(no subject)
"Aliciaaaaa" my best friend Anna moaned to me as she plopped into her seat next to me in homeroom. Immediately I could tell she was gonna ask me for a favor, because that’s the only time she calls me by my whole name. Any other time it’s just "Leesh."
"Annaaaa" I moaned back, trying to buy myslef time. The great thing about Anna was that she didn’t ask for many favors. The bad thing was that when she did, they were never anything even remotely close to easy, fun, or even somewhat tolerable. This one was no exception.
"Okay so, I know that you hate concerts, loud noise, and all things that have anything to do with rock music, but will you please, please, pleaseeeeeeeee come with me to a concert on Friday? I wouldn’t ask but everyone is talking about this band and I hate not knowing what everyone’s talking about." I kept calm on the outside, but inside I was crying a begging for mercy. A concert? A rock concert!? Ugh, I’d rather throw myself into a pit of starving lions then go to a concert. Okay well, not really, but still, you get my point. I opened my mouth, forming my lips around the word "no" when suddenly my mind changed. What would it hurt to go to one concert really? I could use a night of being a normal teenager, and after all, it would be nice to know what everyone’s talking about for once.
"Okay, fine." I said, almost looking forward to my "normal" night. Unfortunately, that night turned out to be anything but.
By the time Friday rolled around I was having second thoughts. I mean, I am so not the concert type. What if I stand out as a non-concert-going person and people give me weird looks? Thank God for Anna, she did my hair and make-up and brought me some "concert appropriate" clothes. After we got ready, we hopped into my car and headed toward the local teen club where the band would be playing. As soon as we pulled up I could tell something wasn’t quite normal at all. The parking lot was completely dark, and not even the flick of a cigarette lighter cut through the inky blackness. Actually, even the sky was abnormally dark. It was hardly past 7:30 and the sun had already disappeared completely, almost as if it had been stolen from the sky. Then, in the utter blackness, a group of voices and the "Thomp. Thomp. Thomp" of a group marching together could be heard like some sick army of shadows. Actually it was a huge heard of people, marching and chanting what appeared to be lyrics to one of the band’s songs. The doors to the club opened and the crowd marched in, with Anna and me trailing at a distance. Like the parking lot, the club was pitch black, but no one seemed to notice, they just marched right on through to right in front of the stage, where the shadowy figures of the band were standing completely still and silent in the suffocating darkness. I whipped out my iPod (packed with classical music. I brought it in case the band was so bad that I needed to drown them out) and used the dim back-light to cut just enough light for me to find my way to a table and sit. Anna started walking up towards the crowd, and then seemed to snap into her senses and sat down tensely next to me, as though preparing to spring up at any random moment. Without saying a word, the drummer joined in to the sick marching footfalls of the crowd, pounding along with them. Then the scratchy guitar ripped out a creepy melody and the singer began to bark the words into the mic like orders and the crowd repeated them back to him like some army of darkness.
"Anna! We have to get outta here something is seriously not right!" I screamed, only to find emptiness beside me. Anna was marching up to the crowd, calling out the chant with them, marching with them. I glazed look cast a shadow in her icy blue eyes. I ran up to her and grabbed her. Then I dragged her kicking and screaming out to my car, and pushed her in. I flipped on the lights, and slowly her eyes became normal again, her angry breathing slowed and became normal, and her face looked puzzled and lost. Then a thought so strange, so abnormal, so insane struck me that I knew immediately that it was right. I mean, nothing normal was going on, so clearly the abnormal was the only logical thing to think. I mean, sure, you’re probably going to say I’m insane when I tell you that the band was hypnotizing the crowd with they’re music and the darkness, but the thing is, it’s the truth! So, locking Anna in my car with the lights shining bright, I dashed inside the club, desperate to shed some light on this freaky situation. I felt along the black walls until my hand hit a plastic bump in the wall. It was exactly what I was looking for. With the flick of a wrist, the club flooded with clean, pure, white light. The chanting stopped. The shrieking started. From the stage the band squirmed and screamed, mostly out of pain, but some at me.
"You! Human! You ruined our plan! We had it all worked out so well! They were coming to us, just because a few people fell under our spell they all wanted to hear us. They fell under our spell and you! You showed them light! You…" I’m pretty sure they would’ve screamed more, but by then they were merely three piles of nasty alien dust on a nicely lit stage.
Everyone was back to "normal", whatever "normal" might be. But as for me, I know that my "normal" isn’t the same as anyone else’s. And also, I’m never going to a concert again. No matter how much Anna, or anyone else for that matter, begs.