Shortly after Tomb Essence’s song “Herpes…or His” was streamed for the 100 millionth time on Spotify, and, for the 50th time, one of them had been accused of being a new infant’s father, someone at one of the popular music Websites dubbed the singer and guitarist of the emo/goth band The Booze Bros. Between them, Abner and Abel were said to get through half a litre of vodka per day. Abel famously played an entire show at Pittsburgh’s First Niagara Pavilion on a seldom-used guitar from which his guitar tech had weeks before removed all the strings, and forgotten to replace them. Abner fell off so many stages that concert promoters became contractually obligated to line them with four feet of foam rubber. One or both of the brothers commonly lost control of his bladder during a performance, and teen garage bands throughout the English-speaking world took to soaking their crotches in homage to Tomb Essence in much the same way that their elder brothers had put phallus-shaped produce down their spandex pants the decade before.

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The group’s tour entourage came to include a surgeon who traveled with two human livers in the event that one of the brothers suddenly needed a transplant. The brothers were very in-demand as guests on late-nite talk shows. Their incoherence and inability to control their bladders made studio audiences — and presumably millions watching at home — howl with delighted laughter.

In rare moments of sobriety, the pair had bragged to journalists that they’d sold their souls to the devil to boost their band’s rating on Spotify. Most of the journalists so informed rolled their eyes and chuckled, “Yeah, of course you did,” but maybe it was true, because 48 hours after Tomb Essence’s none-more-black tour bus — complete with recording studio, kitchen, and Olympic-sized swimming pool —  went off a cliff on the way to a show in Fort Collins, Colorado, Abel and Abner found themselves in a bland beige conference room of the sort in which the middle managers of a medium-sized corporation might sit around talking about synergy, for instance, and feeling their lives slipping inexorably through their fingers. They were startled to realise they weren’t alone, but with a cordial, stout middle-aged woman in a blouse with an enormous bow. She was the sort who traditionally sips tea from a mug that says World’s Greatest Mom and says to job seekers, “So tell me about you”. Except now, with Ab and Ab, her mug said, Not quite what you were expecting, am I, sunshine? and what she herself was saying was, “Well, having danced to the music, my dears, I’m afraid it’s now time to pay the piper.”

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Abner, the elder, and the slightly more articulate, sneered and drawled, “What, we’re fucking supposed to believe you’re The Beast? Well, we fucking don’t!"

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“Don’t you, darling?” the woman said, and all of a sudden the conference room smelled like the 100 worst club men’s rooms in which Tomb Essence had been sick before Spotify went crazy, and was knee-deep in thick green sick.

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“All right!” Abel, the more squeamish of the two, howled on the mutual behalf.  “You’re him. Or her. Or whatever. We fucking believe you!”

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The room instantly reverted to smelling faintly of industrial air freshener, and the sea of sick dried up. “Better,” The Devil — for was it not he/she? — said. “Now, as for your eternal torment, I’ve come up with something I think you’re going to really hate, but tough titty, right?” She giggled.  “You’re going to be confined for the balance of eternity in a  soulless motel room with ugly paintings you can neither remove from the wall nor obscure, and your only visitors will be a program director from a little Internet radio station in the Midwest and a publicist from LA in false eyelashes and cloying perfume who’s perfectly happy to sleep with you so you’ll renew her contract, but whom you find the opposite of attractive.”

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The brothers looked at each other, each noting the terror in the other’s eyes. Abel felt as though his mouth were full of sand, but managed to ask, “Who’s this fucking program director?”

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The Devil smirked delightedly. “One of those sniffly satin tour jacket types who thinks he’s largely responsible for your having broken through because he put ‘Herpes…or His’ into medium rotation on his pissant little station, which has something like 300 listeners.”

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The brothers looked at each other again. This time Abner spoke, or at least whimpered. “What did we do to deserve this?”

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“You glamorized alcoholism and smoking and general obnoxiousness, dear,” The Devil said. “How many photos of you exist in which you don’t have a cigarette dangling out of the corner of your mouth? How many kids do you suppose will go on to hopeless nicotine addiction, and then emphysema or lung cancer, striving for your kind of cool? And you say ‘fucking’ too much. It’s tiresome.”

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“But it’s what the audience fucking wants,” Abel said, his voice breaking with the effort of keeping from bursting into tears. “Rebels. Fucking rock and roll bad boys.”

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“Save that,” The Devil said, smiling, “for the program director.”