“Well, I guess we’ll prove that right or wrong,” Steve said from the back of the bar.

“What?” Dawn asked.

“I said we’ll see if that’s true,” Steve said, pointing to the sign.

“I’ve seen a band with a stand-up bass before, Steve.”

“What? No, the sign!”

Burney entered the bar screaming a question, but he didn’t sound any different than the other screaming patrons, so no one answered.

Gore tried to shove his way through, but only succeeded in knocking over one person. This patron, a woman in her forties who had seen way too much sun and way too many bourbon and cokes, turned to face the man who had shoved her. She screamed as loud as she could and ran out of the bar. No one heard her screams of terror, much less Burney’s screams of heart-felt apology, though, so Gore’s access to the bar was no more successful than Steve’s.

“This is ridiculous,” Steve said as the patrons continued shouting along with the band.

“What?” Dawn asked.

“You look like cheese left out in the sun and pissed on by a badger!”

“I can lip read, you dolt!”

“What?”

By the time plenty of people saw Gore and Burney and a guy wearing a fedora at a blues club, the horror of which cannot be understated, Steve finally made his way to the far end of the bar. There, a skinny grill man with dreadlocks and a grease-coated apron, danced in front of cooking pulled pork.

“Excuse me!” Steve yelled at the cook’s back.

The grill man, still dancing, pulled at the meat next to the grilling buns as he coated sandwiches with spices, but was otherwise unresponsive.

“Hello!” Steve said.

Steve tried to wave a ten-dollar bill in front of the grill man’s eyes, but even this went unnoticed as the cook rolled his dread-locked head to the music. Even Dawn and Gore tried shouting at the cook, to no avail.

Finally, Steve got sick of standing around and getting bumped into while his eardrums died a slow and painful death. Since the grill man wasn’t able to hear them, Steve took off his hat and tossed it against the man’s shoulder. The fedora bounced off the cook’s shoulder and onto the bar, as Steve had intended. Also as intended, the cook turned around.

“Ah, good,” Steve said as he leaned over to collect his hat, his ten-dollar bill in an extended hand. “One please.” Also extended, however, were the two horns sticking out from his uncovered head.

The cook shouted something Steve couldn’t hear before he flung a spatula-full of cooking meat at Steve’s face.

“Gah!” Steve shouted, wiping juicy, seasoned pulled pork out of his eyes.

Gore, upon witnessing his friend being struck with ballistic barbecue, called out a challenge to the cook. This challenge went unheard, but the cook did see Gore extending a fiery sword his direction. So the cook threw hot pulled pork at Gore’s face as well.

Burney screamed as to why the cook would do such a thing, and earned a helping of projectile barbecue for his efforts. Burney screamed in sadness as the pulled pork vaporized upon striking his fiery skin.

“Ooh, greasy,” Dawn said as she plucked a piece of pulled pork off of Steve’s horns.

“Fine, fine,” Steve said, shoving the fedora back on his head. “I’m putting my hat on, okay. No more horns!”

“What?”

Steve’s horns being once more covered did not actually make the now wide-eyed cook relax, as they’d been replaced with a fedora. The cook was just about to fling another spatula full of meat at Steve’s head when Dawn stepped between them with her hands raised in peace.

Dawn waved a hand at the cook, waved a hand at her friends, and gestured to offer reconciliation. The cook didn’t understand the gesture, but he was decidedly distracted by watching Dawn stand between him and the other three creatures. After a few more motions, and Steve once again waving his ten-dollar bill, the cook still hadn’t moved. So Dawn took Gore’s sword and used its flat end as a spatula to flip a chunk of pulled pork onto one of the nearby sandwich buns and toss it her direction. She caught the sandwich, threw the ten-dollar bill at the cook, and walked out.

No one in the group paused, except Gore to retrieve his sword and thrust it through the wooden bar so he could clean the grease off it, until they were all outside the deafening bar.

“Man, I think I can hear the blood pumping through my ears,” Steve said, shaking his head as they once more stood on darkened Beale Street.

