Brigit's Flame -- "Myths"
Prompt: "myths"
Word Count: 1,443
Warnings: language, drugs, I honestly have no idea what else
Author's Note: Please excuse me while I go pass out in my bed for the five hours between now and when I get up for class. XD Thank you to eltea for beta-reading. ♥
"MYTHS"
They’d called him Jason Friday, because “Voorhees” would have opened up a whole can of vaguely-copyrighted worms.
They had thought about shit like that, in the beginning; for they had, once, believed it made a difference.
Jason likes to look up at the wall of his office, where thumbtacks of every imaginable color pin bits and pieces of memorabilia like plastic and paper butterflies’ wings, dead now, but they flutter when the breeze infiltrates the screen on the window, and sometimes he imagines they’re alive again.
Sometimes he doesn’t want them to be.
Appropriately, it’s fragments he remembers-photographs and clippings and article headings in a font one size too big, a little blurry and probably exaggerated. He figures it’s the gist that’s the point.
Dan was gambling from the beginning. He knew his dad would pull some strings and grease some palms, knew that all he really had to do was pull together a couple guys with passable talent, and then the easy part-write a hit. There was a formula, though, because everything had a pattern, and every pattern was predictable. You just had to make it catchy, was all, catchy enough to invade the unsuspecting mind and curl up contentedly there until they all bought the album just to get the damn thing out of their heads. And you made it mainstream-a little bit rock and a little bit pop and a wailing solo to bring in a few guilty metalheads-to maximize the possibility that they’d hear it.
Because once they heard it, they were yours.
It was probably the best when they were still that-one-band and not yet antIdote. Then it was just the hardcore fans at the sardine-tin clubs, just the kids who knew every damn word of every damn song and screamed them back at you like they believed them. Jason hadn’t cared about the money then; it was just him and those kids, him and himself reflected in the white-oval faces that swam beyond the stage lights. Just him and Dan and Vic and Ben; just dumb kids and dumb kids and the fucking music-noise that they all made together.
Of course it couldn’t last like that. That-one-band became antIdote became some sort of chimera that ate Jason’s gold-silver dreams and spat them back out iron, cheaper and stronger and a hell of a lot more efficient.
You’re going to be mythical. You’re going to be legends. You’re going to be rock stars.
He’d loved it, too, for a while-loved the pyrotechnics that practically set Dan’s flamboyant-as-fuck pants on fire; loved the endless rows of seats and the endless tides of bodies that filled them; loved the cocaine and the champagne and the clumps of confetti under his boots on the stage; loved the screams and the sound-checks and the sanctioned stupidity. He’d loved the interviews, most of which he was partly sober for; and the red-carpet shit, where he tried to stay sixty percent rational; and the parties, which he didn’t remember at all.
He’d loved shredding out history with every overblown riff. He was Jason fucking Friday, and nothing and nobody was going to stop him now.
They’d lost it, though. Lost it, of course, he should say. They should never have expected to be able to contain it. They should never have believed that their hydra could be held.
They started fighting. The drugs got worse. The tabloids had a field day; their magnifying glasses compounded the problems under the lens. Dan power-tripped daily instead of weekly; Vic got into heroin and disappeared for days. Andrea didn’t believe him when he told her he didn’t fuck around, that he respected her, that he loved her, that she was the only good thing left, and the phone went quiet, and he could just see her freezing over. He shoved the phone at Ben, almost dropped it-Ben she would believe. Ben wouldn’t lie to her. Ben didn’t lie to anybody except the reporters, and they were more like sharks than people anyway.
And there were good times, like the week later, when Vic was out and Dan was out and he and Ben just sat in the van with two pepperoni pizzas and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and wrote the song about Andrea. They just wrote it, and Jason laughed and cried and shot Pepsi foam out his nose doing either and both.
Dan sang it way too sexy, but she knew. She listened; it was one of the things about her that was irreplaceable.
It fell apart not long after that. First Vic didn’t come back, and they had to drag the tour to the next city without him; a stadium wasn’t going to wait. They hired a backup bassist, and not too many people complained. They had their phones, but he never called.
It was Dan next; he wanted to do shit on his own. It wasn’t fair, really, for him to pull a stunt like that-because he was the one with the brand recognition. A guitar sounded like a guitar, and a drum set sounded like a drum set. Dan sounded like The Guy from antIdote, because he was, and he could milk the familiarity until it bled.
He’d forgotten, of course, that Ben wrote all the songs, because Ben was the one who breathed life and love and some little hint of heaven into scribbled music notes on a piece of binder paper.
Jason let go. He’d believed in them, in antIdote, in the band, in the music, in himself-for a little while, at least. Giving up the hope wasn’t easy. It meant giving up the legend. Giving up the myth. Giving up the anonymous fame, giving up a face everybody knew they’d seen and a soul more exclusive than the clubs they’d crashed in the heyday.
