The Book of Dema

CHAPTER SEVEN + Set Fire This Day

Tyler winced as he sat alone in the dressing room. His costume lay across the yellow chair in front of him. The burgundy pants stuck out below the skeleton shirt and mask. He wasn't ready to put any of it on yet, but the clock was ticking down to show time. Josh had dressed and gone somewhere to meditate. Maybe he should have Josh run him through his routine. It might calm him down, and then he wouldn't need bandages.

Tyler pulled his court shorts up from his knee to inspect his right thigh. He grimaced at the hints of blood seeping through the wrap. He unwound the gauze and pulled at the tape. It gripped the hair on his leg and made the inspection more painful. He needed to look, though. He gritted his teeth and pulled the tape off abruptly. Now he felt stinging and achy pain. Tyler breathed out and leaned down towards his thigh. He had to twist a little to see the area more clearly. He grew angry with himself as he examined it. The leg was pink with irritation where the nine razor lines had been bleeding slightly all afternoon.

He heard footfalls on the wood flooring outside the door and quickly pulled the shorts leg down. The person did not enter the room, though, and he breathed out again. This is nuts, he thought. There is better proof of life than this. He reached down into his bag to retrieve the tube of neosporin pain cream. I can't keep doing this. This isn't solving anything. He squeezed out a dime-size dollop and pressed it into the cuts. The stinging increased, but it did not stop him from rubbing the cold gel across the wounds until his thigh glistened. He frowned at what he had done to his leg.

He spread the gauze he'd laid out on the table across the area and applied new tape. Satisfied that it wouldn't bleed through his pants, he changed into his skeleton costume. Tonight, I am the Skeleton Man. Tonight, I have all the answers. The pain lingered, but his mind was no longer on it, now on the show that would start in a few minutes.

Across the room, the black painted door hinges announced a visitor, and swinging the door open, Josh stepped halfway in. He was wearing his usual impish grin and the same skeleton shirt and burgundy pants Tyler had just put on himself. He looked at the medical supplies and waved at Tyler's gauzy mess.

"What's going on in here? Are you ready to go yet? Greg is set. The audience is here. You're gonna like what you see out here. Let's go, let's go, let's go!" Josh is like a big puppy, Tyler thought. Unending eternal optimism, like he knows where he wants to go at all times. Tyler gave him the ok sign but kept his expression to himself. Putting on his mask, he threw his medical remnants away and followed Josh to the staging area.

Greg had already lowered the lights on the pit and set them flashing on the stage. The first notes of Ode to Sleep had already started. Josh moved behind his drum set. Tyler could hear the cheering. It sounded louder than usual. The lights were now moving to the cadence of the electronic drum beats, and then he was running across the platform–a jump–landing on the downbeat, he started to dance with the music. Almost immediately, he spotted Carter towards the front. He was cheering, and pulling up the top corners of his dark gray shirt so Tyler could read the big yellow letters: DOOR CREW, it said. There were at least three other teens wearing the same shirt. The four shirts startled him, so much that he almost missed his next queue. Josh had noticed and banged out a hard unscripted bass beat that snapped him back. Tyler grabbed the microphone and poured out the first lines of the song:

I wake up fine and dandy
But then by the time I find it handy
To rip my heart apart and start
Planning my crash landing
I go up, up, up, up, up to the ceiling
Then I feel my soul start leaving
Like an old man's hair receding

As the set continued, Tyler became more aware of the size of the crowd. The floor of the venue had room for 250 people. It was almost full, and then the light flashed again upwards. Normally he was only able to see the first few rows, but he suddenly became aware the balcony was also full. There may have been 400 people at the show. This is what Josh meant. The college flyers were beginning to work. Posting the music online was also making an impact. The energy of the place was phenomenal, like nothing he'd seen before now. The adrenaline rush that had come from the stinging pain of his leg had been replaced by the crowd's energy. It rippled through Tyler, and pivoting around to Josh, he could see he was receiving it too. Josh was hammering away at his drums, his face lit up with aggressive excitement.