“I liked that music,” Gore said, wiping the bar splinters from his sword.

“Thanks for the help, Dawn. I don’t know what that cook’s problem was.”

“His problem was he can’t make a sandwich worth the trouble,” Dawn said, taking a bite of her hard-won sandwich and tossing it whole at Steve.

Steve barely caught the sandwich before it added to the grease stain on his forehead, and took a bite. “It tastes like rubber,” Steve said. “And I think there’s a hair in it.”

Steve held the sandwich out for Gore to try, who ate it whole. Instead of swallowing, however, Gore spat the enormous bite all over Burney, who cheerfully incinerated the sandwich. “I shall exact vengeance for my taste buds!” Gore challenged.

“You already exacted vengeance on the bar,” Dawn said.

“That was because you sullied my sword with grease and inferior spices!”

“Call it even then. I’m still hungry — let’s get to another place before someone tries to put out Burney again.”

Burney screamed a question.

“Did the fire extinguisher work, Burney?” Steve asked in response.

Burney answered with another scream.

“Well there you go. Stop asking stupid questions,” Dawn said as they walked further down Beale Street.

The street was becoming darker, the mists from the river growing thicker, and the crowd of people pressing more inebriatedly against the police barricades that funneled locals and tourists alike down the narrow avenue. Steve led the way and went to the first open door he could see once he bounced off an enormously fat businessman who had no idea where he was.

Steve led the way into a the blues club that had a sign reading Spe K Noiv L, a title so long left unrepaired that none of the present patrons or employees recalled what the actual name of the bar was. Steve entered this unknown-named music club through a wall of smoke and paralyzingly smooth blues.

“I don’t see a grill,” Steve said, and was immediately hushed by the bar’s enormously obese bouncer. “Sorry.”

The bouncer, menacing by the door, held a finger to his mouth to indicate that Steve was not to apologize for speaking.

“Sorry,” Steve apologized in a whisper.

The bouncer rolled his eyes.

The music was just two bone-skinny players set at an un-raised stage in the middle of the room. Patrons sat cross-legged in front of low tables without chairs and leaned back on little cushions. One of the musicians had a guitar, a very small guitar that was played with deceptively slow movements to create entrancingly intricate rhythms. The other musician sat in front of a semi-circle of percussion instruments that ranged from actual drums made from some form of animal skin to a cluster of mason jars that paired surprisingly well with a synthesizer. This musician played the synthesizer with a little stick duct taped to his nose, since his hands were occupied with the mason jars.

Whatever good vibes emanated from the band were immediately crushed when Burney walked into the room and screamed a question.

Steve understood this as a simple remark that Burney could not find a grill. All the patrons at the bar heard, however, was “AhhhhhhhHH!” This caused the patrons to turn, silently shoosh Burney, and turn back to the band before they could fully understand Burney’s predicament. Sure, they saw that he was on fire. What they thought, however, was that he was just an annoying person randomly on fire who would quickly evacuate the building to either get un-burnt or just burn to death, and not a soul cursed to be perpetually on fire who lacked the capacity to either become un-burnt or die or stop asking stupid questions via ear-piercing screams.

The confusion also caused people to ignore the hell knight with a sword.

Gore raised his blade in fury for those who had accosted his friend. “You shall face all the wrath that is held within my blade for shooshing the man who cannot be shooshed!” Gore challenged with his blade held high.

With faces purposefully pointed toward the musicians, none of those sitting in the crowd acknowledged Gore.

“I will destroy you all!” Gore proclaimed.

One person braved to turn and shoosh Gore. This was the bartender, who stood along a wide array of drinks and snacks and various other items that, it turns out, were not sandwiches.

“Well, there’s no sandwiches here,” Steve said, and turned toward the door.

Burney screamed a question.

“Don’t worry, Burney, we’ll keep looking.”

“Shoosh!” the club continued to accost.

Gore growled within his helmet and stared at the now dumbstruck bartender. He extended the grip on his sword, but looked down to Dawn.

