Keep the Faith
Never, Neverland.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Those words hung pendulous in the air above him as he breathed slowly, taking his time to arrange and rearrange the pieces of a childhood fairytale in his mind.
It crept up on him, this state he found himself in all of a sudden. He was sucked into his mind and locked up in a place without windows and doors where only his words reverberated off the stripped, cement walls.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The air around him was getting thicker, more humid. Soon it clung to his body, every single nerve in his system reacting to the unyielding blanket of discomfort that stuck to him, smothering his will to move, to keep expanding his lungs, to keep that heart beating. Two noises droned out the rest.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
He was breathing them in right now. Not choking yet. Every fucking syllable stinging his pharynx worse than the previous one. Acid. Like hot acid they crawled up the walls of his throat as he uttered them again and again and again and again. No makeshift remedy would help now. No way out –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
His body on the stage. Boyish looks and a pair of aging eyes, hair swirling everywhere, chest rising and falling, battling the weights pressed upon it, moist skin sticking to that marching band uniform, washed and worn for so many times even he himself couldn’t count.
The mic hovered against his mouth, almost touching his lips as they moved to form words and sentences none of which made any sense inside his head. All he heard was static and a heart monitor. The low murmur of a dead channel and a terrified shriek of a dead heart. And the words –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Everything perished at that exact moment. It seemed as though all that was, is and ever would be had exploded into a giant cloud of – well, nothingness. But what came was not silence or darkness, no stillness and cold prevailed inside that man’s mind. On the contrary. What happened was complete, total and utter annihilation of a human spirit – almost as gruesome as watching a carcass decomposing underneath the hot sun, its innards melting into one with the highway. His own innards melted into one with the apostasy that came as an inevitable consequence to the fact he fucking changed. Peter Pans just don’t grow up.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The spotlight was on him again. There was no way of escaping the fucker. The golden dust particles spilled over his statuesque frame but the light never filtered through his eyes. The clear fires in them stood petrified in a statement that in his mind sounded more like a pathetic, needy question –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you?
There were no windows to guide them into the limbo behind those hazel orbs. Memories lingered in the back, their flashes trapped and preserved like insects in amber, suspended in mid-sentence, mid-motion, mid-dream.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Even the stage lights disappeared. The low murmur of the static and the shrieks of the heart monitor droned out all the rest and the cement walls spelled out the words of his own most sincere lie –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The words echoed hollowly, his naked body sought comfort in the harsh, cold embrace of the concrete floor. He could feel his identity slip his fingers and crash against the ground soundlessly.
Murmurs and shrieks.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Locked inside his mind and with no one to guide his body, the singer crashed as his knees gave in and slumped to the dusty stage as though all strings were cut from that black-clad harlequin, his painted skin now stuck to the filthy floor. The percentage of visibility through its glass eyes equaled zero – their opaque amber shade remained cold and torpid while his own self shivered, back pressed against the hard stillness of the concrete while everything else was spinning. The walls, the words, the music, the fucking changes, the hypocrisy.
The Peter Pan of the music, the complete and total homegrown boy-hero, the savior, the tease, the asshole, all of his personas now crowded the tiny room inside him.
It was getting harder to breathe.
Outside –
Shrieks of worry, of fear:
Has he really fallen? Why isn’t he getting up?! Will he be okay? Let us see him! C’mon, open your eyes! Why won’t he get up?! Get up get up get up get up!!!
The sweaty marching band uniform was covered in dust of the disturbed space around him. Lurid and faint images were beckoning to him, droned out by the murmur of the static and the shriek of the monitor. If he could just make out the meaning behind that flat line.
Flat line.
Shriek.
Static.
Murmur.
Like Neverland, they had to believe in order for him to exist. What did go wrong? When had the lost become truly lost? More importantly, when had that chimerical being reduced itself to a begging wraith, coiled into the fetal position on some make-believe floor?
Where were his Lost Boys?
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Had he ever risen again?
Keep the fucking faith and we’ll never have to find out.
