Trapped. Trapped for hours in an underground parking garage that looked like a catacomb. Tired when I got home. But then I had a guest.
Bib the publicist barged in and kept babbling about an Australian phenomenon I call Namlis; Bib just referred to him as "a musician of note." Bib's press release had no title and said nothing about Namlis' music, instead focusing on the guy's collection of dried bats and the filthy condition of his followers.
Me: "Wha?" Bib, tapping on his phone: "I'm gonna get him over here." Namlis and his cult, about 30 of them, must have been waiting in the alley, because they stepped right in without knocking and pushed down my basement stairs.
Filthy all right -- hair matted, horrible teeth smiling through layers of grime. Males and females both wore greasy rags, torn to expose parts of the body normally concealed. I could not tell which one was Namlis, which ones were his musicians and which ones were rank & file.
Soon, over the cult's muttering and cackling in the basement, we heard something I thought might be music. On my sound system? Live? Uncertain.
The music had no rhythm. It sounded like the smoke that leaks from an oildrum barbecue on a humid summer day. It sounded like a rusty fan turning slowly in a desert shack. It sounded like a dog whimpering through a bad dream. At bottom was a rumble like distant thunder.
Reluctant to go underground again, I nevertheless edged downstairs, a slow process because bodies were slouching all over the stairs and crowding every inch of my music room. I wondered why they didn't smell.
In 20 minutes, the whole place had been transformed. Walls, floor, furniture and even the ceiling were now smeared with grease from the cult's clothing. My stereo gear had all been disassembled into piles of metal, wires and circuit boards.
At first I tried to cajole the creatures out, but they just walked in circles. Then I yelled, which woke them a bit. I herded and shoved them up the stairs until only a few remained; I screamed about the condition of my equipment.
"We thought you wanted to hear the music," croaked one especially filthy zombie. "It works best when we're here, but I can fix something up for you."
He broke open my old boombox, snapped off the laser assembly and made some quick adjustments with a corroded screwdriver. "Now you can play this." From his pocket, the creature pulled a copper-colored recordable CD with an illegible word scrawled on it. He mounted it in the boombox and left.
Since then, I have not stopped listening to Namlis. Somehow the disc sounds different each time I spin it -- quiet, loud, spare, dense. It seems to know what I want to hear. Really I just want more. Addicted? Maybe. I don't care.
I no longer bathe. My wife has left me. I am happy. End of dream.