a short story I'm submitting to be put in a Teen's Short Story Anthology:
Adam paced the dimly-lit hallway in a stress-induced panic, the faint smell of alcohol and sweat pervading the air around him. He was backstage at the Studio 101 club, guitar in hand and butterflies in stomach. It was his first major show as a solo act, as his acoustic project The Kensington Family Crest.
Music was in Adam McKaye’s blood. His father, Derek, had been a professional guitarist, and a fairly successful one. It was only the nature of being that this inclination towards music was passed on to his son. In fact, one of the only ways the two actually bonded was through music, playing guitar together and Adam learning from his “good ol’ dad” the fundamentals of advanced bar chord progression and staccato arpeggios in C minor. Of course, Adam had leaned most of the weapons in his impressive arsenal of guitar by himself; however, it was infinitely reassuring that he knew he could always go to his father for help.
None of this was going through Adam’s head, however, as he approached the stage from “The Pit” (What regular musicians not-so-lovingly called the shabby, quasi-dilapidated backstage in Studio 101). In all actuality, the main words occupying his currently one-track thought process were this: Don’t screw up, don’t you dare screw up in front of this many people…
Two days before, Adam had tried to take his own life. His life, it seemed to him, was trapping him within himself, and he couldn’t recall the last time that he was truly happy. It was all he could do just to look in the mirror and not tear his terribly precarious psyche apart with his incisive analysis of himself. He hated everything he was, past and present, and hated his future laid out before him. Constant rejection had taught Adam one thing, and that was that life did you no favors. The things that you want the most are denied to you for that precise reason, or it seemed to him to be so.
So he sat on the floor of the upstairs bathroom in his house, holding a bottle of bleach and writing a suicide letter to everyone and anyone who would read it. Adam had gotten the idea for the bleach after hearing that his idol, Billy Joel, had tried to commit suicide by drinking a bottle of polishing varnish, and he figured that bleach and varnish were along the same lines, chemically speaking. Eyes red and puffy from crying, he brought the bottle to his unusually chapped lips.
It isn’t that Adam’s lips were chapped badly at this point, or even a cause for a miniscule amount of concern. Adam’s lips were never chapped, however, as he took great pride in his appearance. He spent a half hour on his hair every day, wore colored contacts, and, atypical for most men, learned how to color-coordinate the clothes he wore every day.
But on this day, his hair was bewildered in many places, he wore no contacts, and his clothes consisted of a black and burnt-orange argyle vest of a dark brown shirt. The cowlick on the left side of Adam’s forehead, subsequently his greatest identifiable character trait and his worst antagonist, spewed his dark brown hair into all directions, and his hair was highlighted a dark auburn from the sizzling fluorescent lights above him.
Adam poured the sour tasting liquid into his mouth…at least, he assumed it was sour. It stung his mouth so bad that the pain was equivalent to one hundred constant bee stings all over the inside of his mouth. Immediately, before he could even swallow, he spat the bleach onto the mirror, small air bubbles forming in the deadly liquid as it slowly slid down the pane. His cough, mixed with his sobbing, sounded like the sputtering of an old car, and he rushed to the sink. Drawing in cold water from a faucet he’d turned on into his acrid mouth, he began to think on how it could be a good thing that he was so afraid of pain, and in turn, death. He thought about everyone who had ever done anything nice for him. He thought of his parents, and how utterly devastated they would be if he were gone, and his younger sister, who would have to grow up without her big brother. He thought about his friends, who would have to be sans one at movie night for the rest of eternity. Mostly, though, he just thought, and allowed his suicidal thoughts to be swept away into the dark recesses of his mind.
“It’s time for you to go on…” said the stage manager. He was balding, with a ponytail-comb over of fiery, dry red hair, and was not much taller than 5’6. Adam, practically dwarfing him in size at 5’9, walked right on past him and out the door onto the stage. His eyes were bombarded by light in a variety of flamboyant colors: lime green, azure blue, and stop-sign red, in addition to the regular off-white of regular lights. Adam shielded his eyes from the sudden rush of color and luminescence, caught off guard. His guitar was firmly gripped around the neck in his other hand, and he smiled. “It’s time to make dad proud I guess…” he said quietly, his voice masked by obligatory applause, which, before the night was out, would turn into fervent cheers.
