notbecauseofvictories:

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA
A CORNSTALK FIDDLE 

PART ONE OF TWO  ||  Where Johnny goes, the Devil follows; where Johnny goes, the Devil is already there.

He does try to play the thing
once or twice.

But a fiddle of gold is heavy as
shit, and the sound’s all wrong—loveless, and cold as Hell, with vicious
strings that split Johnny’s fingers when he plays. (There’s never any blood
when he looks, and Johnny wonders if it’s drinking him up, dry; leaving scars
at his fingertips and an ache in his hand that won’t quite ease. Then again,
it’s the Devil’s instrument; it can probably do any evil thing it likes.)

In the end, he loosens the
bow-hair and puts the thing away in a battered, borrowed case, goes back to
playing his box maple. Wood is living, it breathes and breaks; swells like your
best girl’s clit under your tongue, shivers like a warm wind through leaves.
Wood remembers the sun, wants to sing about it.

There’s nothing gold wants to sing
about, except being dead.

Johnny’s playing the maple that
night at the Bellows Club—well, used to be ‘Club’ until the owner’s second wife
decided they were destined for better things, had it rechristened ‘Café’. The
Tuesday-night regulars are the same, though, and they whistle or lazily applaud
when he finishes his set, greet him by name after he’s put the fiddle away and
come down off that high-as-Heaven stage. Johnny wades out among them to make a
little small talk, then wanders his way to the bar.

The Devil is waiting for him
there.

.

[READ PART ONE]

[PART TWO — COMING SOON]