But for some reason my internet connection has been conspiring against me, as has my computer. Like just now, my computer keeps freezing for five to ten seconds at a time, apparently because I am typing too fast for my computer to handle as well as the myriad of programs I'm running alongside it (one other program). But, the gods appear to be smiling on me today, so we're going to try and post another story, right quick. Before my computer just explodes.
Short and sweet this time. This one is called "Attention".
Fuck. Everyone is staring at me. I hate it when people stare at me. Not only that, but there's a crowd gathering to stare at me, more and more rubberneckers by the moment. The worst part is that I can't do anything about it. Normally, I'd freak out, start shouting, or maybe just scuttle away like a cockroach at the sound of a light switch. But that option isn't available to me any more. Not now, not ever.
Sirens are approaching now. Great. Nothing to attract even more rubberneckers like a few flashing lights, some somber looking men in black trying to shoo them away. "Nothing to see here, folks." Yeah, right. Might as well just start selling tickets.
Fuck. News teams next. I'll be on the ten o'clock news now, for sure. Me, the one responsible for holding up foot traffic so everyone could get a good, hard look.
The cameraman comes rushing up, trying to get a good shot of me for the news. Won't get anything they can use tonight, though.
Cops appear, seemingly from nowhere. Within seconds, they've got barricades. Crowd control. Two or three burly mustachioed cops are holding back the crowd, which has nearly doubled in size now.
All for me.
I want to crawl away from all this attention, but I can't. I can't do anything but sit there and be stared at, like an attraction in a sideshow.
It's a relief when the coroner's van shows up to take me away.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Warning: Mature Content!
Okay, so the three that I've put on here haven't all been exactly kid-friendly, but I can't stress this one enough, this is probably the most foul-mouthed story I've ever written (at least at five pages, that is). It's about an unapologetic bastard who has lived the rock and roll lifestyle to the fullest, and is now coming to terms with the fact that it may not have been all that it's cracked up to be. So, just to give you fair warning, this story (were it given a rating) would be a hard "R" for swearing, drug use, some sexual content, and brief violence. Anyone that would find any of this objectionable, please, go to a different blog instead of sending me nasty remarks. Now, everyone that is still here is because they want to be, right? On with the story.
Farewell Tour
"...quite possibly the most influential band since The Beatles..."
Rolling stone, January 1984
The van was cramped, as always. Alex Grimswold lit another cigarette and exhaled into the swirling miasma of smoke that already permeated the entire van. It was everywhere. It was in the seats, in their hair, in their clothes. It didn't matter. They were supposed to smell like smoke. It was part of the lifestyle, another part of the role they played. Besides, this was their last tour. No one was going to miss it, even if they came out on stage smeared in shit and honey. He'd heard on the radio earlier in the week that there were actually people selling their blood to afford the exorbitant ticket prices that Roy had insisted on charging. Alex honestly couldn't give a fuck what they charged anymore. He already had more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime, anyway, and he was sure that Roy had made at least three times more money than anyone else in the band.
The cigarette turned sour in his mouth at the thought of the fat little prig who had control over most of his life, and he stubbed it out on the armrest next to him. Everyone else was asleep, but they wouldn't have said anything to him even if they'd all been awake and watching him as he did it. It wasn't like this was the first time that someone had put out their cigarette on this particular armrest, as the forest of puckered black pockmarks burned into the faux leather could attest to. Besides, who the hell was going to yell at him? He was Alex fucking Grimswold, lead singer of the most influential band since the Beatles, according to more than one shitty little magazine. There were people right now selling their blood, just to see him shaking his aging ass on stage one last time.
Fucking imbeciles, he thought as he flicked the cigarette butt out the window. Who the fuck sells their blood, anyway? Transients and stupid fucking college kids who can't afford their next baggie of pot, that's who. Fucking tossers, the lot of them.
He remembered saying in an interview several years earlier, "Why should I be worried about my health? Come on. Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, all of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse. I'll be pissed off at myself if I don't do the exact same thing." In another interview that same year, he was quoted as saying, "Of course I want to die young. That way, you get to bow out of the business before it starts feeling like a job. One way or another, I want to get the hell out of this place before it's not fun anymore."
