CARLOS & KATRINA

A Novel by Charles Adrian Trevino
Copyright 2006, 2019

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Chapter 30

Slasher stared at Carlos in disbelief; it was happening all over again.

"Phil Collins. Peter Gabriel..." he hissed the words through pursed lips, his eyes narrowing into two little slits.

Carlos turned in his seat to face Slasher. He had been mentally rehearsing his explanation all morning, hoping to find the correct terms to break the sad news to his partner. But as he looked into Slasher's angry face, the elaborately planned apology he had prepared vanished competely from his mind; Slasher's indignant expression was hilarious. Instead of speaking, Carlos involuntarily exploded into an atypically loud and boorish fit of laughter. Slasher continued to glare at him menacingly, but one edge of his mouth started to twitch slightly upwards.

Relieved, Carlos quickly recovered from his mirth attack. "No, David, you've got it mixed up... that's Phil Gabriel and Peter Collins," he said, smiling brightly at his friend.

"Genesis." Slasher spat out the word in disgust, his expression matching his tone.

"No, David, Genius Genesis." Carlos was hoping to divert Slasher's anger into a more humorous avenue. "Please try to show some respect for our superiors!" He continued to smile sweetly.

"Oh, excuse me. Genius Genesis. We're opening for Genius Genesis. Uh‑huh. One of the most boring, untalented bands that David Geeken ever came out with... and we're opening for them. Ok, I get it, uh­‑huh. Would you care to explain yourself, Mr. Fontana?"

Carlos exhaled and turned his head away, looking out the airplane's window at the ground far below. They had been airborne for several hours now, and he was glad the flight would soon be over. Carlos didn't like to fly in airplanes.

"It's like this, Slash... we've made a lot of money from the album already, but we haven't actually seen a lot of it yet. It looks like we're gonna' make a ton of bread on this tour too, but it could be cancelled tomorrow... you know that anything can happen in the music business. We're running up expenses... Frank's having cash flow problems... and some guy just offered you and me fifty thousand dollars apiece to save his pathetic band's lame–ass concert from the doldrums. Fifty thousand dollars, Dave, to play for less than an hour, and then we get to walk away laughing... all the way to the bank. Under the circumstances, I thought we should accept this offer."

"But Genesis? Um, I mean Genius Gen..." Slasher couldn't bring himself to finish saying the name; he looked down at his feet. "Fuck," he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

"Look, David... do you remember what happened when we opened for that last goon band, whoever they were? What happened there, Dave?" Carlos turned to look at his irate partner again. "We embarrassed them, didn't we."

Slasher's head snapped back up. "At the expense of our dignity! By playing shitty, like a bunch of idiotic rage–rock posers!"

Carlos smiled again. "Alright, alright... so now we're gonna' embarrass the geniuses by playing good! And we're gonna' get paid top dollar for the pleasure of doing it. I think when it's over you'll agree that it wasn't such a bad deal, all things considered."

"Ok, ok, right... who's next, Carlos? Goons in Poses? The Fighting Fu Manchus? Little Johnny Cougarboy? What am I going to hear from you next, buddy? It scares me to even think about it..." Slasher looked at Carlos with a mock look of fright on his face.

Carlos laughed again. "No, no, I swear... never Little Johnny Cougar! And this time, I think I can absolutely promise you, this will be the last one... no more nonsense after this gig."

"Right." Slasher snorted in disgust, looking back over his shoulder. On the other side of the plane, Billy Bruce and Mitchell Starkley were sitting together frowning as they talked about this new development in their plans; Carlos had told them first. Like David, neither of them were happy about opening for the ridiculously tedious Genius Genesis, but like Carlos they were strapped for money and had submitted in order to get some working capital flowing. Slasher turned his head back and sighed, looking down at his feet again. "Well... at least you'll be able to get Phil Gabriel's autograph, Carlos. I know you've always wanted to do that."

"Aw, c'mon David, you know they're not my favorite group. The Ice Cold Chili Peppers are! Now if I could get their autographs, boy..."

David lifted his head up once more, to see Carlos rolling his eyes up to the heavens. Finally giving in, he let out a loud laugh at the facetiousness of the sarcastic remark. Carlos grinned wickedly at him. Slasher responded with an evil smile of his own. Then, in a noble attempt to ameliorate their disgust with an escape into gallows humor, the two young musicians began a contemptuous and merciless no–holds–barred roast of the top–selling Creemy Award–winning rage and geek–rock bands of the day.

