Disasterpiece

Back in my hotel room I let my body unravel into absolute misery. Josie must’ve slipped out to spend time with Sid when I’d gone to talk to Joey; because I was alone, curled up on the floor and breaking into millions of pieces. My whole body ached as wave after wave of tears and sobs emitted from me. My breath was short; it was an ordeal just to fill my lungs with air. I dug my nails deep into the skin on my legs; but I didn’t feel it, there was an overload of internal pain that masked any physical pain I tried to put myself through.

On top of everything, on top of feeling like I was close to oblivion…I felt stupid. Completely, utterly, stupid. For mostly there was the fact that I had no right in the first place to lust over a person of his status. Then there was the other blaringly obvious fact that there was nothing between us to justify this kind of reaction. If we had just been friends like he said we were, then him sleeping with someone else should wash over me – in fact if I was one of the guys I should be able to egg him on and high-five him. So this weeping, this pain…this stupidity, it was all on me; it was my fault. I’m the one who fantasised of something more, not him, I’m the one whose karma was waiting to put her in place – and here it is. I was more than in my place; I was completely beaten down.

I’m not sure how long I stayed curled up on the floor, my tears soon subsided as there was nothing left in me to fuel them, but every now and then a sob would still pound up through my chest and retch itself out of my mouth.

For the first time ever, I wanted to go home.

By the time Josie came back I was sitting on the window sill just staring out blankly at the city below; the sun was dipping down on the horizon. Josie closed the door gently and crept over to me, placing her hand softly on my shoulder.

“VJ?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. I turned my head to her, all my facial features still downcast. Seeing her standing there full of worry bought the tears on again. She wrapped her arms tightly around me, rocking me back and forth in her grasp, making comforting noises like a mother does to an upset child.

“It’s ok, it’ll be ok,” she lulled over and over again. I didn’t feel like it would be though, not while I was still here anyway. Eventually she got me to settle down and helped me over to the bed where we lay together; my energy completely drained. She took out her phone and quickly messaged someone before shoving it back in her pocket. We stayed there for a while until she deemed it safe to make conversation.

“Do you want to tell me?” she asked, but I just shook my – there was no way I could bring myself to repeat everything, especially given how lame I knew it would sound. She sighed and ran her fingers through my hair.

“Do you want to me get Corey?” she tried again, I started to shake my head, but then I stopped. Corey had always made everything feel better, the only time he couldn’t was when Mr Squiggle drove him to leave. This was different but, this was his friend…band mate, brother. I really did want Corey, but I couldn’t risk tearing him from his friends. I shook my head again.

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but next thing I knew I was waking up to cracks of sunlight peeking out from the under the now closed curtains. I rolled over and saw Josie asleep on her bed, her face distorted as bad dreams plagued her. I pulled myself up and went over to the bathroom to freshen up and have a shower. When I came out Josie was gone, instead Corey sat on the end of my bed waiting expectantly.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Josie?” I asked tiredly, stopping in the door way. He smiled weakly at me and patted the bed next to him. I took a deep breath and made my way over; our legs touching at I sat down. He pulled me into a hug and didn’t let go.

“Josie came and told me you were upset last night after you fell asleep, I told her to come get me when you woke up,” Corey explained, kissing the top of my head a few times lightly.

“Corey I don’t want you to get involved in any of this,” I said to him, pushing away from his hug and looking up to him with worry. He let his lips curl up sadly just a touch and nodded.

“I know, you would’ve come to me last night if you did,” he replied; his eyes glinting as if he was slightly hurt that I didn’t do just that. “Look,” he said with a sigh, taking my hands in his. “I don’t know what happened and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I made I promise to someone that I would watch out for you on tour and I’m not into breaking promises, so I need to ask you something, ok?” He waited for me to respond, so I simply nodded once. He took a deep breath.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked seriously, trying his best to maintain a blank face so as not to influence my answer in the slightest. I frowned, looking away from him. My survival and defence mechanisms told me I had to go, that if I didn’t I would just get more hurt. It was the sensible thing to do, to let bygones be bygones and cleanse myself of him and the fantasy I had created. Maybe going home would be a fresh start, like after the Mr Squiggle era. But I knew if I went home I would just fall into the same routine, that nothing would change and Des Moines would be my tomb. Then there was the fact that Corey and Josie, my two support beams, would be on the other side of the world. It came down to loneliness versus heart break.

“I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, Corey let out the breath he was holding and nodded.

“Ok, if that’s the case then we need to make you your old cheery self again,” he said with an air of determination. I smiled weakly at him as he got up and pulled me to my feet. “You’re going to stick to me like glue today, I don’t care if you find interviews and everything boring, you’ll just have to deal with it,” he informed me.

Watching Corey do one of the things he does best (that is, talking about himself) was less than boring, actually it was interesting to hear his responses to questions as some of them talked about the earlier days of the band that I was still catching up on. Still, as interesting as Corey was and as nice as he was trying to be, I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the time with him, no matter how hard I tried. It was all too fresh and raw for me to suddenly be able to move on and act like nothing happened.

Corey had got me out of merch duties so I was in his line of site the whole time; it seemed either by a blessing in disguise or by Corey’s knowledge that we were able to avoid a certain drummer the entire day too. At lunch we went into the canteen to find only Chris and Paul eating, Corey told me to get some food while he ducked out of the room for a moment. My appetite was non-existent, but I grabbed an apple to satisfy Corey who I knew would go into overprotective mode if I didn’t eat. Chris and Paul offered me a warm smile each as I sat across from them.

