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Even though the sun was shining brilliantly and it was a perfectly fine autumn day outside, Magnus Hammersmith kept himself holed up in his bedroom, with the lights turned off and the curtains drawn. The reason for this was that he tanned very easily but he wanted to stay all pale and gloomy-looking. Plus, it added to the atmosphere.
It was fairly early in the morning and he'd just taken a shower and was currently naked, lying in bed and wasting time on his smartphone, updating his Facebook status with passive-aggressive phrases. Suddenly, he scrolled through something that made him sit upright, mismatched eyes widening.
Quickly, he jumped out of bed and ran to his closet. The closet was full of black button-down shirts and black jeans. He pulled some clothes on and ran out of his room.
The Metal Masked Assassin was throwing dismembered arms and legs and livers from a bucket at the Revengencers, who needed to be fed or else they would get quite cranky. There was a sort of balcony leading around the inside of the abandoned warehouse where they were living, and the Assassin was standing on it and chucking the human body parts at his brainwashed minions.
Just as he finished and turned around, putrid blood dripping from his hands, Magnus accidentally ran directly into him. This was sort of like running into a wall. Magnus kind of recoiled and went "oof."
The Assassin stared down at Magnus, who steadied himself and looked back up in return. "What are you doing?" the Assassin snarled.
Magnus didn't mind the anger, or the flecks of spit that flew out of the Assassin's mouth. "Look!" he said, pointing at his phone screen.
The Assassin squinted at the tiny screen (he hadn't put his contact lenses in yet). "'Brain Decay plays for one night only in—' Magnus, is this an ad for some stupid concert?"
"Not any old stupid concert," Magnus said. "This is Brain Decay! Finnish black metal, they're brutal. We have to go see them."
"How much are the tickets?" the Assassin asked.
Magnus scrolled further down. His face fell as he saw the exorbitant price.
"Thought so," the Assassin said.
"Shut up," Magnus said. "Fuck...I have to go to this concert! There has to be some way!"
"Well, you better be getting those tickets for free," said the Assassin, "'cos there's no way I'm paying that much just to see some Swedish nobodies making a racket all night. Now excuse me, I have to wash this blood off my hands."
"They're Finnish, you jackass!" Magnus yelled after the Assassin, who was going to the kitchen to wash the blood off. He sighed and slumped against the wall, listening to the screams of the Revengencers below. Why did life have to be so hard?
Later that day, Magnus was in his room, listening to the radio and being all melancholy, when a radio advertisement caught his attention. The ad said that the eleventh caller to the station would win two tickets for the Brain Decay show. Fingers trembling with excitement, Magnus punched the number for the station into his phone and called them, chewing his nails anxiously.
"Sorry, sir or madam, it looks like you're the twelfth caller to our station today—"
Magnus cursed under his breath. A moment later, he had an idea. He called a Revengencer over and whispered an order in her ear. She nodded and ran off. A moment later, the man on the end of the line said:
"Oh! Well, sir or madam, it appears that our eleventh caller has just been shot in the head and violently dismembered. By default, you win the tickets!"
"Yes!" Magnus roared.
Quite a while later, Magnus was running through the halls of the abandoned warehouse where they lived, looking for the Assassin, to tell him the good news. As he ran around a corner he ran head-first into the Assassin again. Magnus grunted and stumbled back, then rubbed the top of his head.
"Seriously? Again?" the Assassin said. "You need to watch where you're going."
"That's beside the point, just look—"
"The problem is that you run with your head down," said the Assassin. "Like, with your head down and your arms stretched out behind you. Like Sonic the Hedgehog or some shit. You know that doesn't really make you go faster—"
"Look!"
The assassin struggled to focus on the bits of paper Magnus was furiously waving about in his face. He grabbed them out of his hand and narrowed his eyes to read the tiny writing.
"Tickets for that concert?" the Assassin said. He sighed. "If you spent my fucking money on these, I'm going to feed you to the Revengencers."
"No, I won them," Magnus said. "They were free, I won them from the radio station."
"Two tickets?" the Assassin asked, giving Magnus the tickets back.
