We Sold Our Souls

A girl with a guitar never has to apologize for anything.

it is possible to be crazy and paranoid and totally insane and still be right. Maybe the problem with everyone is that the world has become so insane they’re not out of their minds enough to comprehend it.

Kris had been alive long enough to know it was dangerous when men accused you of being better than them.

A song isn't a commercial for an album. It isn't a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.

No one loves me! Boo hoo! Guess what? We play fucking metal! I don't want to sing about your sad feelings! I want dragons.

She had nothing. Except her music.

Hard rock, heavy metal, stoner rock, doom metal-it all dragged itself up out of the swamp called the blues.

Everyone plays for someone, and Kris didn't play for the big dogs like Sabbath and Zep, she didn't play for the ones who made it, for the wizards who figured out how to turn their music into cars and cash and mansions and an endless party where no one ever gets old. She played for the losers. She played for the bands who never met their rainmaker, the musicians who drank too much and made all the wrong decisions. The singers who got shipped off to state hospitals because they couldn't handle living in the shadow of Black Iron Mountain. She played for the ones who recorded the wrong songs at the right times, and the right songs when it was wrong. The ones who blew it all recording an album that didn't fit the market, the ones who got dropped by their own labels, the singers who moved back home to live in their mom's basements.

West Virginia was a haunted house. Grocery stores sat dark, empty diners stared out from blank windows, farmhouses collapsed beside the highway like rotten teeth.

Pain is a four letter word the weak use to get out of doing what must be done.

I can pick a fight in an empty fucking elevator. 'No one left to fight'. Fuck you

How does a sparrow destroy a mountain? One pebble at a time.

and like every guitar duo in metal, they were a little bit in love and a little bit in hate all at the same time. For Kris, Scottie was the brother she'd always wanted and the marriage she'd never had, and she suspected that if she ever did get married it would ba a shallow thing compared to what she'd shared for eleven years on the road with Scottie Rocket.

I can't believe that after a lifetime of playing metal, it turns out the world is a shitty country song.

They filled up their time between childhood and old age trying to be as unremarkable as possible.

His makeup was running down his face, and he looked so vulnerable. He was just a little boy in love with himself, making deals without ever asking the price, thinking he'd never have to pay. She saw him, not evil, not good, just another boy who thought he was the only person in the world who mattered. So she did him a final kindness, and in her hour of truth she didn't say that he'd cut the track, she didn't mention the betrayal that still hurt after all these years, the way he'd just taken her baby away from her and mutilated it, and instead she said: "We, um, lost the tracks, they got damaged so it never made it onto the album." And like a little boy, Terry gave her a grateful grin.

The world was a trap and there was no way out. Melanie started to cry.

Just now, she'd conjured $80 out of thin air, turning the sound into money like magic. She had one weapon left. One they couldn't take away.

If Kris could play enough of these, in the right order, without stopping, she could block out everything: the dirty snow that never melted, closets full of secondhand clothes, overheated classrooms at Independence High, mind-numbing lectures about the Continental Congress and ladylike behavior and the dangers of of running with the wrong crowd and what x equals and how to find for y and what the third person plural for cantar is and what Holden Caulfield's basement glove symbolizes and what the whale symbolizes and what the green light symbolizes and what everything in the world symbolizes, because apparently nothing is what it seems and everything is a trick.

Kris,” he said. “Let us go into a battle from which we may never return. But I have sworn Odin’s Oath to keep you safe, and I believe in our victory. For our hearts are pure, Troglodyte is with us, and I just gave the van its annual emissions inspection.” With that, he dropped the minivan into drive. “Until Valhalla!” he shouted. And they took off on their final ride.

Every song was the same song. These were songs for people who were scared to open their mailboxes, whose phone calls never brought good news. These were songs for people standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus. People who bounced between debt collectors and dollar stores, collection agencies and housing offices, family court and emergency rooms, waiting for a check that never came, waiting for a court date, waiting for a call back, waiting for a break, crushed beneath the wheel.

I always tried to protect you from yourself,' he said, and put on his sunglasses. She hated him for timing the move so perfectly.

Up here everything felt epic, felt mythic, felt like magic, and lyrics that had been written in the basement of the Witch House came out of Terry's throat like an incantation.

Then Terry - fucking Terry, the Blind King, the pain in the ass, the boy who tapped on her basement window, the kid who asked her the question that started everything, that caused all this pain, that sparked a thousand shows, the boy who said, "You wanna start a band?" - he grabbed his mic and right on time, right on cue, he said the words that were coming but that Kris thought he would never sing: "And inside that hole!" Terry shouted, and the black ocean fell silent, its colossal sound held back for three seconds, its power coiling, building up, about to overflow. "And inside that hole!" Terry shouted again, "is Black Iron Mountain!

I bet the only time people ever talk to him is when they ask if he’s saving that seat next to him at the movies.

She played for the fallen, the forgotten, the footnotes. The people with an eternal gnawing in their bellies, the ones who died hungry, the ones who wanted it so bad but never got a place at the table. She played for the people who worried about the change in their pockets, who had no crumbs on their counters or cans in their cupboards. She played for the people who believed in themselves long after everyone else wised up and moved on. The ones who died still living in hope. She played for the people who made themselves too hard to love, the ones who never read the fine print, who never listened to good advice, the ones who just wanted to play. She played for Scottie.

He was just a little boy in love with himself, making deals without ever asking the price, thinking he’d never have to pay. She saw him, not evil, not good, just another boy who thought he was the only person in the world who mattered.

I don’t believe in coincidence. The universe always has a plan. It’s our job to perceive it.

I know you think I’m a joke,” he said. “No one ever took me seriously—not in the band, not at Vector Print, not at Quiznos. But I’ve been preparing for this for ten years. You need me to get you to Terry. I’m the only one who can do it. I really can do magic, Kris.