Razor gnashed his teeth against the cage.

The crashing waves of guitars and the squealing wash of keyboards weren’t what drove his frenzy as he thrashed against the mesh. He could smell them. The audience. The putrid stench of stale sweat and warm beer singed his nostrils. He climbed the fence, slathered his tongue over the steel, and caught sight of an irate biker as the man chucked his beer. The bottle exploded against the fence. Smiling, Razor bounded back down to the stage and raised his middle finger to the crowd.

“Fuck you all,” he screeched into the microphone, his voice distorted horribly by the shitty PA. Their music would push the limits of a decent system, much less the cheap systems in the trashy dives they favored.

While Razor raged, King remained anchored stage left, thrashing out riffs, head swinging in circles, his hair a blackened whip slicing through the air. The nine-inch nails that studded his leather forearm bands swayed as his hand raced up and down his fretboard.

Wraith moved his pale, towering form around as if trying to seduce the audience. The burly assortment up front weren’t his type. None of them were fans. They just happened to be there, regulars none too happy to see their favorite watering hole invaded by a band of misfits and freaks. He much preferred the young, lithe goth kids who would come in droves when they played the larger cities. There were a few there tonight, but sadly not enough.

Knife in hand, Razor head-banged his way over to Leech, the keyboardist. They ripped through their final song, “God is an Excuse,” and it was time for the show’s closing theatrics. As the band’s name changed, so did their show. In recent years, the act had grown darker and more disturbing. It was only right to change with the times. The blade flashed across Leech’s throat. Arterial spray spurted into the air. He stopped playing, grasped the wound, and wobbled around like a broken spinning top. His blood slicked the stage and sprayed the audience.

Razor sank to his knees and played with the blood, smearing it across his sweaty, bone-white chest. The vitriol of the audience gave way to gasps of horror and confusion. The act they had just witnessed too shockingly realistic to be fake, yet too violent to be real. It was that twilight between what was real and what should have been impossible that allowed the band to exist.

A smile stretched across Razor’s make-up smeared face, a rictus wide enough to proudly display the incisors he had filed to razor-sharp points He reveled in the moment before turning away from the audience and launching himself into Thorn’s drum kit.

King snapped out of his fugue state, smashing his guitar across the cage, then shattering it against the stage. Wraith kicked at an audience member, knocking them off the fence, before trashing his own instrument. Razor emerged from the wreckage of the drums and found his microphone. He croaked, “Good night,” and broke into laughter.

With that whirlwind of carnage, chaos, and destruction, the Live Undead finished their set.

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