This story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. We’ve sold out our copies, the only ones left are in stores—perhaps there’s one near you? Secure yourself the next 4 issues by subscribing.
“Twenty tongues / Moving at once…”
What the hell? He pressed repeat and listened again. Daniel had heard the new Deftones song enough times by now that he could sing along. He tapped his computer awake and opened a Word document titled “Gore Portal (working).” A short story he’d been writing, inspired by the band. He wasn’t 100 percent on the title yet, so had made note of other possibilities. Alternatives included: “Twenty Tongues.” He’d written that months ago. There were other lyrics in this new song that seemed to reference his story, too. And other words he couldn’t quite make out, not yet anyway. Sure, some were sort of abstract, could be interpreted differently, maybe. But “twenty tongues”? That was pretty damn specific.
“High marks… / ‘Cos you made it, Count…”
“Of a membrane, peeling… / Straightforwardly…”
Daniel’s story was about an obsessed Deftones fan getting drawn into a… cult? The cult was called ‘Gore Portal,’ though he hadn’t actually decided yet whether he was going to use the word ‘cult’ in the finished thing. He also wasn’t sure whether ‘Gore Portal’ should be the name of the cult, the name of one of the cult’s rituals, a sacred place, some divine entity, or any/all of the above. Anyway, in the story this fan-protagonist starts to think he’s hearing coded messages in Deftones’ lyrics. The lyrics, as he interprets them, allude to Gore Portal, their beliefs, their practices and promises, and the means they use to recruit. The fan comes to understand through the music that new initiates, before they even know they are initiates, are visited by a sequence of arcane seductions. A figure called ‘The Count’ acts as a kind of messenger. The name of the first ritual? Twenty tongues.
Daniel closed the Word document and opened MSN Messenger. He needed to talk to someone. He saw Jack had changed his username to… ‘The Count.’ What the hell? The Count was busy, apparently. Daniel sent Jack a text message, ordering him to get his ass online. About ten seconds later the little dot icon by Jack’s username went from red to green.
“Weird stuff’s happening today. Why are you called Count??”
“That’s the name of my cat dude. She’s Countess.”
Daniel remembered now, Countess the cat. Maybe that’s where he got the name for the story in the first place. Jack typed out a string of punctuation that meant ‘pussy.’ Daniel typed an eye-roll back.
“What?? Cats are very sensual creatures. And so am I…” Wink.
“Jack, did you hear the new Deftones?”
Jack’s dot turned red: The Count is Away. Fuck’s sake. Jack was so… distractible. Daniel leant back on his tatty office chair and sighed. His bedroom was covered in picture cuttings, collaged together and stuck directly to the wall with glue. He’d fixate on a specific image, scouring magazines, old books, newspapers or whatever, and cut them out over and over. He’d started arranging them by type, so that each image-form proliferated over time, growing like mold across the walls. A hundred crescent moons, for example, created a dark and glittering firmament over the bedroom door. Elsewhere, he’d gotten preoccupied with reptile anatomy and built a mound of rheumy eyes and plasma-slicked eggs in the corner of the room opposite his computer (on top of the mound he’d erected a scaffold out of snake bones, stacking ribcages upright on top of one another in a charnel tower).
“Your bones broke / Then we made a tower…”
Daniel looked at MSN again: Jack’s dot had turned back to green.
“Still working on your deftones shrine?” asked Jack/The Count. It was always so humid in the summer. The heat made the glues seep, like the room was breathing.
“I haven’t got band pictures up, give me a break… It’s like an artwork. Or mood board or something…” That was true. No pictures of the band. Pictures for the band. Jack hadn’t been in Daniel’s room for a while, and it was different now, but you could call it a shrine, he guessed. The area around the bed looked sort of shrine-like. Above the headboard he’d stuck red, pink, and green flowers, aglaonemas and chrysanthemums mainly, mixed with plastic gore from back issues of Movieworld.
In Daniel’s story, the final ritual has the fan-initiate make a bizarre shrine out of papier-mâché and floristry foam. The construction incorporates spidery stilt legs, a seating platform, a backboard panel just above the seat, and a little Perspex window embedded in the pulp. The window is decorated with fan-made cum, produced each morning by the seated initiate. Pink and green chrysanthemum stems are stuck into the shrine’s surface; these are also replenished daily. Special care is taken around the Perspex window to create a subtle pink/green illumination. This routine eventually culminates in the initiate shooting themselves, adding to the composition.
“You’ll find your true reflection in the splatter…”
“Have you ever had a prostate exam?” asked Jack/The Count. Wink.
“No,” lied Daniel. He remembered the nurse spoke so softly. She told him to get on the bed, pulled on a glove and rubbed lube over her fingers, using her other hand to spread his cheeks apart slightly. She kept talking to him the whole time, softly softly, pushing her fingers inside him mid-sentence. He made a sound of involuntary excitement the nurse either didn’t hear, or just ignored.
The main riff drops out and a filter turns everything to metallic clatter and ice. The drums were recorded in a morgue, apparently. In Daniel’s story, Gore Portal have a whole procession of nurses finger-fucking the initiate, and he describes the ceremonial aspects of their costumes, including capes, cuffs, pleated face masks made out of latex and straw, and rubber gloves going up to their biceps. Before each round of administrations, the nurse puts their hand into the initiate’s pocket and pulls out a surgical tool.
“Because you brought your own… instruments”
He pressed repeat. Listen again.
“So you know I’m writing this Deftones story?”
“Yeah, I read some of this… Gore Portal?”
Jack/The Count’s dot turned green to red. The Count was Busy. Now The Count was… Away. Busy, Away, Busy, Away.
“Fuck’s sake!” typed Daniel, to no one. The Count’s status icon alternated red and yellow, red and yellow like traffic lights, and then: green. The Count’s dot turned green. The Count was — available.
“I’m available, Daniel,” said The Count. Daniel was starting to understand what The Count really was, and wasn’t: “I know.” The Count asks Daniel if he’s ready.
“Ready for what?”
“A sticky bloom, above your head,” said The Count.
Daniel looked at the chrysanthemum and aglaonema blooms above his headboard. He unwrapped the gun he’d hidden under the bed, and started squeezing his cock through his jeans. The Count’s status flicked faster and faster: Busy, Away, Busy, Away, Busy… Away.
“Ready?” asked The Count.
In Daniel’s story, fan-Daniel imagines a gradual papier-mâché encasement, seated astride spider legs, oasis residue sprinkled on his face. The Perspex window illuminated just so by fresh flowers. The chrysanthemums had been replaced daily, up until now.
Daniel was ready. Daniel was… Ready. Daniel was Busy… Daniel was Away.
This story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. We’ve sold out our copies, the only ones left are in stores—perhaps there’s one near you? Secure yourself the next 4 issues by subscribing.
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