Author: Thane Page 15 of 22

The next morning, the sky looked like someone had drop-kicked a blender full of gray paint across the horizon.

Mark, sipping lukewarm gas station coffee and staring up at the swirling cloud cover, muttered, “That’s not ominous or anything.”

Jonah climbed into the van with a breakfast burrito the size of his forearm and said, “I don’t know if it’s eggs or glue, but I’m committed.”

Rico slid into the front seat, glancing at the radar on his phone. “Uh… guys? There’s a big red blob headed our direction. Like, storm-chaser-big.”

Cassie leaned over. “Define ‘big.’”

“Like… biblical.”

Gabriel, already vibrating from his third can of Monster, grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Sweet. Let’s race it.”

Thane, who was trying to refold a road map with claws and mounting rage, growled, “We are not racing a tornado, Gabriel.”

Maya, buckling in behind them, smirked. “That’s what cowards say.”

---

The van rolled out of town just as the first fat drops of rain started to smack the windshield. The wind was howling before they even hit the state line. Lightning split the sky like angry punctuation. Thunder followed immediately after, rattling the dashboard and causing Jonah to choke on his burrito mid-bite.

They hadn’t even gone ten miles before a weather alert blasted through every phone in the van.

“TORNADO WARNING. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.”

Cassie, deadpan: “Great. Anyone bring a storm cellar?”

Gabriel, nose practically on the glass: “That cloud is spinning! SPINNING!”

Thane: “If you open that window I will rip the handle off.”

Mark’s voice came over the backseat comms: “Left side. Funnel cloud. Confirmed.”

A collective “SHIT!” rang out from every mouth in the van.

---

They found “shelter” in the loosest sense of the word: a crumbling roadside attraction called Big Pete’s BBQ & Gift Barn—complete with a ten-foot fiberglass pig statue, a half-toppled billboard, and one terrified old man in a rocking chair on the front porch who just nodded solemnly as the band spilled out of the van and into his life like a caffeine-fueled tornado of their own.

Inside, the decor looked like a pig exploded in a Cracker Barrel.

“Y’all here to buy jerky or die in the storm?” the old man asked.

Thane snarled. “Can’t it be both?”

---

The lights flickered. The wind roared. Something slammed into the side of the building—hard.

Everyone went still.

Cassie stared at the windows. “…Was that a cow?”

Jonah peeked through the blinds. “No. Worse. It was a porta-potty.”

The building groaned. The roof shuddered.

Mark, deadpan: “I’m not dying next to a shelf of bacon-scented candles.”

Gabriel, now huddled under a table with a bag of peanut brittle: “At least the WiFi works.”

Thane stood in the center of the store, arms folded, dripping wet, glaring at the sky through the warped glass like he was ready to fistfight the weather.

“I swear,” he muttered, “if that funnel cloud touches our truss rig, I will hunt it.”

The old man took a sip of iced tea and added helpfully, “Tornadoes don’t like angry folks. They go where the vibes are bad.”

Thane didn’t blink. “Perfect.”

---

Thirty minutes later, the storm finally passed. The sky cracked open to blue like nothing had happened, as if the tornado had just been stopping by for a sandwich.

The van was still intact.

Mostly.

There was a single lawn chair wedged into the front grille, and one of the side mirrors now hung by a cable like a sad earring. But it still ran.

They all climbed back in.

Nobody spoke for five miles.

Then Jonah said, “…I dropped my burrito.”

Gabriel replied, “I dropped my soul.”

The sky was charcoal gray as Feral Eclipse pulled into the gravel pit that passed for the motel parking lot. The sign—half lit, half falling off—read “Rest Eazy Inn”, like it was a challenge.

Rico peered out the window and groaned. “There’s literally duct tape on the roof.”

Cassie leaned over. “Is that… barbed wire on the fence?”

Jonah pulled his hoodie tighter. “Yeah. Yeah it is. I think it’s there to keep us in.”

The band tumbled out of the van, road-weary and rain-damp, dragging bags toward the motel office—a foggy glass box that smelled like despair and cat pee. The desk clerk was a 400-year-old man with a nicotine-stained beard and a voice like a chainsaw filled with gravel.

