Chapter 11: Murder City

(2011 words)

“I can’t believe it! Can you, Billie Joe?” asked a half drunk and somehow familiar sounding voice from a few feet behind me. I looked up from the blood soaked, shrapnel littered ground and turned around to see who had been talking to me. The man was tall, and he had tannish skin, bright blue eyes, and spiked blondish brown hair. A slightly rusty, bloody shovel was half dug into the ground, leaning against his arm. He smiled at me, revealing yellow and crooked teeth. The man wore torn jeans over imitation army combat boots, a spiked belt looping around his waist. Half tucked into his jeans was a black tank top that was splattered in mud and blood. Dangling from his other arm was a reddish brown bottle of some liquid, its label torn off.

Mike… it was Mike Dirnt, who I’d known a few years before then. The Mike Dirnt who had a rock and roll life (including a girlfriend, a car, a house, and probably even more). The Mike Dirnt who I schemed with about running away from suburbia, to the City. The Mike Dirnt who I’d never loved but who had taken my virginity all the same.

“Ohhh Billie?” he asked me, since I appeared to have flown off to Wonderland or something. I snapped back into focus upon hearing my name once again. “Billie Joe Armstrong are you there, man?”

“Holy fuck. Mike?!” I exclaimed upon realizing all that stuff above.

“Who else could I be?” His smile turned cocky and he started half leaning against his shovel.

“I haven’t seen you in ages, man!” I was faking happiness at this point. It was hard to actually be happy when you just, basically, killed hundreds -- maybe even thousands -- of people. “I thought you were still in the City with Alice or whatever the hell her damn name was. You two were gonna get hitched, right? And what the hell is up with the damn shovel? The damn bloody rusty shovel?”

“Eh. You know, stuff happens ‘n all. Oh! The shovel?” I nodded. “It‘s my Traveling Shovel.” He said it in a way that made it sound Very Important. “I use it to kill people… but how have you been, anyway, dude? I mean -- like, you’re the new Whatsername.”

I ignored the strangeness of his shovel and answered his question. “Well, you know, good, I guess. I have a boyfriend now. His name’s Tré… you know him as Christian, probably. We’re together.”

“Oh yeah, I know him. Didn’t know you two are together though.”

“I may be the leader of the Class of Thirteen, but my private life is actually private -- not all public like Whatsername’s was.”

Mike smiled again in reply. “Yeah. You know, he’d be really proud of you. Whatsername -- he would be so proud of what you’ve done, taking inspiration from him and all. I think that D--”

Mike was cut off as Tré wrapped an arm around my waist. “Hey, Gloria. Let’s go back, okay? I’m getting kinda tired.” That close to him, I could hear the strain in his voice. He was struggling to keep his cool (pun not intended) just as I was struggling to keep from crying. I nodded and forced a smile.

“See ya, Mike.”

“See ya, St. Jimmy!”

I cringed as he used my former alias, waved, and simply walked away with his shovel -- I mean, of course, his Traveling Shovel. Thankfully, Tré didn’t seem to have heard it as he half dragged me back to the bike and climbed on. He gestured for me to follow suit, and so I did, and in silence, we left.

As we passed the city limits and rode down to the highway, I could hear the old church clock striking midnight -- I even counted, twelve times exactly -- from the center of the town of murder and depravity.

*

I sat on Tré’s bed, my face buried in my hands as I heard my boyfriend sob from beyond his closed bathroom door. A few tears of my own streamed down my face and left black streaks of bleeding thick eyeliner. My legs were crossed in front of me, just about dangling off the side of the bed; my elbows were leaning on my protruding knees. Everything felt like it was spinning around me -- mental vertigo, almost -- and I felt like throwing up. How could it have all gone so wrong?

I saw people killing others, explosives going off in the midst of the crowd, firearms firing out of control. People had died, and it was because I told them to go out and protest with all they had. People had been arrested, because I told them to try something different. I hadn’t been arrested -- no one wanted to rat me out, no one had wanted to reveal who their leader truly was. I didn’t know whether to be proud of that seeming loyalty, or further sickened by what I had caused.

Death. Destruction. Demolition. I felt like a corrupt military leader or something, leading my followers into the death match ahead. I was leading them in blindly, making them drink the poison fuckin’ Kool Aid rip off shit and die. The casualties, as I later learned, were somewhere in the 300 to 500 area. And it was all my fault.

Well… maybe it wasn’t, but I certainly must have been desperate, sleep deprived, and out of my mind when I decided to go through with it.

I guess I did it because of a conversation I once had with Whatsername, only a little while after we first met.

“You ever feel totally fucking useless, Whatsername?” I had been using his real name at the time, but I eventually forgot what he was really called.

Whatsername just pushed some of his long, curly, black hair behind his shoulder. “I do sometimes. That’s when I know that I have to switch tactics. That’s when I know what I’m doing’s not working.”

