Ravens Fly at Night

Our young would-be songbird did not inspire instant confidence upon our first glimpse of her. She was of good stature and very slim, probably too thin to be entirely healthy at her age. Her hair was cut quite short in bangs around her eyes and just above her shoulders. It was dyed raven black, but her roots hinted that she might be a natural redhead (wow, four redheads in one band - Simon, Irv and I were all redheads of varying shades). She was dressed from head to toe in black leather, with more black (a corset?) underneath and a black velvet collar around her neck. Her shoes were black patent leather platforms, that I could tell were not easy to walk around in and she tended to control her movements extremely carefully. Her makeup? Heavy black, of course. Every inch of her screamed out "Gothic" This was still sort of a new trend and mostly in the fashion underground in those days, and not yet as common as it would become in a few more years. To us the look was new and fairly exotic.

We all collectively shook our heads over her and thought that "she'd never work out", but we had promised her an audition and we took her over to our rehearsal hall right after dinner (which she looked like she had desperately needed).

Talking with me on the short drive over there I found out that she was not a total music rube. She had been a music student at the University for about 6 years and was working on her Masters. She knew all the theory, probably better than we working blokes did. She asked for a lyric sheet and for us to play the first piece through "as you would normally". Ok, we played our first number through for her and she seemed interested. She asked us to repeat a certain part that seemed like it was a bit tricky to play and would probably be even harder to sing correctly, and we watched her work out the phrasing in her head. She jumped up and announced she was ready and ordered us to "Take it once again from the top, guys". We did, and she started to sing... and how!

Her voice was a mezzo-soprano that soared and filled the entire warehouse. She could hold a note pitch perfect seemingly forever. She sang our song in a way we had never even before considered, and it was lovely. Seems our pretty dark angel songbird was a would-be opera singer. We spent the rest of the evening teaching her our other 3 completed songs, and she got each of them note perfect on the first try. We didn't by that point even try offering different suggestions for how each song could be sung, why screw with perfection.

To this day no one remembers who actually offered Erin, our Goth wonderette, the job, or if in fact anyone actually ever formally did. From the moment she joined us for a late night snack at a local 24 hour greasy spoon she was "Our singer." Done and done!

************

I drove her home that first night about midnight, as she didn't have a car and normally took the bus to University. It was late spring and nearly the end of term. She "hoped" to be available most evenings "soon" but had to "check with her partner first". We lightly discussed future plans and I made arrangements to pick her up from her flat at 7 p.m. the next evening, which I did, and received a great surprise. Erin, dressed head to toe in her usual black, was sporting a large shiner, and from the way she was holding herself I could have placed any bet that more bruises could be found on her arms and elsewhere else.

I was livid, and ready to go upstairs and have a few ungentle words with anyone who would lay a hand in anger against a young pretty woman. Erin pleaded with me "not to make more trouble" until I agreed (unhappily) not to interfere... "Only for right now..." I muttered. The story it seemed was that Erin's "partner" was an older woman that she had been in a lesbian relationship with for awhile, and was "very controlling". If Erin could be home no later than 10 p.m. that night, there would probably be no problems, she insisted. Erin's sudden decision to join a band had been a rather "sudden shock" for her, and her temper had flared "just a little bit".

"It was entirely my fault anyway," Erin kept repeating over and over again as if it were almost a mantra.

I was barely mollified, and when I dropped her home at the dot of 10 p.m. that evening I gave her a card to keep in her purse with my home phone number, and ordered her in the firmest voice that I dared to use, to call me "at the slightest hint of trouble, and I would come running!" She accepted it and hugged me. There was no trouble that night, nor for the rest of the month.