“You the ones in 4A through 4G?” he rasped. “Don’t touch the mini-fridge. It bites.”

Gabriel blinked. “…what now?”

“No refunds,” the man added, tossing them seven keys with mismatched plastic tags.

---

Ten minutes later, Thane stepped into his room.

And immediately howled.

Not a metaphorical howl. A full-chested, claws-out, pissed-off alpha roar.

The bathroom light flickered like it was haunted. The tile floor was cracked and sticky. The mattress had one spring poking out and a suspicious stain the size of a dinner plate. And in the bathroom—three cockroaches were having a conference in the sink. One was wearing what looked like a piece of hair gel wrapper as a cape.

Gabriel opened the adjoining door between their rooms and instantly flinched back.

“Thane? You okay—”

“NO. I AM NOT OKAY.” Thane was standing shirtless in the bathroom doorway, holding a motel towel like it had personally offended his ancestors. “THERE ARE BUGS IN THE SHOWER. I SAW FANGS.”

Across the hall, Mark was calmly wiping grime off the inside of his window with a t-shirt. “Mine just smells like mildew and broken promises.”

Rico poked his head out of his room. “Mine smells like… cherry cough syrup and despair.”

“Mine has a dead cricket in the fridge,” Maya reported, stone-faced. “He had a tiny tombstone made out of a hotel mint.”

Cassie emerged, holding up a single flip-flop. “Is this blood? Or barbecue sauce? Or both?”

Thane stormed out of his room, claws out, fur bristling, ice-blue eyes blazing. “I swear to Luna, if another roach waves at me, I will burn this place to the ground with my bare fangs.”

Gabriel tried—tried—to be the voice of reason. “Thane. Deep breath. We’ve stayed in worse.”

“No,” Thane growled, “we haven’t.”

Mark strolled out behind him, still calm, still grumpy. “Mine came with a tiny Gideon Bible and a raccoon footprint on the ceiling. But hey—at least the lights work.”

The group stood in the parking lot for several seconds. Rain started to fall again. Jonah dramatically dropped his duffel bag in a puddle.

“I vote we sleep in the van.”

Everyone, including Thane, simultaneously muttered, “Seconded.”

They reloaded everything in grim silence and piled back into the van. At least it didn’t have roaches. Just old fries under the seats and Gabriel’s three empty coffee cups rolling around like soda cans in a washing machine.

Cassie pulled her hoodie over her face. “Next stop better just have bedbugs, not boss fights.”

The diner’s flickering neon sign buzzed against the otherwise quiet Oklahoma night, casting a soft red glow on the rain-speckled parking lot. A warped plastic letterboard proudly advertised “ALL DAY BREAKFAST – NO REFUNDS.” Perfect.

The van groaned as it pulled into the lot, all seven members of Feral Eclipse spilling out in various states of exhaustion, crankiness, and post-frat-party chaos. The scent of old grease, burnt coffee, and questionable decisions wafted into the humid night air.

Inside, the diner looked like time stopped in 1987 and nobody told it to start again. A jukebox in the corner played a suspiciously off-key version of Africa by Toto. A tired-looking waitress with a half-faded neck tattoo nodded toward the largest booth in the back.

Thane led the charge, coiled audio cable still looped around one shoulder like a warning sign. He flopped into the booth with a heavy sigh, clearly one wrong condiment packet away from a meltdown.

Gabriel slid in beside him, vibrating with residual caffeine and frat party adrenaline. His fur was slightly ruffled, shirt half-untucked, and he was still humming the melody of whatever chaotic song they’d covered last.

Mark took the edge seat near the window, his eyes scanning the parking lot like something might still explode. He muttered, “If someone orders avocado toast in here, I’m walking back to Oklahoma City.”

Maya plopped in across from Gabriel, her boots thudding against the linoleum. “That party had more beer than brains.”

“Which is saying a lot,” Rico muttered, rubbing at a mysterious bruise on his shoulder. “I saw someone doing keg stands off a moving golf cart.”

Jonah, eyes red and hair in full post-headbang disarray, sat down and immediately faceplanted onto the table. “Someone wake me up when we’re famous or dead.”