He gave up, all right. Deleted the plaintive messages; ignored the emails; sat on creaky motel beds and played until his hands shook and his fingers were raw.
Some fuckin’ legend.
Two weeks later, an SUV hit Ben’s Volvo head-on.
Jason had deleted that message, too, but he saw it in the paper. He called the airport, and he screamed at the woman when she told him that the earliest flight left tomorrow at three. She didn’t have time to hang up on him before the dam broke, and then he was crying again, for Ben and Andrea and the things he’d thought he could be.
They didn’t care about Jason Friday at the hospital; he had to get a visitor’s badge like everybody else. He stood there swallowing at the foot of Ben’s bed, because there was nothing to say but Sorry, and that one stuck.
Ben looked amused. Hey, there, studmuffin.
Jason made it all the way to the bedside before his knees gave way.
What do you want? What do you want, Ben? I’ll do it; just tell me, and I will. I’ll do anything you fucking want, Ben, just-Jesus fucking Christ; Benny, baby, just tell me, and I’ll do whatever you want me to.
Ben’s thin white lips curved into a smug white smile.
You know what I want, Jay.
So he’d done it.
He got clean and married Andrea and settled down and taught guitar lessons four days a week (and five in summer).
And when Gavin was colicky, when three straight hours of sleep sounded merciful, when he wanted coke so bad his brain planned elaborately how to keep Andrea from ever finding out-when it came to that, and he’d known it would, he thought of the yellow square that he’d ripped out of the newspaper on the motel step, the one with the picture of what was left of Ben’s Volvo.
And that was enough.
Ben has a new car now, which Jason can see from his office window if Ben’s garage door is open, because Ben lives two houses down in this suburban cul-de-sac.
Jason smiles a little, watching the wings flutter, and imagines the letters peeling off the pages and swirling around the room. The infinite permutations of the alphabet amazed him a whole lot more when he was teaching his child to read.
Gavin comes in, all three of his ear piercings glinting gold-silver, and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Dad,” he says, “I want to learn the one you wrote for Mom, if you’ve got time.”
Jason turns and grins, folding his arms across his chest. “Got your eyes on a girlfriend?” he asks.
Gavin rolls his eyes. “No. I just think it’s cool.”
Cool.
Awesome.
Epic.
Legendary.
Nah. Cool will do.
Word Count: 1,443
Warnings: language, drugs, I honestly have no idea what else
Author's Note: Please excuse me while I go pass out in my bed for the five hours between now and when I get up for class. XD Thank you to eltea for beta-reading. ♥
"MYTHS"
They’d called him Jason Friday, because “Voorhees” would have opened up a whole can of vaguely-copyrighted worms.
They had thought about shit like that, in the beginning; for they had, once, believed it made a difference.
Jason likes to look up at the wall of his office, where thumbtacks of every imaginable color pin bits and pieces of memorabilia like plastic and paper butterflies’ wings, dead now, but they flutter when the breeze infiltrates the screen on the window, and sometimes he imagines they’re alive again.
Sometimes he doesn’t want them to be.
Appropriately, it’s fragments he remembers-photographs and clippings and article headings in a font one size too big, a little blurry and probably exaggerated. He figures it’s the gist that’s the point.
Dan was gambling from the beginning. He knew his dad would pull some strings and grease some palms, knew that all he really had to do was pull together a couple guys with passable talent, and then the easy part-write a hit. There was a formula, though, because everything had a pattern, and every pattern was predictable. You just had to make it catchy, was all, catchy enough to invade the unsuspecting mind and curl up contentedly there until they all bought the album just to get the damn thing out of their heads. And you made it mainstream-a little bit rock and a little bit pop and a wailing solo to bring in a few guilty metalheads-to maximize the possibility that they’d hear it.
Because once they heard it, they were yours.
It was probably the best when they were still that-one-band and not yet antIdote. Then it was just the hardcore fans at the sardine-tin clubs, just the kids who knew every damn word of every damn song and screamed them back at you like they believed them. Jason hadn’t cared about the money then; it was just him and those kids, him and himself reflected in the white-oval faces that swam beyond the stage lights. Just him and Dan and Vic and Ben; just dumb kids and dumb kids and the fucking music-noise that they all made together.
Of course it couldn’t last like that. That-one-band became antIdote became some sort of chimera that ate Jason’s gold-silver dreams and spat them back out iron, cheaper and stronger and a hell of a lot more efficient.
You’re going to be mythical. You’re going to be legends. You’re going to be rock stars.
