The feedback reaching crescendo, Nothing screamed.

Microphone cord wrapped tightly around his forearm, he sank to his knees. At first his screams were atonal wailing, but gradually he formed a sentence. Thrashing wildly, he shrieked the words that haunted his every waking moment for the past week. He didn’t understand what they meant, only they held some deeper meaning not readily apparent. “This is the end of everything,” he cried one final time before he collapsed to the stage.

Lying on his back, Nothing watched the pink and white confetti swirl through the air. Tilting his head to the side, he saw Wraith kick one of the hundreds of black balloons bouncing across the stage. The normally surefooted bassist slipped and crashed to the ground.

Nothing crawled towards Aiden.

Rising to his knees, he stared up at his guitarist.

Head down, Aiden coaxed demonic washes of feedback from his instrument. When he noticed Nothing knelt in front of him, a devilish smile flashed across his cherubic face.

Snatching handfuls of hair, Aiden pulled Nothing’s face towards his crotch and thrust his hips. As Aiden pantomimed fucking his mouth, Nothing grabbed Aiden’s ass. Squeezing tightly, Nothing heard hundreds of excited squeals in the crowd.

When Aiden let his hair go, Nothing theatrically wiped his mouth and staggered to his feet.

Aiden leaned forward, and embraced Nothing. Arching his feet, Nothing found Aiden’s lips. Even though the kiss was now only part of their act, Nothing couldn’t help but remember feelings long forgotten. There was a time when he loved Aiden and Aiden loved him in turn. As their lips parted, Nothing wondered why either of them ever stopped.

Turning away from Nothing, Aiden smashed his guitar against the stage.

Hair in messy tangles, skin lacquered with sweat, eyeliner streaking his face, dress torn and barely clinging to his body and stockings hopelessly shredded, Nothing staggered to the front of the stage. The Red Rock Casino Amphitheatre was sold out. 10,000 kids, all deathly pale and dressed in black raised their hands to the star-filled Las Vegas sky as they chanted the band’s name—his name. Looking at the crowd, Nothing Zero felt alive.

Unfortunately the feeling was fleeting.

The afterglow from his performance starting to slip, Nothing tore the tattered remains of his dress off. With thousands of videos posted to YouTube of him performing the act, he knew everyone in the crowd had already seen him stripped down to his underwear and garters, but that didn’t matter. Without fail, each time he did the striptease, he received a wave of excited squeals as reward. It was enough to make his high last a precious few seconds longer.

When he was alive, Nothing would have done anything to hear those screams. He dreamed of performing with a band for thousands of adoring fans, selling millions of records, posing for magazine covers and filming music videos. But living in rural Ohio, far from the shimmering glamor of New York or Hollywood, he feared his dreams would never come true. He dreaded the thought of being trapped in his small town life, all of his hopes and dreams unfulfilled and his life unnoticed by anyone but the bullies and assholes who lived to abuse him.

But then Nothing died.

Death awoke something dark and terrible inside him. Nothing was reborn as a creature of great power and endless hunger. But most of all, Nothing found himself with everything he dared dream of when he was alive. It was the final night of a sold out tour promoting his third chart-topping album, Nothing should have been elated. He should have felt like a conquering hero as he surveyed the crowd. But staring out at the thousands of adoring kids with their Nothing Zero shirts and screaming for him to throw them his dress, Nothing felt nothing at all.

 

Continue Reading…