Bittersweet

Riley Kendall never knew where he fit in the world. All he wanted was to forget his past and live in the future. To reach his goal, he formed a band called the Dreaded Miracles. Christopher Anderson, Conner Marshall, and Max Weth, his bandmates, shared the idea, and the four young men became well known. One and Eight, their first album, sold a million copies in just two days, but most fans didn’t know the true meaning behind the name “Dreaded Miracles.” Riley had to find a way to get the message across to them, but it was something he had to ask himself as well. Who was he? Who were the Dreaded Miracles? Why were they important?

Their first major tour for One and Eight was coming to a close, but to celebrate, Riley worked his band members three times as hard. It was midnight, and the small studio smelled like Papa John’s pizza. Riley and his friends banged away, but they were exhausted. It was almost too obvious that Riley’s voice was hurting him, and he wasn’t feeling well.

“Come on, guys, step it up,” he begged Christopher, Conner, and Max. “Do you expect us to finish off the tour sounding like amateurs?”

Slightly offended, Christopher dropped his drumsticks and fixed his deep brown eyes on the pale man sitting in front of him. “Riley, we’re tired. We want to go to bed, and you need to rest your voice. I think it’s safe to say you’re the amateur here, not us.”

Riley’s cheeks flushed. He didn’t like being bossed around. A memory found its way into his brain, and he shook his head to get rid of it. “No! I’m the leader here, and I say we keep on practicing!”

The band members groaned, but complied.

Christopher picked up his drumsticks, and Conner and Max tightened their grips on their guitar picks. All three men glared at Riley, who gave them the cue to start playing. They cringed when they heard how hoarse he was.

“Eighteen!” he screamed. “Eighteen years have passed! Eighteen! And they became One and Eight!” but then his voice cracked. He set Reggie, his childhood guitar, down and pushed the microphone away, closing his baby blue eyes. His head dropped to the left. The instruments continued to play, but it wasn’t long until they cut off.

Christopher tried to help him. He pulled a bottle of water out from a twenty-four pack and hopped down from his chair. Coming within reach of Riley, he held it out to him. “Riley, listen to yourself. You sound like a dying toad. Here’s a water bottle.”

Riley, though, smacked the bottle out of Christopher’s hand. It hit the studio wall, where all their guitars hung. His feet hit the dirty ground trashed with pizza crumbs as he, too, hopped off his chair. The shadows were back. He gripped his head with both hands when he heard them laughing at him from the studio’s four gray walls.

Christopher snapped at him. “Hey! That was unnecessary! For Pete’s sake, Riley! I’m trying to help you!”

“I don’t need your help! We’re going to get One and Eight perfect, and that’s final!”

“You’re sick, you know? We’ve been practicing since 10 am. Poor Conner and Max can hardly keep their eyes open.” To emphasize his point, Christopher pointed at Conner and Max.

“Are we still practicing?” Conner asked. “All right.” Nevertheless, his head fell forward, and it landed in a half-eaten box of pizza.

Max could no longer feel his thumb and index finger, because he’d been holding the guitar pick so long. He ran his fingers through his short, brown hair to calm down, but it was difficult. Like Conner and Christopher, he was mad and tired.

Riley did not have time for sissies. He placed his hands on his hips and said, “Look at you guys. You’re obviously not ready. We have much to do before the concert tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow,” Conner mumbled with his face still in the warm, pepperoni pizza.

“You need to stop treating us like animals,” Christopher argued. “We’re human, too.”

Riley scoffed. “Well, that’s more your problem than mine, right?”

That did it! Christopher had had enough of his attitude. He shoved Riley’s chest, and he broke through a cluster of music stands in the corner of the room.

The crash woke Conner and Max.

Conner took his face out of the pizza box. It was dripping with pepperoni pieces and Marinara sauce. He and Max almost called out Christopher, but then they concluded Riley deserved that push.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” he begged. Riley cradled his arm. Tears streamed down his slightly flushed cheeks. He crawled away from Christopher and stopped under a table, hugging one of its legs. Instead of his friend, he saw his father: his gaping mouth, fangs, and white eyes with no pupils.

Christopher did not bother to pick him up. He stomped his foot and stormed out of the studio. “Go ahead and kill yourself, Riley! See if I care!” He slammed the door so hard, the guitars shook on their hooks.

Riley rose to his shaky legs. He saw Conner and Max heading toward the door as well. “Oh, so now you two are turning against me?” he asked.

“Christopher’s right, Ri,” said Max.

“We’ve had enough,” finished Conner.

Without another word, they left Riley alone in the studio.

