Meat Festival in St. Judas

By @f3nix

"Mendo, d’you know where you can stick your fucking sense of adventure next time?" Tres-Culos, bassist of the Tortillas de Pelo, broke the silence suddenly in his usual volcanic style.

Mendoza, continued to observe a mummified bug, relic of past winters, stuck between the window and the cracked sheath of the old Chevy van. He was about to reply when a burp of Tres-Culos banished the words from his mouth, making the interior of the van rumble with an echo-like effect between the cardboard walls of the vehicle.

For a fraction of a second, Machete stopped the chord progression of his new-born piece - somewhat way too similar to Ramones' “Do not Want to Grow Up” - and he cast a sardonic look at Tres-Culos. At the wheel of the Chevy, Tío Billy was a monolith in a leather jacket and Tom Ford.

After all, TC was right, the journey through the glacier was a bad idea. The members of the punk-rock group had come out with their bowels well tangled and the alpine vegetation, more than relaxing them, made everyone feel like sugar cubes dipped in a glass of viscous absinthe.

At least, now the van was sailing calmly through the grassy sea of that mountain valley. Mendoza thought back to how they had ended up accepting that unusual engagement and how unlikely it was that the mayor of a small village, nestled in the middle of the Alps, could have paid them handsomely and in advance to perform at the "Meat Festival".

They had accepted without asking too many questions. Only God, or someone else in his place, knew how much they needed a healthy injection of money and he was tired of recycling picks from every piece of fairly stiff plastic.

Meanwhile, Tío had nailed the old Chevy in front of a crossroads, undecided on which way to get to the village of Saint Judas, their final destination.

From the dusty window, Mendoza's attention was captured by a roadside shrine. It contained a simple painting, representing a lady dressed in a blue tunic and with open arms. On closer inspection, the madonna showed an awkward bright red skin. "Almost skin stripped" he thought, increasingly immersed in the picture. The protruding black eyes of the figure were pointy and vivid blades, thus contrasting with the pale, expressionless faces of the faithful kneeling around her. Only the noise of the Chevy starting to climb the mule-track broke the hypnotic observation of that strange religious representation.

The vehicle was trudging for a good hour through an anaconda of endless hairpin turns. Machete was almost interrupting the arpeggio to complain about the roadmap’s delay, when finally the village of St. Jude was revealed to the band's eyes. A myriad of small houses proliferated under the geological anomaly called Butcher’s Hook, a mountain whose top was bizarrely bent over itself, casting a perennial shadow over the village.

"I will need a steady and uninterrupted supply of booze tonight" Tío Billy solemnly noted.

END
begin @dige's section

The Tortillas de Pelo

By T. Dalton

They lined up. An instinctive gesture.

Billy took out the pack of American Spirits and each member of the band took one. Billy lit his then passed the lighter down the line. Machete put the lighter back in the pack of cigarettes and sent them back to Billy, who placed them in his leather jacket.

“How much are we getting paid?” Machete asked.

“The faggot back in Milan said three thousand euros,” Billy said.

“Fuck, Tío,” Mendoza said with a cringe. “You can’t use that word anymore.”

“Yes I can,” Billy said. “I sucked his dick. He’s a faggot.”

Search And Destroy

They sprinted down the cobblestone street.

“Start the van!” Mendoza screamed. “Start the fucking van!”

Tío Billy, his face in shock, didn’t ask. He hopped in the van as Machete slid the door open and jumped inside. Mendoza fell in behind him. Billy cranked the engine. As Mendoza closed the door he saw them.

A horde of white people, bleached by chalk dust, decorated in a red pigment he knew instinctively was blood. Their eyes black and empty, they were ass-and-dick-swinging-naked.

The mist engulfed the rickety van as it shot down the street. “Where’s TC?” Billy shouted.

“They fucking took ‘em,” Machete cried. “He saved us but they fucking took him in the church.”

“Shit!” Billy roared. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Machete gripped his prized Dean guitar, holding it close like a baby.

Mendoza rummaged through the band’s gear. He found a screwdriver and a hammer and TC’s Bowie knife.

Billy slammed the brakes. An amp fell and Mendoza remembered the gas tank used for the best hardcore punk show in Europe.

“Why are we stopping?” Mendoza cried. “Fucking go!”

“Is he dead?” Billy asked.

“What?”

“Is he fucking dead?”

“I don’t know,” Mendoza said. “They had him strung up on a cross.”

Billy gripped the wheel. “I can’t see shit in this fog.” The opaque carpet swam around them. The Meat Festival had begun. Mendoza heard the sound of running outside. He thought about Tres-Culos. “We can’t leave him,” Mendoza said. “We can’t fucking leave him.”

The argument that followed broached topics of Aristotelian ethics, neo-Kantism, Anarchist individualism in the vein of Max Stirner and finally a proto-communist ethics of collectivism and mutual aid.

What the band agreed on in the end was a simple truth. TC was their friend and bandmate. And nobody wanted to be the one to tell his grandmother what became of him.

Billy turned around.

Holiday In Cambodia

They shot back to the church, stampeding over white people on the way. They burst from the van. Machete, swinging his Dean electric guitar. Billy, slicing with the Bowie knife and a metal stand from his drum kit. The monster drummer rushed forward like a gorilla, impaling white people’s skulls like kebabs with the cymbal stand. Mendoza hammered his way past the townspeople, cracking skulls like watermelons.

TC hung on the cross, bleeding from his gut. He smiled, blood dripping between his teeth when he saw his comrades. “Don’t call me white!” he screamed.

Billy tossed the white people aside, slitting throats and stabbing eyes, crashing, crushing heads.

Machete swung his axe, roaring with a warcry, melting the best solo of his life.

Mendoza danced between hammering skulls and doused the church with gasoline.

“Guns of Brixton, mother fuckers!” Billy said as a body crashed through the pews.

Covered in scratches and cuts, a white person stabbed Billy in the ribs with a hayfork.

Machete’s guitar finally collapsed and broke into pieces. He gripped the neck and smashed it on noses and jaws like a club. Hands and a crowd of white people descended on him, piling on top like football players.

Mendoza lit the zippo and tossed it on the gas. Fire shot up like electricity.

“Switzerland!” he shouted as the fire engulfed the church. “All you posers, get the fuck out! We are Tortillas de Pelo, and this is punk rock

END

The goal was to finish in 500 words. I couldn't. There was too much I wanted to say and so much more written that this is just a snippet of. Regardless, great prompt and writing by @f3nix.

You can check out the contest here. Write your own ending! Join up!