Author’s note: My first Gorillaz fic, but definitely not my last! R-rated for some pretty bad cursing, some blood and violence, and lots and lots of ooey gooey angst. You know you love it people! Enjoy, and please leave me some feedback? Pretty please?!

 

Inner Demons

Written by Zelda

 

Part One: Bad Moon Rising

 

Murdoc growled lowly as he fiddled with his guitar. This whole practice, and the whole day, had gone right down the toilet from the very start. Now, on top of everything, his bass was refusing to stay in tune! He would have punched 2-D, if he wasn’t so busy trying to fix it. Behind him, Russel was still drumming patiently, tapping out the beat to ‘Starshine’ lightly on his snare. Noodle was far less willing to wait, and had started uselessly fiddling with her own guitar. 2-D had walked over to a table in the studio to take a swig from his water bottle, but it wasn’t like Murdoc really cared. He was too busy concentrating on his guitar. Of all the things to go wrong today…

As if purposefully cued, one of the bass’s thicker strings broke, and lashed back across Murdoc’s hand with a loud TWANG.

                “Shit!” he hissed loudly, squinting his eyes shut and grabbing one hand with the other, to cover over the stinging pain. Either the breaking string or Murdoc’s reaction had caused Russel to lose his pace and stop drumming.

                “Murdoc-san?” Noodle spoke up. “You okay?” She cocked her head slightly to get a better look at him, the antennae of her MP3 hat twitching.

                Teeth still gritted slightly, Murdoc uncovered his stinging hand to reveal that the string had actually slashed the skin across the back, drawing a suprising amount of blood.

                “Yo, better go get that cleaned up.” Russel nodded.

                2-D gulped his water loudly and turned around, as if he had only just realized that something had gone on. When he was in the middle of these longer, slower songs, he tended to lose himself.

                “Eww!” he started. “You awright Murdoc?”

                “Fine, you dullard.” the bassist snapped back, seething at both the stinging and at 2-D. “Lemme go get a bloody bandage…” He unshouldered his bass roughly and was off into the hall, shutting the studio door behind him. Of all the bloody things to happen… He stormed towards the kitchen, he thought there was a first aid kit there somewhere. Behind him, he could hear Russel start drumming quietly again. Murdoc growled once more and looked his hand over while he stalked away. He wiped some of the blood off with a rough thumb, and then to clean the thumb off, simply licked it. He had forgotten what blood tasted like, there was a warm and metallic quality to it that Murdoc found slightly appealing. Sighing, he wiped the injured hand again and licked that clean as well. One snapped string sure did a bloody lot of damage. He wanted to fix his fucking bass and go back to playing, he had played like shit in practice today so far. Of course, the mere two hours of sleep and the raging hangover didn’t help, but they had never hurt the bassist’s play before. Maybe a little more vodka was all he needed to turn his day around.

                Reaching the kitchen, Murdoc started rummaging through a few cabinets, all with his one good hand. He finally found a little white case, and popped it open on the counter next to the sink. Murdoc took out a roll of bandaging while he turned the water on, and let it run over the wound. Here again, he paused. There was just something about the way it looked and felt, as the cold water made his hand start to go numb, as the blood ran thinly down into the metal basin of the sink. Murdoc flexed his hand and felt rather detached for a moment. He pulled his hand away, wiped it on his grungy black shirt, and proceeded to loop the bandage around it. He wouldn’t bother with any of that ointment or antiseptic. Finally, Murdoc taped the bandage down, clapped the first aid kit shut, and shoved it back in a random cabinet. He had better bloody things to worry about than his hand. Murdoc paused again, only to open the refrigerator and take a swig from a half-empty vodka bottle before he stormed back towards the studio.

 

                “Christ on a bike…” he muttered, in response to plucking another wrong note during ‘Latin Simone’. This had been at least his fifth on this bloody song, for crying out loud! His frustrated growling was obviously throwing off both 2-D and Russel, who were in earshot. Maybe Noodle was too, but she was oblivious. But they all kept on playing, and Murdoc went through a few more wrong notes, before he finally was fed up and nearly threw his bass down.

                “Take it easy man!” Russel chided lightly, silencing a cymbal by grabbing it with one hand. “That hand still giving you trouble?”

                “Ehhh, it’s nothing, it’s this bloody guitar.” Murdoc kicked it slightly. But Russel was right, his strumming hand was hurting him a lot, the exact opposite of the numbness he had felt when he held it under the cold tap. Maybe it was still bleeding.

                “Hey, I could give you some of my painkillers, if you want ‘em.” 2-D volunteered with a light smile.

                Murdoc glared poisonously back at him. “Like hell they’d help, if they aren’t good enough to cure that eternal migraine of yours.”

                “Well, I guess ‘at’s true…” 2-D looked down for a moment. “But they wouldn’t hurt---
                “I said I don’t wont any!” Murdoc raised his voice. “’At’s it, my bloody bass is shot, I’m calling practice over for today.”

                Noodle blinked at him, her English broken. “Nani? In… middle… of song?”

                “Yes, in the middle of the fucking song.” he nodded sarcastically. “I’m going back to my Winne.” And before Russel could give any reprimand to the bassist for cursing at Noodle, Murdoc stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him, and leaving his bass on the floor.

