The World Will Stain Us

The Spark

Why was starting a band so fucking hard?

The summer of 2009 was fast approaching, and though not even two months ago had Andy brought the idea of finding a drummer and calling themselves a band up to Jinxx, it felt like it had been years since that initial pitch. They were having a hell of a time finding a drummer and an even worse time trying to find a record label willing to work with a new-to-the-scene rock band made up of guys who looked like they were all in their early twenties.

Jake had had the idea to put out a call to local drummers looking for employment, which Andy, Jinxx, and Ashley had all agreed was a good thought. Andy had posted something to MySpace about it in case his modest following cared, and Jinxx had drawn up flyers advertising the recruitment call that he and Jake had tacked up along the Sunset Strip.

To their immense surprise, the advertising had worked. Within a week, they had a decently-sized list of local drummers willing to interview for a place in the band. That was where Andy was at the moment, in the basement of their apartment building with a small table and two chairs set up to conduct makeshift interviews. It was tedious work of the sort Andy had always despised. Cleaning or organizing was one thing―it helped him focus, satisfied the OCD that had plagued him since he was a kid. Running through the same procedure with every drummer on the list and getting largely the same results with every person that sat down only served to drive him crazy. The headache that had developed shortly after leaving the shelter of their apartment six floors above wasn't helping, nor was the unusually strong scent of blood invading his senses every so often.

Andy groaned and crossed off another name on the list of people that had responded to the ad. He was nearing the end of that list, and not a single person had fit what they needed. There had been one man that would have fit the role perfectly, had a couple of things about his demeanor not made Andy uneasy. The fact that he had said he'd only recently gotten into the rock scene and looked to be in his forties didn't help the overall first impression, either.

Andy had underestimated just how hard finding their sound would be, as well―he barely even knew what they needed or what he was looking for in a drummer. The four of them―Andy, Jake, Jinxx, and Ashley, a miniature clan of vampires that had been together for decades―had all been hard at work trying to come up with ideas for music to turn into an album and had so far fallen seriously short. The guitar parts Jake and Jinxx were coming up with didn't match any vocal melody Andy was brainstorming; Ashley could hardly make a bass line fit into any of the guitar riffs or vocal melodies. Something just wasn't clicking when they tried to write music, and it was causing them a lot of trouble.

The one song they had managed to write properly was one that Andy had had an idea for ever since the phrase that became the title started floating around in his brain, shortly before he brought up the idea of becoming a band to Jinxx. Andy's human friend Patrick Fogarty had said he could direct a music video for it if they could get two thousand dollars for him to do it with, and the thought of this impending video was why they needed a drummer―and fast. If they could get a music video out, they'd be on the radar, and the hope was that they might have an easier time of getting a record label to sign them.

Andy remembered when he'd first met Pat. It had been a complete accident. The human director had been assisting on the set of the movie Halloween II, which Andy had stumbled onto after getting separated from Jake, Jinxx, and Ashley in Georgia one afternoon. They were low on the blood packets they got from hospitals (thanks to friends Jinxx had made over the centuries, mostly lab technicians and biomedical staff that actually used the blood they stored) and had needed more; they were just lucky it had been cloudy that day so they could move about freely without fear of getting burnt. Andy still didn't know why Jinxx had insisted on bringing all three of them with him―usually he ran out to visit his contacts at the various hospitals they visited on his own―but that day had been different, and Andy had been bored and wandered off.