Adam paced the dimly-lit hallway in a stress-induced panic, the faint smell of alcohol and sweat pervading the air around him. He was backstage at the Studio 101 club, guitar in hand and butterflies in stomach. It was his first major show as a solo act, as his acoustic project The Kensington Family Crest.
Music was in Adam McKaye’s blood. His father, Derek, had been a professional guitarist, and a fairly successful one. It was only the nature of being that this inclination towards music was passed on to his son. In fact, one of the only ways the two actually bonded was through music, playing guitar together and Adam learning from his “good ol’ dad” the fundamentals of advanced bar chord progression and staccato arpeggios in C minor. Of course, Adam had leaned most of the weapons in his impressive arsenal of guitar by himself; however, it was infinitely reassuring that he knew he could always go to his father for help.
None of this was going through Adam’s head, however, as he approached the stage from “The Pit” (What regular musicians not-so-lovingly called the shabby, quasi-dilapidated backstage in Studio 101). In all actuality, the main words occupying his currently one-track thought process were this: Don’t screw up, don’t you dare screw up in front of this many people…
Two days before, Adam had tried to take his own life. His life, it seemed to him, was trapping him within himself, and he couldn’t recall the last time that he was truly happy. It was all he could do just to look in the mirror and not tear his terribly precarious psyche apart with his incisive analysis of himself. He hated everything he was, past and present, and hated his future laid out before him. Constant rejection had taught Adam one thing, and that was that life did you no favors. The things that you want the most are denied to you for that precise reason, or it seemed to him to be so.
So he sat on the floor of the upstairs bathroom in his house, holding a bottle of bleach and writing a suicide letter to everyone and anyone who would read it. Adam had gotten the idea for the bleach after hearing that his idol, Billy Joel, had tried to commit suicide by drinking a bottle of polishing varnish, and he figured that bleach and varnish were along the same lines, chemically speaking. Eyes red and puffy from crying, he brought the bottle to his unusually chapped lips.
It isn’t that Adam’s lips were chapped badly at this point, or even a cause for a miniscule amount of concern. Adam’s lips were never chapped, however, as he took great pride in his appearance. He spent a half hour on his hair every day, wore colored contacts, and, atypical for most men, learned how to color-coordinate the clothes he wore every day.
But on this day, his hair was bewildered in many places, he wore no contacts, and his clothes consisted of a black and burnt-orange argyle vest of a dark brown shirt. The cowlick on the left side of Adam’s forehead, subsequently his greatest identifiable character trait and his worst antagonist, spewed his dark brown hair into all directions, and his hair was highlighted a dark auburn from the sizzling fluorescent lights above him.
Adam poured the sour tasting liquid into his mouth…at least, he assumed it was sour. It stung his mouth so bad that the pain was equivalent to one hundred constant bee stings all over the inside of his mouth. Immediately, before he could even swallow, he spat the bleach onto the mirror, small air bubbles forming in the deadly liquid as it slowly slid down the pane. His cough, mixed with his sobbing, sounded like the sputtering of an old car, and he rushed to the sink. Drawing in cold water from a faucet he’d turned on into his acrid mouth, he began to think on how it could be a good thing that he was so afraid of pain, and in turn, death. He thought about everyone who had ever done anything nice for him. He thought of his parents, and how utterly devastated they would be if he were gone, and his younger sister, who would have to grow up without her big brother. He thought about his friends, who would have to be sans one at movie night for the rest of eternity. Mostly, though, he just thought, and allowed his suicidal thoughts to be swept away into the dark recesses of his mind.
“It’s time for you to go on…” said the stage manager. He was balding, with a ponytail-comb over of fiery, dry red hair, and was not much taller than 5’6. Adam, practically dwarfing him in size at 5’9, walked right on past him and out the door onto the stage. His eyes were bombarded by light in a variety of flamboyant colors: lime green, azure blue, and stop-sign red, in addition to the regular off-white of regular lights. Adam shielded his eyes from the sudden rush of color and luminescence, caught off guard. His guitar was firmly gripped around the neck in his other hand, and he smiled. “It’s time to make dad proud I guess…” he said quietly, his voice masked by obligatory applause, which, before the night was out, would turn into fervent cheers.