The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Yeah.”
    â€œWell, now he’s in the studio with Trent, who’s fucking doing the soundtrack himself.”
    â€œI’m going to kill somebody,” I fumed.
    â€œI would have already if I could,” Twiggy spat, “but we’re not allowed in the studio.”
    â€œAren’t we supposed to be finishing our record?”
    â€œIt only gets worse. Dave Ogilvie is fucking in there, working with Trent.”
    Our relationship with Lynch had begun two years earlier through a girl we had met named Jennifer, who claimed to be Lynch’s assistant. At the time, everybody else had dismissed her as a name-dropping groupie. But when it came down to it, her claim was not only true, it resulted in an offer for us to collaborate with him on the soundtrack to his new movie, Lost Highway , as well as appear in the film. Now, not only had we been shut out of our relationship with Lynch, but his film was keeping us away from our album. When I called the rest of the band, I discovered that even Pogo had betrayed me, unknowingly, and was working on drones for the soundtrack while we were temporarily barred from the studio.

    I decided to return later that afternoon and see if I could talk to Lynch about it all. As soon as I pushed through the iron doors, I nearly collided into him.
    â€œHow have you been?” I asked as casually as I could, trying to hide my anger. “Good to see you again.”
    â€œSo when are you coming by to work?” Lynch asked. He clearly had no idea that I had been told not to enter the studio.
    â€œI’m not going to be able to, since we’re finishing our album,” I lied, biting my tongue. Trent was standing nearby.
    I ran out of the studio, feeling awkward, like a girlfriend who walks in on her boyfriend while he is cheating. I wondered if I had been a fool all along, taking the advice of others when there was no one in this world anyone could trust but themselves. It hadn’t steered me wrong before. I had been trying to fix what I thought was wrong with Antichrist Superstar: Dave Ogilvie, Twiggy, Trent. But I hadn’t even considered that the biggest obstacle holding it back was myself. Maybe it was time to quit drugs and start working on myself.
    *  *  *
    I sat in the women’s clinic waiting room, imagining what was going on just three rooms away as the doctors put a rod the size of a matchstick, with two tiny thread-like strands jutting from the top, up into Missi’s cervix, causing it to dilate before tearing out the brain of our child with a pair of forceps.
    â€œCoffee?” asked a grey-haired nurse as she crossed the room to a white counter. I looked up and noticed that the brand she was offering me was Folger’s. I shuddered, and lowered my head again, not responding. I didn’t drink coffee. “Delusional Self,” I thought, and my mind traveled back to Canton, Ohio, to a time when I used to construct buildings out of blocks in the grass across the street from my home, creating new houses as a way of escaping from my own. One afternoon I found a metal Folger’s coffee can with a rotting, deteriorating, red-and-brown substance inside. I had shown it to my mother, who dismissed it as discarded meat. Only recently had she confessed that it was actually the remains of an aborted fetus. Suddenly I realized why I didn’t drink coffee.
    Missi had been scared about this abortion—she was well into her second trimester—and I was scared too, not only for her safety but for myself. I thought about the fact that there was no one else in the world who understood and accepted me as unconditionally as she did, no other girl I would ever feel that close to, no one else who I could share my music and my life with when I came home from the studio. But why was I thinking in the past tense? Was I progressing beyond her? I cared about her and knew I would be crushed if anything bad happened, but at the same time I couldn’t keep a twisted, degenerate thought from crossing my mind. I wondered if she could talk to the doctor about keeping the aborted fetus.

    That night, I stayed home with Missi while she recuperated. I had been doing a lot of that lately: staying home. I had quit drugs cold turkey, something I knew I could do. I had come to realize that it was more fun looking for drugs and remembering what you did while on them than actually doing them. I may not have always exercised self-control in