• To Kill An Immortal in a Coming Storm

    To a band, guitars play an important part, as do drums. To Kayla Child, though, a violin always rocks. I am Krista Jackson, and I play bass in our comical, mix-match four-girl-two-guy youth band. Cathy and Carl Smith, twins, both play acoustic guitar and vocals. Cathy was our principal vocalist, lyrics both clashing and fusing with music with such a quality of pitch and sound I had only known in my musical fantasy. Bashing on drums and twirling drumsticks is Laura Kindly, and slapping on bongos in his own rapping way is Jonathon “Jon” Johnson, known to us as “J-J-John.”
    Our band—“To Kill An Immortal;” which was stylishly thought up by Carl—wasn’t killing any musical immortals, but it wasn’t dying. I, writing most of our songs with Laura’s aid, was finishing Tomorrow’s Shadow, a continuation of Tomorrow’s Last Sorrow, which our band was just finishing with putting it with fitting chords.
    Today’s last sorrow, though, was not finding chords to suit Tomorrow’s Shadow. Not any of us could think of how to start it. Though it had a grand story, nobody was going to play it without fitting music.
    “This is so frustrating!” I was saying to Kayla, walking away from our band’s “playground” for our music. “Nothing sounds right with that stupid song!” I said, dishonoring my own work.
    Kayla was nodding, though mainly thinking about that violin, plucking strings and sliding that stick thing back and forth, producing that distinct sound of a violin with a fairly good violinist. As I was walking, I was also focusing on that sound. In my mind, I was combining lyrics with music, and it was just what I sought, flowing from a violin probably randomly thought up. Fitting chords.
    Flowing music from that violin got my hand plucking my bass, and I was about to finish my mission. No, I was finishing my mission now.
    An assault of claps hit us from our right. My hand was now still, as was Kayla’s.
    “You part of ‘To Kill An Immortal’?” a man asks in slang, and I turn to him to find him in a black suit—on a particularly hot day!—with slick back hair slid back. How did this man know our band, as not a soul not in our band, family or not, did?
    “Uh-huh,” Kayla was nodding.
    “What do you want?” I wouldn’t sway to hand this man information about our band without knowing I could trust him, which I had a hunch I couldn’t, and I could follow most any hunch I had. Intuition or not, right or wrong, his just popping out of air was disturbing. “How could you know about our band at damn all?”
    Chuckling was first, probably about my distrust or cursing, or both. “What I want? Nothing, only…I am proposing that you play as a band on an upcoming show on national TV similar to that singing Idol show, only with bands, not a solitary vocalist, and not so much discriminating, obnoxiously arrogant, though truthful judging.”
    I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t, and what was to say, anyway? Our band would go from locally unknown to nationally familiar in days? Who was this guy?
    “I am sorry, how boorish for my part: I am Travis McGinnis,” I was told, as if this man was knowing my thoughts. “Possibly, by such a stand on a national broadcast, you may—no, you will go from practically unknown, as is your status now, to nationally known, a band of youth, non-adult, nontraditional, focal point of today’s most thriving industry. What’s popular and what’s not might adopt to follow your band. How could any band turn such an opportunity away?”
    Giving what I was wanting and bonus, this man was convincing, which was hazardous, risky as it was impossibly hard to say no. What was his catch, what was so damn important to him about us, not as good a band as his hinting puts forward. What did this man want so bad to craft such a thick fog of fabrication?
    “All I want is your satisfaction in living,” his wily curving lips hardly smiling, and I saw it as a fox that has found its food and thinking of how to play with it.
    This guy, to put it frankly, was scary, and I didn’t trust him. I just couldn’t allow him to win trust with Cathy, Carl, Laura, Jon, and Kayla, a difficult task, no doubt.
    Kayla was obviously soaking it all in as if a dry rag, black pools and surrounding rings of sharp indigo focusing on this man.
    Dark, ominous clouds and a giant, bright forking rod with its own bass told of a coming storm. Only my storm that could hurt us, as a band and as individuals, was standing in front of us. And only I saw it for what it truly was through its fog.