The sun had already set against the Mississippi River’s rolling banks when Steve’s car crossed the bridge into Memphis. Amidst the skyscrapers that didn’t really scrape the sky, more projected into it with a lackadaisical attempt at grandeur, was a black pyramid with a brilliant light at its peak advertising the Bass Pro Shops contained within its ancient walls. Buildings of brick and steel lined the roadway that led to the city’s center, intermixed with billboards calling for an end to pornography and billboards calling for patrons to entertain themselves with the gentlemen’s club at the next exit.

“Where are we going anyway?” Dawn asked as they passed another brick apartment complex that at one time had been a Dry Goods warehouse, faded paint still advertising it as such.

“City center,” Steve said as he exited the highway, heading down a short and twisting off-ramp that led to a stretch of road decorated with boarded-up buildings and broken streetlights. “The way I see it, we work from the middle out.”

“Aren’t the best places to eat really hard to find small places or something?”

“And you usually hear about places like that from other people. So either we’ll find something really cool, or we’ll learn about something really cool and go there later.”

Steve turned off the darkened street just before he could realize it was a horrible street to be on. Unless he wanted Gore to encounter some teenagers with handguns, which wouldn’t have been all that bad, perhaps. Steve turned away from this darkened area of would-be demon-versus-gangsters encounter and drove up to a tall parking garage next to a brick-lined baseball stadium.

The baseball stadium was host to a minor league team. It was a solid team, one with great players who always went on to success in the big league. But the stadium itself wasn’t all that big, and Gore made a note that he had never heard of the team and didn’t care about it one bit, despite what was apparently cheers from a victorious game.

As cheers subsided from the neighboring stadium, Steve approached the entrance to the city center parking garage. A quite large man sat in a quite small guard booth that looked like it was about to collapse in an attempt to contain the man’s girth. The guard looked at the approaching Japanese sedan with the burning man chained to its roof, looked again, and took so long to make a furrowed expression of concern that Steve had already asked him three times if anything was wrong.

“Eh?” the fat gate guard asked.

“Is there a problem?” Steve asked as Burney shifted his chains, clanking them against the car roof.

“You got, uh,” the man said, his words coming out in a groaning that echoed the shifting metal groan of the booth in which he sat.

“Allow us entry!” Gore demanded.

“Shut up, Gore,” Steve said. “Sorry. How much is parking?”

“Issa…” the guard uttered. “Figh dollah.”

Steve paid the man and got his parking pass. As they entered the garage, Burney made a passing shout of goodbye to the guard. The guard, upon witnessing this, decided to take this opportunity to close the garage and go learn to be a tenor opera singer like he’d always wanted, breaking the guard booth as he made his exit.

“Okay, so we just walk down a random street, find a good sandwich place,” Steve said as he got out of the car. “Gore, help Burney down.”

“I say we find wherever the most people are. Follow the pack and you’re bound to find something interesting,” Dawn noted.

“Okay.”

“I shall slaughter said pack until its entire species is extinct!” declared Gore.

“She meant a group of people, Gore.”

“I shall slaughter them too!”

“Don’t. The crowd might lead us to a good sandwich.”

Gore grumbled. “Then I’ll slaughter a sandwich.”

“That, you can do,” Dawn said, and patted Gore on the back, which provided the opposite of comfort to the hell knight.

Round a corner past a hotel with a large painting of a duck on its sign they went. A block later, the group of four found their way to a street called Beale. Passed the well-lit avenues lined with major retail chains and fast-food restaurants all shining in their halogen-lined boxes, the group discovered dark Beale Street, lit only by the radiating glimmer of blue neon. From the start of this shaded avenue all the way to the muddy river flowed the people going here and there and bar to bar, some singing, some dancing, some fighting and some loving each other. One couple was doing all four at the same time, a particularly stunning feat that sadly ended when they saw Burney walk past.

“Here we go,” Steve said as he started down Beale Street.

“Ooh, jazz music,” Dawn said, looking on either side of the street and finding an abundance of restaurants and bars.

The eateries all had little neon signs advertising the name of the establishment. Unfortunately, none of the signs fully worked, meaning that instead of Midnight Avenue the music club’s sign read M ight Aven and instead of Joe’s BBQ this sign read Joe Q. The restaurant Below Jobbers, which had a blue-collar themed interior and was housed below the Jobbers temp agency, had a very unfortunate glitch in their sign that seemed strangely able to draw in more customers than if it were fully functional.

