Headwalking 

June was sick of hearing girls can't mosh, on message boards and in the halls and even from friends like Andrew and Chode, so she set out to prove it wasn't so, first with the mini knife on the wrist that no one noticed, then with the half sleeve, which Beth and Alexa said was a bit much for a former eighth grade gymnastics silver medallist and former Miss Junior Ionia County, then with a full sleeve by the end of the year, complete with blocky Xs on both fists, D.R.U.G on her right knuckles, and F.R.E.G on her left, the G a heinous mistake by Pokey Scholl in his first week at Rug Burn Tattoo and Piercing, the potent cocktail of Adderall and compressed air still dancing in his brain, and despite the error June still vowed never to drink or smoke again, but at the xSurvivorx show she was shoved out and forced to the back of the pit by the boys, almost losing an eye in the process to a spin kick that forced her to spend most of the set in the washroom holding her face with a damp clump of toilet paper, a little bit of blood on her Cold World shirt, doing her own expert makeup for the next two weeks to encourage an unblemished pretence from the eye, Her mother and step-dad not buying it when she swore that she got hit by a falling acorn, dropped from a high branch with vengeance by a deranged squirrel as she sat under her favourite tree in Connaught field, nor did they buy that she wasn’t hiding the artwork on her arms and knuckles behind an XXL Bane hoodie she stole from a coat-check years before, and she was in 99% despair mode, ready to run away, sleep on a bench, hitchhike, anything to get away, when she got wind that Knuckle Sandwich were finally playing a show after a five-year hiatus, news that made her and Andrew and Chode beat their heads against their lockers in anticipation, because they remembered that at the last Knuckle Sandwich show six people left in ambulances and Oren Okowski lost his two front teeth, which was why he wore veneers, and which June learned only recently was how he'd earned the nickname Beaver, so she took her time with a mannequin's head she'd stolen from The Levi's Store, drawing convincing blood and gore around the cream neck, adding firm horse hair and painting realistic facial features, and when the show finally came she snuck the head in under her jacket, pretending to be pregnant, which particularly upset Mack Jones who was working the door and hadn't seen June in months and had always had a crush on her, and she bided her time, at the back of the venue, waiting through the openers, avoiding conversation, glassy-eyed, in the zone, until Knuckle Sandwich emerged and opened with Ten Count, her cue to unearth the head from her ruse of a pregnant belly, and ran as fast as she could through the circle, swinging the fiberglass and plastic head by the hair like a Morning Star, mashing anonymous faces, noting Beaver in the crowd scrunching out a panicked Oh Shit! face, and within seconds the crowd cleared, as June swung for her life, and then rushed the stage for the singalong, thrusting the mannequin head up to the mic as Pete Knuckles shoved it at her, and the mannequin head owned the moment, with the crowd behind her carrying the words, security forcing their way through the pit to hoist June and her weapon out of there, everyone screaming, manic, bloodied, June hoisting the head trophy-style, twirling it by the hair like a helicopter blade, screaming the final lyrics to Ten Count, foaming at the mouth, pit queen, if only for a minute 

Derek Fisher is an emerging writer from Toronto, where he also teaches English at Seneca College, and bartends. Look for his recent publications in The Write Launch and Shudder's blog The Bite.