Blue Note

BLUE NOTE.


Midnight in the Wild Crocus was always a special time of night. Around this time the bar was nearly empty, for a while. The Crocus never properly closed, not really, but there was a time of night when the posers and kind of people who got to get home and to bed in time for their jobs in the morning left and the true night people hadn\'t arrived yet.

The place was small, and the brightest lights in the place were the neon beer signs behind the bar. All foreign, all cheap, the kind of stuff you only find at the Crocus. There was a small bar with maybe four stools in front of it, a couple of table and chairs scattered around, cheap plastic, and a slightly raised stage area. One blue light shone down, and on the stage of the Wild Crocus, they played the blues.

The Crocus wasn\'t part of the usual scene, the musicians who came and went from that tiny stage never seemed to turn up anywhere else but the Crocus, to play their blues to the night people. Everyone who turned up to listen knew that there were many bars for blues, but there was just one Crocus. This night, at midnight, the bar was deserted, even the barman had nipped round the back to do whatever horrible things barmen do in quiet momenThe The only occupant, who quietly shuffled up to the stage with a guitar case and began tuning up, was a middle aged bluesman ready to play the night\'s set.

He wore a crumpled suit of indeterminate colour- on the stage of the Crocus everythins sts stained blue. His necktie had been tugged loose for comfort, and the top two buttons of his shirt were open. He wiped a wrinkled handkerchief over his throat as he sat down, he took off his hat and wiped the handkerchief over his brow. Flipping open the guitar case, he extracted a battered looking acoustic, and a packet of cigarettes, tugging one free with his lips and lighting up. He took a long draw, gazing around the empty place with his thin, pinched eyes. Sad eyes, like only the bluesmen get.

With a shrug of resignation he nestled the guitar under his arm and strummed a few notes. He went through a few bars, nothing too fancy. All the while he stared downwards, and the cigarette moved at the edge of his lips, bobbing about as his lips pursed and moved as though he were almost, almost, whispering the words.

After a time he seemed satisfied. He was more then ready to play the night, hell he could have walked into any bar anywhere and started playing, and maybe get some claps afterward. He was a professional, he\'d been doing it twenty years or more. Until the bar filled up a bit, there was little point in having a bluesman in the Crocus though, so he just played a little and smoked his cigarettes, to pass the time.

Fifteen full minutes passed. His worn left shoe pressed down rhythmically on the boards in time to the thin strains of music, and still he seemed to whisper. He looked up, and noticed that he wasn\'t alone.

A kid had wandered into the bar, couldn\'t be more then, say, fourteen but she knew how to dress up a little and was smart enough not to overdo the makeup, she could just about pasd ind in the Crocus no one looked too hard at anyone, anyway. The bluesman looked at the girl, and the music moved into a low even tone, holding pattern for his fingers. He drew off the cigarette and exhaled a think stream of white snowy smoke, blistered blue by the light. He looked her up and down and just nodded. Your move sweetheart.

“That\'s nice music,” she said. He just shrugged. Of course it was nice, or else he wouldn\'t get paid to play. “It\'s a good guitar...” her voice faded off, she was grasping for something to say. He just looked at her, and kept the music going. The cigarette moved from one side of his mouth to the other, without any apparent effort on his part.

Finally, he spoke, tilting his head up, speaking from the chin and spilling smoke,

“You like it? The music?”
“Yeah,”
“Come here often, kid?”
“Yeah,”
“Cool.”
“Thanks.”

He nodded and went back to playing, looking down again. The music moved sluggishly, always threatening but never quite going anywhere, like a cat that can\'t be bothered any more on a hot Sunday. The kid moved up close, she had plenty of balls for a girl so young. She sat right in front of him cross-legged, staring up into his downturned face. He saw the small curve of breast under her tee-shirt with the cute logo, and the corner of his mouth twitched. wor wore small denim shorts that he approved of. A speck of ash descended to land on her bare knee but she didn\'t notice. The tones got bleaker. He hit the strings a little, but it was okay, they could take it.

“You like that, kid?”
“Yeah,”
“How much?”
“Whole lot,”
“Cool.”
“Thanks.”

He smiled, wryly, and was rewarded with a cute grin. He cheek dimpled on one side when she smiled, and he liked that. Smooth one side, but just a touch of dimple on the other. It gave her face a whole other dimension whenever she smiled. He paused playing for a moment, and spent a minutekingking his cigarette. She never once stopped watching him, she didn\'t even try and hide it. He liked that too.

“What are you here for?”
“Just the atmosphere,”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was hoping I could learn something maybe.”

He raised an eyebrow. His eyes were slim lines in his face, but when he twitched a brow up the light could get in, and it lit his expression all up. He grinned.

“Want to hear something cool?”

She instantly perked up, and nodded once, vigorously. He winked and stepped down off his stool. It put him right in front of her and she had to wiggle backwards over the floor on her ass to give him some room. He set his guitar down on it\'s round belly end and put a hand on top of the neck to steady it. With the other he held his cigarette.

“You ever hear of something called... the devil\'s chord?”

That got her attention instantly.

“No, never.”
“Joni Mitchell used it plenty, you ever heard of her?”
“Nope.”
“How about Hendrix?”
“Jimi Hendrix? Sure, of course.”
“That\'s all-right, kid, stand up here.”

