Street Feeling

Prologue

The bass rumbled even from outside of the pub, asphalt vibrating from the sheer power of the sound system. The air stung Churches' skin as he stood on the stoop of the back entrance to the small performance space inside. The snowflakes drifted slowly in the air to a tranquil rest upon the ground. His band, Theseus Noise, had just wrapped up their set, and a much better group than them had just begun theirs.

I'm the second Churches in this stupid band anyway, he thought. He wiped his bleeding nose onto the sleeve of his parka. Them fake Rudies. I won't sleep tonight without a headache.

He wondered if the ruckus across the bar had calmed down since he had stepped out. He leaned his ear against the door and heard the same clattering and shouting of warring Skins and Rudies and Punks and all those dogs of all sorts. His hands, raw from playing the drums, stung as they pressed against the chilled metal that the body of the door was composed of. His breath was shaky, scared at what he had seen before, inside, his friend smashed over the head with a bottle. He wondered if it was safe to enter at all, maybe he should wait. But then again, maybe he shouldn't. That's not what Churches would do as a person. His lungs stung in his chest, heart pounding, resentful of the mold that he was forced to fit into.

He produced a deep exhale that fogged the air like a pair of old reading glasses. He straightened the hat on his head, stalling for one more second before the confrontation, and pushed the heavy door open.

Oh, God, he didn't even consider that where he had entered was right where every sane person was looking. He stepped over microphone cords, the band blaring in his ear. He dodged around them, out of the playing area. What was that band's name anyway? He had no time to think after he was pounced on and tackled by a muscular-looking Skin, whose eyes were clouded with red mist. The maniac easily weighed a hundred pounds more than himself. He was wailed on by heavy fists that were like five-fingered packages of ground beef. He attempted to use the weight against him, like he had been taught, to try and get the guy on his back and keep him there. Churches struggled in the hold and failed. He panicked. His nose was probably already broken.

Then, Churches heard a shout from across the pub, coming nearer and nearer, rushing footsteps audible over the hollering and shouting.

"Hey!" the voice called with glorious amounts of snot.

Before anyone could figure out who it was, a small but formidable Rudie leaped from a cocktail table, elbow out like they were some sort of wrestler. Churches caught a gleam from an accessory on their face, and he recognized those ridiculous sunglasses -- even indoors -- anywhere. It was Carp! They landed with their elbow hitting the Skin just off-center of his solar plexus. The wind was knocked out of the muscular man.

Carp clawed and kicked and punched and yelled, clinging onto the skinhead. It was almost noble, no matter how pathetic a puny creature such as them seemed when facing off against a goliath.

"Yeah? Yeah?! I've got a shank! Get back, get back!" they screeched, kicking him where it hurt.

Churches was in so much shock and relief that he forgot he was still lying on the floor. He pulled himself up quickly before he could get trampled. The crowd in the pub was loud, louder than the music, of which the band did nothing to control the fight. He wondered why his band even agreed to play with them. The smell of piss and spew and alcohol and sweat overwhelmed much of his senses, and it was hard to focus on pulling the members of Theseus Noise out of the brawl. Especially with everyone in suits. The look was cool, but it was irritating now that the rudies were all identical Jabscos in their dapper dress. He held onto his cap as he maneuvered around the mob of people, stressed, exhausted.

He knew where Carp was, he wouldn't worry about them. He picked out two Jamaican men, one, tall, with an unwieldy posture and a round face, breakable and falling over onto himself, and another, rotund and four-eyed, as well as a third, weak-looking and without structural integrity like soggy cardboard. Lanky, Machine, and Schnozz respectively. Each were limping and whining and clutching each other in pain. They followed Churches out of the mess, out the door and on to the street outside. Their blazers were covered in blood, vomit, snot, booze, and other stuff he didn't want to think about. Churches looked at them wordlessly, no expression on his face but his eyebrows, crumpled in concern, and his lips, in a small frown.

Machine held his electric guitar like it was his only raft in the ocean. It was that bad? He hadn't even managed to get his instrument out to the car in the lot safely. He was bleeding from his mouth. Schnozz looked barely hurt at all, and yet he was leaning and limping and crying into Lanky's shoulder like he had just nearly been run over by a bus or fallen off a cliff or something similar. So melodramatic. Lanky was the worst of them, he had gotten a tooth or two knocked out and his nose was now a bit crooked on his mug. His face was swollen and purple and his forehead was bleeding and covered in broken glass. He was barely awake. And Churches himself had rolled his ankle being knocked down, as well as acquired some bruises on his face from being nearly beaten to death.

"I think I sprained a rib!" said Schnozz, exclaiming the words in such exaggerated agony. "Those...maniacs belong on the funny farm! I nearly jumped into the pit to strangle that guy!! Glad I didn't!!"

"They threw that bottle..." Churches said.

He assessed the damage over and over again, and turned to Lanky finally, looking at him, trying not to react harshly to the way he had been beaten. Lanky did not look back at him, but instead at the pub they had just emerged from, eyes narrowed and tired. Churches knew what he might have been thinking over, considering, contemplating, but at the same time it might have been lost on him. He had a different experience than the sickly man, but imagined the suffering, some of it he had experienced as well. National Front beating the rhetoric into the heads of clueless people who took things that were not theirs. Policemen so violent but too scared to even touch the real problems. People gawking on the street at others who didn't look and act and talk exactly the same, carbon copy the same, as themselves. In the gloss of his dulled eyes was the light of the sign over the establishment. His legs wobbled, the only ones he had to stand on.

"They hate us," Lanky said under his breath, mostly to himself.

"It's okay if they do. We're U.K.'s Worst Ska, right?" Schnozz said to him, attempting to reassure him to no avail. He might have understood a little, but he was still ignorant to the things he would never know. "We don't care what they say."

Lanky just simply shook his head. He closed his eyes and leant against him with heavy bones, exhaling deeply.

Schnozz looked at him, surprised that he was now supporting his weight. He stopped his acting. "Uhh, Machine, do you have any first-aid kits at yours?"

"Yuh. bandages and everything."