He looked at me, dead serious, a determined and somewhat grim look in his dark brown eyes, and said words that would inspire me to do what had caused so much devastation:
“When in doubt… when you think that what you’re trying’s not telling people something… when that happens, light things on fire. Destroy things and make a point. Make a statement.”

“That works?”

He just shrugged and added nonchalantly, “Well, it’s always worked for me. Just look at the Underbelly, we destroy things all the time and we definitely get our point across, don‘t we?”

“I guess you guys -- well, we, really -- do. It makes sense.”

“It just has to be organized and it has to have a reason. I’ve learned -- trial and error, it’s the best judge, really.”

I noticed the pained look on his face as he said that. “Whatsername? You okay?”

He smiled at me. “Don’t worry, Billie Joe. I’m fine.”

“Okay, good. ‘Cause I don’t want my new boyfriend to be upset,” I said, standing up and walking toward him. Quietly, I hugged him and we kissed.

He had been holding on my heart like I held on to a hand grenade, and I really didn’t care too much at the time.

I sighed and looked up and around Tré’s room. What I really needed then was a cigarette. My nicotine addiction was kicking in with stress, and I was getting antsy. I was about to crawl out of my fucking skin with anxiety. Insomnia had taken over my brain, and it felt like my mental vertigo had become real vertigo. Everything was spinning.

So what, this was a No Smoking building. Tré always smoked there. He smoked more than cigarettes -- much more than cigarettes, you know, marijuana. And, of course, as he had been seriously addicted then, Opal.

I found one at the bottom of my pocket, old, but still, I took the only comforts that I could find.

I really killed that many people. People had killed people in my name. Was it really Viva La Gloria now? Were we really fighting fire with a riot, now? Were we really the Class of Thirteen -- or just masquerading as the Class of Thirteen while trying to be a bad imitation of the Underbelly? Was I just a Whatsername rip off? Did I really screw up that badly?

I didn’t want to be Gloria anymore. I didn’t want to be Billie Joe Armstrong. I didn’t want to have ever existed. I wanted it all to be a bad dream.

I felt useless. We didn’t get our point across. We organized meaningless, random violence in the name of the Class of Thirteen.

There went any credibility I had left in me. I could almost hear it soar over my head.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, onto the wall behind his bed, as I took another drag of my cigarette. It didn’t help.

Nothing would help.

I knew that Tré was just as upset over this, and his anger was most likely directed to yours truly. I was in for something rough.

Now I was full out crying, as silently as I could, trying not to hurt myself as I did so. I’d already hurt too many people that night. I’d ruined families. It was terrible.

How had Whatsername dealt with this? All this fucking guilt and misery. How did he do it? In his entire career with the Underbelly, thousands had died. Under his command.

How. Did. He. Do. It.

I sighed and dried my tears on my now slightly charred black shirt, leaving wet black marks on it with smeared eyeliner. A few slowly healing cuts now accented my arms, lacing between my tattoos.

I was so fucking mad at the world just then. I was so mad at myself for screwing up so badly.

I was so useless. We were so desperate. And it was all wasted.

We were desperate, but not exactly helpless. Desperate, but for the majority of the then diehard members of the Class of Thirteen, certainly not hopeless.

I sighed again and grabbed a piece of paper. Murder City, I called this poem… a poem that I might have been able to turn into a song.

“Desperate, but not helpless. I feel so useless in the murder city. Desperate, but not hopeless, the clock strikes midnight in the murder city.
“I’m wide awake after the riot, this demonstration of our anguish. His empty laughter has no reason, like a bottle of your favorite poison… we are the last call, and we’re so pathetic.
“Christian’s crying in the bathroom, and I just wanna burn a cigarette. We’ve come so far, we’ve been so wasted. It’s raining all over our faces… we are the last call… and we’re so pathetic…”

As I wrote that last line, I heard the bathroom door open and shut again. Hesitant footsteps crawled through the hallways. The door to his bedroom opened, and there stood Tré.

He looked like a mixture of angry, morose, and just plain depressed.

And he certainly didn’t seem happy with me.

I was in for it, that was one thing I knew for sure.

And it was all my fault for going with what Whatsername had said.

Maybe what he had said didn’t always work.

He did say that trial and error are the best judges, didn’t he? Why hadn’t I paid more attention to how he seemed to feel about that after his comment?

I was a wreck, too, and I just wanted to die (as I stated earlier). I wanted, not to kill myself, but to just die and let it all be over with all fucking ready..

Gloria deserved it.

I deserved it.

Vaguely, I can recall having thought: Man, I hope I have some Novacaine left at home for after this… I’ll need it… dammit… I fucking need it now.

And even though I didn’t do Novacaine then, I totally felt that statement.