Well, now it was too late for any of that. He hadn't OD'd, although Lord knows he'd taken enough drugs to kill a horse on more than one occasion. In fact, he'd actually taken enough horse tranquilizers one night to kill a horse, when they were on tour with some little rinky-dink three-man show that had faded into obscurity a few months later. He'd taken them about an hour before he was set to go onstage, had been stoned out of his mind when it came time to actually get up and play, and still put on a good enough set that the police came in and broke it up less than twenty minutes in.
It was no longer fun anymore, that was the main problem. Roy had seen to that. Even the shit that they used to do for kicks, like trashing hotel rooms and taking advantage of some young teenage groupies looking to sleep with fame for an evening had taken on the bland routine of a nine to five job.
"I ain't never had a nine to five, and I'll put a bloody bullet in my brain before I do." That was another of his quotes, a few years after his "I want to die young" interview. Christ, there was no privacy when you did this kind of thing. He'd said the nine to five thing to the reporter, some sexy little thing who didn't look like she was old enough to buy cigarettes yet, so he could get into her pants, and the next thing he knew he saw his face plastered all over every other T-shirt, looking mean as hell, with that quote stuck under his face like a nasty zit stuck to the underside of his chin. Before that, he'd look out into the crowd and see his face staring back at him off of the sea of black T-shirts, emblazoned with the legend, "Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Grimswold," on the front, and "All of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse," on the back. He was tempted to just start saying stupid shit intentionally, see how many of the little shits would come to his concerts with one of his T-shirts if he started quoting Mother Goose or something. The only thing that stopped him was the image of row upon row of that same mean face that wound up on all their T-shirts, with "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on the back.
The van shuddered to a wheezing stop, and he looked out the window to see where they were. Not at the venue, he saw. Not unless Roy had finally gone apeshit and had booked a gig for them at a gas station. Either they were low on gas, or the driver had to go drain the vein. Probably both, he decided, and leaned back into the battered seat. After a moment, he lit a joint, coughing as he took his first hit. The high rolled over him like a soft, hazy sea, and he let himself drift away.
"If it wasn't for the Jesus Complex, I'd never have started my own band."
Johnny Crash, Johnny Crash and the Thrashers
The spread was absolute shit, but then again, so was the program that had laid it out. He looked disdainfully at what looked like Ritz crackers and Spam lined up on a tray with something that could have been refried beans, could have been dogshit. Neither would have surprised him. He sat down on one of the couches instead, pulling the glass coffee table over to him. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and poured out a small mound of cocaine. He put the vial back and pulled out a razor blade, cutting the coke into small, neat lines.
He looked up to see Natasha looking at him with disgust, but he didn't give a shit. She was another part of the job now, another part of the nine to five that he swore he'd put a bullet in his brain before he ever fell victim to it. He remembered that she had been a lot of fun back then, able to suck his eyeballs out of their sockets by way of his cock, but that was all over and done with now. He'd always been more into the lifestyle than she had, and now he looked like a dirty old man trying to get fresh with a girl half his age, even though they were both barely in their forties. It seemed like all she could manage nowadays for him was contempt, or on really good days, pity. He'd be glad to never have to see that look in her eyes ever again. I'll snort to that, he thought, and bent over, feeling the powder rush up into his nose. Everything got brighter for a moment, just long enough to think that maybe he was actually going to feel the rush again, but the cocaine was neither of a high enough quality nor was there enough of it to break through the immunity that he had built up over the years. After a few seconds, the glow faded from everything, and he slumped back, too tired and too disappointed to do another line.
A technician poked his head into the green room, his eyes glancing off the glass table and then bouncing away nervously, like he was under strict orders not to see anything illegal back here, and said, "Uh... you guys are on in five minutes."
Alex nodded, and looked up just in time to see Natasha turn away in disgust, making a noise that sounded like the same clucking sound his mother used to make whenever he did something stupid. He felt something warm running down his face, and put a hand up to his nose. His fingers came away bloody.
Fuck, he thought. He looked around for a tissue, a handkerchief, anything. He finally found some napkins, and had just torn it in half and wedged the chunks up into his nose when the technician came back in said, "Thirty seconds."