For working purposes, we became "The Blackbirds" and everyone tried dressing up in as "dark and brooding" a manner as we could get, but to nowhere near the extent that Erin could manage. I settled for just a pair of black cowboy boots, black jeans and a shirt. That's about as dark and brooding as I could manage, at least for the time being. We began to work as steadily as we wanted, and our erstwhile new Manager Byron began to "fill up the bookings" for a series of "short, out-of-town" late spring/early summer gigs mostly at or near college campuses. When we finally saw the completed list, we all just about flipped. This "short" tour managed to encompass 25 cities in just 30 days, eventually ending up with a booking at an "alternative music" festival in New York. Our Lord Byron had been far more productive and enterprising than we had ever imagined.

Dave of course had a near heart attack. There was "no way", he exclaimed to everyone and anyone that would listen, that he could be gone that long from his wife and family. At length, he agreed to accompany us as far as the New Orleans show, but then he "would have to return". Having some of Dave was better than none of him at all, and we grudgingly agreed to this. We started to hunt for another replacement guitarist, but finding the right one still continued to elude us.

By the end of May, we started to do a few overnight gigs in College Station, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas to start running "dress rehearsals" to iron out the logistical kinks of traveling a few hundred miles, setting up our own gear, doing a show, then doing a breakdown and reloading the truck for another long 'nights drive to another show. Most of us had some experience with doing all this before in other bands, but we were a bit rusty - on the last ill-fated MR tour the promoter had arranged a small crew for us that had handled nearly everything as part of the contract. He had done most of the work -- and earned most of the profits. We were now on our own and learning that part of the business from the ground up. There were plenty of mistakes, bad screw-up's and shows from hell that I'd never want to relive, but we tried to keep a humor about things and chalked everything up to a learning experience.

We pooled our money and made two major purchases for the road shows. First, an old converted midsized school bus that had been overhauled and redecorated inside with bolted down sofas and lounge chairs with a working refrigerator and hotplate, allowing folks a little amount of budget comfort in our "Tour Bus" on the road. The other was an equally old and temperamental small delivery truck that had just enough space for all of our gear (Irv's steadily growing drum kit and Simon's equally expanding collection of keyboards and what-have-you took nearly half of the space, and amps and speakers took up much of the rest. The truck had a stick shift and an annoying clutch that no one else but me could seem to get the hang of, and I quickly ended up as our permanent truck driver.

Usually in the past whenever we had done a fairly local gig, everyone (except me and, sometimes, Irv) had ridden in Dave's big family sedan, Erin always getting the front passenger seat. Now that we started longer day trips, I was surprised to see Erin more and more often, opting to ride next to me for those long drives, alternating pleasant conversation with frequent jottings in one of her ever present spiral notebooks. I love Irv to death, but listening to him smack the dashboard with drumsticks for 200 miles non-stop would drive any rational person to madness.

One late morning at the start of our last warm-up run, a 4 cities in 4 days trip to Dallas/Waco/Killeen/Austin and then back home, I noticed that Erin climbed into the truck cab passenger seat very gingerly and seemed in some considerable pain, but insisted nothing was wrong. The long 4 hour ride seemed if anything to make her even more uncomfortable, and she was pretty much in tears by the time we got to the club. The show went off just fine, and we seemed to make a lot of new fans who kept asking if we had a CD. "Not yet", we were forced to reply and we decided to get out at least a demo CD as soon as possible. Our hotel for the night was a Motel-6 on the outskirts of Waco, and Erin wasted no time in dashing for her room once she had her key. I noted some dried blood spotting on the cheap vinyl and I then knew for sure that something was terribly wrong. I made sure the truck was padlocked and parked secure for the night, and then dropped my bag into the room I usually shared with Irv. Then I went to borrow David's car.

Since I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was, I got directions and drove over to the nearest 24 hour drugstore where I quickly got a few items I was unfortunately pretty sure I would soon be needing, and returned to pound on Erin's room without mercy until she gave up and let me in. She had been still in the shower (she tended to live in the bathroom and showered at least twice a day, if the opportunity existed) and was wearing just a towel when she finally answered the door and admitted me. Sometimes I just don't hear real well when people are telling me to 'go away'.

