Doug Jankowski locked his bedroom door before he put Hoghead's Bound Mouth into his boombox. He kept the volume low though it should be listened to loud because he would not risk his mother destroying his experience by demanding that he turn it down. The drumbeat shouted the first four notes before the song dove into a chaos of guitars and hypnotic rhythms that transported Doug out of his idyllic suburban life and into a grittier, more tangible world. Vince Vader's masterful lyrics painted the direct route out and invited Doug to a place where those who were different were rewarded rather than vilified, where one could be surrounded by intellectual peers, and where you could have a lot of sex.
    Sex was very important to Hoghead. Two songs on the album gave Doug a glimpse into the realities of bedroom politics that the rest of the world tried to ignore. The message Vince Vader delivered was not about the sterilized fucking on HBO, nor the histrionics of soap operas, but something serious and powerful; a sacred ritual that freed man from his bindings and raised him to another plateau. Vader's words were poetically graphic but with room for personal interpretation, and were so powerful that the radio fascists would never play their music without blurring over "controversial" lyrics.
    Doug claimed the third track, "Rope Music," as his anthem even though its meaning remained elusive. The record company had obscured Vader's message by forcing the band to change certain lyrics before the album was released. He was certain that the chorus had been the victim of censorship since it didn't make as much sense as the rest of the song. Doug had researched all the band's related websites, but he could not find the original words. It pissed him off that the adults thought the world needed to be sanitized for him.
    Doug worked diligently to uncover the message Vader had tried to send. If he could understand the song it might help him capture the passion with which his mentor sang. It would destroy that voided feeling inside his body, the one that muted everything he felt, and help him cross over to Hoghead's world. It was the only thing stopping him from having a real life.
    "The world keeps spinning / and I ain't winning," he read as Vince sang. That was easy to sympathize with. He was repressed every day by his teachers, his parents and those preppy assholes who called him "freak" and "queer" because he didn't dress like them. His mom told him to rise above them, but that was hippie crap. His dad told him to stand up for himself, be a man, but that only got Doug beat up. Hoghead was trying to show him how to escape it, but the message was blurred.
    "Got to string her up to get ahead now," Vince sang. Doug believed it had to do with lynching, but he couldn't understand how hanging a girl would help him get ahead. He knew that in the South they used to hang blacks all the time to get ahead, "For the preservation and propagation of the white race." He had seen that on a PBS documentary. The problem he had was connecting those two things. Vince Vader was no racist; Tom Green, the bassist, was black, and Vince was not a woman-hater like some people said so why would he sing "string her up?"
    "They won't call it sinning / if you're the one with the keys." That he understood. The Vanhorns in town had power and money and they could get away with anything. Everyone knew Mr. Vanhorn slept with high-school girls and his son Tommy was a drug dealer, but no one did anything about it because they were so rich.
    It was the lynching that didn't make sense.
    He believed the answer was in the band's name. He had read and re-read Lord of the Flies by William Golding in search of a correlation between the book and "Rope Music." He concentrated on the scene where Simon has visions supplied by his personal god, the rotting boar's head on a post. The band had taken its name from the man-made deity, but it still didn't help explain how lynching could advance your cause like sex could.
    He restarted the CD to listen to the whole thing again, searched through the album's lyrics to find another reference that might unlock Vader's suppressed message. He lit a candle as the first chords licked around his mind, then opened himself up to Hoghead. The music swirled through the air and surrounded him, elevated him off his seat.
    He lit a second candle and turned to his sacraments. Doug opened his older brother's Camp Scout Manual to the pages on knots. He followed the illustrations to tie a square knot that looked like a fist, then a figure eight knot which was shaped like the symbol for infinity, and finally a slipknot. This knot was not what was called for, but would do the trick in a pinch. He attempted a hangman's noose which was not pictured in the manual, but could not figure out how to create all those extra twists. He undid it, then retied each knot in succession working back up to the hangman's noose. Each time it got easier, the knots were better, tighter, almost perfect.
    Doug stopped tying when "Rope Music" started. He closed his eyes and followed the brooding, barely intelligible lyrics in search of a clue. Vince sang of the "darkness inside her soul" that needed to be "penetrated by a hot, white beam." Doug sensed something religious in tone, but he didn't think Vader meant the hypocritical church Doug's parents forced him to go to. The chorus came next, still cryptic, and then the song exploded into a chaotic array of instruments and words, moving upwards into mind-splitting freedom. Doug was hoisted high by the layers of bass, guitars and drums, and by Vader's sultry voice, then left floating as the song worked into its dénouement.
    "Turn that off!" His mother pounded on the door. "Doug, hear me? Doug? I have to run out to the store so turn that off and come downstairs."