He knew the tissues wouldn't last, but fuck it. He had a job to do. He was going to go out there, and he was going to give them the best fucking song they'd ever heard. He was going to be on national TV sometime tonight, when this piece of shit talk show aired, and by God he was going to make sure that his vocals made every girl cream in their drawers from coast to coast. He stood up, tucking the remaining bits of napkin into the pockets of his suit jacket, and stepped out into the harsh lights.
"Those guys were amazing, Still are. Listening to them, you'd just about think they invented rock and roll."
John "Bonebraker" Hannibal, Crystal Deth
The van was moving again, taking them to another sold-out show. Natasha wasn't talking to him, although that wasn't anything new. He thought about it, trying to pinpoint the last time when they'd actually been able to talk to each other without fighting. He gave up after a while, although he thought it might have been sometime in 1993. He couldn't remember. Hell, he couldn't remember much anymore, but he knew that back then, he hadn't been any better. He'd probably been worse, actually, but then again, so had Natasha.
It probably was 1993, he realized, because that was the year that they'd had their last big album, Virgin Mary with a Twist of Lime. He hated that album.
He hadn't spoken with either of the other two since before that, though. Wayne, who went by Blotto onstage because, (and this was another quote, they were just full of soundbites, it seemed) "Wayne is a pussy name," hadn't spoken to him unless it was absolutely necessary since the late eighties.
And as for Jimmy...
Well, it wasn't too late for Jimmy to stick a knife in his back, now was it?
It hadn't always been this way. They'd all known each other nearly twenty years now, ever since they'd all met in a coffeeshop and had just kind of fell in together. Back then, they'd all been stupid idealists, convinced that they were going to change the world, make it a better place, with songs like "Underage Pussy", and "One Week, Seven Drunk Tanks". He couldn't remember exactly, but he was also sure that they'd been communists, too, or at least had pretended to be. Everyone else had done their share of drugs, of course, but he'd always done more than his share. And then Jimmy went and got married, and he found religion, and blah de blah de blah de blah. It was all very nice for Jimmy, he was sure, but that didn't mean that the little prick had to go rubbing his face in it all the time. He was always trying to convert Alex, like he was a fucking Bible-thumping preacher addressing a congregation of sinners. No thanks very much, Alex happened to like his particular sins, and if Jimmy didn't accept that, then Jimmy could take his Bible and shove it up his ass.
Natasha was the only one who could even make eye contact with him anymore, and sometimes it pissed him off. He could always tell when she was judging him, could almost hear her thinking, "What went wrong?" Well, fuck her, he would think at those times. Fuck the lot of them.
Other times though, he would catch her mood, and it would depress the hell out of him. He would look back over his life and think of all the things he'd done wrong, and there were a depressingly large amount of things gone wrong. But those moods wouldn't last long, and he'd usually blame them on a bad line, or a bad joint.
The motion of the van was putting him to sleep, and he had time for one last thought before it took him. I've wasted my life, he thought. I've spent half of my life in this stupid van, and for what? Before he could think of an answer, he was asleep.
"The Jesus Complex came out of the British punk scene along with other influential bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols, carving out their place in the already overcrowded scene in huge, brutal chunks..."
Excerpt from A History of Rock and Roll, by Andrew Thompson
He was alone in his dressing room. The spread was much better this time, but he didn't care. He no longer had an appetite. He hadn't eaten in three days, unless you counted snorting coke as eating.
He was falling apart. He realized that now, had always known it back in his mind somewhere, but now there was no escaping it. He was falling apart.
He looked up again at the ghastly image staring out at him from the dressing room mirror. His nose had a sunken look, as though it had collapsed in on itself. His face was drawn tight, like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. He thought he could see his skull through the thin layer of skin covering it. Jesus Christ, he looked like a skeleton. I need something to calm me down, he thought, patting his pockets. After a moment, he found the vial, and started going through the familiar ritual. A few minutes later, his head was buzzing slightly with the rush of cocaine, already fading out. He looked around the room, and came to a decision. He searched around for a pen, then a piece of paper. After a few moment, he put the pen down and walked out. After all, the little shits had sold their blood to see him, hadn't they? He couldn't disappoint his adoring public, now could he?