“How are you?” Chris asked as Paul took a large hunk out of his sandwich.

“I’m good,” I lied with a shrug. “How are you?” I asked, more out of social convention than interest as having a conversation wasn’t the most appealing idea to me right now.

“Yeah I’m awesome,” Chris replied. I wasn’t sure if they knew that anything had happened, though I thought it was unlikely of Corey to blab.

“That’s good,” I said lamely. I took a bite from my apple as the other two returned to their previous conversation and continued to eat. My foot began to tap nervously against the table leg as more and more time passed, it almost brought me to the point of nausea to think that Joey could walk in at any time and neither Corey nor Josie would be here to shield me. I heard footsteps coming down the corridor towards the canteen, my breath caught in my throat and I held it there until I saw that it was just Corey returning with a laptop.

“Look what I’ve got!” he sung, waving the laptop around in the air. I raised my eyebrow at him as he placed it in front of me, held out his finger for me to wait, went and grabbed some food, then finally sat down beside me.

“Please enlighten me,” I said, watching him quickly shovel a few mouthfuls of food into his mouth.

“Turn it on,” he said, a few stray food crumbs flying out of his mouth and onto the table. I wrinkled my nose at him, but turned the laptop on none the less. The screen was pretty generic so I assumed this wasn’t Corey’s computer. Once it was on I looked over to him.

“Now what?” I asked. He held up his finger once more as he pulled the laptop over to himself and turned it so I couldn’t see the screen and what he was doing. I rapped my fingers against the table top, waiting for him to show me what he was up to. Suddenly I heard a voice come out of the speakers. Corey quickly turned the laptop around again so I could see that Griffin was on the screen waving and giving us one of his massive goofy grins.

“Aunty V!” he screamed in excitement, a real smile finally adorned my face as my eyes stung a little.

“Griffin! Oh god…how are you buddy?” I asked. I could see in my peripheral vision that Corey was smiling to himself, obviously happy that he had finally managed to cheer me up a bit.

“I am this good!” Griffin replied loudly, standing up he extended his arms out as far as they could go; Corey and I both laughed at his antics.

“I’m glad to hear, how’s school?” I inquired. Griffin sat back down on his chair, but leant against the desk so his face was almost right up against the screen.

“It’s good, we learnt about dinosaurs the other day and then I kissed a girl and then I had to run into the bathroom and wash my face because kissing girls is yuck and you get cooties,” he rambled at a speed I could barely keep up with.

“But once you kiss a girl you’re stuck with cooties for life, you can never get rid of them,” Corey told Griffin with a serious face. Griffin’s eyes bulged, his mouth falling open.

“MOOOOMMMMMM!” he screamed, jumping up from the chair he ran away from the computer evidently to confirm Corey’s theory with his Mom. Corey and I chuckled as Corey took my hand in his and squeezed it. I mouthed ‘thank you’ at him as Griffin appeared on the screen again with his Mom, Scarlet (who I met only once at the airport) in tow.

“Mom says you’re lying!” Griffin exclaimed accusingly, pointing a finger at Corey.

“Me? No, I never lie,” Corey replied playfully. Griffin frowned up at his Mom who rolled her eyes and ruffled his hair.

“You’ll make him have nightmares,” Scarlet scolded Corey light-heartedly.

“My little man doesn’t have nightmares, he’s too old for that,” Corey replied, winking at Griffin who nodded.

“Yeah Mom, I’m too old for that!” he said to Scarlet as he placed his hands on her and pushed her out of view.

“So besides school, have you been up to anything else?” I tried. Griffin thought for a moment and nodded.

“Yeah! I got guitar lessons and I played football with Scotty down the street and I used my pocket money to buy chocolate so I ate lots of chocolate!” Griffin responded, bouncing up and down on his chair.

We probably spent another twenty minutes listening to Griffin tell us about his adventures and the plot to a movie he recently saw. It warmed my heart to see him so happy even though his father was so far away from him; I couldn’t help but to be lifted out of my black mood. When we finally said good bye Griffin kissed the screen and told us he loved us before signing off. Corey closed the laptop and turned to me with a grin.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked, I smiled.

“Thank you,” I replied, giving him a quick hug. Corey looked at his phone as we parted and informed me that he had another few interviews to do before the show. We stood up and I followed him out into the corridor and back towards the media room. As we were walking Corey came to a halt and froze as a girl brushed past us, seemingly ignoring our existence.

“What the fuck!” he swore under his breath, I glanced back at her in confusion.

“What?” I asked him quietly so she couldn’t hear. Corey shook his head as if shaking off a bad thought, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards our destination, telling me it was ‘nothing’.

After the interviews we stood awkwardly in the doorway, both of us knowing that Corey had no choice but to leave me now to get ready for the show – and we both knew I wasn’t going into the green room with him.

“What do you want to do?” he asked me; I bit my lip, shuffling a little on the spot.

“Maybe I should go back to the hotel now?” I suggested, knowing that I couldn’t bear to even see Joey on stage...and then if he walked past me! Corey agreed and called John to organise a cab for me. This was the first Slipknot show I’d miss since been on tour, but instead of feeling sad, I was kind of glad, or rather relieved.