"I think we should maybe try opening for Green Days next time. It might be a good learning experience, eh? Whaddaya think?" Slasher grinned at Carlos.

"Naw... the Green Days rage, but they don't rage enough. We should open for The Plasma Addicts... then maybe we could learn how to play as good as them!"

"You're right! Then we'd get so good we might even get to open for The Black Flags! Or maybe even The Devos!"

"You insect! How dare you mention us in the same breath as The Black Flags? We'll never be good enough to open for The Black Flags! Bite your tongue, you iconoclast! Next you'll be intimating that we're good enough to start off The Circle of Jerks!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right. But we might try opening for Jane's Addict Son... if we practice hard enough, they might let us."

"You're deluding yourself, buddy. They're too impossibly good! We should try the Hoople Motts... you know, Ian Huntress? That golden god of a man?"

"Oh gosh, Hoople! But isn't Mott getting a bit old now? No, maybe we should start with Rage For The Machine..."

"What? I wouldn't even dare approach those rage–rocking noblemen to pay them to let us open their concert," said Carlos, conjuring up the most frightened facial expression he could make.

"Well then, how about the Ozzy Assborne band... or do you think they're too good for us also? I don't know..." Slasher scrunched up his face as though he were concentrating hard. Carlos laughed again.

"Yeah... they are too good. I'd be just terrified to open for those guys..."

As they carried on boistrously, a young man in a dark business suit who was sitting in the plane's center row listening to their sarcastic tirade was growing angrier by the second. His favorite musical idols were falling from grace one by one, savaged by the two cackling long–haired hippies behind him. Finally, at the mention of the hugely popular geek–rocker Ozzy Assborne's name, he turned and fixed them with a hostile, menacing glare, as if defying them to speak just one more irreverent word.

"But my dream, my ultimate goal as you know, is to open for Tom Pretty and the Pacemakers... you realize, of course, that we'd have to practice, practice, practice our butts off and then practice some more! Such things don't come easy..." Slasher gesticulated with his hand as he spoke the words.

Carlos stopped laughing; Slasher had touched a sore spot in his psyche. Tom Pretty was, in his opinion, the quintessence of mediocrity; even though his music was actually a notch or two higher than most of the geek rockers of the day, the man still absolutely turned his stomach. This was because Pretty was the classic example of the kind of sub–reptilian worm that sleaze king David Geeken liked to promote to absurdly undeserved superstardom, as a reward for singing lyrics designed to vex, mock and ridicule Geeken's enemies; lyrics that were provided by Geeken himself. Knowing full well that he and his wretched band would never have risen to anywhere near the top position he now occupied on the charts if he hadn't cravenly grovelled to Geeken's demands, Pretty frequently and willingly sang lyrics that might have been written by an angry eight–year old. His musically–challenged fans ravenously devoured these insipid offerings, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars to Geeken and allowing him to maximize his foul empire. Using these disgusting Usherian tactics, David Geeken had almost single–handedly destroyed the world of classic rock and roll, the music that Carlos had always depended on to get him through his troubled life... a life made almost unbearable by Ushers exactly like Geeken; Ushers such as Steven Schidtberger, the "legendary" maker of inane cartoon movies.

"Aw, Pretty's not as bad as the rest of the geeks," Carlos reluctantly conceded. "At least he can produce a decent song now and then... on every third album or so..." Carlos' mood began to turn irritable, as it always did when he contemplated what Geeken and his ilk had done to the entertainment industry.

The young man in the suit, still glaring at them, cleared his throat loudly, ready to do battle; Tom Pretty was his absolute all‑time favorite musician. Carlos looked over at him, an expression of pure murderous hatred involuntarily coming over his face. It was musically crass people like this guy that made Usher worms like David Geeken into industry titans, billionaires who used their riches not only to destroy the aesthetic beauty of classic rock and cinema, but also to install their ignoble puppet politicians into high government positions, even all the way up to the top. It was these type of machinations that had enabled Eli Wolfen to become President of the UFS and continue the mass–murdering policies of the Ushers, like his predecessor and the president before that one. Knowing how the whole process worked was absolutely maddening to Carlos; he sometimes found himself wishing he was as ignorant as the typical UFS citizen, and didn't have to think about anything other than his own immediate concerns. But what was worse, being aware of the sham had instilled in him a feeling of contempt and loathing for the people that supported and enriched the Ushers by fatuously buying their crap, even if they were doing it out of ignorance.