"The Jesus Complex gave their final show on January 21, 2006, in front of 10,000 screaming fans. Of course, none of them had the slightest idea what singer/songwriter Alex Grimswold had in mind for an encore..."
Excerpt from Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex
God damn, he thought. Now that was a show.
Apparently the fans agreed. Looking out now, he saw rows upon rows of screaming fans. His angry face stared back at him from several rows, parroting out every stupid soundbite he'd ever said, drunk or sober. Many in the audience were in various states of undress, including three angry kids who were stomping around as naked as the day were born.
For a moment, it felt like old times, and he'd caught Natasha smiling at him a couple of times. God, it had felt good. For one moment, he thought about backing out. But then he felt the vial in his pocket, and he realized that there was no way out of it. He was in too deep. If he chickened out now, he would never do it.
He tapped the microphone, sending a wave of feedback bouncing off the acoustically perfect dome of the auditorium. "All right, listen up you little shits."
There was a moment of loud cheering, then they calmed down.
"Listen up, you bastards. I just wanted to thank you for one fantastic farewell tour."
Another roar washed over him, and he rocked back with it, feeling it like an actual physical force.
Grinning now, he said, "Without you wankers, I would've eaten a bullet long ago. Sometimes, I almost wish I had."
The three down in the pit were brawling now, and the crowd was nearly rioting. "Now, I just want you to know that right now is the best I've felt in years. My God, this might be the first thing that I've felt, period, in years."
They roared.
"But it all ends tonight."
The shot silenced the roaring of the crowd immediately. The only sound was the feedback of the microphone, squealing around the arena and bouncing off the walls.
"...Pandemonium ensued. It took police over three hours to restore order and even get the paramedics on stage. Of course, by then, Grimswold was long since dead."
From the final chapter of Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex
Natasha looked out the window of the van, feeling slightly nauseous from the night before. She had gotten way too drunk at the funeral, and she had a serious hangover. The shades were serving two purposes right now, and she would've traded everything she had just to see him again. She'd spent the last two weeks crying, even though she'd thought that she couldn't feel anything for him that same day that everything went wrong.
The van felt different now, emptier, even though Alex hadn't really been there those last couple of months. Everything was different. It hadn't seemed like he'd been doing much more than just phoning it in, but now she realized that he had been the glue holding them all together. Without him, there was no band. They were no longer the most influential band since the Beatles. Now they were just three people who had lost a friend.
She sighed, and looked out the window. They'd come to a stop. She looked around for a moment, experiencing a feeling of deja vu. It took a moment, but then she realized what it was. This was the same gas station they'd stopped at a few days before...
She let the thought die, and stepped out of the car, feeling tense. She stretched, and walked around to the restroom.
A few minutes later, she was at the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, the glasses too large for her face. They made her look like some horrible bug, and she took them off and threw them in the trash can. Her eyes were puffy, but they looked better to her somehow. She smiled, taking a moment to straighten her hair and smooth her skirt.
As she did so, she felt something in her pocket. She pulled it out, and looked at it. Alex's note.
The tears came all over again, and it took a minute for her to recover. Finally, she straightened out, wiped her eyes, and walked out of the bathroom, leaving the note on the sink.
The note simply read, Fuck this. It's not fun anymore.
Farewell Tour
"...quite possibly the most influential band since The Beatles..."
Rolling stone, January 1984
The van was cramped, as always. Alex Grimswold lit another cigarette and exhaled into the swirling miasma of smoke that already permeated the entire van. It was everywhere. It was in the seats, in their hair, in their clothes. It didn't matter. They were supposed to smell like smoke. It was part of the lifestyle, another part of the role they played. Besides, this was their last tour. No one was going to miss it, even if they came out on stage smeared in shit and honey. He'd heard on the radio earlier in the week that there were actually people selling their blood to afford the exorbitant ticket prices that Roy had insisted on charging. Alex honestly couldn't give a fuck what they charged anymore. He already had more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime, anyway, and he was sure that Roy had made at least three times more money than anyone else in the band.
