The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

the computer, beginning to feel one of the blackouts I had been experiencing more frequently coming on. Very slowly and firmly I drummed my left hand on the table as if tapping an S.O.S. into a telegraph and whispered into the microphone: “This … is … my … most … vulnerable … moment.” I flipped the waveform around, so that it was backwards, and added it to the beginning of the song, a distress call heard by no one but myself.
    I collapsed into the swivel chair and tried to clear my head. The words came from a place inside me as pink and sensitive as the head of a newborn baby. I wondered if the debased, demoralized, degraded monstrosity that I had become was dying (or being murdered), making way, as Anton LaVey had predicted over a year ago, for something new, for something confident, for something emotional, for something terrible and beautiful and powerful, for Antichrist Superstar—a world redeemer no one would allow to be born. What neither I nor anyone else around me realized was that the same corrosive that had stripped away my humanity was also responsible for trying to kill Antichrist Superstar in the womb: betrayal. It was a word that rattled around my mind like a rusty tin blade every time something went wrong. From my grandparents to Chad to my teachers at Christian school to my first girlfriends, no one had lived up to the roles they acted out in public. They wasted their years trying to live the lies that they had created for themselves. Only in private could they really be the demons, hypocrites and sinners that they really were, and woe betide anyone who caught them at their game, because the only thing worse than a lie is a lie exposed. I thought I had learned to protect myself from betrayal by trusting and placing faith in no one. But in the weeks that followed, I was to experience more betrayal in less time than I ever thought possible. Each one was like a hammer driving a stake deeper and deeper into my chest.
    It began with my decision to do something about the predicament we were in. I called a meeting with the band, Trent and John Malm, and we discussed what could be done to save the album and ourselves. In the end, it was agreed that we needed someone other than Dave to help produce the album, something Trent had been trying to tell us for a month. We needed someone who would help us work, and Dave seemed to have fallen in with our lethargic self-destruction. Like everyone else, he just wanted to get the album over with; but he didn’t want to have to stop playing video games or watching ice hockey to accomplish this goal. In the end, we agreed that we’d all meet with Dave the following afternoon and let him go.
    But the next day when I showed up at the studio for the meeting, I found myself alone with Dave. No one else had shown up. I was used to looking like a villain to parents and Christians, but not to musicians whom I used to respect, especially when that musician wasn’t even technically working for me. The meeting, which took place in the office, went as badly as expected and ended with Dave storming out of the room, his final words, “This doesn’t surprise me—this is how everyone in this business operates,” echoing off the walls. I had been left on my own to look like an asshole, and I did.
    I didn’t return to the studio for days after that, indulging in a reckless binge that made everything else I had done in New Orleans look like an opening act. I experimented with different prescription drugs—morphine sulfate, Percocets, Lorcets—and shoved sewing needles underneath my fingernails to test my pain threshold because my emotional one had already been crossed. The time when Twiggy and I had been so close that we didn’t even have to speak to write—together—the best music we had ever made seemed so distant and unreachable. I tried to remember what that music sounded like and what was happening to it.
    In a rare moment of sobriety, which must have been in the window between the first five minutes I had woken up, I called Twiggy and asked him those questions, and we pledged to return to the studio and get some work done. When I arrived there the next morning, I found Twiggy outside, pissed off.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, man,” I began.
    â€œRemember how David Lynch wanted us to collaborate with him on the soundtrack for his movie?” he began.
    â€œFor Lost Highway ?