    He lowered the volume. "Where's dad?" He stared holes into the door.
    "He's playing golf, you know that. Doug? I have to go to the store, come downstairs and watch Suzie. For an hour, I promise. Doug, do you hear me?"
    "Why can't you take her with you?"
    "Jesus." He heard her exhale. "Turn that off, all right? That music, and come downstairs. Now."
    Bitch, he snarled. He let the end of the song play out even though she had destroyed its transportive quality, and then blew out the candles. He closed the Camp Scout Manual and set aside his short length of rope. When all of his things were in their proper place he turned off the CD player. He unlocked his door, closed and locked it behind him, and went down to the kitchen. He got a glass of juice and watched his mother pace between the kitchen and the living room looking for her keys.
    "Doug, I know you are 13 and you already think you are an adult, but as long as you live under my roof you live by my rules, remember? I told you to turn that music down, I don't want you listening to it at all, it's Satanic."
    "It's..."
    "Don't interrupt me, Doug." She pointed her finger at him. "When you support yourself you can listen to whatever you like, but I will not have your sister exposed to that stuff. I don't know why your father let you buy it."
    "I..."
    "Not now," she warned. "Here they are," she pulled her keys out of her purse. "I have to run to the store. I will be back in one hour. Watch your sister, make sure she doesn't suck her thumb, the dentist said her teeth are coming in crooked. And take her outside. You should be outside too instead of cooped up in that room. It's a nice day, Dougie."
    "I don't want..."
    "I'll be right back," she said. "Suzie, Dougie is going to take care of you for a little bit while I go to the store."
    "Can I come?" she asked. "With Belle too?" She held up her scruffy plastic doll.
    "No, honey. But you can stay here with Dougie and he is going to take you outside to play." Her mom stroked Suzie's hair, then said, "Just one hour, Doug, all right? Then you can do whatever you want."
    He didn't respond.
    Doug's mom gave Suzie a quick kiss, then rumpled Doug's hair on the way out to the car. The little girl followed her mom to the door, but was turned away. "No, Suzie-Q, you stay here with your brother." Their mom closed the door and Suzie watched her go down to the car through the sidelight.
    His sister started to cry and Doug sighed. "Oh, fuck. I can't believe this shit." He tried to drink his juice and mentally return to the Nirvana he had almost experienced, but his sister's whimpering distracted him. "Hey, Suzie? Stop crying, all right? You want to go outside?"
    "No!"
    "What do you want to do?"
    "I want to go with mommy!" She cradled the neck of her doll in the crook of her arm and stuck her thumb into her mouth. Doug thought, At least she'll be quiet. He turned to go back upstairs but Suzie started to whimper. "I'm just going to get my CD, all right?" He went upstairs and his sister followed him up halfway. He unlocked his door and pulled the CD out of the player and placed it reverently back into its jewel case. Suzie followed him back down to the main floor when he passed her.
    With his parents out of the house, he could listen to Hoghead on the stereo in the living room, really listen to it. Doug knew that some bands, just to get their message out to their real fans, would whisper lyrics which could only be heard if you really paid attention. In this fashion the band could deliver its true manifesto uncensored to the public. With his father's stereo system and its amplification he might find the missing link that would tie all the pieces together.
    Suzie looked aghast when he opened the stereo cabinet. She strangled her doll in a half nelson. "Ewwww! Daddy's gonna get mad if you use that!"
    "Not if he doesn't know," Doug said.
    "He'll know." She stuck her thumb back in her mouth.
    "No, he won't," Doug warned. He turned the volume up to ten and hit the play button. The opening drumbeat trembled him down to his balls and the guitars nearly deafened him. Suzie covered her ears. He closed his eyes and opened his mind.
    He skipped ahead to "Rope Music" and pressed his ear close to the speaker, alert for any hidden lyrics. The sound vibrated his whole being and made his ear ache, but being a real fan, he endured. He heard nothing extra, however: no whispered lyrics, no backward words, no hidden meanings. Suzie screamed that it was too loud, but Doug shooed her away. She sat in her little chair and sulked.
    He played the song again and his ear lit upon what he was searching for. Right after the second chorus he was sure he heard, "bang your face," and then he stopped the CD and scrolled backwards. He listened again. "something face." He wasn't sure what it was. He went over it again until he was sure it was "hanging face." He listened three more times before he was positive.
