Josiah pulled his green Cherokee into a makeshift gravel space on the side of the building specified by the address on the flyer, and noticed that it was 10:05pm - he was 10 minutes early. Just enough time to collect himself and slam his last sugar-free Red Bull.

"Yes!" he whispered.

Today was his day off so he spent the majority of it preparing himself and playing (and re-playing) his entire collection of WEGORE CDs - and one limited edition vinyl single of Ripped-A-Cock-Us. Now with his black fatigue pants, and 1993 Severed Heaven tour t-shirt, which showed an image of God (presumably) being pulled apart by demon-like creatures, Josiah was ready for the show.

As he gripped the handle and creaked open the driver's side door, something caught Josiah's eye outside of the window. There were 2 identical black cats perched like gargoyles on the roof of the car next to him. Even as he fully opened the door and stepped out of the car, they remained deadly still. He leaned in and grabbed the ax he'd "borrowed" from his neighbor's shed off of the passenger seat and waved it in front of the cats - but they still did not move.

What they did do was hiss. Not together, but in turns, each taking about 3 seconds to hiss at Josiah. Back and forth, back and forth. With the creepout factor rising by the second, Josiah downed the last of his energy drink, slammed the door and trotted around to the front of the building at a rapid pace.

The main entrance to the venue was helmed by a frazzled-looking woman dressed in a bus driver's uniform. She had to have been at least 70, with drawn in eyebrows, nearly encircling a pair of small brown eyes. It was actually hard to tell the color of anything while standing outside the main doors as the blue light spilling from underneath them cast an excessively powerful glow.

Seated on a stool in front of an awkward mechanical contraption, which appeared to be a steno-graph, the woman crackled, "What's your name and age dear?"

"Josiah Meeks, 26" he said gripping the ax handle a little more tightly than before.

"Good" she replied, and began clicking away on the steno-graph, while looking him up and down - particularly eyeing the ax. "I see you are ready for an adventure - please enter and join the others."

Just then, the frail woman made a final click on her typing machine and the 2 front doors swung open revealing a staircase leading down into the floor. The light muted a bit at that moment, so Josiah could see well enough to begin his descent. With his last step at the bottom of the stairs, the room re-illuminated, casting everything inside of it a deep shade of blue.  All around the edges of the room were what appeared to be arched hall entrances - perhaps 7 in all, and against the southern most wall was a velvet curtain. While the lack of any visible people in this large chamber-like room was initially unsettling, the more alien element was the full-size school bus in the center of it. Small flashing circles in the floor throbbed to a low muted bass - thump thump thump -  leading the way to the door of the school bus.

Carefully stepping inside the bounds of each circle, Josiah made his way to the bus. When he was nearly 3 feet away, the door slid open, the sound of screams blasting from within. As quickly as they started, they silenced. Looking astoundingly into the drivers seat, Josiah saw the woman that checked him in seated there. "Are you ready for the ride Josiah?" she whispered. He swallowed hard and stated "I suppose".

"Then step inside. You sure don't want to be out there when it starts."

"When what starts?" Josiah asked.

The old lady smiled and said, "Why the blood, of course..."

"WEGORE?" mumbled Josiah. "Holy CRAP, WEGORE!"

This chick was associated with WEGORE somehow! The most creative, avante garde theatre/horror/music ensemble in history had this horrible woman in charge of their fliers. Was she their artist? Thier manager? Their groupie? Talk about 2 degrees of separation. Josiah had WEGORE posters plastering his dorm room in college. Now they were more mainstream, but back in the day, onstage they would mimick ripping bodies apart and mutilation, and vampirism - all sorts of cool stuff - but no one ever knew who they really were. For all he knew, noone did now either!

Josiah knew he had to play this one cool. If he was to get any information out of Ms. StickUpHerAss, he'd have to really play this one cool. "I'll say I'm a promotor for a local venue here in town. That'll get her to talk, yeah that'll work." His friends had booked bands a few years ago, so talking the "club" lingo shouldn't be too far of a stretch. He'll just mention that he's looking for a big national to headline a horror festival he's putting on. That'll be perfect.

