“Music Festival,” one of sixteen short interconnected stories in Heath Mensher’s first upcoming collection, “RIPT.”
Derek handed out the acid with a smile that reached up to his eyes and kept going. An
explosion of fireworks somewhere high up sprayed the floor of their lean-to and Jenn flinched,
and shook, and caught herself, and breathed out a shaky laugh.
“That still happens to you?”
Mike was pretty, but he never knew when to shut up, and Jenn needed him to desperately.
She didn’t want to think about anything, or anyone, or any time. This was expensive, and
necessary, and her brain needed a makeover. A collective giggle started to rise with the group,
starting with Rae and Davy, moving to Derek and Mike and the others. It caught fire and they
each passed it around and shared it together, a giddy joy that cut through thought and stress. Jenn
let it take her, and she soared and drank and smiled so hard she’d feel it later. She took the slip of
paper from Derek, carefully, and stared at the happy smiling pig on it. She took a deep breath,
and dropped it directly on the center of her tongue.
The Peach Apple Festival was a rite of summer for Jenn and Rae, with Davy and the rest
joining two summers ago. It was forty-five minutes from Tobyhanna. Just far enough to be an
inconvenience for her parents or anyone else she knew to see her in passing. They would camp
here two nights, and it would be dirty, and uncomfortable, and worth it with the right attitude.
“Want?”
Jenn shook her head and Derek passed the pipe on to someone else, his thumb capping
the bowl and sealing it. She liked these people, and she felt herself take the wheel.
A thousand feet away, Joe Harris leaned his guitar against his hardcase and sat on the
plastic chair, a dollar bill on the white plastic folding table in front of him. He worked it out.
Smoke forty minutes before the show. Cocaine fifteen minutes before the show. And now, when
he was done with his set, adderall crushed up with a dugout. This was the best way to stay sharp.
Gotta meet the right people to try to get into other festivals. He knew he killed. He could tell by
the looks on the faces and the silence during the bridges. It was nice, but it wasn’t enough. It will
never be enough, his body told him. He knew. A guy from The Tuckett Band passed by.
“Hey, man. Can you keep an eye on this?”
Joe gestured to his guitar and bag.
“Yup.”
“Close eye, okay?”
“Got it.”
He knew he could trust these guys. They were like him. Mostly alone. He got to his feet
and enjoyed the balance of his body’s weight as he strided.
“Libby.”
“Yeah, hun.”
“I’m gonna go get some shows.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna see if I can talk to Jimmy Brigga. He’s somewhere. Behind the big
stage.”
“Good luck, man. Spread that around, too.”
Joe smiled and touched foreheads with Libby, who’s sweat-wet stick and poke tattoos
rubbed up against his eyebrows. He took a breath and started walking, securing his pack and
rolling his neck.
Jimmy Brigga couldn’t wait for this all to be over. This was the worst part – really the
only bad part – of producing these shows. The Peach Festival. He just wanted to be home, this
behind him, looking at next month’s schedule. These festivals were getting bigger and bigger.
Too big, Jimmy thought. Too many bands, too much merch, too little down time. He walked past
monitors and kids with pink and orange lanyards. Like twelve year olds, for the most part.
Maybe a thirty year old sprinkled in.
“Mr. Brigga, Mr. Tanzos wants to know if you have time to meet.”
Jimmy didn’t even know this one’s name, and there were no name tags anymore. She was
doing her best. Looked happy.
“Yes, fifteen minutes. Where?”
“His trailer is way in the back by the mountain setup.”
Jimmy moved past her, past the faces that all tried to look him in the eyes while he
walked by. He felt always under fire. It used to be a thrill and a shiver to be the most interesting
man in the room. Now it just made him jumpy. Irritable. “You used to hate people like that,” he
heard himself say and felt one side of his face twitch. It was doing that more and more. He
walked out of the air conditioning and the heat hit him everywhere, especially in his chest where
the polo shirt pulled. “There’s not enough air,” he thought. He pushed through it and kept his
head down, past the kids rushing around with clipboards and walkie-talkies. John Sheer, the
manager for “MINNY Mouse,” stepped in front of him.
“Jimmy, hey, quick thing–”
“John, I have to go. Talk to Brenda inside.”
