The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [119]
“I brought some music,” Suzanne said, reaching into her backpack. “I ordered new stuff for you, off the Internet. It sounds like the crazy shit you listen to on that record player, but it’s brand-new.” She produced a CD by a band called The Vengeful Virgins, the cover art consisting of hundreds and hundreds of guitar strings, wound into strange shapes. “It’s two twin brothers and they’re, like, savants or something. They’re fourteen years old or close to that, and they make this really weird music. It’s just drums and guitar, but it sounds like animals.” Buster shrugged. He didn’t want to get into a long conversation, but he only listened to his parents’ music because he had never developed his own tastes. He had found it too difficult to search out other music, to constantly listen to something and wonder, “Is this any good?” His parents had selected worthwhile music and so he listened to it, but he did not say this to Suzanne. He said, “Put it on,” and went back to the Tots that Suzanne had instructed the fry cook to fry twice so as to make them extra-crunchy.
The first song opened with the sound of a bass drum, the beat slightly off, spastic. It went on for over a minute until he heard a voice, a pitch that suggested sudden pubescence, singing, “When the end comes, and it always comes, we will drown in our own dust. We will watch the sky as it slowly darkens and we’ll be left with rot and rust. But we won’t die. We won’t die.” Suzanne pointed at the stereo, nudging Buster with her elbow. “Was I right? Weird.” Buster nodded. A guitar, or something like a guitar, squealed, and then, suddenly, the drumming tightened up, became as steady as a heartbeat, and the song began to bend and twist and Buster felt like something wonderful was happening that would soon implode. By the end of the second song, he said, “This is good,” confident of the proclamation, turning the volume up so the house began to vibrate. Suzanne kissed him again. “I knew you would like it,” she said.
“It’s a sad world,” the voice on the CD screamed, shredding his vocal cords, as a new song began without warning. “It’s unforgiving.” Buster sat up, the song tripping the hard wiring of his memories, and he placed his hands firmly on the coffee table, pressing so hard that the table began to softly vibrate. “Kill all parents, so you can keep living,” Buster sang, in perfect time to the voice on the CD. “Kill all parents,” he repeated, his voice cracking, “so you can keep living.” Suzanne touched his shoulder. “You know this song?” she asked, and Buster could only nod.
Annie emerged from her room, dumbbells still in her hands, her expression one of such confusion that her facial features seemed scrambled, some kind of cubism. “What the fuck is this?” she asked, one of the dumbbells pointing at the stereo. Buster held up the CD case and Annie dropped the dumbbell, shaking the floor, and snatched it out of his hand. “Number three,” Buster said, pointing to the track list on the back cover. “Song number three, ‘K.A.P.’ ” “What’s wrong?” Suzanne asked, backing away from the intensity of the Fang children.
“This is a Fang song,” Buster said, as he and his sister ran out of the room, to his computer, the Internet, a sudden interest in The Vengeful Virgins. “What?” Suzanne asked. “Our parents,” Annie shouted, her voice echoing throughout their parents’ house, where they had somehow grown up. “Our goddamned parents.”
As the Fang children searched every inch of the Internet, Suzanne having let herself out of the house, leaving the two of them to their own wicked devices, Buster scrolled through the Google results so quickly that Annie had to keep slapping his hand to get him to slow down. The Vengeful Virgins were signed to Light Noise, a tiny indie label based in the Northwest, one that had discovered The Leather Channel, another band Buster and Annie had never heard of, who had subsequently signed a multimillion-dollar contract with Interscope Records. The two boys who made up the band,