So let me bring you up to speed.

Pain was moronic enough to try to trick his parents into coming here, to the very den of sin; I could have told him, and I did tell him - repeatedly - that it wasn't worth the breath, much less the effort of dialing the number, to be turned down. I told him they were going to mix up an excuse, and I was right. They brought it out of the oven half-baked and tried to pass it off as decent cooking. I rolled my eyes, but sympathized like a friend should when Pain called me, asking where I was.

I was at Lenny's Bar, as in, where Die works and where we tried to have a show last night. Yeah, don't remind me of that. Pain and I were deconstructing our stage when we saw Die run out, and I left pussy-boy alone to take things out to the van. He's not good with emotions. I had to be the one to talk to Die, try to get an explanation out of him. I should've known better than to lay a hand on his shoulder, though. He kicked me in the shin with one of those heavy Army-Navy Surplus combat boots he loves to wear, and I still have a bruise as mottled, purple, and dark as his spirits were that night under the sickly streetlight glow. He told me to fuck off.

I told him that whatever Larry said about our vision, it didn't matter. "Mere mortals can't be made to understand the music of the gods," I said.

He burst into tears, like a woman, or like Pain on one of his worse days, and begged me, "Let's go home."

Once we got home, Die curled around me like a kid's fingers around the gooey cardboard stick of a lollipop, and he refused to let go. All but sewing his fingernails into my shirt, he bawled against my chest, soaking me with mascara, the white powder he uses to "accellerate death's beautiful pallor," and eyeliner thicker than industrial-weight sludge. I fell asleep sitting in the couch with him sniffling and drizzling his snot all over my poor shirt, not to mention the recoiling skin underneath. When I woke this morning and my eyelids were heavier than the lid of a coffin after being nailed shut, Die was still there, only his head was on the arm of the couch and his shoulder blade was carving a canyon in my right thigh. I managed to escape his clutches with Pain's help, as we shifted him onto the couch and I went to my room to catch the twenty winks he stole from me with all his pissiness and his shame. He shouldn't be ashamed.

I mean, the guy is a fucking moron who lacks true meaning in his life, but he has a vision, if nothing else, and some talent with a guitar. The one who should be crying and having a hissy is that Larry, his own boss who should know how skilled we are, how much worthier we are than all those who dared to leave the bar that night. All of them will meet the hateful jaws of Ashtaroth's mount, will burn in eternal flames of boredom after spurning us and running like those flames were on their heels. I'm going to enjoy somehow knowing, feeling the karmic link pulse with heat, when they're punished for their deeds.

I want to write a song about it, but Pain has his heart set on a dark, ambient piano ballad forsaking love until the one he loves can be resurrected by any means, fair or foul. He's pathetically romantic. As for Die, he's likely writing something about killing himself, killing me, or killing the archangels to replace them with the Dukes of Hell. He's sickeningly arrogant.

Pain cried when Die told him what Larry said; he didn't have to tell me for me to know it must have been an awful and undeserved insult. Sure, Pain fucked up a few notes in the middle of 'Semiramis,' but that's no reason to crack down on us like a dominatrix's whip on an unwitting slave boy's back. We're on the lookout for a new venue, a "venue of vision," according to Die. Good luck with that.

Anyway, Die's reaction, not Pain's, should come as a shock to me; Pain always cries. He's sitting in the living room now, curtains drawn, playing some miserable song on the piano. ("Playing" is too gentle a word; he's attacking the keys with the vengeance of a woman scorned, backed by hell's fury, and I don't dare go in there for fear of him throwing a blow dryer at me and wailing. Is it possible for men to get pregnant? But yeah, where was I...?) Whatever the song is, I think it's from some weepy, girly musical, and I think he got the sheet music off the Internet. I'm trying my damndest to stay at least ten feet away from his gloomy aura at all times, avoiding the PMS virus that has swept through the house like the plague through Europe, or like flames through a pyre. Hm, there's a song idea Die will definitely shoot down. He never agrees with anything decent.

"Hey," says Die. He's over whatever Larry said, or he's doing a great job of faking it, an art most of his past girlfriends must've perfected.

"Hey."

"'Scuse me," he says.