Dawn shrugged. “As long as you don’t make a sound, you’re in the clear, Gore,” she said.

Grinning behind his helmet, Gore pointed the tip of his blade at the bartender.

It’s amazing how quiet a hell knight can be while pummeling a bartender. It’s also amazing how if you keep a man from screaming in pain while being pummeled by a hell knight, blues club patrons will be surprisingly complacent with allowing you to punch and kick to your evil heart’s content.

“Is that completely necessary, Gore?” Steve asked.

“Shoosh,” the obese bouncer said, approaching Steve from the door and putting a ham-sized, and ham-greasy, hand on Steve’s shoulder.

“What? Your bartender is currently having a bottle of whiskey shoved up his—”

The bouncer, silently growling down at the person who’d dared talk in his club, yanked on Steve’s shoulder and nearly threw him out the door.

“Hey, hey,” Steve said as he stumbled outside, once more on the noisy streets, “Okay, fine.”

The bouncer, still not saying a word, extended a cautionary finger toward Steve.

“Okay, Mr. finger pointy guy. I don’t want to go to your hippy club anyway,” Steve said, brushing imaginary dust from his jeans. “You don’t even sell sandwiches.”

Burney and Dawn, along with Gore, who was experimenting with various methods of silence-oriented physical torture on the wait staff, remained in the club. So Steve shouted, just before the door closed behind the fat bouncer, “Hey Burney! What was the name of that movie you liked?”

Burney screamed in response to this question. What he screamed was “The Grapes of Wrath.” What the bouncer heard was “Ahhhhhhhhh!” so the bouncer grabbed Burney by the shoulder and attempted to escort him out like he’d just done Steve. Instead of grabbing the skinny man by the shoulder and hurling him to the exit, however, the bouncer’s arm caught on fire the moment he touched Burney’s skin.

Now it was the bouncer’s turn to scream “Ahhhh!” in agony. Unlike Burney, however, he was unused to the status of being on fire and thus caused a major disturbance in the chill factor of the music hall. In fact, screaming in pain from having his arm on fire so de-vibed the blues that the musicians stopped playing altogether.

“You didn’t have to do that, Steve,” Dawn said as she and Burney exited the now decidedly un-vibe-worthy music hall, Dawn dropping a few bunnies in her wake. These didn’t help revitalize the club’s cool factor, but it did make a few patrons smile. One bunny in particular actually joined the band. Not as a member, but as an instrument. It’s the sign of incredible talent to turn a small mammal into a percussion instrument, and one that makes a sound that was quite capable of luring patrons back inside.

“I didn’t do anything more than ask Burney about a movie he’d seen,” Steve countered. “The bouncer wants to set himself on fire for being an idiot, that’s his problem.”

Burney screamed.

“No, Burney, we don’t blame you,” Dawn answered.

Burney then screamed another question.

“And no, you can’t have a bunny.”

Amidst the patrons shaking their heads for the lack of cool the bouncer had displayed while enflamed, Gore once more joined Steve, Dawn, and Burney. He exited the lounge with a grin wide enough it was visible through the slits in his helmet.

“Is that cherry juice on your sword?” Steve asked.

“Yup,” Gore said, still brandishing the now red juice-covered blade.

“Do I want to know what you did with — is it on your hilt too?”

“Yup. And nope.”

“Right.”

“I shall not stand to see those whose soul I defend troubled by such weaklings.”

“You just really wanted to beat someone with a trombone, didn’t you?” Dawn said.

“I was defending Burney from those who had yelled at him. And yes. But there was no trombone, so I had to use cherry juice.”

“Well clean off your sword. I’m still hungry and we haven’t found a good place yet,” Steve said.

“Sure thing,” Gore said and slapped Burney with the flat of his sword. The thrust made a cracking noise and a second thud as Gore flipped the blade to its other side. In this way, Burney burnt off all the cherry juice and flecks of human hair that were sticking to Gore’s sword. “Thanks, Burney.”

Burney, imprinted in the pavement from the blows, screamed in cheerful reply.