It wasn't in Carlos' nature to be mean; it was something that had to be pulled out of him. His problem was that it was pulled out of him far too often. By simply defending himself against the Usher's vicious attacks, he had incurred the wrath of a slice of humanity so satanically evil that he wouldn't have even believed it could actually exist, if he had not seen it with his own eyes. And this evil did not confine itself to the entertainment industry; it was hell–bent on gaining complete control over the entire world and shaping it into something closer to its sick heart's desire, complete with insanely violent movies and computer games, rancid music, NTV, the whole disgusting deal. This was why he had become completely exasperated not only with the Usher industry moguls themselves, but also with the uncomprehending fools that made them unstoppably wealthy; it was impossible to explain to anyone, even close friends, that these sick creatures had sadistically fixated on him and actually used their control over their entertainment "artists" to try to demoralize him and drive him to despair and madness for some inexplicable, ungodly reason. Carlos knew full well by this time that if he attempted to tell anyone about some of the things these worms did to try to rattle him, he would be taken for a paranoid madman. And so the entertainment industry trolls could continue their revolting games with complete impunity... or so they thought. But now things seemed to be changing somewhat; he was meeting more and more people who despised the conspirators' emotionally retarded, ape–level reasoning as much as he did.

What Carlos liked most about Slasher was that he didn't have to tell him why he hated the grossly incompetent top musicians and actors of the day; since Slasher was an unusually perceptive person with good taste in music, cinema and literature, he already despised those bootlicking bought–and–sold celebrities without needing any more impetus from him. This was one of the reasons why they got along so well with one another, sharing a common enemy as they did. Nevertheless, Carlos could have benefited from talking to a good, sympathetic analyst; his life was akin to a sort of strange, frustrating hell on earth.

While most people either didn't know or didn't want to admit to themselves that they were being spied on by a shadowy entity that never revealed itself, Carlos knew damn well that he was like a goldfish in a bowl; a victim of constant surveillance. The crazy circumstances of his life had shaped him into what he was, or had been until Katrina had fallen in love with him; a very solitary, tormented sort of person who needed to regularly retreat into his own private world. Carlos was definitely not an exhibitionist, and considered the people who spied on him to be the lowest representation of life on the planet, right down there with the debilitating viruses that plagued mankind. And they were mass–cloning their sick demented philosophy of life, surreptitiously influencing a gullible society to think just like them; i.e., that sticking one's nose up another person's ass, like two dogs on the street trying to smell what the other one had for its dinner last night, was perfectly normal behavior. He was diametrically opposed to such canine idiocy; such people absolutely disgusted him, especially when he could clearly see that it was insane, self–loathing Ushers who were behind it all.

Suddenly Carlos saw Katrina's face, smiling radiantly at him, and the beautiful vision shook him out of his dangerously escalating Usher–resentment. "Don't hate," he thought to himself, repeating the words over and over in his mind. "They're not all like that. Don't hate. Don't hate." Carlos relaxed his angry facial mask, looking away from the angry young business suit's challenging eyes and picking up the newspaper in his lap.

Something in the paper caught his attention, and he started reading a short editorial about gun control. There had been another mass shooting, a nightmarish spectacle that was occuring on an almost daily basis now; Carlos was actually becoming afraid to venture out to a public place. But Carlos fervently believed that it was all being incited by the foul media manipulators, especially the Usher–controlled entertainment industry. He knew that they were also behind the ultra–violent computer games that were being blatantly forced onto the U.F.S. youth, and, accordingly, to the entire civilized world which looked to the wealthy U.F.S. as a model of what the "good" life should be like; in his opinion, Ushers were responsible for the abysmal decline of western civilization that he was being forced to witness. Ushers again... he just couldn't seem to free himself from the angry thoughts that vexed him almost constantly.

"Don't hate..." Carlos mentally repeated the words over and over for a minute, thinking of Katrina.

The angry young man in the suit cleared his throat again loudly, and Carlos looked up from his newspaper. He turned to look at Slasher, and saw that he was still calmly staring back at the disgruntled dummy with that funny non–expression of his; he had never even blinked an eye. Carlos just had to burst out into another bout of rude laughter; he couldn't help himself, David was so funny. Then, slowly gaining control of himself, he put one hand on Slasher's shoulder.

"Hold on there, champ," he said, patting him gently. "Don't go off, now. Remember... we're still eight miles high."

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Copyright 2019 by Charles Adrian Trevino.