My Fucking Nightmare

I’ll just say I never believed in karma until returning from Vegas and suffering from some of the worst food poisoning of my life. First Melissa had it, probably because she ate more of those funky wings from the buffet than I did. She had it pretty bad, too. I visited Brian’s one night—a daring attempt to stifle the awkwardness, and boy was it harder than I thought—and started feeling the cramps right about when she keeled over and fell into the side of their bathtub, consequently cracking a couple ribs. She was gorgeous and all, but did not fall gracefully.
I would have gone to the hospital that night with them if it weren’t for the fact that we’d been away at the studio all day and my goddamn dog had the house torn up in loneliness. And since it rained a little, probably thundered too, Bishop panicked and broke a lamp and tore one of my couch cushions to shreds. Thanks, dog. Not something I wanted to clean up when there was projectile everything about to spew all over. Pardon the raucousness but goddamn.
Well, it turned out that while in the hospital Brian was accused of breaking Melissa’s ribs since the bruises looked a little too cookie-cutter shaped. More like a bat than the side of a bathtub. Problem was that they got those cases a little too often, which almost involved the cops. Brian came off the fucking handle at one of the doctors, security had to handle the situation, and it just got…ugly. That’s all I knew about it, since I was still at home dealing with my own bout of illness. I couldn’t remember if it was E. coli or Salmonella. Regardless, I wanted to die.
Thankfully Brian thought the chicken and rice Melissa made a couple days before was the culprit. I’d eaten a fair share of it, assuming Brian hadn’t since he spent the majority of his time in the studio, returning so late at night that he just didn’t eat ‘til morning. No one even wondered where I disappeared to the weekend Melissa went to Vegas. Honestly, I was so cut off from everyone else as of late that I was sure they’d given up on me.
Until I woke up in a pile of my own puke in bed, surrounded by my boys. Wow, embarrassing. Jim tried flipping me on my back to force some Gatorade into me. I fought and tried to tell him that I couldn’t keep anything down, but my brain was so fried from fever and dehydration that I remained goddamn near catatonic. No, it wasn’t pretty. But at least I didn’t have broken ribs.
Okay, so they weren’t broken. Bruised. Maybe a hairline fracture. My theory was that the doctors were so heckled by the band being there that they forgot how to properly run fucking tests. Not that it was any of my business, but I mean it wasn’t like Melissa was the First Lady of the United States or something. All I heard was stories about that whole ordeal. As much pain as I was in, it would have been worth a trip to the hospital to see Brian almost come to blows with the staff.
Fuck, I hated hospitals though. Ever since that incident, I just vowed to never step foot in one again as long as I was still breathing. It started to become a running theme: nothing good could come from those deadly disease boxes. If I could have fought this off on my own, so be it.
As long as someone bought Gatorade every few hours.
I shook it off in a couple days, surfacing from the putrefaction that was my bathroom and bedroom floor only to check voicemails and contact Phil, who’d apparently done some discussing with the record label. They wanted more new shit. We were sinking already, as our last tours hadn’t done as well as the target model originally predicted. I wasn’t about to fight the record label. It was easier to compose than to keep beating the dead City of Evil horse. Fuck it, to the drawing table I went.
Those studio days sure helped. Brian and I caught a couple usable chords. A theme was crucial to the composition process however, and I’d have to suck Jimmy back into this hole of torment and brain-racking.
Fortunately the deadline was set for another year or two from the end of summer. There was one last tour planned I briefly mentioned to Brian the other night. It might not have been the best time to bring it up, with Melissa sick and in the hospital. I was better off telling Jimmy or Johnny who weren’t as roped down as the other two.
Regrettably, the tour was another long one. A real doozy. I thought I remembered Phil saying there was a Rock am Ring show in the mix somewhere. Open venues where shit flew and equipment got ruined in the rain. No fucking acoustics for shit. The more wasted we got the better we sounded, I thought. Ah, I digress. Money was money and the further I got from home, the more places we saw and the things we did just made up for it all.
Only now I faced the inevitable depression of lacking something or someone to come home to after a tour so long. Johnny did it. He was happy with his single lifestyle. Always had been. I could still be if everything that had happened just didn’t happen. There was just too much to hold onto. So much agony and I was tired of coming home and dealing with it all over again.
Ugh, anyway. Back to the composing bullshit. I hibernated in my secret little back room and wrote endless lines to songs I knew would never have a chance when I brought them to light. For a day or two I thought about that collaboration with the Maddens and their band. Fuck, it had been so long since we associated with them that I almost forgot about the whole thing. Last I heard they were touring for their last album, meaning they’d soon be in the pre-recording process too. Enough time to put effort into a side-project. Nothing serious.
