1: I love you more than I love to eat brains

After the show, Mara coils her intestines up carefully and threads them back through the hemmed slit of her bellybutton. I mirror her, coiling up her guitar leads and putting them behind the amps so she doesn’t get them mixed up. She did that once before and the electric shock fried part of her liver — we had to eat three boys to get that back.

Tukie’s busy with the drums, unscrewing the high-hats cos she’ll be getting drunk and smashing them round people’s heads at the after-party. She lost most of her fingertips the last time she did that, so maybe she won’t bust so many eyeballs this time round. That was fucking messy. Plus, the crowd tonight was mostly hotbloods, it looked like — though they’d have to be dumb to come to the after-party cos there’s no security there — and they don’t smash so good. Tukie’ll get bored of them pretty quick and we can all get back to pouring shots into her bone marrow like we used to.

Mara’s done with her guts so she comes over to help me with the leads — I’m having some trouble cos my scapula’s bent funny. Last week, when we ate a bunch of drunk hotblood girls, it grew Mara’s clitoral hood back, and now she wants me to fuck her really hard all the time. I invited this punk kid with a blonde and pink mohawk to the afterparty; I could see through a rip in his shoulder that he still had a whole clavicle, so we should fix that.

I have great peripheral vision just now cos I’m missing my left temple, so I can see the look Mara’s giving me — even with a bit of her jaw missing, she can do that fuckable smirk. I wind the leads slowly, my messed-up scapula clicking with every twist.

Tukie’s got the high-hats unscrewed and she’s practicing her smash-action on the bigtitted babydyke sound tech, who’s giggling and feeding Tukie the falling shreds of earlobe and eyelid, so I figure it’s a good time for me and Mara to disappear. I twirl the guitar lead and lasso her in for a kiss. Jawbones scrape, dry tongues rasp; she presses her sternum against my nipple, and I’m gone.

2: All they have to lose are their graves; all we have to lose is our brains

I feel like shit and like nothing at the same time. The feeling-shit part is mostly just memory — knowing how I would have felt if I still had brain cells to dehydrate or a liver to poison. The knowledge that it can’t really hurt isn’t as strong as the memory that it should. The part of my brain that remembers those hotblood hangovers knows what it needs: water, painkillers, and a fry-up. I wander round the flat, trying to find a working tap and taking stock of the debris from the night. It’s not my flat so I don’t really give a shit, but it looks pretty fucked up. There are handprints and footprints and random smeared bodypart-prints all over the walls. Something dark is dripping from the ceiling. Shreds of toe and scalp — the unappetising bits — are piled up on the windowsills. Bodies are curled up together after the best or worst or most indifferent night of their lives. Everything smells of dust and flesh. To be honest, the place could all have looked like that before last night.

Tukie’s crashed out on the floor, limbs tangled around the babydyke sound tech. It’s not obvious whose limbs are whose or even if they’re attached to either of them, but it doesn’t really matter. Our tour is moving on to the next town today, so there’ll be some new dumbfuck hotbloods for us to chow down on. Besides, we could use a sound tech. I dig my toe into Tukie’s side until she starts twitching, then leave her to wake up. She keeps the keys for the van wedged between her collarbones, so we can’t go without her.

I can’t find a tap that works, but I manage to suck up some liquid from the broken end of a water pipe in the kitchen. It mostly falls right out again, pooling around my feet and soaking into the fabric of my Converse. I hate the feeling of having wet feet, so I rub them dry with a hank of blonde hair I think I remember yanking from someone’s head and abandoning in the bathroom sink.

I finally find Mara, mostly in one piece, but with someone’s ankle bone imbedded in her temple. I take that as a sign that it’s time to go. I hoist Mara up onto my shoulder, climb over the slow-breathing bodies in the doorway, and prop her up in the backseat. I work on digging the ankle bone out of her skull until Tukie and the babydyke stagger out and start up the van.

3. Don’t eat the brains from my head; let’s just make out instead

Five minutes before we’re meant to be on stage, and Mara wants to fuck. We’re both missing our perinea so it’s a bit messy, but last week I crushed my hands under an amp and Mara’s going crazy for the way I fuck her with all my fingers triple-jointed. We barricade ourselves in the only toilet cubicle with a lock that works, and bury ourselves in each other. Her cunt smells of wet earth and fresh blood, and when she comes she screams so hard her tongue splits. She sits me up on the tank and shows me how a split tongue feels — I can’t describe it, but I can say it sent my feet into spasms. By the time I’m done, none of the cubicles have working locks.

Backstage, Tukie is still making out with the sound tech. They’re both missing all their extremities cos they like to feed each other fingertips and earlobes as a romantic gesture, a reminder of their first meeting. It’s been months and they’re still at it, though they have to eat a dozen hotbloods a week just to grow everything back. Still, there are plenty more where they came from.

Tukie stops nibbling on the sound tech and starts wiping the gore off her high-hats. Mara winks at me — she has both her eyelids at the moment so it looks hot as fuck — and goes off to find her mic stand. I sling on my guitar and load up my pockets with plectrums.

We’ve changed around the set-list tonight, making sure our final song is the loudest one so that everyone in the bar upstairs will think all the shouting is just us playing, rather than the crowd. We’ve already wedged the van up against the fire doors, so we don’t need to worry about them getting out that way. I’m pretty sure tonight will be a messy one, and we won’t be able to come back here again. But that’s okay. Next week we’re coming to your town.
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Kirsty Logan is a writer, editor, grad student, waitress, and general layabout. She likes bad horror films and sticking pins in maps. She lives in Glasgow with her girlfriend, who is a musician but not a zombie — yet. She can be found at kirstylogan.com.