By Roman Soto
The Visions were a rising punk talent. The lead singer had a voice so horribly pungent it was admirable. No one knew how it worked, but it did, and boy, did people love the hell out of it. To many, though, he seemed out of place. It was as if the other band members breathed in unison, leaving their frontman out with awkward moments of hesitation so subtle that avid listeners could unobtrusively thrash their heads. Something was off. From the moment those iconic combat boots clunked across the stage, his balding brunette hair flailed, and his eyes met the crowd’s, his pale, ghoulish skin shone monotonously as the nervous gaze of his emerald eyes refracted like a disco ball. I was fortunate enough to know the lead singer; after all, he was my best friend. My name is Anthony; his, Nick. You’d swear Nick’s demeanor was just a facade to amplify the darker atmosphere radiating throughout a suffocating music hall: It wasn’t. Nothing about him was an act.
I remember the night it all started. At the time, I managed The Visions and got them set up for their first tour of Minnesota. The band was ecstatic, and it might have been one of the few times we could sneak a mere smirk out of Nick’s stone-cold bearing. Then, Bzzzzzt. We all turned our heads, a residual smile left on our faces, to see what the disturbance was. There it was, alone on the dimly lit desk beside piles of openly spilled pill bottles, shining bright like an incoming meteor and threatening to tear down our world’s current moment of joy: Nick’s phone. The doctor’s office was calling, most likely regarding the results of his tests earlier that week. The smiles vanished as Nick strutted over to properly receive the news. He picked up the phone, nodded a few times, and hung up.
“Well,” Kenny, the drummer, inquired, “what’d they say?”
Nick turned to face us dejectedly and defeated.
“On top of the medication they already have me on,” he started, “I gotta take some stuff for my newly diagnosed epilepsy”
We stood there baffled. Speechless. It was a group consensus that the pills he was already taking to treat his insomnia magnified his intensely cold self. But epilepsy on top of that? Our lead showman and singer, the person who would have all the flashing lights blaring down on him among some of the rowdiest, most notoriously chaotic crowds in music, has to deal with epilepsy now? Would it have been selfish of me to admit I questioned the tour and band’s future success in the moment rather than my best friend’s well-being?
“Listen, guys, I don’t feel so well; I’m gonna go home,” Nick said.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, man. I can take you,” I offered.
“Okay,” he replied, eyes halfway shut.
Scattered mumbles of band members, void of reassuring words, echoed in the chilly room as the air seemed to thin with every step I took closer to the front door.
I let everyone in the house know they could stay at my place as long as they needed and clean up when they were done. They nodded, and I took whatever pieces of my friend Nick were left out the front door.
After a silent five-minute car ride to his house, I pulled up in front of it, and as I opened my mouth to speak, he shoved the door open and sprinted inside. By the time he was inside, I didn’t understand what I had witnessed. I stared off into the worn-down shack he called home. Unexpectedly, the empty house flickered a light turned on in what seemed to be the bathroom. Panicked, I instinctively chased after him.
My eyes widened in fear; a twisted anticipation overtook me with each step down the concrete pathway eroded by overgrown weeds.
Suddenly, “Ahhhhhh!”
I stood up, alert as the haunting wails of a broken man plagued the block, and I quickly answered the howls of distress. I burst through the front door and rushed through a sea of crushed beer cans and scattered papers with illegible writing in the cramped halls, bumping into every corner. It was a madman’s paradise. BANG! I stopped in my tracks for a second, then crept towards the door, cracked open; a static yellow-orange glow fled the bathroom.
“Nick?” I hesitantly called out.
He replied, “I just can’t do it anymore, Anthony. I can’t”
I peeked to see the aftermath of my friend’s manic state. He stood there facing what used to be a mirror; a massive, cracked dent splattered with trickling blood like an intricate river system. I couldn’t quite make out the details, but when he turned around, I knew what he meant. The pressure of a successful band, the medication, the depression, the insomnia, and now the epilepsy—it was all too much for a 23-year-old kid. I stood there, facing those same emerald eyes, anguish in them as they gazed into mine.
Nick’s face was bashed into an unrecognizable pulp. Glass shards scattered across his smooth, ghoulish skin. He looked as if he cried tears of blood. Even in his final moments, was he this same tense boy I played with as a kid? No, it wasn’t. He gave me a last hopeful smirk as consciousness quickly faded. Nick collapsed and hit his head on the corner of the sink, sealing his tragic fate.