My Bloody Idiot

There are three types of people in the morning. The happy-go-luckies, which honestly speaking annoyed the absolute shit out of me; then there’s the misanthropes which were my people, we connected on a very deep level and I absolutely agreed that if you don’t bring a person some mouthwatering coffee – you have no right to talk to him… And then there’s the third kind. My mother. The one who’s still drunk.

Slowly I walked downstairs, feeling the agonizing headache gently scrubbing the insides of my brain with what felt like a sandpaper on every step I took.

Pete Steele’s voice blared through the entire first floor. I mean, yes, the man did in fact have a godly voice, but come on – the guy’s dead. Let him stay dead at least until after 9 am.

As I walked around the corner, I saw my mum playing the air drums with a spatula and a fork right before the guitar solo came on. She was practically yelling the main phrase of the song – I don’t wanna be me- as she headbanged the morning away.

I just stood there… blinking until the song ended. I was a second away from thanking God himself, but then the song started again. And so did my headache. She had put the goddamn thing on repeat!

I raised my head to look up, “Are you even up there?”

Somehow I managed to walk my way across the living room to lean over to mum’s laptop and press a pause to her playlist without throwing up or dying. Who’s bright idea was to drink tequila anyway?

“Hey! That’s my jam!” Mum yelled, before the spatula came flying towards my head. I managed to duck in the very last moment. This was the reason I moved to live with my dad.

“And this was your spatula,” I rolled my eyes as I picked the plastic thing up from the floor and threw across the kitchen island as I moved closer. “I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t attempt to murder your own daughter.”

Mum waved me off, before she took her pack of smokes from the kitchen island and put a cigarette between her lips, lighting it shortly after. “You’re not that easy to kill…” She said with the cigarette still lingering from her lips as she flipped over a pancake. Great, now there’s gonna be ash in my breakfast. That is if she’s making some for me too which would be highly unlikely.

“Are you drunk still?” The question had barely left my mouth and she was already stumbling over something. What exactly? My best guess would be her sanity. “Nevermind… Why did I even ask…”

“These motherfucking slippers!” She exclaimed as she put the cigarette out against the side of her mug of morning coffee I guess. Yea, sure, blame the slippers instead of your love for the bottle. Moments later her slippers went flying over the room.

“Easy!” I exclaimed shielding myself from whatever she was gonna throw next. I knew I needed to get to the studio to meet a contest winner, but I wasn’t sure if my mum wouldn’t burn the house down being in her wonderful trip to drunkville.

“You were with Brian yesterday,” She spoke thoughtfully and as if nothing had happened just a minute ago. “You know he’s married, right?”

“Mum!” I exclaimed. He ran into me, not the other way around, was it that hard to believe I wanted nothing from my ex? “The guy cheated on me, why would I wanted anything with him?” And frankly I did not know that he had gotten himself hitched. The fact alone surprised me greatly. I walked over to the high stool and sat down by the kitchen island.

“I’m just saying,” She shrugged, before she turned the oven off and came to sit next to me with her burnt pancakes. Yeah, there’s no way in hell I’ll be putting that in my mouth. “You’ll be sharing the studio, you will in fact run in to him from time to time. Sparks fly, magic happens and boom you’re pregnant.” She said as she bit down on that partly black substance. No, I will not call it food, ‘cause honestly? I didn’t believe you could actually eat it.

A mix of emotions went across my face. From shock to confusion and topping it all off with pure irritation. “Is there a particular reason why you’re on his side? You’re my mum for pete’s sake…”

“Hey, he’s not a bad guy,” She said as she chewed on the pancake. “You had your misunderstandings, I get that,”

“I really don’t think you do…” I sighed, bracing my elbows on the counter top and cupping the sides of my head. “Mum, he broke my heart, how can you not understand that?”

“Yeah, and your dad broke his nose for that. I think you’re pretty much even.”

I simply shook my head as I looked over her. I swear to god her rockstar attitude towards life was an enormous pain in the arse. Sure, my friends considered my mum to be the coolest chick on the block, but sometimes, just sometimes, I wished for her to be my mother, not the badass from a rock band.