I wasted no time, "Ok, go lie down on the bed and let me see what that bitch has done to your cute little ass." She started to protest, saying she was fine and nothing was wrong, but I put on my most glaring squinty-eyed look of implacable determination and just pointed at her bed and said "Go! Now!" Without uttering another complaint she dropped her towel on the floor and stood before me completely nude and wet before turning to go lay down on her stomach on the bed.

I really only had a second or two to appreciate the full package that had been unveiled so unexpected for me. The package was well worth any admission price, her breasts were well shaped and somewhere between a B or C cup I guesstimated, the nipples were at least an inch long and were both pierced with gold rings.

Their beauty was much offset by a near all-over pattern of red and purple bruises and welts, some of which had broken skin and had bled. She had a few tattoos, but they were pretty ones and I did not at all consider them any defect to her beauty. Her vaginal area, from the brief glimpse I got, was shaved smooth with a colorful tattoo of a butterfly on her pubic mound. Her clit and both sets of labia lips showed sparkles of additional ring piercings.

Inspecting her bottom, her lower back, ass and upper thighs it was clear that she had been well flogged with what was probably a riding crop or else a thin cane. This whipping here had been at least as equally violent as the marks that I had briefly noted on the front of her breasts.

Gathering my newly acquired first aid kit I began to get to work. I cleaned all of her wounds with peroxide and strips of soft gauze, and 'band aided' over the worst of the skin breaks and abused areas. This stung a bit, but she submitted to my care and began to relax. I finished by gently applying some Witch-Hazel to the inflamed areas to cool and sooth them. I resisted the near overpowering urge to gently kiss each and every sore spot and abused area.

"You don't have to if you don't want, but may I take a look at the marks on your front and chest?" She immediately rolled over for me and lifted her arms above her head and even spread her legs a little bit for my very complete and thorough inspection. The damage done here to her breasts, stomach and upper thighs seemed a bit less severe, and more quickly attended to. I offered to let her do the gentle patting with the Witch-Hazel or I could just leave the bottle with her, but she asked me to continue and as I applied the soothing cooling liquid around her breasts her nipples seemed to grow even larger. She didn't even offer the slightest resistance when I treated the bruises and beating marks around her vaginal area, in fact she spread even wider for me to give me a completely unrestricted view and access to her most intimate and delicate regions.

This was becoming very distracting for me and I finished as fast as I could being thorough without taking any liberties on her trust. I started to cover her back up with her bath towel so that she could relax with lessened pain for a few more minutes, but instead she asked me to get her bath robe for her from the bathroom and she still showed no shyness at all about sitting up in front of me and dressing. After her robe was on, she laid back down on the bed and asked me to turn off the overhead light for her, which I did as I was about to leave.

"Please don't go! Don't leave me just yet, just come lie next to me for awhile and please hold me." I couldn't refuse.

I kicked off my shoes and lay down beside her, almost but not quite touching her. She rolled over into my arms and snuggled her head into my shirt and began to softly cry for a very long time as I held her.

We ended up talking for most of the night, about our current and past relationships. I currently didn't have a steady girlfriend but had "lived with a few" young ladies in the past. Being a musician is an odd sort of job and comes with extreme built in jealousy problems 99 out of 100 women can't handle, even if they think they can. I would always be out on the road or up until dawn nearly every night while my girlfriend would be brooding alone in bed each night wondering what groupie was warming mine. 99% of the time, there was none - I'm not a saint, but I do try to be a "one-woman" man... but no woman was ever going to believe that. I'd come home to accusations that were impossible to defend against and eventually I'd just come home to an empty apartment, if I went home at all.

She had only had one prior male lover, back in high school and it had not ended particularly well. In college she "discovered girls" and had enjoyed it, soon becoming, she felt, "nearly 100% lesbian". Her taste in women was admittedly poor, and she was attracted to older successful "strong" women, and especially ones that seemed to have a dark "tormented" side. As a result she would move from one abusive relationship to the next, her current one of less than a year, the most physically abusive of all. She admitted she enjoyed a bit of rough handling would be happy in a stable D/s relationship but there was a limit to the amount of abuse she was prepared to take and she was reaching that point. She felt currently trapped in a loop of offering loving support and forgiveness which was eventually repaid each time in return by another violent "episode". Her lover, Marla, she eventually admitted to me, needed professional help for her "anger management" problems.