Cassie was last to join, still trying to pull her phone charger out of a tangle of cables in her purse. “We are famous. Just… weirdly.”

A waitress named Debbie (or at least her name tag said so, though the “i” was replaced with a middle finger sticker) came over, chewing gum like it owed her money.

“What’ll it be?”

“Coffee,” growled Thane.

“Coffee and bacon,” Gabriel added.

“Bacon, eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and don’t skimp on the hashbrowns,” Maya said, glaring like Debbie might try.

“Just coffee. Black. Leave the pot,” Mark deadpanned.

Debbie nodded. “Y’all look like you’ve seen some shit.”

Rico blinked. “We are the shit.”

She blinked slowly at him and scribbled something on her pad that may or may not have been their order.

The group slumped in their seats while waiting, the diner’s low hum becoming a kind of lullaby.

Gabriel suddenly sat up. “Hey. Remember the birthday party show?”

Thane didn’t even look up. “If you bring that up one more time, I’m feeding you to Mark.”

Jonah raised a hand. “I still have frosting in places that aren’t medically recommended.”

They all burst into exhausted laughter.

The food arrived like a greasy miracle, and the band tore into it like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Gabriel dunked toast into his eggs with the precision of a man who’d done this many times before. Mark, despite himself, actually cracked a smile as he carefully deconstructed his pancake stack.

Cassie reached across to clink her coffee mug against Maya’s. “To surviving another night.”

Maya smirked. “Barely.”

Jonah stirred, lifting his face from the table with a syrup packet stuck to his cheek. “Wait. Where are we again?”

Rico, mouth full of bacon, just pointed toward the rain-smeared window. “Nowhere good.”

But the diner lights flickered. The jukebox glitched into a distorted version of Sweet Dreams. Outside, the rain eased into mist, steam curling from the pavement like ghostly applause.

And for one brief, weird, wonderful moment, everything was okay.

Even if only until the check arrived.

Because if one more guy says ‘play Freebird,’ Thane might commit a felony.

---

The sun was barely down when the Feral Eclipse tour van pulled up to what looked like the unholy spawn of a plantation house and a liquor store. Greek letters lit in mismatched neon screamed ΑΒΨ, and the thudding bass from inside rattled the siding like the building was trying to shake off its own shame.

Rico leaned out the window. “Oh god. I can already smell the Natty Light and Axe body spray.”

Gabriel grinned wide, tail already wagging. “THIS is more like it.”

Jonah peeked out from behind his hoodie. “I don’t know, man. I see four shirtless guys doing keg stands and one in a Pikachu onesie with a bullhorn. I don’t feel safe.”

Mark muttered from the back, “I haven’t seen this much stupidity since we let Gabriel mix vodka and cold brew.”

Thane killed the engine. “Alright. If we die, I’m haunting whoever booked this.”

---

Inside, it was absolute carnage.

A crowd of sweaty college students swarmed the main floor, red Solo cups in every hand. A kiddie pool full of Jell-O wobbled near the DJ booth. Someone had spray-painted “FERAL ECPLISE RULZ” on the wall. (Spelling optional.)

Cassie surveyed the crowd. “Jesus. They’re all drunk enough to think we’re the Wiggles.”

A frat bro in a backward visor and aviators stumbled up to Maya and slurred, “You guys do covers? Can you play like… Nickelback?”

Maya stared at him. “I’ll play your spleen like a banjo if you don’t move.”

The bro wandered off in confusion, still shouting “Photograph.”

---

Stage Setup: Frat Edition

• Thane was given one working outlet and a folding table that collapsed under the weight of a single mixer.
• Mark’s “lighting rig” consisted of three smart bulbs duct-taped to a ceiling fan.
• Jonah was told to set up “where the beer pong table used to be.”
• Gabriel got distracted for twenty minutes teaching a stoner how to hold a bass backwards.
• Rico tuned his guitar over the sound of a dude vomiting into a plastic plant.

---

Showtime.

Someone shouted “WOOOO!” and pressed play on the smoke machine—which was actually a humidifier filled with vape juice. A cloud of strawberry mango wafted across the stage like a bad dream.