Those words hung pendulous in the air above him as he breathed slowly, taking his time to arrange and rearrange the pieces of a childhood fairytale in his mind.
It crept up on him, this state he found himself in all of a sudden. He was sucked into his mind and locked up in a place without windows and doors where only his words reverberated off the stripped, cement walls.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The air around him was getting thicker, more humid. Soon it clung to his body, every single nerve in his system reacting to the unyielding blanket of discomfort that stuck to him, smothering his will to move, to keep expanding his lungs, to keep that heart beating. Two noises droned out the rest.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
He was breathing them in right now. Not choking yet. Every fucking syllable stinging his pharynx worse than the previous one. Acid. Like hot acid they crawled up the walls of his throat as he uttered them again and again and again and again. No makeshift remedy would help now. No way out –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
His body on the stage. Boyish looks and a pair of aging eyes, hair swirling everywhere, chest rising and falling, battling the weights pressed upon it, moist skin sticking to that marching band uniform, washed and worn for so many times even he himself couldn’t count.
The mic hovered against his mouth, almost touching his lips as they moved to form words and sentences none of which made any sense inside his head. All he heard was static and a heart monitor. The low murmur of a dead channel and a terrified shriek of a dead heart. And the words –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Everything perished at that exact moment. It seemed as though all that was, is and ever would be had exploded into a giant cloud of – well, nothingness. But what came was not silence or darkness, no stillness and cold prevailed inside that man’s mind. On the contrary. What happened was complete, total and utter annihilation of a human spirit – almost as gruesome as watching a carcass decomposing underneath the hot sun, its innards melting into one with the highway. His own innards melted into one with the apostasy that came as an inevitable consequence to the fact he fucking changed. Peter Pans just don’t grow up.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The spotlight was on him again. There was no way of escaping the fucker. The golden dust particles spilled over his statuesque frame but the light never filtered through his eyes. The clear fires in them stood petrified in a statement that in his mind sounded more like a pathetic, needy question –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you?
There were no windows to guide them into the limbo behind those hazel orbs. Memories lingered in the back, their flashes trapped and preserved like insects in amber, suspended in mid-sentence, mid-motion, mid-dream.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Even the stage lights disappeared. The low murmur of the static and the shrieks of the heart monitor droned out all the rest and the cement walls spelled out the words of his own most sincere lie –
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
The words echoed hollowly, his naked body sought comfort in the harsh, cold embrace of the concrete floor. He could feel his identity slip his fingers and crash against the ground soundlessly.
Murmurs and shrieks.
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Locked inside his mind and with no one to guide his body, the singer crashed as his knees gave in and slumped to the dusty stage as though all strings were cut from that black-clad harlequin, his painted skin now stuck to the filthy floor. The percentage of visibility through its glass eyes equaled zero – their opaque amber shade remained cold and torpid while his own self shivered, back pressed against the hard stillness of the concrete while everything else was spinning. The walls, the words, the music, the fucking changes, the hypocrisy.
The Peter Pan of the music, the complete and total homegrown boy-hero, the savior, the tease, the asshole, all of his personas now crowded the tiny room inside him.
It was getting harder to breathe.
Outside –
Shrieks of worry, of fear:
Has he really fallen? Why isn’t he getting up?! Will he be okay? Let us see him! C’mon, open your eyes! Why won’t he get up?! Get up get up get up get up!!!
The sweaty marching band uniform was covered in dust of the disturbed space around him. Lurid and faint images were beckoning to him, droned out by the murmur of the static and the shriek of the monitor. If he could just make out the meaning behind that flat line.
Flat line.
Shriek.
Static.
Murmur.
Like Neverland, they had to believe in order for him to exist. What did go wrong? When had the lost become truly lost? More importantly, when had that chimerical being reduced itself to a begging wraith, coiled into the fetal position on some make-believe floor?
Where were his Lost Boys?
Even if you stop believing in us, we'll never stop believing in you.
Had he ever risen again?
Keep the fucking faith and we’ll never have to find out.