For those four nights of our mini-tour, I never did get to sleep in my own bed but neither did our relationship progress to physical intimacy. She showed no shyness whatsoever in changing clothes or even being completely nude in front of me, but during our constant late night talks until she fell asleep in my arms, she would usually wear her robe or a long oversized t-shirt, and I stayed in shorts and a t-shirt. She wanted for me to be her friend and confidant, but not her lover.

I kept my increasing amorous thoughts, and hands, to myself. Besides, intra-band relationships always go bad and end up screwing up the music. I didn't want that.

By the end of the tour and for most of our drive home, Erin was in top spirits and bubbled confidence and happiness. She had decided that she would press Marla into accepting counseling as a condition for Erin staying with her, and felt sure that she would accept. I cannot say that I was entirely happy with this decision, but felt that I must be supportive of my friend, who came to me with her trusting open arms, but alas never her spread legs. Erin did allow me at last to peak at her notebooks and read to me some of her poetry, all of it I thought excellent and some of them I told her would have excellent potential as song lyrics.

We dropped Erin off at her home first and then we guys, utterly exhausted, unloaded the truck one last time into our rehearsal hall. We had about two weeks until the start of the big tour and had pretty much decided that we needed to get "something... anything" recorded onto CD to sell at our gigs. We considered we had enough working material now to create something 'decent" at last, and after planning to give ourselves one day of rest, we agreed to start early the following day, recording tracks for the demo record.

Erin's next crisis nearly derailed all of that.

**************

Chapter 3:

After helping to unload the truck from our four day trip, I got home, quickly showered and threw myself into bed intended to sleep the next day straight through. Instead the phone rang just a few short hours later. It was Erin and she needed my help, "I need you to come get me now", was about all that she would or could say, but she sounded hurt... badly.

I drove like a man possessed and ran every stop sign and red light on the way and got to her house in less than ten minutes. I began to ring the doorbell and just about broke the door beating on it. In a few minutes Erin shuffled slowly to answer the door, and I barely recognized her. She had been beaten all over and her face and arms were a solid mass of bleeding welts and swelling bruises. She was bleeding seemingly from everywhere and the blue terrycloth robe she was clutching around her now was spotted all over with purple bloodstains. I sat her down into a chair to cry, and immediately called 911 and reported a domestic assault and requested an EMS unit. I then asked Erin where her clothes and things were kept and where I could find some suitcases, and so informed I went upstairs and began packing her things.

To say that I was incandescent with rage would be an understatement, and she was not going to spend another minute in that house if I could help it.

I had left the front door wide open for the Police, who responded extremely promptly, and before I knew it I was being confronted by a woman officer who had a gun drawn on me and I could tell she was just itching for any excuse to pull the trigger. I kept my hands high and identified myself repeatedly as Erin's friend who had come to her aid, and not her abuser, but I would gladly lie peacefully on the floor so she could cuff me until my story was confirmed, which it fortunately soon was.

The officer never did quite apologize for nearly shooting me, but she did help me finish packing Erin's things and take them out to my car. At the last moment, I found the bloody rattan switch that Marla had used (among other things) to beat Erin with and I took it with me. EMS by then had arrived, and they wasted little time in getting her into the wagon and off to the hospital with the sirens wailing to clear the way, with me in my car right behind them. She spent the next six hours in the Emergency Room where her wounds were cleaned and bandaged and x-rays taken (2 cracked ribs and a minor concussion from being repeatedly struck and then pushed down the stairs was the worst of the damage). There was a little internal bleeding due to some vaginal tearing, but it soon stopped and was not considered to be significant fortunately. Eventually an official Police Complaint was dictated, written out and signed by Erin and we filled out the forms to get a Restraining Order against Marla, preventing her from contacting Erin in any way.