The roar of the crowd rises as the long haired man in the ragged shirt strides onto stage. Picking up the microphone, he wraps the cord around his wrists, his grip causing the definition of his arms to show, biceps bulging out and stretching the fabric. Behind him an insane man with wild eyes and long white hair staggers to pick up another microphone.
The singer taunts the crowd in a language of tongues. Someone shoves me. I’m flying across a strange vacuum in the midst of strangers. I bounce between people whose faces are tattooed with satanic symbols.
I am a ping pong ball. I leap into the air and sail up onto the crowd. I spin. I fall. I look around. The voices come from all directions at once. The crowd is yelling. The band is screaming.
My ears hurt.
I stagger towards the pit again, for no good reason. Recognizing someone I’d seen before, I bump him in the shoulder, and in a move that defies the conservation of energy, he shoves me off of the ground to arc through the smoke filled heavens into a tightly packed group, who deflect me into a hapless girl. I slide down and climb back up again.
A bloody nose walks by me. He looks confused.
I don’t know what to call what is coming out of the man with the white hair’s mouth. It could be singing, it could also be the cries of a trapped demon. He sounds so angry I don’t know how to describe it. The demographics of the crowd remind me of American History X, too many tattoos and shaved heads. A man of no less than 300lbs is using another man as a battering ram.
My ears are bleeding.
Everyone but the drummer puts down their instruments and picks up previously hidden drums. All four of them start beating the drums in perfect rhythm and force, the sound rising and rising and rising until people do not know what to do. Panic breaks out.
I am laughing as someone shoves me from behind.
I am laughing as I twirl out of control from tattoo to tattoo.
I am laughing as my senses overwhelm my conscious thought.
I want to run in every direction at once, to rise like a phoenix into the open air and explode.
I am laughing, because this is my release.
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