The cigarette turned sour in his mouth at the thought of the fat little prig who had control over most of his life, and he stubbed it out on the armrest next to him. Everyone else was asleep, but they wouldn't have said anything to him even if they'd all been awake and watching him as he did it. It wasn't like this was the first time that someone had put out their cigarette on this particular armrest, as the forest of puckered black pockmarks burned into the faux leather could attest to. Besides, who the hell was going to yell at him? He was Alex fucking Grimswold, lead singer of the most influential band since the Beatles, according to more than one shitty little magazine. There were people right now selling their blood, just to see him shaking his aging ass on stage one last time.
Fucking imbeciles, he thought as he flicked the cigarette butt out the window. Who the fuck sells their blood, anyway? Transients and stupid fucking college kids who can't afford their next baggie of pot, that's who. Fucking tossers, the lot of them.
He remembered saying in an interview several years earlier, "Why should I be worried about my health? Come on. Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, all of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse. I'll be pissed off at myself if I don't do the exact same thing." In another interview that same year, he was quoted as saying, "Of course I want to die young. That way, you get to bow out of the business before it starts feeling like a job. One way or another, I want to get the hell out of this place before it's not fun anymore."
Well, now it was too late for any of that. He hadn't OD'd, although Lord knows he'd taken enough drugs to kill a horse on more than one occasion. In fact, he'd actually taken enough horse tranquilizers one night to kill a horse, when they were on tour with some little rinky-dink three-man show that had faded into obscurity a few months later. He'd taken them about an hour before he was set to go onstage, had been stoned out of his mind when it came time to actually get up and play, and still put on a good enough set that the police came in and broke it up less than twenty minutes in.
It was no longer fun anymore, that was the main problem. Roy had seen to that. Even the shit that they used to do for kicks, like trashing hotel rooms and taking advantage of some young teenage groupies looking to sleep with fame for an evening had taken on the bland routine of a nine to five job.
"I ain't never had a nine to five, and I'll put a bloody bullet in my brain before I do." That was another of his quotes, a few years after his "I want to die young" interview. Christ, there was no privacy when you did this kind of thing. He'd said the nine to five thing to the reporter, some sexy little thing who didn't look like she was old enough to buy cigarettes yet, so he could get into her pants, and the next thing he knew he saw his face plastered all over every other T-shirt, looking mean as hell, with that quote stuck under his face like a nasty zit stuck to the underside of his chin. Before that, he'd look out into the crowd and see his face staring back at him off of the sea of black T-shirts, emblazoned with the legend, "Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Grimswold," on the front, and "All of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse," on the back. He was tempted to just start saying stupid shit intentionally, see how many of the little shits would come to his concerts with one of his T-shirts if he started quoting Mother Goose or something. The only thing that stopped him was the image of row upon row of that same mean face that wound up on all their T-shirts, with "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on the back.
The van shuddered to a wheezing stop, and he looked out the window to see where they were. Not at the venue, he saw. Not unless Roy had finally gone apeshit and had booked a gig for them at a gas station. Either they were low on gas, or the driver had to go drain the vein. Probably both, he decided, and leaned back into the battered seat. After a moment, he lit a joint, coughing as he took his first hit. The high rolled over him like a soft, hazy sea, and he let himself drift away.
"If it wasn't for the Jesus Complex, I'd never have started my own band."
Johnny Crash, Johnny Crash and the Thrashers
The spread was absolute shit, but then again, so was the program that had laid it out. He looked disdainfully at what looked like Ritz crackers and Spam lined up on a tray with something that could have been refried beans, could have been dogshit. Neither would have surprised him. He sat down on one of the couches instead, pulling the glass coffee table over to him. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and poured out a small mound of cocaine. He put the vial back and pulled out a razor blade, cutting the coke into small, neat lines.
He looked up to see Natasha looking at him with disgust, but he didn't give a shit. She was another part of the job now, another part of the nine to five that he swore he'd put a bullet in his brain before he ever fell victim to it. He remembered that she had been a lot of fun back then, able to suck his eyeballs out of their sockets by way of his cock, but that was all over and done with now. He'd always been more into the lifestyle than she had, and now he looked like a dirty old man trying to get fresh with a girl half his age, even though they were both barely in their forties. It seemed like all she could manage nowadays for him was contempt, or on really good days, pity. He'd be glad to never have to see that look in her eyes ever again. I'll snort to that, he thought, and bent over, feeling the powder rush up into his nose. Everything got brighter for a moment, just long enough to think that maybe he was actually going to feel the rush again, but the cocaine was neither of a high enough quality nor was there enough of it to break through the immunity that he had built up over the years. After a few seconds, the glow faded from everything, and he slumped back, too tired and too disappointed to do another line.