"Yeah!" Magnus said. "One for me, one for yo—"
"One for somebody else!" the Assassin said. "I'm not going with you."
"Why not?" Magnus' face fell.
"I don't have time for silly things like that," the Assassin said. "Take your stupid concert tickets and go by yourself, just sell the other one."
"I can't go by myself."
"Why not?"
"Well..." Magnus' eyes darted back and forth. "I get nervous around crowds, okay?" he spat out. "There, I said it."
"You were in Dethklok. Don't tell me there weren't crowds around Dethklok."
"Yeah, but it's different when I'm with people I know," Magnus said. "I just get anxious by myself, I need someone to go with me!"
Behind his mask, the Assassin rolled his eyes. "That is seriously pathetic. Gods."
"I know. Shut up, you douchebag."
"Well, find someone else," said the Assassin.
"I don't...I don't know anyone else," Magnus said quietly.
"What d'you mean?"
"I don't have any friends apart from you!" Magnus said. "I mean, not that you're my friend. But I'm not good with people. I tend to get all, you know, stabby. You're the only person I know who doesn't completely hate me."
"I kind of hate you right now." The Assassin sighed. Perhaps he looked into his blackened, withered heart, and remembered a day when he'd only had one person to confide in, his brother... "No," he said. "No!"
"C'mon!" Magnus pleaded. "It'll be awesome! They have flash bombs, dancing chicks in bondage gear, I heard they decapitate goats live on stage..."
"Well, that does sound kind of neat," the Assassin murmured.
"It is! You'll like them, they're brutal, I promise!" The Assassin didn't look like he'd be swayed. Magnus was so desperate he was nearly dropping to his knees to beg. "Please please come to the show with me, I think I might literally kill myself if I can't go, please—"
"Fine!" the Assassin said. "I'll go to your stupid concert, just to make you shut up! Are you happy?!"
"Yes! This is good!" Magnus yelled back. "Okay!" He breathed heavily for a moment, fists clenched by his sides. Then he kind of slinked off to his room with the tickets.
The Assassin watched him leave. "What a fucking weirdo," he muttered to no one in particular, shaking his head.
Even more quite a while later, on the evening of the concert, the pair got ready to go.
The Metal Masked Assassin waited impatiently behind the wheel of their unmarked white van. Magnus had said he was going to be outside seven minutes ago, and he wasn't in sight. The vain little bugger was probably still picking out his outfit, the Assassin thought.
He honked the horn angrily. "Magnus!" he bellowed. "Get your ass out here! This was your idea!"
"I'm COMING!" came a yell from inside the building. A moment later, Magnus Hammersmith ran out of the warehouse and jumped into the passenger's side of the car.
"What took you so damn long?" the Assassin growled.
"I was picking out an outfit," Magnus said.
"...You're wearing the exact same thing you wear every day," said the Metal Masked Assassin. This was true.
"...Well, I didn't like the outfit," Magnus said, "so I put it back and put this on."
"You're wasting even more of my time!"
"Well, I'm here now, so let's go!"
They drove off. The sun was just going down behind trees that clawed at the purpling sky like witches' hands, as the moon rose opposite it. Magnus' stare absently followed the moon.
They didn't talk much on the ride there. The Assassin wasn't much for small talk, rather obviously. When they arrived they went to a little cafe downtown near the venue to get drinks. They picked a table on the patio and glared at everyone. The Assassin leafed through a newspaper someone had left behind.
Of course, a giant, disfiguringly-scarred pale man with a mask covering his face looked strange here. The most distinguishing thing was probably the aura of misery and rage that constantly surrounded him.
A little girl holding her father's hand as they crossed the street pointed at them. "Daddy! Look at the strange man!"
"Don't point, honey, it's rude," said the man.
"Daddy! I want to touch his mask!"
Magnus narrowed his eyes at the little girl, then glanced over at the Assassin, whose expression was unreadable (as usual).
The man sighed as the little girl dragged him over to the table in front of the cafe. "I'm sorry, uh...sir," he said, "but my daughter wants to touch your mask." The Assassin stared at them, baffled that anyone would even ask a question like that.