Jimmy put his hand on the small of the big manager’s back and went past him, hating the
wetness he found there and wiping his palm on the pole of the massive pavilion tent as he kept
moving towards the RV’s parked in a colony back by the mountain. The heat was oppressive,
like standing over a subway grate, and the wind blew, but it was too thick. “God dammit,” he
muttered as his birkenstocks hit a deep puddle. The splash hit the back of his calves and he
sucked in humidity and saw the “Star Wagons” abutting the mountain itself, nestled between
trees on both sides. There was a purple light shining out of the windows in the rear of the
oversized white trailer. “It’s one big party,” he breathed, adjusting his shorts in the back and
holding up his hand to knock.
Jenn was floating, even though the music was a little loud. It would pierce her. She felt it
slip in sharp under her breastbone, then settle in her stomach with hard vibrations. It rumbled her
core until she could not take it anymore and she slowly doubled over and put her hands on the
floor, squeezing the dirt between her fingers. Rae was down there, sitting criss-cross on the
ground, head down and forearms up. Jenn brought her eyes to a comfortable squint, letting the
sky drown her. When her focus returned to the ground, she could not make sense of everyone
running. Not just running, but running panicked. Sloppy, tripping. Full flight, like animals. A
woman all in blue ran through their circle, sideswiping Rae with her knee, stumbling into their
styrofoam cooler and hitting her head hard on the stump they were using as a coffee table.
Everyone in the circle just stared at her, frozen. Mike made a clicking noise in his throat, but was
too shocked to speak. The woman in blue stood up on fawn-legs and shook her head as if to clear
it. She looked around the group, made eye-contact with Jenn, and remembered where she was.
She screamed.
Joe tried not to perseverate on his guitar while he walked behind the towering Main
Stage. He hoped no one traded it for cocaine to one of the handful of people at the festival
“holding.” Those people were extra-nice to be around, but they scared him. The way he saw it,
things would have to go very sour for him to sell drugs to strangers. Even these strangers, who
were real touchy-feely. He’d been walking for almost 20 minutes, but the heat didn’t bother him.
Instead, he swam with the humidity, riding the current down the double-wide dirt road deeper
into the woods. There were way less people here, and the music from the stages about a quarter
of a mile away joined and crashed apart. The adderall disconnected him from his lower half, and
his legs pumped away like they belonged to a different person. One job, he said to himself. Get
the next gig. This had been his plan for eight months, since he got the email that he would play
the Peach Festival. Get the next gig. Even if Jimmy hadn’t been there to hear him, he knew
Jimmy had people everywhere listening for him. He walked into the clearing where the big
trailers lived, and looked for the biggest one.
The purple light seemed to spill over the corrugated iron of the top step of the ladder to
the trailer door. It pooled over Jimmy’s muddy birks and made the hairs raise up on his legs. He
was almost physically overcome by the humidity. It was trapped under the canopy of trees that
dotted the mountain in clutches and groves. He weakly knuckled the door. He sucked in air and
knocked again, hard, and the thin metal door came open. He immediately became aware of a
hum. Loud, it sounded like a massive television had been left on, one the size of a building.
Jimmy entered the trailer’s main room and fought the urge to throw up. The hum was sharp. It
made his eyes sting. The toilet flushed in the bathroom near the back and he jumped. The main
room was empty of people. Only light and sound. Jimmy shut his eyes hard and called out
hoarsely.
“Mr. Tanzos?”
Something shifted in the rear room – the bedroom – behind a door that looked like wood,
but was as thin as a storm door.
“Hey. I-it’s Jimmy Bragga, Mr. Tanzos. You asked to see me.”
The bedroom door swung open easy and a boy appeared in the doorway. He looked at
Jimmy, walked directly to him, took his hand the way a child would take a parent’s hand, and led
him back into the rear room. Jimmy felt the boy squeeze his hand, and his mind chose not to
process the boy’s naked red-veined chest.
The woman in blue would not stop screaming no matter what Jenn tried. She even got so
panicked that Jenn slapped her face, but the woman could not break out of whatever she was
feeling. Jenn thought it looked like naked fear and sadness. Derek was repeating sentences over
and over. Mike was nowhere, and Rae was throwing up. Davy approached the woman in blue,
asking,“What happened? What happened?”