Cassie grabbed the mic. “We are Feral Eclipse. Prepare yourselves.”

Someone shouted back, “PLAY SKRILLEX!”

Cassie ignored them and screamed into the mic like a banshee on fire. Rico ripped into a solo. Jonah knocked over a lawn chair with the sheer force of his kick drum.

Gabriel crowd-surfed for five full seconds before the crowd just sort of… forgot to hold him. He crashed into a beer cooler, popped up soaking wet, and howled with laughter.

Thane was screaming into his headset. “I SWEAR TO LUNA, IF SOMEONE UNPLUGS MY POWER STRIP AGAIN—”

Mark, calmly balancing a flashlight and a fog remote, triggered a strobe burst so intense it sent half the crowd into a spontaneous TikTok dance.

Maya’s guitar string snapped mid-solo. She replaced it mid-riff using a shoelace. Nobody noticed. She was too badass.

---

By the end of the night:

• Three frat bros had confessed to Gabriel that they now “totally get werewolves.”
• Jonah had somehow acquired a tank top with “DRUM DADDY” printed on it.
• Thane was threatening to electrify the beer keg.
• Rico had a fan in his lap asking if he “wanted to jam later.” Rico did not.

And Cassie?

Cassie stood on the roof of a cooler, bathed in red light, screaming the final chorus as the crowd howled like a wolf pack gone wrong.

---

Afterward, the band dragged themselves back to the van — soaked, deafened, and kind of amazed.

Gabriel flopped into his seat, still laughing. “Okay. That was a shitshow.”

Thane leaned back, wiping beer off his face. “Yeah.”

“But like… a fun shitshow.”

Jonah nodded, holding up his “Drum Daddy” shirt. “I’m framing this.”

Mark just downed another soda and muttered, “Next stop better have a damn theater.”

The tour van coasted through the tree-lined streets of Oakridge, a picturesque college town so charming it practically had a degree in wholesomeness. Brick buildings gleamed in the late afternoon sun, bike racks overflowed, and students wearing beanies and earbuds walked in clusters, sipping cold brew and quoting Nietzsche.

Thane squinted at the navigation app. “This can’t be right.”

Gabriel leaned between the seats, tail twitching with curiosity. “Says the event is at the ‘Simmons Cultural Auditorium.’ Sounds… fancy.”

Mark growled from the back seat. “If we’re playing next to a guy giving a lecture on butterfly migration again, I’m not responsible for what happens.”

The van turned onto a narrow service road and pulled behind an ivy-covered building. A banner flapped overhead in awkward, cheerful font:
“OAKRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESENTS: INSPIRING MINDS SERIES — TONIGHT ONLY!”

Underneath in smaller print:
Featuring Feral Eclipse

There was a pause.

Maya leaned forward, staring out the window. “…Please tell me that’s the name of a student poetry collective.”

Jonah slowly lifted his head off the window, blinking. “Oh no. They think we’re here to speak.”

Cassie, staring at the banner, deadpanned, “Well I do inspire minds. Mostly to run.”

Rico pulled a laminated event pass off the dashboard and read aloud:
“‘An immersive evening of empowerment, artistic expression, and the creative voice in modern society.’”
He turned to look at Thane.
“…Bro. We’re opening with Blood Moon Breakdown.”

Thane just muttered, “Kill me.”

---

Inside, things got worse.

The “green room” was stocked with vegan muffins, herbal tea, and a collection of pre-highlighted books on mindfulness. A student volunteer named Braeden with an undercut and ironic Crocs handed out personalized name tags.

“Just wear these on stage, yeah? Helps the audience connect with you emotionally.”

Gabriel’s tag read:
GABRIEL – BASS / TRANSFORMATIONAL ENERGY LEADER
He was thrilled.

Thane’s tag:
THANE – SOUND TECH / AURAL ARCHITECT
He immediately crumpled it and shoved it in his pocket.

Mark stared at his:
MARK – LIGHTING DESIGNER / EMOTIONAL CONTRAST SPECIALIST
“…I will burn this building down.”

---

Ten minutes before showtime, a soft-spoken organizer approached.