He’d loved it, too, for a while-loved the pyrotechnics that practically set Dan’s flamboyant-as-fuck pants on fire; loved the endless rows of seats and the endless tides of bodies that filled them; loved the cocaine and the champagne and the clumps of confetti under his boots on the stage; loved the screams and the sound-checks and the sanctioned stupidity. He’d loved the interviews, most of which he was partly sober for; and the red-carpet shit, where he tried to stay sixty percent rational; and the parties, which he didn’t remember at all.
He’d loved shredding out history with every overblown riff. He was Jason fucking Friday, and nothing and nobody was going to stop him now.
They’d lost it, though. Lost it, of course, he should say. They should never have expected to be able to contain it. They should never have believed that their hydra could be held.
They started fighting. The drugs got worse. The tabloids had a field day; their magnifying glasses compounded the problems under the lens. Dan power-tripped daily instead of weekly; Vic got into heroin and disappeared for days. Andrea didn’t believe him when he told her he didn’t fuck around, that he respected her, that he loved her, that she was the only good thing left, and the phone went quiet, and he could just see her freezing over. He shoved the phone at Ben, almost dropped it-Ben she would believe. Ben wouldn’t lie to her. Ben didn’t lie to anybody except the reporters, and they were more like sharks than people anyway.
And there were good times, like the week later, when Vic was out and Dan was out and he and Ben just sat in the van with two pepperoni pizzas and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and wrote the song about Andrea. They just wrote it, and Jason laughed and cried and shot Pepsi foam out his nose doing either and both.
Dan sang it way too sexy, but she knew. She listened; it was one of the things about her that was irreplaceable.
It fell apart not long after that. First Vic didn’t come back, and they had to drag the tour to the next city without him; a stadium wasn’t going to wait. They hired a backup bassist, and not too many people complained. They had their phones, but he never called.
It was Dan next; he wanted to do shit on his own. It wasn’t fair, really, for him to pull a stunt like that-because he was the one with the brand recognition. A guitar sounded like a guitar, and a drum set sounded like a drum set. Dan sounded like The Guy from antIdote, because he was, and he could milk the familiarity until it bled.
He’d forgotten, of course, that Ben wrote all the songs, because Ben was the one who breathed life and love and some little hint of heaven into scribbled music notes on a piece of binder paper.
Jason let go. He’d believed in them, in antIdote, in the band, in the music, in himself-for a little while, at least. Giving up the hope wasn’t easy. It meant giving up the legend. Giving up the myth. Giving up the anonymous fame, giving up a face everybody knew they’d seen and a soul more exclusive than the clubs they’d crashed in the heyday.
He gave up, all right. Deleted the plaintive messages; ignored the emails; sat on creaky motel beds and played until his hands shook and his fingers were raw.
Some fuckin’ legend.
Two weeks later, an SUV hit Ben’s Volvo head-on.
Jason had deleted that message, too, but he saw it in the paper. He called the airport, and he screamed at the woman when she told him that the earliest flight left tomorrow at three. She didn’t have time to hang up on him before the dam broke, and then he was crying again, for Ben and Andrea and the things he’d thought he could be.
They didn’t care about Jason Friday at the hospital; he had to get a visitor’s badge like everybody else. He stood there swallowing at the foot of Ben’s bed, because there was nothing to say but Sorry, and that one stuck.
Ben looked amused. Hey, there, studmuffin.
Jason made it all the way to the bedside before his knees gave way.
What do you want? What do you want, Ben? I’ll do it; just tell me, and I will. I’ll do anything you fucking want, Ben, just-Jesus fucking Christ; Benny, baby, just tell me, and I’ll do whatever you want me to.
Ben’s thin white lips curved into a smug white smile.
You know what I want, Jay.
So he’d done it.
He got clean and married Andrea and settled down and taught guitar lessons four days a week (and five in summer).
And when Gavin was colicky, when three straight hours of sleep sounded merciful, when he wanted coke so bad his brain planned elaborately how to keep Andrea from ever finding out-when it came to that, and he’d known it would, he thought of the yellow square that he’d ripped out of the newspaper on the motel step, the one with the picture of what was left of Ben’s Volvo.
And that was enough.
Ben has a new car now, which Jason can see from his office window if Ben’s garage door is open, because Ben lives two houses down in this suburban cul-de-sac.
Jason smiles a little, watching the wings flutter, and imagines the letters peeling off the pages and swirling around the room. The infinite permutations of the alphabet amazed him a whole lot more when he was teaching his child to read.
Gavin comes in, all three of his ear piercings glinting gold-silver, and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Dad,” he says, “I want to learn the one you wrote for Mom, if you’ve got time.”
Jason turns and grins, folding his arms across his chest. “Got your eyes on a girlfriend?” he asks.
Gavin rolls his eyes. “No. I just think it’s cool.”
Cool.
Awesome.
Epic.
Legendary.
Nah. Cool will do.