The little girl screamed and launched herself into the Assassin's lap. She squished her hands all over his face. "Daddy, it's so shiny!"
The Assassin stayed very still.
"Daddy! What's underneath the mask?"
"You might not wanna do that," Magnus said.
"Don't be bossy!" the little girl shrieked. She ripped the Assassin's metal mask up. Magnus averted his eyes. He'd never seen what was underneath the mask and he didn't think he wanted to.
The girl saw the Assassin's face, immediately started screaming and then went into a state of shock and had to be carried away by her father. When they were gone, Magnus turned back and started to say something.
"I know what you're thinking," said the Assassin, "but I've learned that it is generally not a very good idea to go around stabbing people in the middle of a crowded area like this, especially if you don't have any backup."
"Yeah, but you just sat there."
The Assassin shrugged. "You'd be surprised at how much I get shit like that."
"People are fucking rude," Magnus said.
"Tell me about it."
After that, Magnus couldn't help but notice whenever anyone behaved weirdly around the silver-faced man. People looked at him weirdly whenever they walked by. The waitress, when she came back for their bill, didn't look at him, and used this odd high-pitched voice when talking to him. The real kicker came when a bunch of teenagers drove by on dirt bikes and yelled at them while they were walking to the show.
"Seriously, how are you not bothered by that?" Magnus asked the Assassin.
"We're different," said the Assassin, "and that makes us better. But people don't like it when things are different. I'm used to it."
"You could tear them limb from limb with your bare hands. These people are idiots."
"Magnus, if I tried to kill every person who looks weird at me I'd be killing people all day. Which I wouldn't mind, but I have better things to do, and people can see me here. I'm not going back to prison."
A drunk guy stumbled past. "Hey, weirdo!" he yelled at them.
The Assassin didn't move.
"Weirdo," the drunk guy yelled, "look at me, I'm talking to you!"
"I don't like that guy," Magnus muttered.
"What happened to your face!" yelled the guy.
Magnus made a little growly sound and suddenly spin-kicked the drunk guy in the head. The guy crumpled to the ground. The few shady-looking people in the alley around them backed away but he didn't really care. The Assassin watched as Magnus sank down from the bastardized judo position he'd gone into after the kick to kneel and examine the dude.
"Shit," he said off-handedly, "I think he's dead."
The Assassin squinted down at the dude. "I don't think so."
"Well, you'd know better than me." Magnus made some kind of effort to roll the possibly dead guy into the alley behind a dumpster and then stepped out to look around and see if he could spot the venue. "I think it's that way."
"Why'd you do that?" the Assassin asked as they began walking again.
"What?"
"Kick that guy in the head."
"I dunno. I don't like it when people do that. Maybe you're used to it, but I'm not."
The Assassin furrowed his brow behind the mask. "So you're trying to defend me. That's kinda funny."
"I'm not trying to defend you," Magnus said. "We're partners, and I don't like it when those weird regular people bug you. I can't just do nothing while that happens. Nobody talks to you like that but me."
The Assassin thought about this. "...I guess I appreciate the sentiment."
Magnus smiled and rolled his eyes. "You're welcome."
Very soon, they got into the concert. When it started, the lights all went down and were replaced by laser lights. Magnus had somehow gotten into the mosh pit and was punching everyone in sight. The weird Finnish music blared loud enough to puncture your eardrums. The Assassin sighed from where he was in the back, leaning against the bar and drinking.
"Your kid drag you along, too?"
The Assassin looked around. A cigarette-wizened small woman nearly covered in tattoos was sitting at the bar next to him.
"Uh, yeah," lied the Assassin awkwardly. He wasn't really used to random people striking up conversations with him. He had to yell to be heard over the music.
She chuckled. "Kids. I dunno..."
"I guess it might be fun, if—"
"If there weren't so many people hanging around," the woman said.
"Yes," said the Assassin. "Still, I guess he's having fun. He begged me for ages to come here."
"Oh, mine too. Sometimes I think I didn't raise her quite right. That girl definitely knows what she wants, though. I guess she got that from me."
