Finish the Fiction Story Contest - Week #13

Little Jazz and Lot of Hair in New Orleans

What the fuck is doing a punk-rock band like the Tortillas de Pelo – a bunch of idiots who think a jam session is a type of orgy –in New Orleans, the homeland of jazz? You won’t believe it, but this is the simplest part of the whole story.

There’s no doubt that the Tortillas play like dogs. The fact is that "play like dogs" is still too euphemistic to describe the kind of noise that this band of demented produces: a concoction between an alpenhorn’s bellow, played by a crack whore, and the fornication of a pigeon with a dying elephant.

The only consequence can't be other than their chronic broke-ass status.

The money made in Saint Judas was drying up faster than their beer reserves and they quickly needed an idea, before their musical independence was jeopardized. In case the band couldn't self-sustain anymore, the alternative would have been to go back working as clerks in the filthiest sex shop of all New York, property of a third cousin of Machete.

That’s why - in front of the chance of a payment that, for once, was not limited to the booze during the concert - Mendoza did not hesitate to sell the Tortillas as refined jazz musicians and to conclude an engagement for a wealthy cocks’ private party in Louisiana. This was not before having sold to the organizer, a certain Madame Laveau, a whole amount of references, later confirmed by an old alcoholic xylophonist in debt with Mendo for a couple of favors.

After all, what did it take to learn a bit of fuckin’ jazz? They would have had plenty of time during the long trip aboard their rusty van to try something.

The Chevy left The Big Easy behind, spinning along Interstate 10 as a suppository stuck in a well-oiled colon. Mendoza stood thoughtfully at the back of the van, laying his back on his Marshall tube amp and using a tangle of wires like a pillow. From the window, the monotonous landscape did not show much of the bayou beyond the trees, beckoned only by a group of herons.

The singer thought back to that absurd weekend, all those hours of travel just to be thrown out from the sumptuous farmhouse immediately after their first song "Spiderman has hemorrhoids". He did not understand: the arrangement in a jazz fashion should have worked. Fortunately, they had not left empty-handed from that party of pricks. Machete had stolen a strange mask that had all the appearance of being ancient and very precious.

In fact, readily resold in the French Quarter, the mask had yielded them a nice nest egg. Everything that had happened after the sale of the object was very confused in his mind and had to do with Cajun boudin and cracklins, sailing in rivers of Brandy and Gin. He also remembered anatomically confused female details and, in the chaos, the blissy and sweaty face of Tres Culos, who was watching him clinging to a huge seventy-year-old-heavily-made-up lady like a lemur to a baobab.

He smirked… this was part of a true punk-rocker’s life, too. The fresh air filled the van and laid a regenerating feeling of unrealized adventures on his tired face and... fresh air?!

"Tìo Billy... for the dangling Jude’s nuts! Tell me that TC is there in front close to you"asked the singer, his voice imperceptibly trembling.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Mendo? Isn’t he there with you, farting as usual? " In answering, the drummer's voice had lost courage and momentum while something was becoming clear even for a Machete in the grip of his obsessive-compulsive riffs: Tres Culos was missing.

The sound of the nailing Van recalled a moan. The same prolonged moan that, at that moment, not far from the interstate 10, filtered through the basement of an old ruin among the cypress trees of the bayou.

My Entry:

Tortillas de Pelo minus one. Pop, a nail in the tire sent the Van reeling on its side. Rolling over and over again along the barren side lane, over the grass, and stopping before the trees.

“Fuck!” yelled Machete dangling in a seat belt as a very safe drunk driver.

“Mendo?” asked Tio Billy crunched up against the ceiling of the Van. He could see Mendoza wrapped in speaker cables.

“Cool bro.” Said Mendoza raising a fist.

Rock’n’roll, Tortillas de Pelo minus one, crawled out of the Van amazingly unhurt.

“We still got Gin!” Said Mendoza, and he passed the bottle around. They were standing in the grass looking at the upside down Van, in the Full Moon light. Cars sped by on Interstate 10. No cars stopped to check on them.

“I’m drunk Mendo. We should sleep this off. Don’t want to get a DUI too. TC will just have to wait.”

“Yeah Machete. That’s the right move. Only we should finish this Gin first.” Said Mendoza taking another swig. From the cypress trees behind them they could hear a moan. All three turned to see what had made the sound. Only to be met with darkness. No signs of movement. Only silhouettes of limbs against the moon lit sky.

“Whaaaaa? Seriously. Whaaa!” Cried Tio Billy. “I’m so fucking wasted right now! I mean whaaaaaaaaaa! TC’s missing. We crashed the Van. Now some fucking Vodoo bullshit!”

“Oh God no, what is happening here!” Mendoza sang out to the moon like a werewolf.

Machete remained silent as his hands rubbed his face as if he were getting a massage, deep in darkness, with the world spinning around him.

And again the moan from the woods.

333

Tortillas de Pelo minus one, awoke at a banquet table filled with food. TC looking like Tiki Man, stood in front of them, his arms raised above his head with fists. He farted and then started laughing.

The three started laughing too, wild and delirious. Then suddenly they all stopped.

“Man, that mask we took had a hold on me or something. I got out of the Van before you guys left. Broke into the pawn shop and put on the mask. I now have infinite powers! Can you believe that shit?”

The three could not believe it. Or maybe they could believe it. Whatever TC wanted them to think they did.

Thank you,

Cyrus Emerson

Fear and Loathing in the State of Jefferson
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B079R5KLPN&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_GsURAbAVDYNEM

The Blues Brothers – Funky Nassau

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