Slipknot

Okay everytime I listen to Iowa I think of this story I made up. Read on...

He was confused, he was the fatherless kid, he was the deaf bass player. Every night at twelve in the night, he crawled out of his mom's little shack with only his old worn clothes and a coal black bass. Down past the football field, through the woods and up into an abandoned tower on the edge of the city was where he escaped to. The deaf bass player trudged up the creeky stairs and into a dark attic. He sat down crosslegged next to an old amplifier and plugged in the bass guitar.

He plucked with his right and danced with his left. The deaf bass player could not hear, of course, but he could feel. Sitting on the floor, the bass notes traveled through the dusty floorboards and through his whole body, until he was in his own world and his throughts were translated into notes that vibrated in the room. He did this very thing every night. All alone, well, except for this particular night.

Down the street in front of tower were people running mad and shreiking obscenities. A man had wired the houses with gas bombs that dropped people one by one by one by one. No one knew who he was but he was there, among them. Stumbling down the street, in front of the tower. He heard the faint throbbing sound near by. Something was in the tower. Someone.

This person was mental, he was insane, and he was on a massacre. He had on a gasmask to protect himself from the huge amounts of deadly fumes of Carbon Monoxide. Pedestrians lay dead in the sidewalks and streets, and the others alive were fleeing everywhere trying to escape. He had caused this. But the person in the tower was too high to be intoxitated. He would have to go up the tower and take care of this one himself.

The madman entered the old building and started climing the spiral stairs, anxious to end whoever was up there, but going slowly because of the pain his mental state was sending throughout his body. He stumbled again and fell atop the third step, the staircase creeking and shaking when his body hit the metal railing. The person in the attic didn't seem to hear, and the sound that was coming from there didn't cease. In fact, it was getting louder; heavier. He pulled himself up the steps, not caring to walk. Closer, closer, closer. The bass getting louder and harder like a hammer, each note hammering his mind, and he started screaming and moaning as he crawled.

He was at the top of the stair case, yes, and he could see the person now. It was a kid, faced away from him, sitting on the floor, bass in his arms. The notes were booming around the room. The man couldn't see the boy's face. But he knew who he was. It was his son.

His son, his poor deaf baby, who the government had taken away from him ten years ago because of his mental state. He slowly took his gasmask off. This was the only human he had ever loved. The child was about five feet away. He started pulling himself across the floor, toward his son. But the bass was too much now, stabbing and battering his brain until the man couldn't bear it anymore. He grabbed his head in agony and ripped at his hair, trying to claw into his head as if he could rip his brain out and take the pain away. He was yelling and screaming and then he reached his arms out about to strangle his son's neck who hadn't even turned around to see him yet but about two inches separated them and he couldn't even touch him and then he couldn't see and his arms weren't working and he collapsed.

The man lay limp and he couldn't feel anything, not physical or mental. He was slipping away into a cloud, and the song his boy was playing was ending, and the notes drifted quieter and quieter until they died out, and he died with him.