“We’re so excited to have you all. Just a quick note—no pyrotechnics, no flashing lights, and please keep the volume below 85 decibels. We’re still within library hours.”

Cassie stood there in full leather, mic in hand.
“…You know I scream for a living, right?”

The woman beamed. “That’s the spirit!”

---

Showtime.

They walked out onto a fully seated auditorium stage—no pit, no fog, no lights. Just polite clapping from two hundred students holding complimentary stress balls.

Gabriel took the mic and cheerfully declared, “We are Feral Eclipse—and we are not your usual lecture!”

Then he slammed into a bassline so filthy it made Braeden drop his reusable water bottle.

Maya launched into the rhythm guitar part like she was starting a riot.

Rico’s solo tore through the auditorium like a sonic earthquake.
Cassie let out a bloodcurdling scream halfway through the chorus.
Someone in the third row fainted.

Jonah, grinning like a demon, smashed through the bridge and howled into the breakdown. One of the professors actually stood up and cheered.

And Thane—offstage—cranked the mix past 100 decibels.
Library hours be damned.

---

Afterward, the event organizer approached, shell-shocked and smiling.

“That was… not what I expected.”

Cassie, still panting, wiped blood off her lip ring. “You’re welcome.”

Braeden handed Gabriel a tote bag. “Here’s your honorarium. Also, like… what are you guys doing later?”

Gabriel blinked. “Uh. Sleeping?”

Rico took the bag, peeked inside, and muttered, “Cool. They paid us in granola bars and bookstore gift cards.”

Mark just stared at the ceiling. “We should’ve played the frat party.”

Thane, arms folded, nodded. “Next time someone offers us a ‘cultural engagement opportunity’—we say no.”

Gabriel leaned on him, grinning wide. “But we did inspire minds.”

“Yeah,” Thane said. “To invest in better earplugs.”

Somewhere between Red Pines and the next town—wherever the hell that was—the van was in full-blown gremlin mode.

Jonah had taken over DJ duty from the passenger seat and was abusing it.

“I SWEAR TO GOD,” Maya shouted from the back bench, “IF YOU PLAY THAT ‘TRUCK YEAH’ SONG ONE MORE TIME I’M THROWING YOUR IPOD OUT THE WINDOW.”

“It’s not even an iPod,” Jonah grinned, cueing it up again from a busted knockoff MP3 player with duct tape holding the battery in. “It’s a Moozic Rockz.”

Gabriel, sprawled across two seats with Randy the Possum in his lap like a war trophy, snorted. “Let him live! This is his villain arc.”

“I’M the villain if this keeps up,” Maya grumbled.

Up front, Thane had a clawed hand white-knuckling the wheel.

“I swear, one more plastic bag flies across this road looking like a raccoon ghost, and I’m putting the whole state in park.”

Cassie was next to him, sipping gas station coffee through a Twizzler straw like it was a lifestyle. “You know we’re all slowly mutating in this van, right?”

From the back cargo section came a thud.

“…What was that?” Rico asked, slowly turning his head.

Mark’s voice came from the very rear, half-buried under guitar cases. “A bag of Funyuns just fell off Jonah’s amp and hit me in the throat.”

“Is it your bag of Funyuns?” Cassie asked.

“No. And now I have questions.”

The van hit a bump. Jonah yelped. “MY MOOD SWINGS CD JUST FLEW OUT THE WINDOW!”

“Good,” Maya muttered.

Gabriel reached down into a questionable cooler and fished out something in a crinkled foil wrapper. “Guys… who brought gas station sushi?”

The entire van went silent.

Thane didn’t even turn around. “Gabriel. Put it down. Slowly.”

Gabriel stared at it. “…It’s warm.”

“OUT. THE. WINDOW.”

The van hit another pothole. Cassie spilled her Twizzler-coffee. Jonah accidentally hit play on a ten-hour YouTube loop of screaming goats that he had saved for reasons.

And somewhere in the chaos, Randy the Possum fell over sideways, seatbelt and all.

Mark spoke again, voice calm and low: “If we crash, I want it on my tombstone that this was not my idea.”

“Noted,” Thane grunted.

