Fourteen Seconds

Warning: The following is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This story contains violence and graphic descriptions of drugs/drug addiction. Discretion is advised.

I'm not sure what keeps me in this room.

Nothing is really forcing me to stay. Everything is telling me to leave. But I can’t force myself up, off the couch, and I can’t escape.

I tell myself it’s because they’ll know where I’m going. They’ll know that I’m going to get more.

I don’t really think they’d stop me, though.

Everything is too bright, like a hospital room or a warehouse. The lights are fluorescent, the walls are white, the polished marble floor glints painfully, reflecting the coldness of the room.

For your convenience, Mr. Thatcher.

I sit on the bed, half naked, my heart pounding. I need something. There's a familiar buzz in my ears and my hands are shaking. I need something.

I want to rummage through the drawers over by the door, but I know I won't find anything. Nothing I want.

There's a knock on the door. A nasally female voice calls in, "Half hour, Mr. Thatcher."

I don't give a reply. I don't think she was expecting one. My nerve endings are on fire.

I need something. I need to feel it pumping through my veins. I need the high, need to feel my senses leave me. I need to abandon my mind before I see that crowd. My spine tingles, making me shudder.

My hands nervously clench and unclench. This room is too cold. I never like dressing rooms. I'd rather just be out there with Caleb and Tom and Jay.

Another knock. I want to scream at them to go away.

The door opens and Tom walks in uninvited. I consider yelling at him, but my thoughts are nervous and quick and pounding, synchronized with my rabbit heartbeats, and it wouldn't end the way I'd like it to.

"Twenty five till our set," he says, "and you still look like hell."

I run my fingers through my hair. "Give me something." I don’t need to specify. He knows me well enough.

He raises his eyebrows. "Man, you'll be dead by the end of the night. Is the heroin even out of your system yet?" My jittery silence is answer enough. "I didn't think so. You're gonna get a high off the crowd in just a couple minutes. There isn't even any need to take more."

I lunge at him, catching a fistful of his shirt. “There’s always a need,” I hiss, but the words sound different outside my mouth rather than in, and he grimaces. I meant for them to sound poetic, like my lyrics in the journals that I spend my life poring over. They just sound sick and twisted.

He just lets his upper eyelids droop into a disinterested gaze and stands there calmly, because he knows that I want him to fight me.

I shove him away from me in disgust. I pace back and forth in the sterile looking room, feeling cramped. "I need it, Tom. I don't even care what it is. I just need something."

He crosses his arms. "And I need Rita to call me back. Neither of us are gonna get what we need, Collin."

I throw myself down on the couch, my body shaking. "Later, then," I say in a voice that is meant to sound submissive, but ends up sounding like a challenge. Words don’t come easily to me when I’m craving. That’s why I need the high.  

A rap on the door. "Five minutes, Mr. Thatcher."

Tom calls back, "Get Caleb and Jay!"

There is the sound of scurrying outside the door and knocking down the hall.

I clench my fists and give him a look that I use whenever someone tries to get in my way, which isn’t frequently. "I need it."

"No," Tom says firmly, and then I remember that that look doesn’t work on him. If had it I would have remembered. "You're doing this show without it."

I shake my head. I won't make it. I know damn well I won’t make it.

Tom drags me off the couch and uses his right hand to tousle my hair, trying to make me look less like a homeless person. "Alright," he says. "You're good."

"I'm not good," I reply, but he's not listening to me; he's walking out the door to meet up with the guys.

I follow out of habit, still not wearing a shirt. Backstage, everything buzzes louder. I can hear the roar of the crowd as if through a tunnel... Fourteen Seconds... Fourteen Seconds...

I stare anxiously at nothing. Caleb stomps on my toes impossibly hard, making my foot smart and briefly bringing me to reality. He looks at me like he knows exactly what I'm thinking and doesn't like it at all.

We run out on stage.

The buzz inside my head merges with the roar of the crowd, and for a second, I can't feel my bones and I think that maybe, just maybe, I really don't need it after all.

