Rock Show

I love a good mystery story. I made sure the story consisted of many turns and keeps you guessing until the end…

I dedicated this story to all those Rock stars who died in vain not even getting a second look in their cases.

I also dedicate this story to Kurt Cobain who I loosely based this story on.

I don’t know why I came here. Any minute now they can take me. That can be very bad. Somebody approach the small stage, he lowered his glasses and gazed at a tall wiry man. What? They’re booing him already? He hasn’t even started. He looked around. I bet most of these kids use illegal drugs. I remember my sister overdosed on prescription drugs. She almost lost her life.

A woman stood up and said, “Alright, come on just give him a chance.” He heard silence wash through the place.

With the man’s lips almost kissing the microphone, the sound of feed back erupted though the room. He moved his head back slightly making a clicking noise with his tongue. His brown hair fell in his eyes as he spoke with emotion,

“Stolen Dreams. Why did you have to part? I can still hear your words spew from your lips. You penned your words, sometimes angry, sometime sad. Always caustic. You penned them well. I remember I saw the truth in your eyes ignored it with a shrug. You felt the thickness. You should have let it encompass you like a damn cocoon. Instead of beveling your life where you left me too soon.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes and said in a somber tone, “Thank you. See I didn’t come up here to rave like a lunatic this time. Thanks again.”

He raised his sun glasses again, leaned over to the next table. “Bad break up?” he asked another guy.

“Don’t you know who he is?” the guy snided.

“No, Should I?”

“He was best friends with Jeramy Lane from Frozen Lunch.”

“Really,” he said with interest then remembered the guy seemed kind of rude. “How do you know this information?”

The man waved to some guy and turned around to Todd. “Listen I’d love to fill ya in, that’s my ride.” He got up and walked out the door.

When was the last time someone was rude to me on poetry night?

He heard clapping, and the man got off the stage and took a seat next him. The man lowered his head and stirred his coffee.

“Very touching poem,” he commented.

“Yeah,” The man said preoccupied with coffee straw.

“So you recite poems here regularly, or is it your first time?”

He stirred it faster.

“I’m just asking because, I haven’t been up this way to Chicago in about a year, and I used to hang out here with my friend Richard and my high school girlfriend Pam when I picked her up in the old town area while she lived with her father. She was a poet. You could never get Richard or I to go up there. We came for the coffee.”

“I use to come here on Friday nights with my friend Jeremy.” The man lifted his head at last. “He liked to test the waters before he became a big Rock star. He wanted to see how he could piss everybody off.”

“You mean Jeremy Lane?” he asked then he chided himself, “Man that was forward of me.”

“Hey no sweat.” The man took a sip of his coffee. “By the way I’m Mason Donaldson.”

“Todd Anderson.”

“Pleasure. I was also good friends with Michael Collins,” Mason replied.

“Wow. You probably heard this a million times, I’m sorry. It was a tragedy. I didn’t really know much about their lives, I loved their music.”

“They didn’t kill themselves.”

He narrowed his eyebrows. “What?”

“Listen the show is starting. If you want to talk about it now, we better leave before they think I’m acting like a raving lunatic again. Any way I could use a smoke. Ya wanna go?”

“So you use to get on stage and yell both of them were murdered by a leftist government organization who was backing the record company,” he said leaning up against a toy store window two doors down from the coffee house. His hands pushed deep into his pants pockets. “Question is why?”

Mason took a drag on his cigarette and sat knee squat on the ground. His hand shook.

“Sure Jeremy was in a successful band, and” he continued. “Michael was still in the local scene. Why, and how do they connect? I mean Jeremy’s prints were all over that rifle plus he wrote bang to the world on the butt of the gun used in the shooting.”

“He wrote that four months before. The papers miss quoted me.”

“Yes, there was a suicide note in his handwriting. You can’t deny that.”

“Yeah, you have to understand who Jeremy was, and I knew because, I was his best friend. He should have stayed in that dam cocoon of his or found a different way to deal with his problems then he wouldn’t be dead.”

He narrowed his eyes again and rubbed at his upper lip.

“I gave up playing after his death. Man he should have been an artist. Geez it’s getting cold. What is winter going to come early in November?”

He hugged his body. “Maybe we should head back to the coffeehouse.”

“No I’m done with that scene tonight. My place isn’t too far from here. Our jackets aren’t going to protect us of from these conditions. You game?”