The woman stopped screaming, and now was moaning low. She looked at Davy, then
looked at Jenn. Jenn saw something shift in the woman’s eyes. Behind her eyes. She saw the
moment the woman emptied of reason and lost everything. The skin was gone from her forehead
where she hit the wood, and shiny blood spilled over her right eye.
“It was impossible. And it happened anyway.”
The woman breathed in and out fast, five or six times, then sprinted away in the direction
other people were running. Davy grabbed Jenn’s wrist.
“Oh my god, oh my god Jenn.”
Jenn felt herself slipping. Davy’s fear was like a hair blanket over her face. She spun
away from him and went to Rae, helping her up. Derek watched the people run by. Some
following only because everyone else was. But every few people he saw someone really running,
running in a way Derek never saw before. He saw them as streaks of color, thick oils smearing
across the forest background.
“Should we follow them?” Davy asked. “Should we?!”
Jenn’s eyes felt twice the size. It was like watching a movie on her phone vs. in a movie
theater. Her peripheral vision felt as clear as what was right in front of her. She took a deep
breath. She almost saw too much of what was happening. She yelled loudly, “Okay okay we are
going!”
She made close eye-contact with Rae and nodded to her. She did not like what she saw.
The blood vessels in Rae’s eyes had burst, making her look horrific. She held onto Rae’s arm.
Davy was next to her, but Derek was standing with his back against a thick tree.
“I’m staying here. I’m staying. Staying here.”
Jenn led a clumsy walk with Rae and Davy down one of the dozens of side paths that ran
parallel to the main path. The music had stopped now, replaced by shouting and running. She
fast-walked into a stall where long canvases hung, a blow-out of colors and hard angles. The
Artist was sitting on the floor beside the small counter with the register.
“That wasn’t what we saw, right? That’s not a real thing, right?”
Jenn saw that the older man was sitting wrong. His legs weren’t right. Hands pounded on
the sides of the tent while people ran by, sometimes yelling, but then became silent. The beating
of hands became tapping of fingers. There was a buzzing and a murmuring, both electric and
wet. Davy was absently pawing at Jenn’s arm.
“What-what-is this?”
Jenn was watching the Artist. The old man’s leg was folded under him in a way that
wasn’t possible, the knee twisted almost fully around.
“I know what it is,” the man said. “I saw this once. I saw this once.”
Rae noticed the man’s injury and freaked out, forcefully backing up from the man until
she stood just outside the tent. She made eye-contact with Jenn. Jenn saw a look in Rae’s eyes. A
trust, and a hint at a deep friendship. Something low scuttled to Rae and bit through her knees,
sending her tumbling to the ground, and Jenn’s mind winked-out.
Joe had two choices. The white metal Star Wagon on the right, or the wood-paneled
oversized bus on the left. He made a beeline for the bus, practicing his pitch in his head like a
mantra. “I can make you money.” Joe had no illusions that talent was going to be attractive to
someone like Jimmy Bragga. “Mr. Bragga, I got a plan, now hear me out.” He took the trailer
steps two at a time and knocked on the door. It swung in on new hinges and a woman stood
there, old. Shockingly old, Joe thought.
“You him?” the woman said.
“Uhhhh… mmmm. Yes. Is he here?”
She closed her eyes and walked back inside, leaving the door open behind her. He walked
in, ready, and tried to make sense of what lay on the couch. It was a man who looked familiar,
but there was a hole in him. His head was back, his arms spread out relaxed on the tops of the
leather, but his pants were down and his left leg was flayed open. A thing sat on the floor in front
of him, its mouth pressed against his thigh. Without looking up, the man said, “You got it?”
Something had entered Jimmy. He knew that much, and also that there was almost
nothing left of himself. The boy was pressed to his leg, and Jimmy remembered a train car, but it
was not his memory. He saw himself swimming with his sister, but his family only had boys, and
he was the youngest of four. The room in the back of the trailer wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t
see what was coming through the wall. It was a split, a cleft, and it dripped purple radiation. It
shimmered darkly, and something slipped through, like a goat giving birth. It pushed itself
around on the floor of the trailer, and fought with the crust that covered it. It picked it off, leaving
red raw tissue underneath, and inched its way over to the bed Jimmy sat on. It curled up into
Jimmy’s lap and lay its raw red skin against Jimmy’s, cooling it, while its six legs nudged it
closer into his soft parts.
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