A volcano erupted from his head. The fear. The anger. It was intense. He proceeded to turn over the table he was hiding under, and he picked up one of the downed music stands. Riley chucked it into the wall and tightly clenched his fists. The music stand shattered just like his blackened heart, which had very little light in it. He wasn’t satisfied with his actions yet, though. His next victim was Reggie. Riley lifted him high over his head and smashed him on the floor. Guitar pieces catapulted all over the studio until all Riley held was Reggie’s neck.

He fell to his hands and knees and sobbed. He remembered the time his father threw him into a table and broke his arm, the time his mom died, and all the times he tried to hide from the Devil himself. His black clothes stuck to his body as sweat mixed with his tears. Riley just accepted that nobody would ever love him.

He rose to his feet and made his way to the studio’s guitar rack. He stopped next to a few hanging guitars and used their slick surfaces as mirrors. Riley was a very handsome young man, but he never saw his inner beauty. He had medium-length, black hair and a small goatee on his chin. His life depended on fear, for that was the only emotion he had. The only way he could forget his past was through music. That was why he felt so connected to the Dreaded Miracles.

His band members may have ditched him, but that didn’t stop him from practicing. Therefore, Riley pulled a new guitar off the rack and plopped down in his chair. He sang until five in the morning. By then, he could do no more. Riley collapsed out of the chair and landed unconscious on the floor.

Christopher, Conner, and Max found him just three hours later and worked together to wake him. “Riley! Riley!”

“What happened?” Riley shot to a sitting position, but he accidentally smacked Christopher in the nose. His eyes rolled over to Conner, who showed him Reggie’s broken neck.

“Um, you see, Riley,” he stuttered, “it looks like you and Reggie became involved in a fist fight.”

At the sight of the guitar, Riley’s heart snapped from two pieces to three. Reggie was his only way to keep him sane, and he just murdered him. He really was a monster. No Reggie meant no concert, and no concert meant no money. Riley Kendall himself was going to be the downfall of the Dreaded Miracles.

He shoved past his friends and slipped into the studio’s bathroom, where failures like him belonged. Inside, he closed the drapes and picked up a razor blade. He thought about cutting himself, but then something else came to mind. A cut on his arm would not tell the world his story, so he decided to vandalize the bathroom instead. The message he carved into the wall tortured him, but it was the truth: Stop the abuse. It’s gotten old.

He hid in the deepest corner of the room and covered himself with his jacket. Riley had to understand he wasn’t the only one suffering. Christopher, Conner, and Max were, too. All four band members wanted to start their lives over because no one ever loved them as children. Riley needed his friends’ support. They knew he did, so they joined him in the bathroom.

Christopher sat cross-legged in front of him, and he sighed as he tried to find his words. “Riley, you need to stop living in fear. Think about music. I know you can do this concert.”

“Reggie or not, we are still the Dreaded Miracles,” Max said. “Our name means ‘there are still miracles waiting for you, even if you have lived a dreaded life.’”

“We’re brothers—the Big Four. And brothers never leave each other in the dark,” Conner elucidated.

Riley agreed, but his suffering wasn’t the only thing devouring him. He was homesick. After six months on the road, he just wanted to skip this concert and return to his lonely life in Greenville, South Carolina. His forehead burned, and his vocal cords screamed in agony. It was like somebody stuck an ax in his throat, but he refused to tell his friends he was hurting.

They dragged him out of the bathroom, and their stage manager drove them to the concert hall. It was a huge, dome-shaped building—the biggest the Dreaded Miracles ever performed in. The concert would decide whether or not the band would fall. Fans from all over came to cheer the Dreaded Miracles on, so every seat was full.

Merely an hour before the concert started, Riley changed into a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, white pants, and black shoes. He lost track of how many bottles of water he drank, but even they didn’t cool him down. Instead, they made him sick. He lost all the water he had just consumed in the backstage toilet because of how much he vomited, but he still refused to tell his band members he didn’t feel well.

He stepped out of the bathroom, only to hear the shadows laughing at him again. Riley thought he saw a figure coming toward him from the backstage closet, and he sprinted. He tripped once, falling to the floor, but quickly got up.

As always, the area was dark. Carts and chairs surrounded Riley, and his nostrils sucked in a musty odor. He found a prop bed at the end of the hallway, near the backstage exit, that the theater used for plays. It had two white blankets and a plaid bedsheet in red, blue, and yellow.