First though he had to get these fliers made up, and FAST. Maybe even slip in his employee discount...yeah, that'll show he's a pro on the downlow for sure.

Twenty minutes later, and just as Sandy hotpants walked back in from her latte excursion, Josiah was finishing up the final cut of the 4-up. He racked and boxed the fliers and approached the counter with them as she offered a bit of backhanded praise, "Wow, I didn't think you'd be able to do it, at least from the look of you."

Before Josiah could even launch into his "promoter" bit, the lady offered, "My name is Lisa, and I work with WEGORE. Tell ya what, if you want, I can get you into a super cool show this Friday night. You familiar with WEGORE?"

"HELL YEAH!"....

"Good, then you know the drill with these shows, except this one's a little different. They're trying out some new material so to speak. You cannot tell anyone about it, you have to come alone, and you have to bring an ax."

Josiah swallowed hard. The mixture of excitement, fear, and what might be nausea was almost too much to bear. He promptly agreed and handed over the box of fliers. She wrote down an address on the back of one of them, and said "Be here at 10:15pm sharp."

He turned the flyer over to investigate it again. WEGORE always had intricate designs and patterns that really brought out the geek in him. As he stared, one thing that really stood out  was the date on the flyer. It was not for this Friday....it was for a show one month away. The slight nausea began culminating in the pit of Josiah's stomach again.

He had seen her before. Once in the shop and twice next door at Starbucks ordering Fru-Fru lattes or something. Though quite beautiful in a refined and exotic way, she had an air of complete bitchitude about her. Maybe it was the the Louis Vuitton handbag, or the Louis Vuitton key ring, or just the way she spoke to the latte-maker when there wasn't enough cinnamon dust on her coffee. Regardless, Josiah did not think kindly of her and dreaded the day of ever having to serve her in any capacity.

"Hellooooo. Is anybody here?" the woman bellowed. The very tone of her voice scraped Josiah's soul like nails on a chalkboard. He had crouched beneath the counter as soon as he saw her enter the store, and was now pretending to sort credit card slips. The only hope would be that Judy, his co-worker would come in for her shift a few minutes early and relieve him of this kneeling purgatory.

"I need some assistance pleeeeeaaaseee" she called, more than a little hint of impatience creeping into her cadence. As she approached the counter and saw the top of Josiah's head, the  woman immediately became angry. "I don't know what you're doing, but you obviously heard and ignored me. I need 5000 copies of this flyer made on full color paper, and I need them in one hour."

As if that weren't enough, the phone rang, it was Judy. She was running late, and wouldn't be in until 8:30. Josiah had no choice but to do the lady's fliers.

"Do you want these on any particular color paper?" Josiah asked meekly.

"I said FULL COLOR! Jesus Christ! Don't they at least train you to listen to your customers?" snapped the woman bitchily. "I'm going to get a coffee next door. Wouldn't it be fabulous if you actually got the flyers done by the time I got back? A lady can dream, huh?"
She threw the flyer master down on the counter and stomped out the door, posh Louis Vuitton bouncing on her hip with every step.

Nearing breakdown status, Josiah picked up the flyer and stared down at it in amazement.

There stood Josiah, blood-drenched long-handle ax in his left hand, crisp white wash cloth in his right. The surreal contrast of the two went unnoticed by him, and certainly went unnoticed by the motionless body at his feet. Slowly, Josiah began wiping the ax with the cloth until it was only slightly smeared red.

Spinning steadily on his heel, Josiah made a quick jaunt back to his Jeep Cherokee. He threw the ax and cloth in the back, hopped in the driver's seat, and reached for the keys already in the ignition - except they weren't there. 

"That bitch!" he yelled.

"God Dammit!!!!"

The last few day's events began playing back in Josiah's mind like a warbled movie. He saw himself at work on Tuesday filling the last order of the night, perfectly aligning and collating copies as he always did - pridefully tending to his last customer's order before ending his shift and heading home for an evening of Battlestar Galactica re-runs and microwave peperoni pizza.