Jay picks out his intro to our opening, Fighter, and then I feel myself floating and I smile, feeding off the sound of thousands and thousands of people chanting my name.

My voice comes out of me the way water falls down a waterfall, loud and destructive. They sing it back to me, this mass of people who I have never known and who think that they know me.

"United by our hatred,

Divided my our fear,

Tonight, we fight,

Because the future is for grieving..."

I sound otherworldly. My hands have stopped shaking. I feel drunk on fame once again. I try out a shaky grin and the cheers reach a fever pitch. I close my eyes, breathing out the last words of the song.

"Feel me."

I turn and smile at Tom, my feet in a fighting stance, my hands gripping the mic like a lifeline.

The high wears off too quickly.

Halfway through the set, we do an acoustic. I hate acoustics. They’re slow and soft and you can’t scream to them. Or, that is, most people can’t. I have a habit of doing whatever I want.

The crowd goes quiet and my voice comes out of me, harder than it should be in such a slow song. I don’t really care all that much. I can feel the energy in the room, but it’s distant, not enough.

The crowd goes silent.

I feel my body shaking again, my heart pounding in my head. Everything hurts.

Then a single person, somewhere in the back of the crowd, says my name.

I’m not sure why it happens, but in the middle of this slow, melodic song that my voice is making painful, they start quietly saying my name. Not Fourteen Seconds. Collin.

It keeps growing in volume as more people join in the chant, all their eyes trained on my swaying body. I’m so confused. I just want some…

There’s a collective gasp from the crowd as I collapse, my whole being violently shaking. I don’t believe in souls. But if I did, my soul would be crying. I don’t believe in God. But if I did, he is clearly punishing me.

And then,

I

Forget

The

Words.

They keep playing the song without me, but the crowd has stilled and stares at me silently. I can feel the audience holding their breaths.

I don't move. I need that drug.

I push myself off the ground and stumble off backstage.

I feel like I should be worried about the rest of Fourteen Seconds back there, alone on the stage in front of the crowd. But my vision is tunneling and it doesn't matter.

I feel physically ill. I drag myself to the bathroom, and with no dignity whatsoever, kneel in front of the toilet and puke my guts out.

Everything is ringing again.

I hate this.

My burning desire crescendos and morphs into loathing. If I had a gun...

The thought startles me. I feel my stomach violently lurch, and I try to hold down its contents.

What did I do to deserve this? This endless suffering, this constant agony… what?

I don’t so much hear as feel footsteps outside the bathroom door. There’s a knock and I don’t reply. The person tries the handle and finds it locked.

A voice calls down the hallway, “I think he’s in here!”

I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.

If I had a gun…

Who would I take? If I had a gun… that guy in the hoodie at our very first gig, back in Pasadena, who’d first given it to me?

No. Something felt wrong about that.

If I had a gun…

My father, who always detested me for my fame?

I couldn’t do that.

If I had a gun…

Maybe I would take Jessica Montclaire, the first and last human being I ever cared about.

I wasn’t a murderer. I might hate her for the rest of my life, but I could never kill her.

Me.

The thought comes unbidden, making my stomach twist again. It snares my thoughts in its noose.

Would I do it?

Of course I would.

But could I do it?

That was much harder to answer. Could I actually take myself?

You'd be better off dead.

There’s so much you haven’t done.

There’s no point anymore.

They’d never forgive you.

I am suddenly very thankful that I don’t actually have a handgun lying next to me, because I truly don’t know what I’d do with it.

I vomit again.

They have picked the lock on the bathroom door.

My manager storms into the room, his face red. His nose scrunches up when he’s angry, I notice weakly.

I am lying down and I don’t remember lying down.

His face changes drastically when he sees the vomit. “Oh,” he says.

I grin at him, not really showing my teeth, but baring them. “Expecting someone else?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers, surveying the room. “Yes I was.”

He was expecting to see me in here getting high. But no. No, this was far worse.

A security guard comes in and throws me over his back. I couldn’t care less.

“You’re going to rehab, Collin,” my manager says. “We’re getting you help.”

If I had a gun...