Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor & Other Things We Called The Band

Their final gig ended with two hundred people dead. Patrick's only regret is that he wasn't there to be a part of it.

There were three things everyone knew about the band: they played like demons, sang like angels, and there was definitely something magic about the way they glowed onstage. Patrick's still hanging onto that, 15 years after their final gig. All those people may be dead, but they were part of something special and he chickened out before the end.

Now he's back on the Gold Coast for the first time in years, walking the streets where he used to see the posters, going past clubs that have been turned into Korean restaurant instead of a home for punk gigs. He can remember everything about those years when he was a fan, and he's loaded with regrets about the gigs he missed.

The band were called many things in their day: Hornet's Attack Your Best Friend Victor; Whisky-Whisky-111; All that Glitters and We Will Always Have the Lighthouse My Melancholy Bride. None of those names stuck. None of them felt real. And Patrick isn't sure he cares what the band was called—he just wants to touch that feeling he lost, no matter what it might cost him.

Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor and Other Things We Called the Band is a dark fantasy short story about rock-and-roll, going home, and chasing the dreams of your youth. It's the first story in The Kaleidoscope's Children, a mosiac series of interweaving stories tracing the aftermath of the bands last, deadly gig.