Eventually, the screaming goats stopped. Jonah ran out of cursed playlists. Maya ran out of ways to threaten him without physically leaping across the van. Gabriel fell asleep with a bag of sour worms stuck to his chest, and Cassie began drafting the setlist on a napkin with a broken eyeliner pencil.

Peace, as fragile and temporary as ever, returned.

And then Rico said, “Hey, has anyone seen my left boot?”

The van erupted again.

The air outside the Red Pines barn was thick with post-show heat, bug spray, and the kind of giddy madness that only follows a musical exorcism. The makeshift parking lot had become an impromptu fan zone—pickup trucks pulled up with tailgates down, beer coolers cracked open, headlights on for ambiance. Someone had lit a citronella candle on the hood of their Ford and called it a VIP table.

Feral Eclipse filed out one by one, still dripping, still riding that adrenaline high.

Cassie was immediately mobbed by a group of teens who looked like they’d lost a bet with a thrift store. “YOU SAVED ROCK AND ROLL!” one girl cried, holding up a homemade poster that just said HOWL MOMMY in glitter.

“Sweet,” Cassie grinned, signing it without breaking stride.

Gabriel, tail flicking lazily behind him, posed for selfies with fans who dared get close—though one kid ran off squealing, “HE WINKED AT ME AND MY SOUL LEFT MY BODY.”

Jonah stumbled toward the van, but two fans intercepted him with a battered snare drum and a sharpie.

“You were like an angry wizard back there, man,” one said.

“I blacked out after the second song,” Jonah replied, scribbling his name upside-down. “Glad it worked out.”

Rico was holding court near the folding merch table (which was actually just a milk crate and a flatbed trailer), showing a young guitarist how to do a hammer-on while simultaneously swatting mosquitoes. “We play loud enough, they usually leave,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Maya had cornered a guy who asked if her amp “came in pink.”

“Does your ribcage come in rearranged?” she snapped.

Thane stood to the side, arms crossed, watching it all with a tired, satisfied grin. His black polo shirt was damp with sweat, his jeans dusted in hay and stage gunk, and his claws still faintly glowing under the weird pink light of a bug zapper.

Mark appeared beside him like a silent ghost, passing him a lukewarm bottle of water.

“They love us,” Mark said flatly.

“They’re insane,” Thane replied.

“Same thing.”

Then it happened.

A man in overalls and a mullet that defied physics approached, cradling what at first looked like a wrinkled pillowcase.

“I made this for y’all,” he said, proud as sin.

He opened it to reveal… a full-sized, taxidermied possum.

Wearing a tiny leather jacket.

With “Feral Eclipse” scrawled on the back in puffy paint.

The crowd erupted.

Gabriel lost it, laughing so hard he dropped his soda.

Maya recoiled. “Is it… blinking?”

“It’s just the gloss,” Cassie whispered, eyes wide.

Jonah whispered, “It’s got tiny sunglasses…”

“His name’s Randy,” the fan explained. “Thought he’d look good on y’all’s merch table.”

Rico gently accepted the offering. “He’s… perfect.”

Mark deadpanned, “If I wake up and that thing’s on my pillow, I’m setting the van on fire.”

Thane finally chuckled, shaking his head. “Okay. Okay. That’s it. Show’s over. Let’s load up before we inherit anything else.”

As they packed up the van, Gabriel buckled Randy the Possum into the front seat.

“Randy rides shotgun now,” he declared. “He’s earned it.”

Thane just muttered, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

And with that, Feral Eclipse rolled out of Red Pines, headlights piercing the night, Randy’s tiny shades catching the moonlight.

Ready for the next chaos, claws and all.

The lights dimmed—or tried to. One flickered like a moth on its last wing while the rest buzzed angrily like they owed someone rent. But the crowd in the “Red Pines Pavilion” didn’t care. They were already half-drunk, half-hyped, and whole-heartedly rowdy.

A dude in the front row screamed, “SHOW US YER TEETH!” right before pouring Coors on his own head.

Backstage, Thane’s headset buzzed with static. “Mark, I swear—if the foggers fire during the opening line again, I will bite the fuse out of them.”

Mark’s reply was bone-dry: “No promises. The breakers are doing Morse code and I think they’re asking for help.”