 

                Moping was never his thing. Murdoc Niccals didn’t mope, he went out and set fire to a cat, or knocked out some more of 2-D’s teeth. But for once, Murdoc didn’t seem to have the energy to go out and wreak some havoc, despite the alcoholic haze that he was in. Lounging on a bed littered with cigarette butts and bits of guitar strings, the bassist ran a hand through his greasy black hair and could only lie and think. He was definitely having a bloody bad day… but even then, there was something beyond that. He was having a bloody bad week, maybe a bloody bad fucking month. Beyond that, his memory was just a blur. For someone who claimed to be in a perpetual bad mood, Murdoc had found very little happiness as of late. The trouble was, he couldn’t put his finger on just why. After all, wasn’t he living his dream? Thanks to this bunch of losers around him, he’d achieved fame, fortune, and even a few chicks that didn’t seem to be screaming after that tosser 2-D. So what was the fucking problem with him lately? Murdoc sighed and wished he had a little more vodka within reach. That always seemed to help him forget, helped him to turn a critical eye on other people instead of himself. The bloody truth was that there was just something missing, somewhere.

                His thoughts were rudely interrupted as he heard the door into the car park open and shut. Peeking out of one of the Winnebago’s dirty windows, Murdoc growled to himself as he saw 2-D toting an ice pack, and walking back to the lift that would lead down to his room. The bassist recoiled back down into bed, muttering hexes and devil’s curses upon the head of his frontman. Why did he hate 2-D so much? Murdoc had never really bothered to think about that either, he just knew that he did, from gut instinct. Maybe it was jealousy, or annoyance, or some shit like that, frankly Murdoc didn’t care. All he knew was that seeing 2-D submissive and relenting to him gave him an important feeling of power. He wouldn’t complain about that one bit. Now only if Noodle and Russel would get with the program and stop defending the weak little face-ache.

                Nearly hitting himself on the head, Murdoc tried to force himself not to think about  how much he hated 2-D. He tried to focus on some happier kind of thought, something that wouldn’t plain infuriate him. Unfortunately, the only thing that came into his mind was the way he felt when he had run his hand under that freezing cold tap water earlier. Sweet Satan, he had actually liked the way that had felt, even more than the weird feeling he got when he tasted his own blood. Maybe the numbness was a kind of disconnection, a way for him to leave what he was feeling behind for just a moment. Reminded of his recent injury, Murdoc tried to flex his hand again, and winced a little. The bandage had come slightly unraveled, thanks to the poor job he’d done of fastening it down.

Grumbling, Murdoc rolled to his feet and wandered over to the little sink that was in the countertop of the Winnebago’s miniature kitchen. If he wanted to play again anytime soon, he’d have to keep the bloody thing clean. Unraveling the bandage completely, he saw that it was, indeed, bloody. Some damage for such a shallow wound, that string really must have lanced something good. He turned the cold water knob, pulled the bandage away, and went to rinsing his hand better this time. Again, that same coldness seemed to seep into his flesh, creep up his arm, cloud over some part of his brain. He definitely liked this, and he wasn’t bothered at all by seeing the water thin his blood, making it run easily into the basin of the sink. Flexing his hand made the blood run faster, the red in the sink become more thick and distinct. As the coldness crept further and further into his mind, Murdoc stopped thinking, concentrating on how it felt, watching his own blood run down the drain. Thousands of other thoughts tried to crowd their way up into his head, but the coldness somehow prevented them from really getting through. He quickly lost sense of time, and after what could have been a few moments or a few hours, he started to feel kind of tired and sluggish. Something told him to just go back to bed and lie down, have another bloody drink. But something kept him leaning over the sink, bleeding out the wound until his fingers started to lose their color. Something primal within Murdoc liked this, liked the feeling of his emotions bleeding away, running off down the drain. In fact, he had begun to feel that his hand was almost not there, like it had just melted away from his body. Wrapped up in all of this, Murdoc barely noticed how tired he had begun to feel. The elbow that he was using to brace himself bent a bit, his knees started to buckle. Little white flecks started to dance at the edges of his field of vision. But the sensation was blended with the total emptiness, and Murdoc almost didn’t notice the accessory of his failing muscles. He leaned down a little more on the counter, running his head under the cold water as well. The freezing, draining sensation wrapped itself around the back of his head, dripping from his flop of black hair. The blood, the alcohol, the emptiness was all melded into one, melting into the sink and running down the drain. Murdoc closed his eyes, and time lost all meaning.

 

Russel entered the carpark, shoving a long grocery list under his arm. He’d been planning to do the week’s worth of shopping, and was hoping to take Noodle with him. But for some reason, she’d been impossible to find. Probably hanging out with 2-D in the basement, he figured, and she’d have more fun doing that than going grocery shopping. He went over to a white van that the band often used to take short trips, it was better than having Murdoc drive or having to ask him for the keys to the Geep. Yawning, Russel made the van rock as he opened the door and hopped in. He was about to start the engine when he thought he heard something… Turning back and looking out of the open door, he heard another faint sound from inside the Winnebago. It sounded like someone was whimpering. Russel frowned when he realized it sounded like Noodle. He immediately got out of the car and stormed up to the run-down camper. The door was slightly ajar. He was fearing the worst, that Murdoc had turned his violent nature towards 2-D on poor Noodle instead. “Murdoc, I swear man, if you’ve hurt her…” he let out a warning as he swung the door wide open. But what greeted him was something he didn’t expect at all. His jaw dropped. “My God…”

 

 

End of Part One