It’s cold. The air ripped with a chill that has people wrapped up tight in leather and denim, pushing close, screaming, moving for warmth, for heat. To make their heart’s pound, their throats raw, blood rushing, bodies crushing. They want, they need, they breath Dominick in like worshiper’s before a Deity, and he glows. Stark in the spotlight, the mega screen behind the band fading to black, and he’s still, panting, eyes to the sky, sweat sticking his clothes to his back.

No more bruises on his skin, but no lighter circles under his eyes, no more weight lost, but not a lot gained. He’s on hiatus, framed like a life sized blow up, tired and alive, aching and glowing, drained but gorgeous. The image of tragedy, they called him. Dominick Dursache, iconic and beautiful even when he crumples to the stage with no one there to catch him in time.

He’s standing today, breathing deep and slow and ragged after screaming up a lung for these people. He loves them, each and every one, with their hands in the air, their smiles wide, and their pleasure so evident. Vitalizing, energizing. There to see him and Priestess, their art, their work, their everything.

It stuns him to think that it almost fell apart, his band and his friendships. He almost lost everything when he lost Casey. In the end they were there for him, albeit reluctantly, after he told them why Casey wasn’t taking their visits anymore.

Explaining that Casey had to leave them all, that he had to sever all ties had been the hardest thing. He’d understood it, but Emily didn’t. Convinced they’d all done something wrong; convinced it was all their fault and not just Dom’s. I had not been beautiful; it had just hurt so bad he wanted to vomit up his own heart if it meant he’d stop feeling.

And the music hadn’t come, not for months, just ripped around inside him like a hurricane until there was nothing but a husk left standing around a compacted ball of it for him to spew out. Long, slow, a song just for Casey.

Breathing the chill air in deep he duck’s to pick up the guitar plugged and tuned for him on the stage, the strap heavy over his shoulders and his fingers zipping idly over the frets as he steps to the microphone. A hush falls, like magic, like he has cast a spell over each and every person packed into the open air arena, and a thousand eyes turn to Dominick as he prepares to spill his guts to fifteen hundred people.

Squeezing his eyes shut he can’t help but pluck a few absent strings, a tiny, brief melody biting the night. The light’s fall behind him, the crew improvising, making him a haloed angel dressed in black and looking about to weep.

“You know, it was always my goal to be here. To be huge and famous like Axl Rose or Jimi Hendrix. For so, so long it was my only goal, and I thought….I thought that once I got here it would all fall into place.” He stars slowly, his hesitance something that doesn’t belong to the Rock star. Something new. “It was so hard, we worked so hard and I really believed that once we reached the top it would all be smooth sailing….”

He turns his eyes to the crowd, but can hardly see them beyond the lights. Hardly pull them form the dark. Instead he takes a moment to think back on the years of effort they put into scraping this together, how tired he was after months of touring, scratching a living on the absolute minimum until they reached breaking point. Thinking about their tears of pain as they left yet another stage with no fruit and no energy and no food, and of their tears of joy when they got home and fell into real beds. Thinking about the comfort they took in one another. About Jordan, about their teenaged years, about every ounce of pain or happiness or excitement or anger he poured into his songs, in screaming guitars and banging drums, and sweat and love, and hurt and comfort.

It’s everything he has, everything he’d ever been through, and he can’t sum it up in a bite sized piece, not for the world.

“People, you know….just kinda slip through my fingers. The ones I love, the ones I care about. Fuck it, even the people I hate. I can’t…I thought I had one person who would always be there, who wouldn’t slip through my crack…my fuckin Canyons….and drift off.” There’s no stopping the crack in his voice, the way it wavers, and as the crew change the lighting he can look down and see a girl, her earnest brown eyes warm and adoring. She’s beautiful, soft mouth parted, eyes wide, pale fingers wrapped around the barrier. She wants to reach out, he knows, wants to touch him and hold him and heal him. He can see it, just like he saw it on Casey. His Casey. Casey he loved, Casey he lost, Casey who sold the world for a bucket of mud and tired to make it something worthy of the things he forsook. Casey. Casey.

He holds the girl’s eyes for as long as he can, silent thank yous and I love yous he means to them all, before he has to look away.

“I lost…I lost a friend awhile ago. I don’t think I said goodbye properly, so…I wrote something for him…” He admits, the quiet almost touchable. People breathing, shifting, paying close attention. All here because of Priestess, all hear to experience something special. It’s what they expect, what they want.

