As Johnny slowly turned around he tried to match the voice to a person in his head. His mind flickered through thousands of faces he had seen recently, from hotel staff, tour crew, fans and even people from around his neighborhood, none of them seemed to fit. Expect one. The one man he didn’t want or need to see tonight, the one man he owed more money than he had right now.

The man in question stood there, a smile plastered to his face; he looked pleased with himself, satisfied that he would be once again ruining Johnny’s temporary happiness.

“You know you still owe me money right?” he beamed down at the table, taking note of all the band members seated around, eyes fixed between Johnny and the new presence stood behind him.

“Can we please do this later?” Johnny replied, his voice barely audible above the hub of the bar.

“Later ended a while ago darling, you still owe me quite a bit. Now am I going to get it or am I going to start smashing in the faces of all of your pretty friends?” At that point Matt bolted up, his chair flying behind him, he strode towards the stranger, getting his face as close as physically possible.

“I’m sorry ‘friend’, do we have a problem here?” His fists tightened, Johnny could see that Matt’s mind had just changed from flight to fight mode. “As far as I can see, you’re ruining our quiet evening here, now why don’t you turn your fat ego around and prance back to your minders over there?” Matt gestured through gritted teeth to a group of suspicious looking men huddled around the bar, closely watching the group’s actions.

“Okay”. The man smiled warmly at Matt and acknowledged the other men he then turned to Johnny. “We’ll have to do this some other time then wont we princess?”

As the group cleared from the bar conversation began to return to normal, apart from a few questions directed at Johnny about the man. Johnny brushed them all off saying he was an overenthusiastic fan who thought that Johnny owed him something. He promised to tell them all later about it but now he was tired and the situation had suddenly ruined the atmosphere and bought reality crashing down again.

Johnny left his friends early and pulled his hood up over his head as he left the bar. He walked quickly through the streets hoping that the gang wouldn’t turn up around the corner, ready to jump him. The heavens suddenly opened and rain began to heavily spill from the sky. Counting the change in his pocket Johnny decided that he had enough to catch a bus downtown, back to his flat.

He paid the driver and sat down, the bus was empty apart from a few homeless people and teenagers who had obviously been thrown out of the clubs early for being underage. There was one girl though, who sat with her hood up, dirty blonde hair lingering in her eyes, she looked lost. In a split second the girl looked up, met her eyes with Johnny’s and jumped off the bus at the next possible stop into the night.

Johnny sighed, she was pretty, he wondered for a while where she might be going this late at night. Before he knew it his stop came up and he hopped off the bus and made it into his apartment.

The night had shaken him and had triggered a voice in Johnny’s head screaming how ‘useless’ he was and how ‘it would benefit everyone if he was gone’. Tears began to burn his cheeks as he made his way over to his bed. Johnny sat down and took off his hoodie and shirt. He then bent forward and pulled a new, shiny razorblade out from under the mattress. “Just once more won’t hurt,” he whispered as he felt a wash of relief swim over him, he laid back, he had cut too deep this time and he knew it. It was too late though.

Darkness surrounded.

Notes

I'm so, so, so, so sorry that it has taken so long for me to post a new chapter. I've had a lot of personal issues to deal with and decided that perhaps putting the story on hold for a while would be best for everyone :)

I'm hoping to knock a couple more chapters out in the next few days to keep the story going!