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where I see you dead,
and I can’t breathe…
because I led you into a place where you couldn’t win.”
The words of The Decoy, the song I’d written last night, trailed off, and it wasn’t because I was too drunk to remember the lyrics. I was. It had already happened twice tonight.
But this was something different, created from the same bitter emotions. The song was causing fucking pain. Too close to home, perhaps.
The crowd continued to sing to the beat of my band, having learned the chorus quickly, but seconds later, many gave up, wanting to hear the person they’d paid to—wanting to hear me.
Heat spread through my body. There were too many eyes on me, too many glares from people and their cameras.
Cat…she liked photos.
She liked drawings, pictures of any kind.
Cat, who I’d seen last night in a lowly bar where I’d played for only three men.
I’d stepped in the path of the trouble following her as she bolted for the door, blood on her lips from the cock she’d bitten.
I had wanted her to get away. Torturous nightmares of what I feared happened afterward plagued me as I wriggled beneath my bedsheet last night, agitating the cat who slept on top of it.
A thousand flashes brought me back to the moment—I stood on the stage, my band silent around me. Over my shoulder, I checked their questioning glares and lack of patience.
I took them all in, stepping back and away from them. The mic in my hand felt poisonous now, being the reason I gave Cat up in the first place.
How the fuck could I do that to her?
Why the fuck didn’t I fight harder last night?
Security around the stage stood sternly, snidely warning me I wasn’t leaving. Daniel stood amongst them, whisper-shouting about Alerion on his back through a series of text messages.
The shiner around my left eye felt tight as I careened back to the crowd and blinked to the flashing of lights, blinding me from so many angles as people tried to catch photos of my downfall.
Maybe that wasn’t the reason for their photographs. Maybe they just wanted as many photos as they could get, with their evening with me being cut short, but paranoia was a dangerous thing, assaulting me daily.
A group of girls hung around in the VIP section, and my attention shifted to them to avoid camera flashes. Some of them were the daughters of has-been reality stars and the rich men who fed their insecurities with infidelities that constantly made headlines in Z-list magazines. These girls only had interest in snapping photos of themselves, all heavily filtered and looking nothing like themselves. Two others stood nearby, a clear contrast to the people only a foot away. Their clothes were different, cheaper and older, handed down from strangers to charity stores to them in exchange for small change. They had no cameras to snap pictures, just the memories that would live in their heads. Their smiles hid trauma and pain, and their skinnier-than-the-A-list-wannabes frames spoke of their hunger.
I took the poisonous mic to my lips, my eyes on the crowd for the few seconds it took me to open my mouth and say the final words. The crowd cheered, hoping I’d come to my senses. But song lyrics didn’t come out. The only words that did were, “Show is over, folks.”
The show was over an hour early.
And I didn’t care.
Disappointment filled the room when I chose not to elaborate. The truth was, I didn’t have a fancy excuse. I didn’t have any excuse. I just didn’t want to fucking be here.
I wanted to drink myself to death and find Cat in whatever came after life and beg her to forgive me.
The noises in the room faded into one big sound that annoyed the fucking shit out of me. I let the mic fall from my hands, causing a louder noise to pierce through the declining atmosphere around me, and hush it all.
A step back had my boots creaking, and I heard it over the silence now inhabiting this venue.
My mind convinced me it was a good idea to walk over to the VIP section. The spoilt rich brats convinced themselves I was heading their way, and giggling commenced.
I wasn’t heading their way.
Even if I was looking for an easy lay, a face of filler wasn’t my cup of tea. Neither were the botched breast implants that were proudly put on display, surgery scars and all.