A technician poked his head into the green room, his eyes glancing off the glass table and then bouncing away nervously, like he was under strict orders not to see anything illegal back here, and said, "Uh... you guys are on in five minutes."
Alex nodded, and looked up just in time to see Natasha turn away in disgust, making a noise that sounded like the same clucking sound his mother used to make whenever he did something stupid. He felt something warm running down his face, and put a hand up to his nose. His fingers came away bloody.
Fuck, he thought. He looked around for a tissue, a handkerchief, anything. He finally found some napkins, and had just torn it in half and wedged the chunks up into his nose when the technician came back in said, "Thirty seconds."
He knew the tissues wouldn't last, but fuck it. He had a job to do. He was going to go out there, and he was going to give them the best fucking song they'd ever heard. He was going to be on national TV sometime tonight, when this piece of shit talk show aired, and by God he was going to make sure that his vocals made every girl cream in their drawers from coast to coast. He stood up, tucking the remaining bits of napkin into the pockets of his suit jacket, and stepped out into the harsh lights.
"Those guys were amazing, Still are. Listening to them, you'd just about think they invented rock and roll."
John "Bonebraker" Hannibal, Crystal Deth
The van was moving again, taking them to another sold-out show. Natasha wasn't talking to him, although that wasn't anything new. He thought about it, trying to pinpoint the last time when they'd actually been able to talk to each other without fighting. He gave up after a while, although he thought it might have been sometime in 1993. He couldn't remember. Hell, he couldn't remember much anymore, but he knew that back then, he hadn't been any better. He'd probably been worse, actually, but then again, so had Natasha.
It probably was 1993, he realized, because that was the year that they'd had their last big album, Virgin Mary with a Twist of Lime. He hated that album.
He hadn't spoken with either of the other two since before that, though. Wayne, who went by Blotto onstage because, (and this was another quote, they were just full of soundbites, it seemed) "Wayne is a pussy name," hadn't spoken to him unless it was absolutely necessary since the late eighties.
And as for Jimmy...
Well, it wasn't too late for Jimmy to stick a knife in his back, now was it?
It hadn't always been this way. They'd all known each other nearly twenty years now, ever since they'd all met in a coffeeshop and had just kind of fell in together. Back then, they'd all been stupid idealists, convinced that they were going to change the world, make it a better place, with songs like "Underage Pussy", and "One Week, Seven Drunk Tanks". He couldn't remember exactly, but he was also sure that they'd been communists, too, or at least had pretended to be. Everyone else had done their share of drugs, of course, but he'd always done more than his share. And then Jimmy went and got married, and he found religion, and blah de blah de blah de blah. It was all very nice for Jimmy, he was sure, but that didn't mean that the little prick had to go rubbing his face in it all the time. He was always trying to convert Alex, like he was a fucking Bible-thumping preacher addressing a congregation of sinners. No thanks very much, Alex happened to like his particular sins, and if Jimmy didn't accept that, then Jimmy could take his Bible and shove it up his ass.
Natasha was the only one who could even make eye contact with him anymore, and sometimes it pissed him off. He could always tell when she was judging him, could almost hear her thinking, "What went wrong?" Well, fuck her, he would think at those times. Fuck the lot of them.
Other times though, he would catch her mood, and it would depress the hell out of him. He would look back over his life and think of all the things he'd done wrong, and there were a depressingly large amount of things gone wrong. But those moods wouldn't last long, and he'd usually blame them on a bad line, or a bad joint.
The motion of the van was putting him to sleep, and he had time for one last thought before it took him. I've wasted my life, he thought. I've spent half of my life in this stupid van, and for what? Before he could think of an answer, he was asleep.
"The Jesus Complex came out of the British punk scene along with other influential bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols, carving out their place in the already overcrowded scene in huge, brutal chunks..."