I give him free reign over the countertop, where he starts buttering one side of a piece of white bread. Grilled cheese, then. With pickles. God, does he ever have the nastiest taste in comfort food. Pain and I always eat chocolate chip cookies, the store brand of Chips Ahoy the store downtown gets, the same kind we shared and dipped in whole milk when we were in elementary school, before it mattered and we had to start drinking one percent to protect Pain's girlish figure, before I started seeing blood in all my milk after that incident in seventh grade, before Pain's parents started hating him, before I started hating Pain and Die. Not a lot of hate in those times, so I like to eat the cookies even when they've gone stale from waiting too long at the back of the mausoleum of a cupboard, and sometimes, I pretend that it's Die's insides dissolving in the milk, being pickled in a better-smelling formaldehyde.. At least I have symbolism, meaning, behind what I like to eat when I feel as if my heart has been wrenched from my chest and shoved down my gagging, protesting throat. Die, Mr. High-and-Mighty-Vision, can't say that much.

"I have an idea for a new venue," says Die.

I break out of my reverie like a zombie from the frosty midwinter earth, hands breaking through the soil to stretch towards a waxing gibbous moon's pale, watery light. "Oh?" I say.

"Yeah."

I wait, and when he drops the sandwich in the frying pan without continuing, I prompt him to continue. "So what's this brilliant new idea?"

"Hold on."

I wait another six seconds, listening to the sizzling intensify as the pan heats up and the butter starts spitting on the cast iron. Then I prompt again, "So?"

"Hold ON!" snaps Die.

"Look, I'll ask you later, when you're off your period."

On cue, Pain comes into the room, and I notice that his mascara, newly applied not half an hour ago, is dotted underneath his eyes from clenching them shut and streaked down his cheeks from tears. He's weaker than a pawn shop amp, weaker than the last thrumming beats of a heart that are fainter than the tiniest vibrations of a string. I really can't stand him right now, not when he's about to burst into a fresh faucet of tears if I so much as mention his melodramatic performances of late.

"Please don't fight," he says.

Now more than ever, I want to satisfy myself with the crack as I break his neck, or with his scream as I chase him with a knife to bury in his jugular vein as if the cleaver is a vampire in search of sustenance. I shake my head. I'm turning into Die, the king of gory fantasies. He's described his thoughts of killing both of us, and he doesn't hold back any details about turning me into a macabre alphabet soup or finding a way to photograph Pain's face right before driving an electric drill through his wrists and ankles and crucifying him on the wall with screws meant for anchoring bookshelves. Die is twisted. I, on the other hand, am not fixated on the rivulets of blood that would stream down the wall after Pain was affixed to it. I'm not a freak. I just want to play music, and if it happens to be darker, more misshapen than the abyss that is my soul, so be it. I've stared too long into that depth and it's stared too long into me for me to back away now, no matter how frightened I am sometimes to see the crazy look glaze over Die's eyes.

"We're not fighting. I'm leaving the kitchen and Die is withholding information," I say.

Pain looks at me with plaintive, teary eyes and brushes his hair out of his face. He hasn't showered yet today, and it's clear from the stringiness, the damp look of his hair that comes from all that oil building up since yesterday morning. He needs a new bottle of Manic Panic, Aftermidnight Blue; if he wouldn't sob with gratefulness, I would order it online for him to make sure those pesky roots stay back.

It's six o'clock in the evening, and none of us has done a thing all day but mope and bitch and act as if we're the star performers hamming it up for a reality TV show. But there's no camera, and there's no prize like winning some battle of the bands. Which we invariably would, no questions asked; we would walk in, the judges would see how superior we were without us even having to touch our instruments, and that would be the win, in the bag like a body after a murder.

I wish life were like television sometimes; these days, I find myself wishing that more and more with every hour that passes me, wasted on writing lyrics that Die eventually rejects, wasted on practicing my guitar for a band that seems to be going anywhere but up and out of the rut we've mired ourselves in.

It's not from lack of vision, or lack of talent; if those were the only criteria, we would be double platinum by now and living in Hollywood, dodging the sunlight and the crowds for the neon glow of after hours. Except that there is no after hours in Hollywood, and we wouldn't have to obey it even if there were. We would be so famous that if the air in a bar smelled even the slightest bit wrong, the bartender wouldn't insult our music, but would throw himself to the lions to be able to please us. The torn fragments of his body, the remaining toothmarked chunks of bone, would be in our burgers if we demanded them. Oh, I wish.

It's time for a reality check, not a reality show, and not a big, fat royalty check.

The front porch in the peachy radiance of the sunset is about the brightest place I ever willingly hang out, elbows on knees, chin in my hands, eyes facing the blazing red eye of the vampires' greatest enemy that sinks slowly, inevitably behind the horizon. I feel warmer here than I can inside the house, trapped in the clammy grip of Die's failure and Pain's weakness. And here, I can listen to the sounds of life. There are kids next door and the Alexandra, only the most beautiful woman in town, down the street. There are kids across the street, too. I hate kids. I hate their noise, I hate their stench, I hate their rosy cheeks and shining eyes and proclivity for asking mindless questions. But I like the liveliness they add to our neighborhood. I like coming out of the graveyard that is our house, shrouded in darkness even on the brightest of summer days, to feel myself surrounded by brilliance and by nitty-gritty life. It's weird, I know. Even Pain, the Queen of Being Mock-Worthy, teases me about it.

