This is part of the "Finish the Story Contest" hosted by @f3nix. You can find the contest here. It's a great contest and I highly encourage everyone to participate!

The Story by @f3nix

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.

The Ending by @dirge

“God damn it,” Tres Culos glanced around the basement of the ruinous church.“How does this keep happening?” The seventy-year-old witch cuffed him to a pipe, bringing back nightmarish visions of a certain Swiss church.

“The piglet awakens,” Finley said, rubbing lipstick over their lips. Their skin was mummified dry, like a raisin covered in dog piss left out to rot in a sun.

The bassist puked in his mouth at the thought of the night before.

Finley stepped forward, placing their cherry red wig atop their head. Old, rusted gladius in their right hand, they pointed the ancient blade at TC’s throat. “One last time,” they said. “Where is it?”

The rickety wooden doors burst open. Mendoza, Machete and Tìo Billy stood ready for battle.

“Put the knife down tranny!” Tìo Billy shouted. He raised a two-by-four and pointed it a them. “I’ll knock your daemon fucking head off.”

“Don’t call me that,” Finley said. “Tranny is a fucked up term.”

“Yeah,” Machete said. “Tìo, just because you’re gay as fuck doesn’t mean you can use that word.”

Tìo Billy glanced at his comrades than back at the witch. “Okay. Sorry, that was wrong of me.”

“We got the mask!” Mendoza raised the glittering, golden artifact. Shaped like a horned wolf, it's radiance illuminated the otherwise candlelit basement room. “So just...release him and it’s yours.”

Finley broke out in laughter, lowering the blade. “I’ve no idea what unspeakable things you had to do in order for Loic Thibodeaux to refund that sale. He never offers refunds.” Finley leaned forward, licking Tres Culos on his face with a slimy tentacle of a tongue.

“Yesh,” TC said.
“EEeeeeew,” Machete said.
“Aaaaaghh,” Mendoza said.
“Rawr,” Billy said.

“Don’t be like that,” Finley said. “You didn’t mind it when I was…”

“Don’t say it!” Tres Culos said.

Finley snapped their fingers. The chains holding Tres Culos in place slipped off like dead snakes. He fell to his knees. Machete and Billy pulled him to his feet as Mendoza left the wolf mask on a table.

Finley stepped to the table and slipped the mask on, tossing off the cherry wig. Their stooped and crooked spine straightened out. Their skin tightened from knots and webs of age into the tight and supple flesh of a twenty year old fashion model. Tres Culos whistled.

“See?” he said. “She was hot. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Leave,” Finley said, their voice majestic and regal. Each word shook the room. “Before I change my mind.”

Outside of the ruins of the old French church, a man with horns in a black suit greeted them, surrounded by an entourage of others likely dressed.

“She’s in there,” Tio Billy said. Loic Thibodeaux stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on Tio’s chest.

“You won’t reconsider staying?” he asked.

“We’ve got other journeys,” Tio said. “It was fun. Maybe the best I’ve had, but punk must stay punk.”

Loic Thibodeaux nodded. He and his men made for the church.

In the van, Tres Culos reclined against a marshall tube amp. “What’d you do? To get the mask?”

“Broke glass with my voice,” Mendoza said.

“Beat a devil in a guitar duel,” Machete said.

Tio Billy cranked the van into gear. Smiling at Tres Culos through the rearview mirror he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m a fucking tyrannosaurus. What can I say?”

END

Again, I couldn't help but go beyond the 500 words. If that disqualifies me, that's ok! It was a good prompt. There was so much to work with. The mystery of the artifact, how they sold it, how TC went missing. Most of all, what they had to do to get it back. Image source