Excerpt from A History of Rock and Roll, by Andrew Thompson
He was alone in his dressing room. The spread was much better this time, but he didn't care. He no longer had an appetite. He hadn't eaten in three days, unless you counted snorting coke as eating.
He was falling apart. He realized that now, had always known it back in his mind somewhere, but now there was no escaping it. He was falling apart.
He looked up again at the ghastly image staring out at him from the dressing room mirror. His nose had a sunken look, as though it had collapsed in on itself. His face was drawn tight, like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. He thought he could see his skull through the thin layer of skin covering it. Jesus Christ, he looked like a skeleton. I need something to calm me down, he thought, patting his pockets. After a moment, he found the vial, and started going through the familiar ritual. A few minutes later, his head was buzzing slightly with the rush of cocaine, already fading out. He looked around the room, and came to a decision. He searched around for a pen, then a piece of paper. After a few moment, he put the pen down and walked out. After all, the little shits had sold their blood to see him, hadn't they? He couldn't disappoint his adoring public, now could he?
"The Jesus Complex gave their final show on January 21, 2006, in front of 10,000 screaming fans. Of course, none of them had the slightest idea what singer/songwriter Alex Grimswold had in mind for an encore..."
Excerpt from Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex
God damn, he thought. Now that was a show.
Apparently the fans agreed. Looking out now, he saw rows upon rows of screaming fans. His angry face stared back at him from several rows, parroting out every stupid soundbite he'd ever said, drunk or sober. Many in the audience were in various states of undress, including three angry kids who were stomping around as naked as the day were born.
For a moment, it felt like old times, and he'd caught Natasha smiling at him a couple of times. God, it had felt good. For one moment, he thought about backing out. But then he felt the vial in his pocket, and he realized that there was no way out of it. He was in too deep. If he chickened out now, he would never do it.
He tapped the microphone, sending a wave of feedback bouncing off the acoustically perfect dome of the auditorium. "All right, listen up you little shits."
There was a moment of loud cheering, then they calmed down.
"Listen up, you bastards. I just wanted to thank you for one fantastic farewell tour."
Another roar washed over him, and he rocked back with it, feeling it like an actual physical force.
Grinning now, he said, "Without you wankers, I would've eaten a bullet long ago. Sometimes, I almost wish I had."
The three down in the pit were brawling now, and the crowd was nearly rioting. "Now, I just want you to know that right now is the best I've felt in years. My God, this might be the first thing that I've felt, period, in years."
They roared.
"But it all ends tonight."
The shot silenced the roaring of the crowd immediately. The only sound was the feedback of the microphone, squealing around the arena and bouncing off the walls.
"...Pandemonium ensued. It took police over three hours to restore order and even get the paramedics on stage. Of course, by then, Grimswold was long since dead."
From the final chapter of Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex
Natasha looked out the window of the van, feeling slightly nauseous from the night before. She had gotten way too drunk at the funeral, and she had a serious hangover. The shades were serving two purposes right now, and she would've traded everything she had just to see him again. She'd spent the last two weeks crying, even though she'd thought that she couldn't feel anything for him that same day that everything went wrong.
The van felt different now, emptier, even though Alex hadn't really been there those last couple of months. Everything was different. It hadn't seemed like he'd been doing much more than just phoning it in, but now she realized that he had been the glue holding them all together. Without him, there was no band. They were no longer the most influential band since the Beatles. Now they were just three people who had lost a friend.
She sighed, and looked out the window. They'd come to a stop. She looked around for a moment, experiencing a feeling of deja vu. It took a moment, but then she realized what it was. This was the same gas station they'd stopped at a few days before...
She let the thought die, and stepped out of the car, feeling tense. She stretched, and walked around to the restroom.
A few minutes later, she was at the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, the glasses too large for her face. They made her look like some horrible bug, and she took them off and threw them in the trash can. Her eyes were puffy, but they looked better to her somehow. She smiled, taking a moment to straighten her hair and smooth her skirt.
As she did so, she felt something in her pocket. She pulled it out, and looked at it. Alex's note.
The tears came all over again, and it took a minute for her to recover. Finally, she straightened out, wiped her eyes, and walked out of the bathroom, leaving the note on the sink.
The note simply read, Fuck this. It's not fun anymore.
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