“Let’s go listen to some jazz,” Dawn suggested as Burney was pulled away from the broken-signed restaurant.

“It’s blues music,” Steve corrected.

“Where is the heavy metal band hall?” Gore inquired.

“There is no such thing, Gore.”

“I shall find a heavy metal band hall. Then I shall take their heavy metal and hit people with it. Then I shall record it, and that shall be your music. It shall be the most glorious music ever made.”

“What’s the difference between jazz and blues anyway?” Dawn asked.

“Subtlety. I don’t even know really. I just know jazz and blues people get angry if you mix up the two,” Steve said.

“Jazz is making an axe. Blues is making people’s skin blue with bruises from the axe,” Gore noted.

“You know, that’s probably the best definition I’ve ever heard.”

“To the jazz club then! I desire to pommel someone with a trombone.”

“I think that’s how jazz got started in the first place. You’re redefining the genre, Gore,” Dawn said.

“Don’t forget why we’re here, guys,” Steve said, sniffing the air. The smell was a waft of bodily fluids, mud-lined curbs, poorly maintained and painted brick walls, and the ever-present thickness of barbecue mixed in a pupil-dilating cocktail of aromas. “And I can’t decide if the smell of these places is making me hungry or want to flee the country.”

“Then we shall beat patrons with trombones until you uncover a pulled pork sandwich worthy of the endeavor,” Gore said.

“See? Gore’s got a plan,” Dawn said.

Burney screamed.

“No, Burney, we’re not going to a karaoke hall,” Steve said, spotting a neon sign for a music club called the C Note Vill that only had two broken letters. “This looks like a good place for a sandwich.”

Exiting the darkened street and entering the music hall, Steve blinked his way past the threshold and into the sweat-tinged air of the building’s lightless interior. Steve immediately collided with the bouncer, apologized, and stuck his hands out to guide his passage, until he bumped into the bar, along with a few chairs and patrons along the way.

“Dawn, Gore, are you behind me?” Steve asked, still blinking his way through the gyrating crowd. He could tell there was music, could hear it on the other side of the room, but the only light came from a few blinking dots on the cash register, making silhouettes of the bartenders.

“Right here,” Dawn said, coughing through cigarette smoke so thick it forced her to lower her hood to keep her eyes from watering. “Excuse me.”

Dawn weaved her way through the crowd, bumping and apologizing as she tried to join Steve at the bar.

“Is this supposed to be blues?” Gore asked as he walked right into the pitch-black room and steam-rolled through the sea of people. Cries of pain from trampled, poked, armor-prodded, and on one occasion elbowed-to-the-throated people combined with the chill sounds of the band in a way that actually added to the rhythm. “I don’t like it. I can’t see the trombone! Where’s the trombone? Gore desires to hit someone!”

“Ow! You just did, jerk,” an unfortunate patron of the bar said as Gore stepped past him. The patron struck back against the hell knight. If there was light enough to see, the patron probably wouldn’t have done this, because all it accomplished was to break his knuckles and make a deep clanging sound against Gore’s armor.

“I need to find the grill. I smell barbecue, but… excuse me,” Steve said as he searched the darkened room for where the sandwiches might be.

It was only when Burney entered the room and bumped into the bouncer that there was any light at all. This was because Burney, in apologizing for bumping into him, had lit the bouncer’s clothes and hair on fire. Screaming in panic, the bouncer ran through the music hall and was quickly beaten by the blues singer in an attempt to put out his burning head.

In the brief time that the lit-up bouncer ran through the hall and was extinguished, Steve was able to catch sight of a little grill at the far end of the room where people were lined up for sandwiches.

“Ah, there it is,” Steve said, making his way through the press of once more darkened bodies. “Just stay outside, Burney, we’ll be with you in a second.”

Burney screamed in reluctance, but he’d already set three more people on fire in an attempt to get through the crowd, so he figured it was best he stay outside.

The blues players jammed invisibly at the far side of the room as Steve found his way to the grill. Hand extended with a ten-dollar bill, Steve just hoped he would be exchanging the unseen currency for a sandwich, and not a dead hamster or something. He wasn’t sure why he dreaded a dead hamster being placed into his unseen hand, but it made his fingers twitch with worry all the same. Suddenly, someone snatched the bill out of Steve’s hand and replaced it not with a dead hamster, or any other sadly departed tiny mammal like the ones Dawn was summoning to make up for the enflamed bouncer, but with a warm, liquid-leaking, soft item. Steve’s initial reaction was to hurl it away as quick as possible.