When he said all-right it was as two separate words, old fashioned. She grinned and stood up, he beckoned her close, and pointed at his vacated stool. A simple circular stool with a plastic covered cushioned top.

“Bend over that.”
“What?”
“Go aheadnd ynd yerself right over that stool there, you\'ll see.”

She was a little uncertain, but she looked up at him and he was grinning, he knew things and she wanted to know. She delicately stepped up to the stool, and bent forwards at the waist. The stool was at just about the right height that the cushion, still warm from him sat on it, pressed into her shallow belly. He reached out a hand to stroke her back, and she felt oddly comfortable, even stood like this with, it felt, her rear end sticking up in the air.

“Now you see the so-called devil\'s chord is actually not a chord but an interval, a diminished fifth to use the correct musical term,” he said. His voice was slightly raspy around the cigarette, deep and filling. It seemed to fill the room, it filled her all up. He continued, “what that means is, it\'s a gap in the music of a certain length between a note and another note a certain amount lower. When you put it in music if feels kinda crazy inside, but there\'s only one way to really hear the devil\'s chord.”

He lifted his guitar and laid the neck of it across the back of her neck, the wood touching her skin. She nearly jumped but he put a hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. The hand felt warm and big, and she was certain he could have held her down easily if he wanted, but het tot touched her to tell her not to move.

The bluesman touched the strings, and played something, a jarring sudden cascade of music, then singing a line in his hard gritty voice.

“Purple haze, all in my brain. Lately things... don\'t seem the same.”

The notes throbbed through the guitar and into her neck, running straight into her spine through vibratiod ald all through her mind. Before she knew it, she had emitted, from somewhere in her body, a low urgent moan. He lifted up the guitar but the girl remained bent over, not moving.

He laid down his guitar. Standing up he slipped the belt from his trousers. The girl was just as she stood, unmoving, bent over his stool. She looked like she couldn\'t move, or didn\'t want to. Fixed by the devil\'s chord. She was slim enough around the waist that he could wind the belt around both her and the stool, buckling it tight at the small of her back to bind her down firmly. He took hold of her tee shirt and abruptly pulled it up her back, exposing the tiny ridges of her spine, which seemed to flutter slightly as her breath caught. She was afraid, a little. And, a little something else.

Without any warning at all, he took the almost spent cigarette and pressed it down onto her back, extinguishing it against her flesh. Her low, almost inaudible purr turned to a sudden squeal of intense pain. She tried to look around at him to complain but she couldn\'t quite seem to crane her neck around enough. Somewhere behind her backside she heard him light another cigarette, and after a short time little flecks of hot ash landing on her back. She moaned as she felt the hot stinging across her shoulders and back. She felt his smoke breath over her skin. When this cigarette was done he stubbed it out just over the small of her back, and she nearly screamed.

The man reached down expertly over the bar and hooked a longneck. With a quick motion he flipped off the bottle cap on the metal edge of the bar, and emptied out foaming cold beer over her. She felt it cascade down her and it felt so good on her back where she felt burnt by now. The beer flowed through her hair and over her face, making a mess of her. She twisted her neck around as far as she could and caught a look at him out of the side of her vision. He looked like he was doing it to her just to see how she took it. He was definitely studying her reactions closely, and that more then anything made her feel humiliated by the ordeal. Humiliated and excited too, that she provoked this restrest in him. She wasn\'t sure what on Earth she thought he was any more, he was so quiet as he hurt her, but part of her was screaming in glee at the treatment. He could have ignored her entirely, but he hadn\'t. Whatever it was he was doing to her, and it certainly seemed that what happened to her now was his decision, he was doing it to her. Of all the girls in the world, her.

Then he had his hand on her back, her soaking wet burnt ash stained back, and he drew his guitarist nails down her skin, leaving little dry trails in the wet. She whimpered and tried to stretch out, but couldn\'t, she had to endure it. He gave her an almost cheerful slap on the ass and she quivered from head to toe, shivers running through her as she began to feel cold as the cold beer overwhelmed the heat inside her rising tremulously.

It was a little after four in the morning when his set finished. He played standing up, and all the while this girl was obliged to stand there bent over a stool presenting her backside to all the world. As he played she was a makeshift ashtray. He would knock his cigarettes in the air over her back, and the falling ash would stick to the combination of beer and sweat coating her. He would stub them out too but she barely noticed any more. The shame and humiliation, the pain, all drew her through the night on an emotional high she had never experienced. She was actually grateful that he had belted hown,own, or else she felt sure she would slide to the floor in a quivering heap. There was actually a small puddle of drool on the floor beneath her lips, and she prayed that the damp in her underwear wasn\'t showing through her shorts.

The night people came, heard what they had come to hear, and left. The girl was an interesting addition to the set, but in the end the music was what they came to the Crocus for, and gimmicks couldn\'t sway them. The bluesman was pretty good too, there was a heat to his tunes, something raw and real in them, though they couldn\'t decide what exactly if any of them had tried to pin it down.

The belt wuddeuddenly yanked free and sure enough she crashed to the floor in a ball, twitching in horror at what had occurred. She looked up at him in desperation, mouthing silently like nothing so much as a beached fish. He calmly put away his guitar and stood up with the case hanging by its handle from his left hand. He wiped his forehead then his throat once more, and put on his hat, before he regarded the girl.

“Learn anything?”
“Y-yeah,”
“Cool.”

END.