“Whatever.” I sighed as I pushed myself off the stool. “My car’s in the garage?”

“Yep. Right where you left it.”

“Perfect.”

As I walked upstairs to my room to get dressed, I hoped to God that mum would go and sleep it off instead of going out and hitting another six hundred bars. Actually we weren’t that different which was the main reason why we couldn’t get along. While I spent my whole evening sitting in a single bar, she went exploring each and every one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mum to bits, but when she was drunk and I was hungover… It was like trying to mix water and oil. They don’t mix!

It took me a good half an hour to dig out something decent to wear from my unpacked suitcase. I realized I had packed only a single pair of jeans, the ones that I had worn yesterday and the same damned pair that I drenched in jagermeister. So I had a new mission – to infiltrate my mum’s closet. Another half an hour later I was ready to leave the house wearing a pair of skinny leather pants and a Jack Daniels wife beater. I was very well aware I had left a mess after myself, but seeing how mum had passed out on a couch with Kardashians on the tv entertaining her dream land, I figured it would be good six hours until I received an angry text from her.

I walked over to the garage and pulled the heavy cloth off my ’69 Camaro. God bless America and muscle cars. The car was in the exact same state I had left it. With a nearly empty gas tank and empty cigarette packs scattered all across the floor.

If I had hoped to be in the studio in less than an hour, I clearly had been drunk still when the thought hit me. The Camaro deserved to have a spin around town. It was needless to say I was an hour late when I arrived to Liberty Records.

Liberty Records was a big two story building standing tall between Taco Bell and some ridiculously expensive SPA where you could get a gold facial for only 1,500 bucks. Who came up with stuff like this? I mean what’s the next thing we’re gonna put on our faces? Our own blood and charge twice as much? Oh, we’re doing that already?…great. Faith in mankind restored.

I left my car in the scorching sun of the parking lot and went straight for the big glass door. As I passed the reception, I couldn’t bare but start thinking what on earth made Avenged guys agree to work in a studio crawling with people. As far as I knew they have always been the guys who needed their freedom and a small private studio in the hills would’ve been the perfect place for them.

My eyes landed on a rather big group of people, which consisted of Ashley – mum’s assistant, Justin – my engineer, Heidi – marketing manager and people I had never seen before.

“Your producer is going to be Riley Vex,” Ashley was a tall girl who liked to spend most of her money at strip joints. If I’d swing that way, I’d most definitely would hook up with her, since she was absolutely gorgeous and quite frankly the only friend my mum had who could talk some sense into her.

“Riley Vex?” Was it just me or it seemed the girl didn’t seem pleased with what she just heard? “Who the hell is Riley Vex?”

I took a deep breath. Why exactly am I doing this? Oh right, because I love my mother. I needed to keep reminding that myself, ‘cause sometimes… occasionally, I did forget that.

“I’m Riley Vex.” I spoke quite annoyed all faces suddenly turned against me. Back in UK I worked with artists who appreciated me, artists like Asking Alexandria, Ed Sheeran, Arctic Monkeys and even Radiohead for heaven sake and here I had an arrogant little bimbo who was eyeing me with all the hate you could find on this crappy world. “-And I could care less for your wacked contests so either you show me what you’ve got or you can walk straight through that door.” I pointed towards the big glass doors I had walked through just moments ago.

It seemed the girl was up for a stare down, as for me? I was not. If the chick wanted to get on my good side – not the way of doing it.

Without another word I walked across the large hall towards the studio B. I knew my way around since this was not my first rodeo at Liberty Records. Every now and then when I was in California I helped my mum out and studio B appeared to be my hobby horse.

I opened the glass door to see Brian, Zack and Walter sitting by the board.

Huston, we have a problem.

Notes

Hey guys, I know it's building up very slow, but bare with me. We need the proper introductions before we can start blowing shit up. And I do know that there's not much of Avenged guys in the chapters at the moment, but we'll fix it. Just bare with me.
Anykind of feedback would be very much appreciated.
Love you all. :)