The Crow

IV :The Atrocity Exhibition

The heaving mass of people gyrated, jumped, and moved to whatever rhythm they could find within the slow, spacey beat of the music provided by the rock band playing on stage tonight. The tinny sound from the guitars helped to give a top layer to the song that only seemed to soar far above the musical base the percussion provided, but the soulful vocals of the slim female singer somehow managed to keep it all grounded.
None of this mattered much to T-Bird as he forced his way through the heaving crowd, Skank keeping pace close behind him. "Look at this mess!" T-Bird cried humorously. "What's this world comin' to!?" This earned himself Skank's reply of "Yah, eh's a mess."
As soon as they managed to reach the bar just to the right of the stage, T-Bird turned back to Skank and shook him to get his attention, pointing to his left. "I've gotta go upstairs – report from the front!"
Skank nodded in understanding before T-Bird turned to go, shoving harder through the mass of people with a cry of "Get outta my way, you worms!"

Soon enough, T-Bird managed to reach the stairs, darting up them two at a time around the sharp corners the metal platforms took until he heard a deep, rather quiet voice.
"…pretty out of sight. Why don'tchu ladies come by later, check me out?"
As soon as the two ladies in question spotted T-Bird coming up the steps, they soon departed from their tall, dark-skinned escort. The man, Grange, served as the personal bodyguard and top lieutenant to T-Bird's boss. As a rule, T-Bird respected the man, but when he found out just what lengths Grange went to to protect their boss and how much he seemed to relish the thrill of what T-Bird's gang did – even supplying better weapons and gear – T-Bird's liking of Grange grew more and more. It was as close to friendship T-Bird ever got to, aside from what he had with his gang.

It turned out that Grange used to be a soldier in the Vietnam War, but had just managed to scrape out with an honorable discharge – his superiors had stated he had a deep obsession with death and murder. Here, as the top bodyguard for T-Bird's boss, it served him well, and T-Bird reported to him not just because he was the best line to their boss, but because he knew Grange loved to hear about it.

"Guess what? Arcade Games fell down, went boom.", T-Bird reported, barely keeping the satisfied note in his voice from being heard. However, Grange must've heard it, as he smiled in much the same way T-Bird felt. "Boom", he repeated, slowly donning his thick-lensed wire-frame glasses.
"We even found someone to have some fun with, but…she wasn't with that even after seeing what we got up to. Can ya believe that? It's tragic", T-Bird concluded, lighting up a cigarette.

"Gather your soldiers, T", Grange told him. "You're on for tomorrow night – no sweat."
Tomorrow night. Devil's Night. The new best holiday of T-Bird's life. To say that he was excited about it was an understatement, but he didn't let himself get too fired up for it just yet. "Is the man in?"
"He's taking a meeting", Grange responded with a sly wink, referencing their boss.

The man in question was sitting on the edge of a silk-sheeted bed, contemplating a graveyard-filled snow globe, the body of a nude voluptuous woman lying away from him on the other side.
It may have been a liability to let himself have these moments, but the man known as Top Dollar never could seem to help himself otherwise. He always had these sentimental journeys when it came to his old man – he'd taught Top Dollar everything he knew, from how to successfully run a grift to keeping order among fellow gang members through fear to even how to properly start a Devil's Night bonfire and keep it from stopping.
Even though he led his own huge gang – in particular its top four members, who reported directly to him – there were times when he missed the sheer thrill of being out there himself, as an eager son of a criminal or as a crime lord in his own right.

It wasn't just this that Top Dollar had learned though. His own father had an obsession with the occult back in the day, always keeping an eye over his shoulder for any supernatural entities that may be right at his back. He always believed that some such thing would, one day, catch up with him and escort him to the gates of hell. Thus, Top Dollar had been taught everything from A to Z on that front as well – demons, ghosts, spirits, and even their own forms of vengeance and anger.