MSTed: The Seven Stars, Chapter 2 (Part 4 of Many)

[Kevin Mowery]

Michael was coming home today, if good fortune prevailed, which it
rarely had lately. He was up for some leave-time from the Navy for a
couple of weeks according to our phone conversation last week. And,
according to our tight-knit little group's infamous Mardi Gras custom,
he was going to spend most of it getting as toasted as he could with
his best friends, in the finest of naval traditions.

TOM: So I probably wouldn't get to see him.

Ahh, I considered, already tasting
the Southern Comfort, good friends reuniting and old drinking ways
renewed... And if David had somehow managed to get his long-overdue
vacation from his slave-driving superiors at China Lake, then we were
gonna have one helluva Brüe Crüe reunion, one that no one would ever
forget!

MIKE, TOM, CROW: <drunken fratboys> Wooo! Brue Crue rules! Woooo!
Packers!

I heh-heh'd at that prospect. Had to.

CROW: I had been debarked last week.
TOM: <raspy, debarked dog noises>

Mardi Gras,
you know? Besides, our band, Electric Bard, was finally in position to
showcase its collective weirdness/talent

MIKE: Oh, I'm not sure those words are interchangeable.

before the electric eyes of the world, with a hootin'-hollerin'
hometown crowd to boost our appeal.
The Place: the French Quarter, at that infamous watering hole known as
Bad Streets. The Time: 11:00 PM tomorrow night, which just happened to
be Mardi Gras night as well. We had "confirmation" from three labels'
representatives,

CROW: <representatives> We'll call you.

who
had supposedly fallen over backwards and foamed at the mouth after
hearing our self-produced EP,

TOM: His music causes grand mal siezures and he thinks it's a good
thing?
MIKE: It's probably still better than Korn.

that they would be in attendance at the gig. We also had "assurances"
that an MTV crew would be there to broadcast periodically, as they
always do from the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. To top this line
of hokum off, we also had "promises" that Electric Bard would be
featured for at least a couple of seconds during the live MTV
telecast.

CROW: And we were opening for them!

Our turf, our crowd!
And, if only one of those "possibilities" came through, we were as
good as signed. If the bigwigs could even catch a glimpse of us, we
were signed. Hell, how many three-member bands in the world could
boast a seven-foot one-inch Jamaican-born drummer/octopoid
percussionist from hell/vocalist who had a white mohawk instead of the
traditional dreds,

TOM: That'll happen.

a stunning green-eyed and naturally white-haired goddess-virtuoso with
Juilliard training on both bass and keys (and vocals), and a maniacal
demon-guitarist/vocalist with an eight octave vocal range to run the
show?

MIKE: So the band is composed of white-haired vocalists?
TOM: Peter Paul and Mary!

(Not to mention a Total Loon

CROW: What does that mean?!?!
MIKE: I'm thinking more like an albatross, myself.
TOM: Does it come with wafers?

by the name of Sammy Joseph running the
computerized sound and light shows for us, too!) Electric Bard
couldn't lose, if only because of our sheer shock-value! We all sang.
We all wrote. We all contributed.

TOM: Shocking!
MIKE: We were like lots of other bands that had been successful, only
we weren't very good.

We were tight!

CROW: Well, let's not get into that.
MIKE: Crow!

And here I am, dreaming of being a Star...
Then, the wheels turning again, I muttered an expletive about not
getting my MTV

TOM: That's one specific expletive.

and turned the TV volume down to nil. Those little creepy-crawlies
parading across the face of the Cathode God had just inspired me to
try something. I got up off the couch and, after working a kink out of
my left knee, sat down before the mute god and crossed my legs,
tucking them into each other, assuming the "lotus position," which
Luther, in his decidedly Rastafarian way, was always trying to get me
to teach him.

CROW: And what does *that* mean? Do Rastafarians persuade
differently?
MIKE: A white-haired Rasta drug dealer with a mohawk in a metal band?
The hell?

I guess he thought that
he could get more of a buzz from his ganja if he smoked it while
meditating. Nirvana, ascending from the lotus petal...

TOM: Oh, it's no Venus On the Halfshell....

I allowed myself to sink into a state of concentration, in the same
fashion that Michael had taught me so many years before. There was no
humming of mantras, or any of that hokey stuff. There was only a
calming of thought, then a concentration upon a single line of
thought. Next, the idea was to get the single line of thought down to
a single word, then get that single word down to a single
infinitesimal point which could then be focused fully upon, with no
waste of energy.

TOM: The hardest part was having a line of thought.

Finally, from this point, the adept could draw upon inner reserves of
mental energy called ki or chi, the name depending on if you studied
Japanese or Chinese martial arts, respectively. Still, they amounted
to basically the same thing: concentration.

CROW: Or not. I'm pretty much grasping at straws here.

Soon, I was flowing along, destructuralizing the components of the
things that confounded me, slipping deeper and deeper into my
concentration state.
Down, down... ...down into The Void!

MIKE: He's going--
TOM: Get him! <TOM and CROW jump MIKE. Wrestling ensues.>

"Whoa!" I started, shivering and blinking furiously, as if that would
really help.
What in the hell is wrong with me?

<MIKE, TOM, and CROW retake their seats.>
MIKE: That was a little rough, guys.

The chills reintroduced themselves to my vertebrae. That feeling of
everlasting damnation from my nightmare returned to my conscious
thoughts, leaving a foul taste in its wake. Suddenly, I had the
feeling as if someone were tap-dancing on my grave.

CROW: It's probably just someone who read The Seven Stars.

Turning my head quickly to the side, I could almost see...
something?... moving at the edge of my peripheral vision. But it was
gone before I could decide that it had even been there. Geez...

MIKE: Pieces of lint can often get in the eye and take on ghoulish
shapes.

Wheels turning, twisting, burning.

TOM: <singing> Rolling down the road.

My alleged "mental training" was a joke! Not even those years of
one-on-one hard-ass martial arts training with Michael had prepared me
for the onslaught of my recent nightmares.

MIKE: Did he expect to hip-toss the nightmare?

Nor had nearly two years of postgraduate training in psychoanalysis
and dream interpretation with some of the best instructors in the
south.

TOM: All his friends are there and he's killing people with a big
magic sword. Seems pretty straighforward to me.

TO BE CONTINUED....

--The MST3K characters are copyrighted by Best Brains, Inc. The text
of the novel is copyrighted by Nova Eth publishing or Todd King or
whoever. No infringement is intended.

--
Kevin "Professor Bobo" Mowery________________________________
"I am not an orangutan! I am a mountain gorilla! My name
is Bobo, Professor Bobo. Son of Koko and heir to the lineage
of Godo, Gogo, and Chim-Chim." --MST3K