Cassie stood by the curtain, microphone clutched like a dagger, hair wild and eyes burning. “This is gonna be one for the FBI files, isn’t it?”

Gabriel bounced on his heels, bass strapped low, coffee in one clawed hand, absolute chaos dancing in his icy blue eyes. “I love this already.”

“Y’all are feral,” Maya muttered, adjusting her guitar strap (duct taped for extra faith).

“Damn right,” Rico said from behind his battered lead guitar, running a pick down the strings with a flick that sparked pure mischief. “Let’s burn this barn.”

Thane barked into the headset, “Standby, lighting—”

BOOM.

The foggers exploded at once.

Every VL2B Mark had managed to coax into life fired a hellbeam of red down into the fog, slicing through the room like the wrath of a disco demon.

A beat of silence.

Then…

Cassie screamed the first lyric.

And the barn went berserk.

---

Gabriel launched into the bassline like he was possessed, claws shredding across strings, tail whipping, head thrown back as he roared into the opening chorus. Fans screamed back. Some howled. One tried to climb the stage and was immediately tackled by a bouncer who looked like he used to wrestle gators.

Maya shredded rhythm guitar like it owed her child support. Her eyes blazed with fury as she stomped across the crooked stage, body angled into every chord.

Rico let loose with a solo so intense, sparks flew from his amp—or maybe that was the faulty wiring. Either way, it added to the aesthetic.

Jonah was a demon behind the drums. At one point, he flung a stick into the air and caught it with his teeth like some kind of heavy metal seal. The crowd lost their minds.

Cassie’s vocals ripped through the rafters—pure power, raw rage, and zero chill. She hit a note so hard it made one of the beer signs fall off the back wall.

Thane, stage-right at the board, fur dripping, headset half-fried from sweat and panic, was manually rerouting power while shouting into his backup mic: “YES, MARK, I SEE THE STROBE—NO, DON’T AIM IT AT THE DANCE FLOOR—TOO LATE, NEVER MIND!”

Mark, from the back truss, was cackling into comms while running a rapid-fire combo of red-white-red that turned the crowd into a sea of seizure-dancing cowboys.

Someone crowd-surfed in a hay bale.

Two couples started line dancing in the pit.

A fight broke out over whether Gabriel was “part bat” or “just built different.”

And through it all, the band crushed it.

---

By the time the final song hit, “Red Moon Rising,” the air was thick with sweat, fog, and unfiltered Oklahoma chaos. Cassie belted the final chorus. Jonah hit a crash so hard the snare jumped. Rico lit up the last solo like a pyromaniac on a sugar rush.

Gabriel dropped to one knee, bass held like a holy weapon, and howled into the crowd.

The crowd howled back.

Thane, drenched and exhausted, hit the final cue. Every light Mark had left flared blood red one last time.

Blackout.

Silence.

Then the barn erupted.

---

Backstage, chaos still buzzing in their ears, the band collapsed into mismatched chairs, breathing like they’d just run from a pack of demon possums.

Mark passed around bottles of water.

Gabriel looked at his claws. “I think I dented the fretboard again.”

Jonah was still panting. “I think I need new lungs.”

Maya muttered, “I think that one guy tried to throw his boot at me.”

Cassie grinned. “We’re never gonna top that.”

Thane just laughed—low, hoarse, and a little wild.

“Oh, we will,” he said. “Just wait till we hit Arkansas.”

The moment Gabriel set foot on the stage—a spray-painted plywood riser with “Rock It, Cletus!” still faintly visible beneath the black paint—his clawed foot stuck to something.

“Either that’s a stage booger,” he muttered, “or crawfish juice is way more adhesive than I expected.”

Cassie pointed to the stage-left monitor. “Why is that wedge covered in duct tape that says ‘DO NOT SING HERE’?”

Thane checked the patch bay and grimaced. “Because if you do, it feeds back so hard it calls the dead.”

Jonah was crawling under his drum setup—wedged between what looked like a folding table and a fake cactus—to figure out why one of his toms was wobbling like a nervous chihuahua.

“Uh… guys?” he called. “There’s a mouse. Just… chillin’ in the kick drum. I think it’s judging me.”