    He turned to his sister who had her arm gripped around her doll's head and the picture came into focus. Doug kicked himself for being so stupid for not having seen the connection before. The severed head of the god-pig, the "darkness inside her soul" which was "penetrated by a hot, white beam," and the lyric "got to string her up to get ahead now," followed by the whispered "hanging face." Doug listened in hushed awe to the blurred words, "hanging face," and glowed. It was true. Even though the band's creativity had been suppressed, Vader and Hoghead had gotten their meaning through to him. The message felt like it was for him alone, a true fan, and he could picture himself hanging out with the band and saying, "FUCK YOU!" to the normal world. He was so damn proud of the band's subversive tactics in helping him out of this hell that he was almost overwhelmed by emotion. The ice inside of him started to melt.
    Doug had to get to work now that the path was laid before him. He looked at the clock and figured his mother would not be back for at least another half-hour at the earliest which gave him enough time to set everything up. He told Suzie to stay in her chair and then went out to the garage and got the package of clothesline. It was sixty feet of hard nylon yellow rope, but it would work. He ripped open the plastic bag and unraveled the rope on his way back to the living room. Doug passively reminded himself to throw the bag away before his mother returned. He went back to the living room and the world of music.
    He practiced his knots as the CD played. First the square knot, the figure-eight knot, then the slipknot. The clothesline was really hard to work with; it wasn't flexible at all. The knots were loose and ugly. This rope was all wrong, but it was all he had.
    "Whatcha doing, Dougie?" Suzie asked. Her eyes were dark and half-open and he knew it was time for her nap.
    "Adult stuff. Let me borrow that doll for a second."
    "No!" She woke up and clutched the doll to her thin chest.
    "Come on, I'm not going to hurt it."
    "That's too loud. Dad's gonna be real mad." She shook her pixie curls.
    "Dad won't know." He looked around for something to suspend the rope from but there was nothing in the living room. He stepped back into the entrance hall and looked up. The banister on the second floor landing would be perfect. He ran up the stairs, twisted the clothesline around the banister and then dropped both ends to the carpeted floor below. He went back into the living room and told Suzie to get up. When she wouldn't budge he picked her up and set her on the floor. He dragged her chair into the hall and set it beneath the second floor landing.
    Suzie followed him into the hall, clutching her doll with one hand, her opposing thumb in her mouth. Doug turned to her. "Here. Sit down. I am conducting an experiment and I need an assistant."
    "What are you doing?"
    "Adult stuff, Suz. Don't ask any questions and I'll let you have some cake afterwards, all right?"
    "The kind with the candy on top?"
    "That's birthday cake. We don't have any."
    "I want it with candy!" She stamped her little foot.
    "I will put some M&M's on it for you, all right? Sit down on the chair, I'm going to do a magic trick with your doll."
    "No! You'll hurt her!" She gripped the doll's plastic head so hard it squished into a peanut shape.
    "Never mind." Doug picked her up and set her down on the chair. She played idly with the doll's blonde hair and sucked her thumb. "Don't suck your thumb," he said as he looped the rope. "It will make your teeth all crooked." She made a face at him.
    "Here," he said when he had made a passable slip knot. "Put this around the doll. Like a scarf."
    "No," she said around her thumb.
    "Come on, Suzie." He looped the noose over the doll's head, but she removed it. He dropped it over his sister's head instead. "This is your costume."
    "It itches," she said, her eyes half-closed.
    "That's all right. This will only take me one second, all right?" Doug brought the CD remote into the hall.
    "Whatcha doing?" Her impatience raised her voice into a whine.
    "I told you not to bother me with questions," he said. "Be quiet and sit still. This is a very important magic trick and if you are really good and it goes according to plan, I will give you two big slices of cake with M&M's all over them."
    She toyed with the rope beneath her chin then played with her doll's hair again, combing it with her fingers.
    Doug returned to track three and played "Rope Music." It blared to life through his father's powerful speakers. Doug closed his eyes and blindly tied his knots with the loose end of the rope. Square knot, figure-eight knot, slipknot. When he attempted the hangman's noose his hands were magically guided by the music and it formed perfectly. "Look," he said to her proudly and held up his creation. "It's perfect! It's a sign."
    Doug backed up the CD and re-started track three. This time he closed his eyes and sang the lyrics and understood the secret heart of the message. He smiled to himself and waited for the right moment, the moment after the second chorus when the whispered message was given.
    "The world keeps spinning
    and I ain't winning.
    Got to tie her up to get ahead now,
    They won't call it sinning,
    if you're the one with the keys."
    He jumped back and yanked hard on the rope. The noose he held formed a perfect handhold and the nylon fibers felt naturally at ease with his skin, even as it bit into the flesh of his palm. It felt a little heavy, but not by much. Doug tilted his head up towards heaven and waited for his promised release when he would become unfettered from the earth and ascend into his new life.
