SCREAM-O

Okay, sorry for keeping you all in the dark so long. My company is here and I've not had much time for patrol or for writing.

I found Nicholas, completely by accident.

Saturday night, I was out doing the patrol/detective thing and I was coming up with nothing. I'd been ding-donging around town for three hours and was starting to get depressed due to the lack of action when I noticed a banner outside of one of the bars downtown. It was karaoke and open mic night. Since I wasn't going to get my name in the paper for saving anyone, I might as well get my name in the paper for making a spectacle of myself, so I barged into the bar, intent on singing something ridiculous like "Love Shack" or "What's New Pussycat?".

Wanna hear a great joke?

Ever heard the one about the super hero who walks into a bar and trips over a corpse?

Well, not a corpse yet. The guy was still breathing. I was being dramatic.

My shoes slide in blood on the floor and I almost fall. I grab the door frame and I'm suddenly aware of a very shaky, unpracticed version of Malaguena coming in over the bar's speaker system.

The floor is littered with a multitude of young people. There are the farmer boys in their trucker caps with the big fish hook on the bill. There are gangly, skanky girls in low-cut tops. There are college kids in polo shirts. People are slumped over the bar. They've all got one thing in common: Their ears are bleeding.

The music stops and a voice comes from the other end of the bar, light and smoky and infinately sad:

"Did you come to hear me play?"

My eyes fall upon a young man, my age, with his hair down in his eyes. He's sitting in a stool with his black Converse All-Stars hanging over the edge of one of the footrests. His shirt and his pants are both a size too small and he's got an electric guitar on his lap.

"They all came to hear me play... SHE came to hear me play... But they all ended up the same way..."

"Are you Nicholas Freeman?"

He sighs at the end of every phrase, every sentence, and each one ends like he's got something more to say after that, "I was... But not anymore..."

He stands from the stool and lets his guitar slip down from his lap. It hangs on a long strap, to just above his knees. "I'm not Nicholas Freeman anymore..."

"I'm SCREAM-O."

"You know, I fought a gloomy kid not too long ago," I tell him, "And you both had really stupid supervillain names."

"That hurts..." His voice seriously almost breaks my heart. I'm about to apologize when he fiddles with one of the knobs on his guitar and strums a chord. My teeth rattle in their sockets. My bones feel like they're shaking apart. My head lights on fire and I feel something hot rushing down the sides of my neck. Jesus Christ, it's his guitar! The reverb on the amp keeps the feeling going, but it fades away soon enough and I get my bearings.

You can't punch sound.

I've got my hands over my ears and SCREAM-O is wearing a humorless smile under his wild mass of dyed-black hair. "That was just E-Minor... Imagine if I played a major chord."

"I'm not going to give you the chance." Imperceptively, my foot slides so I can spring at him if he tries to strum again. I'm not taking any chances.

"You should hear me sing," His arm goes up and I spring forward. I draw my fist back and I spin through the air at him like a missile.

The guitar roars to life again and his voice erupts out in a disgusting whine, "SO CUT MY WRISTS AND BLACK MY EEEEYYYESS!!"

Instantly I'm blind and searing hot pokers slap across my wrists, I'm distracted and I slam harmlessly into the wall somewhere near him. I can hear his footsteps as he's moving away from me. I force my eyes open as I'm getting up. The feel swollen. I look down at my arms and blood is quickly collecting in my armbands.

Oh, this is bad.

"So I can sleep tonight..." he continues and my eyelids get heavy. It's crunch time, Now or never.
Lazily my hand wraps around the base of a steel bar stool and I rip it out of the bolts in the floor and hurl it at him. I'm so tired I just fall to the floor and hope.

"Or d--" The cracking sound I hear, I think, is his jaw. I claw myself up off the floor, holding onto the bar and I look at him, and sure enough, he's screaming, his hands on his face, the bar stool on top of him. He can't get to his guitar with the stool there, so I dive at him, trying to shake the sleepy cobwebs. I'm too slow. The bar stool rolls off and he hits the guitar again, not strumming any notes. I'm knocked out of the air. It feels like a train just hit me.

I'm not feeling sleepy anymore. Whatever this kid does, it doesn't last long, but these people on the floor aren't superhuman. I need to get the guitar away from him, but I can't get close enough. Desperately I scramble across the floor and hide behind the karaoke DJ's booth. I need time to think.

