solve et coagula ( The Wig)

 

What's Done in the Dark Will Be Brought Into the Light

Prologue: The Roadkill for Breakfast Years

Before wigs spoke and gospel came in sequins, Eveline was a sad, lonely, confused soul. By nineteen, her parents had turned her into a medical experiment—diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, and gender dysphoria, then enrolled in a mail‑order neurotherapy program that promised to “repattern trauma through guided dolphin sounds and light fasting.” Effexor, Seroquel, Lamictal: perfumes of despair fogging her up like a haunted mirror. On Sundays, televangelists thundered that mental illness was demonic residue, their frosted hair glowing like cheap halos while Eveline’s temples burned under hydrogel patches that smelled of melted plastic.

But the darkness had teeth long before that. Trailer park nights reeked of stolen liquor, Zoloft, and Marlboro Reds. Eveline learned to paint bruises with Wet n Wild foundation, to swallow pills dry like communion wafers, to carve scripture into her own flesh when visions demanded it. Her sister Liliann—violent, meth‑bright, Barbie‑complex—was both tormentor and omen. Eveline swore she’d grow up to be a serial killer with a Barbie complex. More of her later. You’ll wish there wasn’t.

At ten, Eveline sat cross‑legged in the attic’s hush, baseball cap tilted low, guiding the planchette across a faded Ouija board. Dust thick as incense, cardboard boxes stacked like forgotten altars. She expected nonsense. Instead, the board spelled with uncanny rhythm: When I’m good, I’m very good… but when I’m bad, I’m better. Behind her, shadows coalesced into a feathered hat, ruffled gown, and a smirk that split the veil. The ghost leaned close, whispering: You’ve got timing, kid. Eveline blinked, as if catching a draft. The planchette twitched once, then stilled. She didn’t know it yet, but the Wig was already watching.

By fifteen, she duct‑taped a microphone to a broomstick and screamed her first sermon in an abandoned laundromat. Roadkill for Breakfast wasn’t a band—it was ritualistic purge. Distorted bass, broken Casio keyboards, Eveline howling cut‑up verses over feedback loops, dancing like a crazed Ian Curtis. They played condemned churches, basements with black mold, underground rings once used for exorcisms.

One memorable gig was at Bobby Mackey’s Music World. Eveline showed up dressed as an altar boy with Bowie’s Aladdin Sane lightning bolt. They only got halfway through Roxy Music’s In Every Dream Home a Heartache before bottles started flying. One hick fixated on her, thinking she was a boy, creeping closer with a look more terrifying than glass.

She wore combat boots, black band tees, salopettes, white button‑ups with red bows and lace veils. Lyrics scribbled from pulp magazines and dream fragments. Every show began with Eveline lighting a candle, reciting Naked Lunch like scripture: Goddamn floating whorehouses, death is the navigator.

The crowd was goths, runaways, the spiritually deranged. They called her Coke Bugt. She baptized them in black nail polish and glitter, once performing wrapped in a funeral flag stolen from a cemetery.

Her parents tried to intervene—matching beige turtlenecks, pamphlets on spiritual warfare and Ronald Reagan. Eveline answered with a 12‑minute noise track called Lady Leatherface, hurling communion wafers like ninja stars. The third time they dragged her from the stage, she bit her father’s hand hard enough to taste copper. Her mother screamed about demons while Eveline spat blood onto the club floor—a crimson Rorschach over vomit stains. That night she dreamt of televangelists sewing her lips shut with fishing wire while Liliann applauded from a pew made of bones.

The demo tape pulsed against her thigh as she limped home, Walkman batteries dying so the music slurred like a drunk preacher. Streetlights flickered overhead, casting her shadow in stop‑motion—one frame a girl, the next something jointed and wrong. Behind her, the scent of gardenias and spoiled meat. When she turned, only a crow perched on a STOP sign, pecking at something shiny in its claws.

This was her gospel of contradiction. Her church of distortion. Roadkill for Breakfast wasn’t just rebellion—it was prophecy in punk form. A prelude to the rhinestone apocalypse.