    The rope burned his hand after awhile and he noticed the sensation of weightiness attached to it. He slowly opened his eyes and found everything was exactly the same; the same sun was shining directly onto the same wallpapered walls that surrounded him and the same blue carpet his feet were glued to. The song faded away and after a four-second silence "Suburban Wasteland" started. He looked down at his hand, at the coil of yellow rope that twisted around his palm, then followed the nylon train up to the second floor and back down to little girl who floated about a foot off her miniature chair.
    Suzie's head was oddly tilted, and he noticed with some amusement that she had wet herself, something she hadn't done since she stared kindergarten. He laughed at the way her shoe dangled off her toes, it looked so unreal. The doll dropped from her arms and his heart nearly stopped when it crashed to the floor.
    The rope left his hands and zipped around the wood of the banister. He watched his sister collapse onto the chair and then tumble to the floor like a sack of potatoes. He approached her cautiously and touched her arm with the tip of his sneaker. She didn't move. He titled his head to catch the lyrics of the fourth track on the album, but the words suddenly didn't make sense to him.
    Doug touched himself all over, even his penis which had become frustratingly hard, but he only felt numb. Nothing was different, nothing at all. He felt the plodding weight of gravity upon him, keeping him fixed to the carpet beneath his feet. "Fuck," he said. "What the fuck?" He kicked his sister's doll and it skittered across the floor into the living room.
    He marched to the CD player and started "Rope Music" over. He closed his eyes and sang with it, visualized the words, the meaning, the music. Nothing happened.
    He looked at the clock. His mother would be home in about fifteen minutes and he realized he had to clean up before she came back. "Shit," he cursed. He turned the volume levels on the stereo back down and took the CD out of the player and returned it to the jewel case. He dropped the CD to the floor and crushed it into the carpet with his sneaker and then kicked it as hard and as far as he could.
    Doug knocked Suzie out of the way and moved her chair back into the living room. He noticed some of her urine had dropped to the seat cushion so he flipped it over. Then he went into the kitchen and got a Hefty Lawn and Leaf Bag and returned to the hall. He coiled the rope back up, stuck it in the bag, then reached down to shove her body into it. He startled when he touched her, her skin was already growing clammy and she felt a bit like raw chicken. He had some difficulty maneuvering her into the bag because it kept sliding away. He stuffed her in, pulled up the sides and tied off the top.
    "What am I supposed to do with her?" he asked the walls. His voice echoed in the empty hallway and his ears were still ringing from the music. He had to put her somewhere they wouldn't look. Somewhere safe.
    He dragged her upstairs, one step at a time, then across the carpet and into his room. He dug out all the childish crap that had collected at the bottom of his closet, interred the bag there, then covered it up with old baseball mitts and clothes. He got the Lysol from his parent's bedroom and sprayed his room. His sister already smelled like shit and he was afraid someone might notice if she started to smell worse.
    The plastic bag rustled and he had a terrible image of his sister struggling for breath. His heart raced and he shivered, "What if she isn't?" He knelt down at her side, ripped the bag open until he could see her head and then turned her small face up to his. Her head wobbled and he guessed that her neck was broken. He checked her pale blue eyes for any sign of life but found only a serene, contented gaze that saw beyond him and the confines of the world. He kissed her cool lips, removed the rope from her neck, and then covered her back up.
    He retreated to the landing and dangled one end over and measured the distance from the floor, subtracted six feet and then tied off the rope with a hitch knot. Everything looked fine. He took his perfect noose and fondled it, studied his craftsmanship. Even with this hard, nylon rope he had been able to make it work. It had been used as an instrument to release his sister, now he would do it for himself.
    Doug climbed out on the ledge and looked straight ahead with a smile. He stepped off into weightless air. His body jerked up, then swung side to side when the rope pulled taut. His arms flailed momentarily but he forced his hands down to his sides. He focused instead on the approaching darkness which was filled with stars. They swirled around his body, enveloped him, transformed his body; he tingled with their energy. They accepted him as one of them. He ascended with a jolt and turned back once to see the small roof of his house shrink beneath him. He looked straight up into eternity, it was even bigger than he had ever dreamed.



About the author:
Sean’s fiction has been defined as dark realism, his subjects rooted in the peculiar nature of everyday life. His work has or will be published in Lodestar Quarterly, 3AM Magazine and Best Gay Erotica 2002. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. In addition to writing, he has the pleasure of editing Outsider Ink and Velvet Mafia: Dangerous Queer Fiction. Sean lives in New York with his partner, photographer Jack Slomovits, and their two dogs. If you are interested in reading more of his work, visit him online at seanmeriwether.com.

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