Kaotica's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Kaotica nailed the sign to the outer wall of the Rusty Anchor an hour before sunset. The board showed a bright arrow and the word auditions in loud yellow letters. She had come back to this tavern three times now. The first time she sat in the back and said nothing. The second time she listened to someone butcher a tune in the wrong tuning. The third time she brought a hammer. A traveling band needed players, and the forgotten shores of the lagoon were not going to fill themselves with music. Inside, she cleared the rear room and built a small stage from crates and planks. She set up an electric guitar on a stand, a microphone, two speakers, two amps, and a full drum kit shoved against the back wall. On a side desk she placed a notebook and a pen. Her black bass leaned against her chair, the diamond outline catching the lamp light. She sat down, opened the notebook, and drew three columns: singer, guitar, drums. The first hopeful was a fisherman who screamed into the microphone until a speaker whined. Kaotica wrote one word under singer: no. The second was a guitarist who could not tune. She wrote no. A woman tried the drums and dropped a stick on the second bar. No. By the ninth try her page was a wall of the same word, and the tavern crowd had thinned to three drunks and a cat. Something moved under the side desk. Kaotica looked down. A furry creature the size of a small dog stared up at her, eight legs ending in tiny sneakers, tongue out, eyes huge and wet. It had followed her from the marsh road that morning and she had not had the heart to shoo it off. It scuttled past her boots, climbed the drum stool in one hop, and picked up the fallen sticks with two front legs. Then it started to play. The kick landed clean. The snare cracked on the two and four. The other six legs worked the hi-hat, the toms, the ride, the crash, all in time. Kaotica lifted her bass and locked in on the downbeat. The room stopped talking. She played for a full minute before she let the groove drop. The creature panted, sneakers scuffing the kit. She closed the notebook and scratched a line through the drums column, then wrote one word above it: Snickerfang. One seat filled. Two still empty. She looked at the door, at the guitar on its stand, at the silent microphone. Tomorrow she would need better players to walk through that door, and she would need them before the tide of drunks upstairs figured out she was serious.