SCREAM-O has gotten to his feet. In the confusion, I think, he's lost me. He's spinning around, looking for me. I catch the cord on his guitar. It runs from the guitar... to an amplifier about 15 feet away. That's all I need. I kick off of the wall and slide across the floor on my back. He hears me and his fingers slide up the neck of the guitar. He takes a deep breath and his right arm goes up, all the way to his shoulder. My hand stretches out toward the amp. If he strums now, I'm dead. His hand crashes down into the strings and I slide past the amp, yanking the cord out and his guitar makes a sad, impotent little plunking sound.

I feel nothing. "M-MY AMP!" he yells. I'm on my feet before he can do anything and I yank on the cord. His guitar strap pulls him to the ground and I reel him in. He kicks and screams all the way across the floor. I drop to my knees, landing right on his chest.

"Curtain call, kid," I say and my fist is ripping through the air, just when he screams right in my face. My head snaps back like a balloon on a string hit by a hard breeze and I'm thrown off of him, doing a backwards somersalt in air. I hit the wall and slide, upside down to the floor where I land directly on my head, crushing my neck. I can't breathe. He's crawling across the floor now, his guitar clattering on the hard wood between his hands and knees. He grabs me by the collar of my shirt and pulls my face up to his. He inhales for another scream just as I headbutt him in the teeth. He pulls his hands over his mouth as he screams and I roll out of the way. I see his fingers bend backwards with the force of the scream and break.

That about does it for his guitar playing days.

I roll far enough away from him that I'm behind the DJ booth again.

This is when I have an awesome idea. That amplifier is the key to all this...

I stand up and go to the computer console that controls the Karaoke machine. I type in the name of a song. I unplug the computer from the DJ's amp and cross the floor in long strides to where SCREAM-O is wallowing on the floor, trying to rub his hands together for comfort, but it's just making things worse. He's screaming so loud I can't think. The building is shaking and holes are being ripped in the walls as he twists his head this way and that, screaming through what's left of his bloody teeth.

I plug the computer into SCREAM-O's amp and I go back to the computer console. I hit play.

Trumpets...

It's powerful. It builds. There's a fanfare. I jump over the table and pick up a stray microphone off the floor and I pray that it still works. I take a deep breath and as the fanfare peaks, I sing, as loudly and as best I can:

"YOUNG MAN! There's no need to feel down!
I said, EVERYBODY!! Pick yourself off the ground!"

Everyone in the bar starts moving all at once. It's working. The bloodied and bruised people start getting up, looking around as though they just woke up from a bad dream. Suddenly all eyes are on me. I get a little bit of stage fright as they all stand up, including SCREAM-O, all as one.

"I said, YOUNG MAN! 'Cause you're in a new town
There's now NEED!"

"TO"

"BE"

"UNHAPPY!"

Smiles spread through the crowd and everyone starts to get in the groove.

Well at least everyone agrees with what I'm doing.

I'm really playing the crowd now, singing, waiting for the chorus to make my move.

"... You can stay there! And I'm sure you will find
Many ways."

"To."

"Have."

"A GOOD TIME!"

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE!

"It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A!"

Everybody's doing the dance, including SCREAM-O. His broken fingers flop worthlessly at the ends of his hands and he's smiling wider than he probably has ever smiled in his life.

"IT'S FUN TO STAY AT THE --"

SCREAM-O's arms go up over his head for the Y and that's when I make my move. I fly across the bar and I slug him in the throat with the microphone still in my hand. He makes a weak rasping sound and he hits the floor, grabbing at his throat. The microphone explodes in my hands and instantly everyone stops dancing and just looks horrified.

With any luck I ruptured his larynx, and he'll never sing again.

Then, above the music, I hear sirens.

That's my cue to go.

I shove through the crowd and get out the back door of the bar and waiting for me is an awful surprise.

Three squad cars.

"FIRE!" screams one of the policemen, and then there are gunshots.

I hate, hate, HATE getting shot. Bullets rip through my shirt and pound into my skin, not doing much more than scratching or bruising me, but GOD it sucks. I charge the nearest car and jump right over the officers' heads. I jump in the air, trying to fly, but I can't, so I just run, run, run until I'm downtown.

I spend a few hours hanging out under the bridge that goes to Illinois, catching my breath, looking myself over.

I'm a total mess...

But thank God for the Village People.