an invisible force field holding him in place? They didn’t exist, so that couldn’t be. He couldn’t back up or go sideways, either. He extended his arms successfully, reaching around and up, but he appeared stuck in place. Though he didn’t see anyone, he was about to consider calling for help when something changed.
A semi-translucent display of light appeared hanging in the air several feet before him. Instead of an edge, it had an outline of glowing, yellow light with rounded corners. For a moment, he thought it was a TV or computer screen, but there was no stand, and it wasn’t hanging from a tree or crane or something. It just floated there. Nothing that could be powering it lay out here in the middle of nowhere and it didn’t seem like it would have a battery compartment. Words of blue then appeared in the middle of it, a pleasant female voice speaking them.
Welcome to Llurien Online, the world’s premiere virtual reality game. You must choose a character before you begin your adventure. Proceed?