“Hey there,” a gravelly voice announced from where the music had suddenly stopped. “Whoever threw that there sandwich up ‘ere, thanks man. We was hungry.”

“Strike yourself with your own trombone; your music is terrible!” Gore replied.

“Thanks man.”

“It was not a compliment! I desire that you injure yourself!”

“He wants you to hit it, mister bone-man.”

Another musician, unseen and presumably wielding a trombone, replied, “Ama do juz that,” and proceeded to hit it, musically, with his trombone.

“My request was not metaphor!” Gore shouted over the music. “Gore desires you to break your instruments upon your heads!”

“Keep shouting, Gore, they’re matching your rhythm,” Dawn noted, as indeed the musicians were playing off of Gore’s angry cries. The combination of mellow brass notes and angry hell knight created a musical contrast of fire and ice that exhilarated the entire room. “It’s pretty good actually.”

“I suddenly realize I find jazz infuriating.”

“It’s blues, man,” an unseen patron said right before Gore elbowed him in the face. Gore suddenly realized the merit of this darkness-shrouded establishment. Dawn, or anyone else for that matter, couldn’t see him hurting people.

“Calm down, guys, I got us another sandwich,” Steve said, having traded another ten-dollar bill waved in faith that it would be switched with a sandwich. This time, he’d been provided a plate. “Let’s go eat it outside. I’m not sure if there’s barbecue sauce or boiled mayonnaise on this thing.”

“I am suddenly realizing I might like this music,” Gore said, contemplating how far away the band was and how hard he’d have to throw someone in order to hit them. He thought, probably correctly, that this would add immeasurably to the musical enlightenment of the set.

“You like and hate everything, Gore. Now come outside so we can decide if we like or hate this sandwich.”

The three made their way to the exit, with Gore’s punching motions both adding staccato to the blues music and shoving people out of their path. Finally, they exited the lightless blues club and entered the moonlit street, sandwich in hand.

“Okay, so a sandwich you have to go through all that to get has to be worth the effort,” Steve said as he examined his meal in the light for the first time. It was wet with juices, the meat simmering and cut to thin strips sloppily piled and spilling out from between two pieces of white bread.

Steve took a bite.

“Well?” Dawn asked.

“Bland,” Steve said, wiping juice from his mouth. He handed the sandwich to Dawn, who examined it with a titled head, took a vigorously contemplative nibble that she swirled around her mouth several times, and handed the sandwich to Gore with a shrug.

“Perhaps the one you threw at the musicians would have tasted better,” Gore said, finishing the sandwich in one bite.

“Probably,” Steve agreed. “Where’s Burney?”

Burney was in the act of being beaten profusely by a group of tourists from Texas. He screamed in pain, lying in the middle of the street, as a score of Texans kicked and punched and struck him with shirts and a few scorched hats. They weren’t doing this to injure him. In panic for seeing a man set aflame, they had kicked him to the ground and tried to beat out his flames. After several exhausting minutes of kicking, the Texans weren’t really sure why Burney was still on fire or what to do other than keep kicking.

“Burney, stop screwing around and come with us,” Steve said, walking toward another Beale Street club.

The Texans found a fire extinguisher and started enthusiastically spraying Burney. The ensuing cloud of evaporating chemical spray did not help him in anyway, but allowed Burney an opportunity to escape and rejoin his companions, leaving nothing but a charred patch of asphalt when the chemical cloud cleared. This created the frightening conclusion that Burney had been liquefied, forcing the Texans to flee in hysterics.

The establishment Steve approached, advertised with flickering blue neon, was called the Hero E Will. It was named for some exceptional blues musician, or soldier, or someone of significance, the exact nature of their accomplishments being long forgotten.

From the moment he passed the club’s threshold, Steve felt a pounding in his ears like he’d never heard. A bass drum thumped while an enormous free-standing bass thrummed. The thunderous cry of the singer played off the piercing intensity of a trumpet while a tenor sax groaned against it all. Steve could clearly see the set-piece band at the other end of the room, just beyond a low wall of amplifiers and screaming bar patrons and possibly-structurally-sound brick walls. He could also see a little chalked-out sign near the band that advertised the beSt PULLED Pork sandWich in memphis.