Riley took no time to stop and admire the bed. He had to hide from the shadows before their bony hands grabbed him, not daring ever to let him up again. Like when he was a child, he fell to his hands and knees and slipped under the prop bed. Curling into a ball, he hugged his knees close to his chest, coughing. Sweat dripped onto the dusty floor. To Riley, it smelled like death.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard footsteps. Whimpering, he tightened his grip on his knees and whispered, “Please, no.” He couldn’t help but feel like the Devil, his father, was in his presence. He concluded he was when the footsteps stopped next to him, and a pair of powerful hands turned the bed over. It crashed down behind the petrified man. Riley sneezed through the dust. However, it wasn’t his father hovering over him, but Christopher.

“Riley,” was the only word that left his cracked, bleeding lips. He took Riley’s arm and pulled him into a much-needed hug.

Conner and Max soon entered the scene, too. They, too, hugged Riley, and it wasn’t long until all four men sat in a circle with hooked hands. Dim stage lights from above bathed them in a brilliant, white glow.

“Riley, please, we can do this. I know we can,” said Max. “You need to leave the broken mountain behind and climb the next one. That is the message I tell myself before every concert.”

“The Dreaded Miracles made me who I am today. Not the Demon Devils,” Conner added. Before joining the Dreaded Miracles, he was part of another band known as the Demon Devils. They treated him just as badly as his own parents when he was a child.

“Riley, do you remember the day we met each other?” asked Christopher.

Riley thought back to five years ago. He was at Andy’s Pub in Downtown Greenville, drinking away his problems, when his attention rolled over to a small stage. A microphone on the slick wood intrigued him. Aside from that, there was also a drum set, bass guitar, and electric guitar. Something pulled the depressed twenty-three-year-old to the microphone. With Reggie in his grip, he sang “The Razor’s End,” one of the first songs the Dreaded Miracles wrote for One and Eight. The title referenced all the times he tried to commit his own suicide but could never follow through with it.

His singing was so good that Christopher, Conner, and Max, who were at the same bar that night, joined him. Fate brought them together. Christopher took the drums, Max chose bass, and Conner chose lead guitar. A crowd gathered around the stage, and people cheered them on. Twas the Dreaded Miracles were born.

Riley would never forget the magic he felt that day. That was the first time in his life that he smiled and laughed. It was a bittersweet moment for him.

“When we met you, we instantly felt a connection,” Christopher explained.

“A connection we still feel today,” said Max.

“We are the Dreaded Miracles, and we will stay this way until death do us part,” Conner said with a small smile. “Riley, you have to understand that you’re not alone in this world. There are people who love you: your fans and us.”

Love. Nobody ever told Riley they loved him—his mom, dad, or even his grandparents—until that day. The tears fell like a fountain. Coughing, he wrapped his arms around his body.

“Aw, come here, baby,” Conner said. He, Christopher, and Max gave Riley one last hug and let him have his cry.

They were ready for their concert, but with his deteriorating condition, Riley wasn’t sure how long he was going to last.

“Alone” was the song that changed everything, but Riley pushed himself to the extreme. He should never have worked so hard overnight. His own foolish mistake came back to haunt him halfway through the concert.

To open the song, Christopher gently tapped the drums and cymbals together. The audience stopped cheering and listened intently. Some even moved to the edge of their seats. Spotlights of various colors shone on each band member.

Riley, who had his head lowered, brought the microphone to his lips when the guitars joined the cymbals and drums. “Do you even know what has happened to us? Or do you think that you know it all? Do you think that you understand the call? Do you believe that there’s nothing wrong?” he sang.

“Ooh,” added Christopher. He was Riley’s backup singer.

“You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong,” Riley continued. Now came the chorus. “We are alone. That’s all we are. We live as one, but we don’t know our home. We’re alone. We are alone. That’s all we are. We live as one, but we don’t know our home. We’re alone.”

Riley chose the song for a reason. It was so he could help his fans understand who the Dreaded Miracles really were.

The message struck some of them right in the heart. A few fans’ jaws dropped, and a few others started to cry.

The song progressed, but Riley found it harder and harder to sing each verse. He couldn’t do it, but he had to. “We were not expecting to have a life such as this. We were expecting to have so much more. Now all that hope is lost, and we can’t soar on. We need somebody to pull us through.”

Christopher jumped in. “Ooh.”

“Our own,” Riley sang in a scratchy, pained voice. “Our own. Our own. We are alone. That’s all we are. We live as one, but we don’t know our home. We’re alone. We are alone. That’s all we are. We live as one, but we don’t know our home. We’re alone.”

Things took a wrong turn there. One simple flash from the spotlights blinded Riley. He couldn’t think or breathe. The ax in his throat sliced his vocal cords, and he dropped the microphone. A coughing attack engulfed him like molten lava. He tried to stay standing, but the pain was too great.

“Riley!” Christopher yelled, but it was too late.

Riley toppled to the ground and entered a state of near-death unconsciousness.