He's one to talk. I can hear his voice raising as he and Die get in an argument, probably over who likes mayonnaise on Wonder bread and staining clothes with a rain of tres noir mascara tears more than who. God, they make me sick and ruin the scenery, ruin the majesty of the blood-red ruler of the world. That's right, the sun. I may not have Die's genius for poetry, but I have a flair for description when it doesn't involve vivisection or homicide.

"Shut up!" I shout over my shoulder.

I get a strained sob and a, "You shut up!" in return for my troubles. Gee, thanks ever so much, you two.

I hear strains of, "Why won't you listen to me? 'Crawling through Wonderland's black woods, / a mire of misery drowns my mind' is so much better than what you came up with. You never let me write lyrics!" Pain.

And, "What the fuck is that? You call that lyrics?" Die. Great, he just cranked the faucet on and threw a wrench in so the tears won't stop.

"Yes!" Pain screams. "If you let me write, Larry wouldn't've forced us to stop!"

"If I let you write, there would be no band!"

"There's no band anyway! You're such a fucking...ohhh, forget it, you fucking tyrant! God!"

"That's my name, don't wear it out," says Die. Although he fancies himself a servant of Satan's calling, Die has a lot to learn about professing to be the very power that doesn't exist to curtail suffering in this world so full of tragedy and death and meaninglessness. I hate him more than ever right now, or so I think until he adds, "It has to be, 'Into the wooded blackness I drag myself, / In a well filled with tears of blood.'" Now I hate him even more than when I hated him more than ever; he stole my final line and mixed it with his words to turn it into a pile of bloody stool on a sterile, otherwise glowing white floor. What a prick.

"That sucks!"

"You suck!"

"Really original," mutters Pain, though he must have acquired a built-in microphone in the last five minutes for me to be able to hear him this clearly.

I roll my eyes. He can return it to whatever store supplied it and get his money back, because I don't want to hear him having a catfight with Die. "Shut up!" I shout again.

Twenty minutes later, as the sun is a sliver against the flat horizon behind the houses and the tree in the neighbors' yard is casting a long shadow over ours, Pain deems himself worthy of joining me. He's washed up and changed his shirt, an old white skull and crossbones t-shirt that barely manages to look acceptable with the black jeans he borrowed from me last week, a few sizes too big. Or he's a few sizes too small. He's built like a toothpick, long and thin with narrow shoulders and hips worthy of an archaeological dig - they're that bony, almost fossilized beneath his pale skin like a plaster cast over rock.

"I don't want you out here right now," I tell him.

"I don't care," he says.

I want to sigh in disgust and huff theatrically until he goes away, but this is Pain, the master of the theatre himself. His own tactics don't work against him; he has some kind of saving throw or saving grace against them. Instead, I wind up saying, "Did he tell you?"

Pain looks blank.

"About the new venue?" I add.

He shakes his head. "He never tells me anything. I figured he was going to tell you when he got our next show lined up."

I snort.

"Hey! He trusts you with that shit, so why is that so illogical?" A fresh river of tears spills over the dam, dripping on the shirt. At least there's no more mascara to darken the spots where the wetness creates a shadow. "I'm tired of you two making me the laughingstock. I don't have to be in this band. Unlike you, I can get a job."

"Unlike you, my parents would welcome me into their home again, job or not," I say.

It's not true; for one thing, my parents resent me for refusing to go to college and "throwing away my future" on my dream of creating music worthy of people's ecstatic, enthusiastic worship, and for another, I wouldn't go back there unless I had pancreatic cancer eating me from the inside out. But it's the biggest gun in my arsenal, with the sharpest sting and the strongest jaws to bite down on his heart, so I break it out of the safe and revel in Pain's frantic blinking. He's trying to hold in his tears.

"Shut up!" he screams, and flounces back into the house with much stomping and door-slamming leaving vibrations in his wake.

I'm tired of feeling alive. I go inside, pass Die, who says, "We should try the coffee shop," as I push his shoulder to get him out of my way, and flop down on my bed. In the next room, the master bedroom that Die and Pain have to share, the sniffling is jarringly loud. I throw a pillow against the wall before I remember that Pain, lost in his forest of sadness and drowning in the saltwater lake at the center, can't hear that. I kick the wall instead and pick the pillow up, put it back under my head.