“Now….this hurts, this song, and I ent sung it in front of no one…my band, we ent played it all together before but…we aint ever gonna play it again. So…get out your cameras and mobile phones, record it, sell it, do whatever the fuck you want with it. Coz just this once…this once…yeah. Here we go.” Here it is, the hard part. Delivering. Handing over the chunks of his soul and trusting it to thousands of people, trusting them to spread it, breed it. Trusting it will reach who it needs to eventually. Today, tomorrow, a year from now. Here it is, the hard part.

Behind him Harrison at his drum kit takes a breath and taps his sticks lightly, counting them in. One. Two. Three. Four. Noah’s bass comes in, low and slow, a soft, steady rhythm with a promise attached. Something sweet, something strong. Caleb takes his cue, strums out his delicate, intricate, spidering riff, his fingers dancing up and down the neck of his Fender and spinning something that sounds like perfection.

And finally, his wrist shaking with nerves, his throat so choked he doesn’t think he can sing Dominick comes in with his chords.

“I will never walk it through

I could never promise you

As some plans to follow do

The end, it never ends in truth”

His voice is low and rough, filled with the endless, nameless chaos and despair he’d tried and failed to scream for years and year. It’s not a scream, it’s quiet, bleeding over the audience in ripples.

“This won’t mean love again

I will never have a friend.”

He lost Casey. He lost him. He wasn’t taken, he didn’t die. He fell, he disappeared, he pulled away. He’s gone. Lost. It hurts, that ache rips out in the lines, whispered then cried in rehersal until he was hoarse, his fingers stumbling their way along the guitar. Stuttering over the perfection of his band, even if every chord he strikes is flawless.

“This will mean it’s me to me

I just don’t know how to be

It’s a never ending dream

I will always want to scream”

The girl in the front row, the one with dark eyes, has her hand over her mouth, and the stadium is nothing but music. No cheering, no whistles, just Dominick bleeding out onto the stage. His voice builds, his words stretch and the volume he’s capable of, the scream he wants’ it right below the surface

“The only me you’ll ever know

Everything I’ll ever show”

Forced out, ground. It’s not enough, and his eyes are tight, everything he has angled towards this one thing. Getting this out for the phones and cameras in the audience, getting it out for them and for Casey. To let Casey know. To show him. To give it up.

“This is how it’s gotta be

The only end we’ll ever see”

It breaks, crescendos, and he’s screaming, folding inwards, the drums behind him a heartbeat, the guitars and bass his own trembling. Everything he has, everything he is. And the world is caving in, Eden burns, Pompeii is buried, Rome falls, kings die. Civil war, a holocaust, Hiroshima and Dachau. Chernobyl and Baghdad. Dominick Dursache, bleeding from his eyes and inarticulate in the face of everything. In the fafe of everything he’s screaming.

“The only words I’ll ever mean

Are made up of apologies”

He’s given them this, the audience, so why not give it all? The song is ripped from him, and there’s his heart, puked up onto the stage, and the crowd are roaring the second the thrashing final chord’s end. So why not give it all? His knee’s buckle, and he falls, guitar cast aside, his forehead touches the stage, and curling into a wrecked, sobbing, broken open ball he lets the roaring crush him, lets it drown out the ringing in his years. They can have him, he is theirs. Every single last person willing to take him, every last heart he’s held. They have his back.

The song is called ‘The End’.

Note:

A lot of you weren’t satisfied with the ending. So here’s and Epilogue for you.

I hope it satisfy’s at least a little, even if there is no Casey present.

It wasn’t easy to write, and I’ve really been thinking about ‘Casey’s song’ since like, chapter six of this story. I’m pretty happy with what is essentially the poem here, but I’d like to know if it’s woks. If it’s powerful enough and makes sense.

Again, I’m still trying for the 100th review (ALMOST there) and if I reach it I promise in good FP style that the 100th reviewer gets a one shot, if they want one, on anything they choose.

Anyway. Like I said. I hope this pleases. It’s three thirty (wow, first time ive looked at the clock in the two hours it took to do this) and my brain is fried, but yeh. R&R, and be happy and what not. And read my other shit too. I COMAND YOU.

Yeah. Defiantely too late (early) for me to still be up.

LoveLove.

Erasmuss.