The Assassin nodded contemplatively. "I guess this isn't as bad as I thought it would be."
"No. The lead guitarist is pretty cute..."
"Mom! Mom!" yelled someone in the audience. A teenaged girl with a face full of piercings broke out of the crowd and rushed toward the woman who'd been talking to the Assassin. "Mom, c'mon! You have to see them up close!"
The mother sighed. "Okay, Jessica." To the Assassin, she said "Nice talking to you," before they dove into the crowd. The Assassin stared after them.
Everyone here looked just as weird here as he did. They were freaks. He barely stood out.
Interrupting his train of thought, Magnus rushed out of the crowd. His hair was all frizzy from the humidity and his shirt was torn. "Hey!" he yelled. "Come mosh with me."
"I don't want to."
"It'll be fun! Come ON!"
"Just go by yourself."
Magnus scowled.
"...I know why you tried to make me come here," the Assassin said.
"What d'you mean?" Magnus asked.
"It's not because you're afraid of crowds or whatever. It's because...you think I'm your friend."
Magnus shook his head.
"You're a bad liar."
"Well, so what?!" Magnus yelled. "Fuck! Fine! I think you are my friend! Why couldn't we be friends? We have similar interests and shit."
"By interests do you mean we're both seeking revenge?"
"Yes, I do, actually. We spend a lot of time together. I just think we could be friends."
"I don't do 'friends.' You know that," the Assassin said.
Magnus sighed. "I dunno why I even asked. I mean...I respect you, okay?"
"I, uh, I respect you as well." This was a bit better, the Assassin decided. More businesslike.
"And you're good to work with. Even if you are a dick."
"Same to you."
They both kind of stared into each other's eyes for a moment.
"Will you come into the mosh pit with me—" Magnus began.
"FINE!" the Assassin roared. "Fucking hell, you're a persistent little piece of shit."
"Yes! Okay, c'mon, it's awesome..."
They stayed in the mosh pit for nearly the whole show, except when they went to get drinks. By the end of the show all the other moshers hated them since they were excessively violent and had no respect for mosh pit etiquette. They both puked but had a good time anyway.
When the show was over, Magnus somehow snuck backstage. "I wanna meet the band," he said. "Wait out here."
He came in. The Finnish band members were wiping corpsepaint off their faces and drinking.
"Hey," Magnus said. "I'm a big fan."
"Oh, ja?" said the singer.
"This was the first time I've ever seen you guys live. The show was great."
"We haves our techniksians to thanks for dat," said the guitarist. "Thanks you, though."
"I was wondering, how did you think of the riff in—"
"Hey," said the guitarist. "ams you Magnus Hammersmiths?"
"It's Hammersmith, actually...I mean, no! Who is this Magnus Hammersmith? I don't know anyone named that. You must mean someone else."
The Assassin meandered backstage with his beer and looked over. "Hey, Magnus, you Finnished?" he said. "Get it, because they're Finnish and I said Finnished—"
"Thank you, Silverface," Magnus said in a very strained voice.
"It ams him!"
"Magnus, signs my guitars?"
"You know dey got da police lookings for you," said the drummer to Magnus. "Did you really kidnaps dose guys?"
Magnus sighed. "Yeah..."
"Oh man. Brutal."
And after that Magnus and the Assassin walked back to the van in the dark, with their ears ringing, still intoxicated, stumbling over the sidewalk and each other. They passed the guy that Magnus had kicked. He was still on the ground. Flies buzzed around his head.
"See, that was fun," Magnus said. "Told you."
The Assassin shrugged. "I'd do it again."
The Assassin drove them back home. Again, they were mostly silent.
"You know, you're not that annoying," the Assassin murmured suddenly to Magnus when they were almost home. When Magnus didn't look up, the Assassin glanced over. The ex-guitarist was fast asleep, snoring, with his face smushed against the window. The Assassin rolled Magnus' window repeatedly up and down to bug him. Magnus sputtered awake and rubbed his face.
"Jackoff," he said.
"Douchebag," the Assassin replied affectionately.
Neither of them knew the other was doing it, but they both looked down and smiled slightly.