My Fucking Nightmare

I think I was way in over my head with this girl. Hmm, perhaps that’s not a good way to put it. Okay, maybe I meant to say I was head over heels for this girl. As high maintenance as she is, I needed someone like her. She kept my head afloat with all the feelings about my ex that recently surfaced again. I was so grateful to feel loved and appreciated by a girl, I’d almost completely forgotten what that cold bitch even did.
I dropped her off at 4100 just after we ate a massive steak and seafood dinner. I needed the extra aphrodisiacs, as I planned on taking her on a one-way trip to pound town tonight when she got off. Well, one way or another she’d be getting off. Shit, my place needed some serious tidying up though. Living as a bachelor got really shitty. Occasionally when the guys came around for beers I would get too caught up and forget about cleaning. Or just put it off constantly. Yet no matter how shitty my place looked, Johnny’s always looked way worse. And I mean, way, way worse.
On the way home I stopped into a small convenience store owned by a nice Korean couple and bought a bouquet of assorted flowers. She didn’t seem to like any specific kind, so I figured as long as they were brightly coloured and fragrant, what could go wrong? She’d be off in about six hours so I had time for a nap. Didn’t sleep well last night. Too much thinking about her, and the pressure of releasing the new album. It catches up to us one way or another.
Bishop met me in the garage where I left him, barking as usual. I was grateful there were no neighbours around to hear him go absolutely berserk. Sometimes though, it was too lonely. “Come on, Bisoo, let’s get some chow into you.” He followed me into the house after he stopped barking and waited at his food dish for me to dump a heaping scoop of high-end kibble he seemed to enjoy a little too much. As he snacked away I turned on the tube and checked my messages. Two from Phil, one from Brian, and one from Zack. Mostly about grabbing a couple beers down at our local spot, but man I didn’t feel like going out tonight at all.
I went to my writing room in the very back of my house where sat a stool at a workbench that was littered with papers and notes of literally everything and anything that came to my mind. Whether it was the middle of the night or day, if something worthy of writing down popped into my head, I wrote it down in the mix. Lately it’d been lots of cheesy lovey-dovey stuff. Stuff I wouldn’t usually write. I mean, times change right? And that girl…damn, that girl.
Every inch of me was so grateful that Brian got her number from Melissa. As nervous as I was about it at first, seeing as I made it my rule to never see a fan, I had to make her an exception. It was one of the best risks I ever took. She was goddamn beautiful. Heart-stopping, absolutely incredible in bed. So I sat at that workbench and poured my heart out onto that goddamn paper. Let the emotions flow and the rhythm take place. Soon enough, I had something to work with.
I shot Brian a text telling him to come over if he had nothing going on, but he must have gone out with Zack, or was too busy nailing Melissa to care. He had it bad too. I mean, what, after a few months they were shacked up, talking about plans for the future. Can’t blame him, I mean it’s a solitary life. We never know if we’re gonna find that one right person. So when we meet a girl who has literally everything we could ever want, of course it’s gonna go quick. Plans will get made fast.
And, if I can write any of these songs as fast as that, this album will be produced and released in no time. For the time being, the record label would be off our asses. But then we’d have the other stresses of press, interviews, photo shoots, and the most strenuous: the touring. Oh god, I’d give anything to not have to go on a six month tour right away. A couple months at most would be satisfactory at best. Remind the fans that we’re still here and alive.
It was just after eleven when I stopped. I hadn’t realized that in the couple hours I’d been hunched over the table on my stool that my back had become horrendously sore and the tips of my fingers were numb from writing and sketching concepts. Not to mention how hungry I’d gotten, or how dry my eyes were. The dust that this room collected made it all the more harder to breathe. Bishop waited outside the room as he usually did for me to come back out; odd dog never came into this room. I wasn’t sure why but it spooked me a little bit. Maybe it was the murals of old concept artwork for our previous albums on the wall.
I slid off the stool and arched my back to crack it, listening to the vertebrae pop back into place and all the pressure slowly ease away. Yawning, I turned off the light and left the room, closing its door behind me. Bishop followed me into the kitchen and sat beside me while I checked the fridge. “What do you think, Bisoo, a light snack?” he groaned and slid down to lie across the floor. Wagging his tail, his eyes wouldn’t leave me even as I backed away to the table with leftover chicken in my hand. I peeled some off the bone and tossed it at him, his big head lifting off the floor again to catch it. Smacking his gob in a satisfied means, he plopped back down on the floor again.
I ate in silence and checked my phone for any messages. Usually when I wrote I left all distractions in the kitchen where they wouldn’t, well, distract me. So far there was nothing, but as I ate, I got a text from Harriet. I responded asking how her shift was going, but she didn’t get back to me, so I tidied up and headed to the living room to turn on a movie.
To my surprise, TMZ had something on about Benji and his brother at a club downtown. I was surprised that they’d even be here in Los Angeles and not at home in Maryland visiting their mother. Should probably give them a call, I thought, the idea of a possible collaboration entering my mind.
Maybe I ought to run it by the guys first, though. Collabs aren’t exactly the easiest thing to arrange and we all had enough pressure on us with this fucking album. Then again, that’s probably the exact thing the album needed: some outside critique. Duly noted.
I went back to the writing desk and logged that idea. Christ, I had enough material for some serious compositions the next time we met up at the studio. If only Brian or Jim were with me right now…we could have had some demo tracks to work with, if not more.
When I went back out to the living room, I lied down on my couch and proceeded to close my eyes for a few minutes, only slightly losing track of time. Long enough for a quick nap, long enough to dream. It wasn’t much of a dream, really. Some vague images about fiery hell, a demon army in the distance. And the oddest yet most appealing sound I’d ever heard. When I woke I tried to repeat it by humming, remembering minor keys and chords. Fuck, I had to do this on piano or it would escape me forever.
So I went to my piano in the other spare room, where we did some chord work. I set up my tape recorder and started playing, using some of the words I remembered writing. Chills shot up and down my spine the more I sang, the more I played. After about twenty or thirty minutes, I picked up the phone and called Brian. He answered almost immediately, almost in a panic. “Matt? It’s like…two in the morning. What’s up?”
Fuck, was it really that late? Oh god…Harriet. “Nothing, man. Something just came to me. I needed to tell you that I got something great. Couldn’t let it slip away. You gotta hear it tomorrow. We might have an album concept that won’t actually lead to nowhere.”
He yawned and paused for a moment. “That’s…great, dude.”
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“No, we were sleeping. Well, I was sleeping. She’s dead to the world.”
I laughed. “Right, okay. Call me in the morning.” I hung up without letting him say goodbye and frantically dove for my keys, dashing out the door. God, I hope I wasn’t going to be late picking her up. I hated this fucking town in the wee hours of the morning…the freaks came out at night.

Notes