Mark was high up on a shaky scissor lift made from an unholy mix of rebar, rust, and prayer. He had managed to secure two surviving VL2Bs to the flimsy truss overhead.

“Don’t bump the fogger,” he called through comms. “It’s directly wired into the breaker for the snack bar. Again.”

Maya let out a full-body sigh and glared at her mic stand, which had all the stability of a Jenga tower in an earthquake. “If this collapses mid-set again, I swear on every string I’ve ever broken, I will eat it.”

Gabriel was mid–bass thrum when one of the fluorescent lights above them fizzled, sparked, and then flickered back to life—revealing that the venue ceiling still had disco balls from the skating rink days… and possibly a squirrel nest.

Cassie laughed. “This is either gonna be the best show we’ve ever played or a paranormal crime scene.”

Thane barked into comms, “Let’s get it over with. Line check. Pray to whatever gods are listening.”

---

Five minutes into soundcheck:

• Maya’s strap broke and she did try to play with her teeth.
• Gabriel tripped over an extension cord and almost took out a full speaker tower.
• Rico knocked over a paper crawfish mascot that somehow burst into flames.
• Jonah’s snare stand collapsed and the mouse retreated, unimpressed.
• Cassie shredded her throat trying to sing over the venue’s popcorn machine whine.
• The lighting rig shorted during the fog test, cutting power to the bouncy house next door—mid-birthday party.

Mark, from his post near the breaker box, sighed. “Congratulations. We’ve broken everything. Including childhood.”

Thane slowly lowered his headset mic. “I’m starting to miss the birthday party gig.”

Gabriel, sweat-soaked, claws covered in stage grime, looked up and grinned. “Still better than Tulsa.”

The band collectively agreed.

Even the mouse seemed to nod.

By the time Feral Eclipse limped into their next destination, the sun was setting over Crawdad Crossing, a place so small it had a church, a bar, and a feed store—all in the same building.

The town sign featured a giant smiling crawfish giving a thumbs-up, with a crudely added “NO FURRIES” spray-painted beneath in dripping red letters.

“Oh great,” Thane muttered, leaning over the steering wheel with a scowl. “We’re already famous.”

Gabriel, still emotionally wounded from the gas station fan ambush, peeked up from behind his clawed hands. “Please tell me they don’t have Wi-Fi.”

Jonah checked his phone. “They have 3G and a Facebook page last updated in 2014 with a photo of a dead raccoon holding a Bud Light.”

Mark grunted. “At least it’s not a possum. That’d be culturally aggressive.”

The venue? A hollowed-out skating rink now used for “Community Events, MMA Fights, and Weddings.”

Inside, a dusty banner hung above the stage: CRAWDAD FESTIVAL KICKOFF – Featuring THE ECLIPSERS.

Cassie tilted her head. “Did they just… pluralize us?”

Rico raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure that’s a different band.”

A man in an American flag tank top approached with the swagger of someone who’d once punched a vending machine for stealing his Snickers bar.

“You them… Eclipse boys?”

Thane sighed. “Feral Eclipse.”

The man blinked. “Right. That’s what I said. Y’all the ones with the fursuiter?”

Gabriel’s tail bristled.

Before he could lunge, Maya stepped in, guitar case slung over one shoulder like a bat. “Say that again, cowboy. I dare you.”

The man backed off fast. “Hey now, no need to get spicy.”

They entered the venue to find… an actual kiddie pool full of boiled crawfish next to the merch table.

Also at the merch table?

A freshly printed stack of Team Pupslut shirts.

Gabriel’s soul left his body.

Thane picked one up and held it up with a smirk. “You approve of the font at least?”

Cassie howled with laughter.

Rico grabbed one and spun it like a prize wheel. “Who’s responsible for this?”

A young local girl in a homemade “I ❤️ Werewolves” hoodie peeked out from behind the folding table. “I saw it online. I thought it’d be cute. I made thirty of ‘em! They’re selling super well!”

Gabriel covered his face.

Mark put both hands on his hips, looked to the ceiling, and muttered, “This is our legacy now.”

Jonah just whispered, “We’re gonna die here.”