For the time being, I just needed to lay low. Days passed by. Pretty soon I’d grown something of a short beard and my hair was getting long again. We’d done a couple recording sessions to hash out demos to hand off to the label to appease their greedy needs, and with the money we paid out of pocket for the studio we used this time around I could easily have gotten a new bike or some ink. Fucking crazy.
We all unanimously agreed that there ought to be a more natural look to our group than what we did with the last album. All the photoshoots, all that makeup and heavy black, making something of us that we just didn’t want to be. I started working out more, too, to get my mind pumped up for what was next to come. For a month or so I was unbeatable. Rocking new jeans, a new record on the way.
Until, typically, the phone call came from Brian informing me that Melissa had taken a test with positive results. She had a baby on the way. Well, first my temper flared. For a while I figured that if it would have taken this long to tell whether she was pregnant or not that she wasn’t and that everything that happened in Vegas was just a bad experience worth leaving in the past.
So…yes. My temper flared. Face probably flushed red. I threw whatever happened to be in my hand at the wall. Shattered pieces of ceramic mug went across the room. As did the cream-filled coffee, spraying all my collectible items, notes, photographs. Fucking perfect.
You’re better than this, man. I kept telling myself. For all you know it’s Brian’s kid and you’re jumping to conclusions. Breathing quickly to calm myself down, curling my fists into tight balls, I relaxed and let all the tension float away. It was time to congratulate them. Time to come out of hiding and see my people in a setting other than a cramped up recording studio.
When I got to Brian’s, I assumed they just finished up with late morning sex—gag—as Brian met me at the door, sweaty, in boxer briefs. I barged in and pulled them both into a massive hug, careful not to squeeze Melissa’s ribs in case they were still all fucked up. And, obviously, without causing harm to the kiddo. Whosevers it may be.
“I kinda panicked when she was in the process of telling me,” Brian told me over a beer at the kitchen bar. “Figured it was too good to be true. Like maybe she didn’t wanna go through with the wedding and everything. Nah, didn’t expect this to happen at all.”
I choked down my mouthful of beer in an attempt to bite my tongue. Be the bigger man, Matt. “Nothing short of a blessing for you guys, anyway. How’s she doing with the bruises or whatever?”
Brian’s face contorted in a funny way. “Well, they’re healed. All’s well with that. I just…something doesn’t add up. We use condoms every time, man. And this time around one just happens to be ineffective…that happens, right?”
“Why, you got cold feet?”
He shook his head. “No. No, no. Timing just sucks, is all. We’re gonna be going away for a long time, not that far off either. And just the thought of coming back here and seeing her all fat and pregnant. Fuck, man. Can’t miss that much time. Missed too much already.” Oh trust me, buddy. I know.
I swashed some of my beer around in my mouth, watching as she pulled up a stool across from us at the bar island, a glass of tonic water in her hand. Probably for the nausea. “Feeling okay, Liss?” I called out, clenching my bottle almost a little too tight. Fucking nerves, man.
Her face went from pale to green. “Just peachy. How’s composition coming?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s uh…getting there. I got a lot going on lately so my focus isn’t great. Better composing when we’re all together, I find anyway.” Brian agreed, slurping back several mouthfuls of Sierra. “So, how far along are you anyway?” I meant to sound less blunt, but honestly I just couldn’t hold back.
“Not sure, really. I was supposed to go to the doctor today to find out. Could barely get out of bed. My guess is about a month, maybe two. I don’t have a bump yet.”
But she definitely missed a period. I could see the look of desperation in Brian’s eyes, that happy longing, slowly being eaten by the realization that we would definitely be gone long enough to overlap the majority of her pregnancy, if not the due date.
As she rushed off to the bathroom again, followed by the ever-so-frequent vomiting sound I’d gotten used to, I sighed and swished the liquid around the bottle between my finger and thumb. “If she’s already one or two months into it…” I started, but he stopped me mid-sentence and left to go check on her. It should have been me in there instead.
If there was any chance that the kid was actually mine, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be away on tour when she’d go into labour.
My only problem was determining whether I was the real father or not; if she had no memory or idea of Vegas, springing it on her would make things worse than they’d have ever gotten and I couldn’t risk losing it all again. On the flipside, I had a feeling deep in my gut that she was suspicious. So I decided to let it slide for the time being, praying to god it wouldn’t end in another miscarriage.

Notes