The house was still unfamiliar to him, and though the Hamiltons could hardly be considered middle-class, the rattlesnake still felt out-of-place, like a pauper in a mansion.
Like he didn’t belong.
Mrs Hamilton had washed his dirty, stringy blond hair and cut it into a presentable shape.
Mr Hamilton did his best to make him laugh, treating him more like an old work colleague than someone who’d barely been in his life for more than a fortnight.
He’d been very touched (and more than a little intimidated) by Rusty’s furious oaths to turn the parents of his new houseguest into scaly smears in the ground.
Climbing the stairs of the family home, the rattlesnake slunk into the room he shared with his new brother and flopped onto the mattress of his camping bed - Mr and Mrs Hamilton had promised to get him a proper bed as soon as they could, and yet it was easily ten times better than the bed he’d had with his… previous family….
Upon turning over, he noticed his new brother’s CD collection on a nearby shelf - tens upon tens of jewel cases, arranged carefully by the artist, then by chronology.
Intrigue bubbled up in Ricky - he’d never been allowed to listen to music in his old…
The rattlesnake shook his head - he needed to stop this. He wasn’t in that godforsaken place any more!
He needed a distraction, and to that end, he reached up and selected a CD case.
The one he chose proclaimed ‘Look What The Cat Dragged In’, and presented him with four pictures of makeup-laden, angular-faced women at oblique angles.
The snake opened up the CD case, plucked out the disc, placed it into the CD player and pressed play.
Boom, boom-boom whack! Boom, boom-boom whack! went the drums. It was louder than the boy expected, and it reverberated off of the walls of Rusty’s room.
Four bars later, it was swiftly joined by a nice, clean guitar and the bass, and then, another four bars later…
…the distortion guitar kicked in.
His red eyes opened wide, reducing his slitted pupils to black needles.
Remember the nights we sat And talked about all our dreams Well little did we know then They were more distant than they seemed
The rattlesnake was blown away - the singer sounded like a man, despite his appearance on the cover!
Well I knew it You knew it too The things we'd go through We knew the things we had to do To make it, baby
By God, what an anthem! His thin-lipped mouth split into a wide and jubilant smile, as he felt his whole body uplifted from within. The music seemed to be getting under his very scales and into the core of his being.
You gotta cry tough Out on the streets To make your dreams happen You gotta cry out Out to the world To make them all come true
It was like a big door had been opened before him - Rusty had 3 whole shelves full of CDs, and who knew what other musical treasures lay hidden within them…
“I thought I heard ma radio going!” came a voice from the door, and the rattler turned to see his new brother, beefy arms folded in the doorway. “Whit happened tae ‘don’t touch anything’?”
At any other point the brown snake would have stammered and cried out an apology for this transgression, but the revelation he had just experienced easily outweighed any consequence.
Grabbing the CD case, the boy leapt up from the floor and, with his red eyes gleaming, shoved it excitedly into Rusty’s face:
“What is this??”
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In this one, Ricky Hamilton takes the first step towards rock stardom via hair metal.
