Gone Isn't Forever

Chapter 5

No Words to Describe This

The rest of the week passed fast and all the while, Jimmy stuck around and followed me everywhere. Except for those times when he would randomly disappear and not show up for several hour intervals at a time. I vaguely wondered where he would vanish off to. But during the times he was there, I couldn't get him off of me. It was as if he were attached to my hip. Although some good came out of it. I got to spend a lot of quality time with my hero and he actually helped me out with a lot my music. Every time I would bring up Jimmy's suggestions, the rest of my friends loved it and called me a genius. It sort of made me feel dirty because I was forced to take credit for The Rev's ideas.
But I mean, what else was I going to do. I couldn't exactly tell them that my dead mentor taught me these things. They would send me to a nut house and I would find myself within the contours of the looney bin. On top of that we bonded and he became my teacher, soul mate (haha punny), my best friend, and remained my hero. Although he was not aware of the last two categories.

“Hey Mell, you're getting a very important text soon. Make sure you take your phone with you when we go to the show tonight.” Jimmy spoke with urgency and I nodded, taking my ancient cell phone out of the hands of a rock legend. I always hated texting on my cell phone because it was one those old cheap tracfones where you were forced to text the old fashioned way. Three clicks on the 4 button just to get to an ' I '. But at least it was affordable.

“Yes Mother. I mean; Yes Sir, Mr. Jimmy, Sir Sullivan Sir!” I gave James a military solute. “But uh, just how am I supposed to answer a phantom text message if I'm going to be rocking out on stage rocking out at the Commonwealth Lounge?” I asked him.

“I'll answer it for you. You shouldn't bring your phone on stage with you anyway. It might mess up the amplification systems. Besides, you probably won't even receive the message until after the show.” He answered. I nodded.

“Right. I found that one out the hard way.” I murmured, recalling the incident from our second gig ever. I had forgotten that I still had my cell in my pocket. As soon as I stepped foot on that stage, the amps and the mics threw out a high pitched explosion of various high frequency sound waves that deafened the entire band for ten whole minutes. I cost us our time slot that day. The two things that have ever made my shed a single tear consisted of that dreadful day and the gorgeous man before me.

“Okay then.” I flashed a brilliant smile at him, kissing my ghostie on his cool, very solid cheek. “Thankies Jimmers.” I said before whipping around to finish loading my guitar and its essential equipment into our creeper van. Jimmy was silent after that and he didn't say another word until we arrived at the Lounge. It seemed to be just a place for kids to hang out at. A place where you could chill and listen to some awesome new music. The concessions were open, selling everything from a soft pretzel and cheese to a monster. It seemed like a place we would have loved to hang out at before we became a band of our own. It was nice to be getting to play at bigger places than the local village tavern. However, the thought that we could quite possibly be stuck playing shows like this one for the rest of our band's existence did cross my mind.

After setting up our stage equipment ourselves, since our rhodies could not make it out to Cali with us, we took five to catch our breath before falling into our set. I gave Jimmy my cell phone and winked at him before running off to set.

“Don't miss our phantom text now Boss.” I told him.

“Wouldn't dream of it.” He replied winking back at me and the look in his eyes seemed to be holding concealed secrets that I was not yet aware of. It was like not being in on a simple joke when you did not understand the punchline.

The members of Raising Babylon took their places as the curtains rose to reveal the crowd. I listened to Maggy clicking her sticks together, counting off our opener. Four clicks and I was in. The intro to Shallow Graves went quite smoothly if I do say so myself. The bass drum hit on the off beats guiding the tempo. I listened closely for the bass and the entrance of my rhythm. We seemed to have caught the crowd's attention seeing as how the audience began in an uproar as soon as I played my first note. My eye brow shot up as I glanced over at Kirsten who had adopted the same expression of confusion as I had. This club had never heard us play before in their lives and yet they were treating us like we were big shot rockstars. We had never gotten such a response from any crowd. We had played over a hundred shows since RB's existence and this had never happened before. They had started getting riled up as soon as we took the stage. Hmm, weird.

The crowd's reaction caught my band mates and I off guard, but that didn't stop us from delivering the best of Raising Babylon there was to offer. I almost faltered near the end of Shallow Graves when I spotted a very familiar group of men sitting in the front row with an extremely familiar face standing behind them, flashing a very familiar smile up at us. I jumped back a foot, but made it look cool by going into a crazy as shit head banging to save myself from looking like the hell just got scared out of me. Besides, I figured that a nice head bang may shake off the shock of the hallucination I had just experienced. I mean that was not cool. This was not Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and I did not do drugs, nor did I drink. So there was no reason why I should have been experiencing that insane of trip.

However, it appeared that the head banging did not work because when I gazed upon the front row, I still saw the faces of Matt Shadows, Synyster Gates, Zackary Vengeance, and Johnny Christ. Among them was their lost member whom had been my mentor for the past week. Was this reality? Had Jimmy actually pulled off getting Avenged Sevenfold to come to our little show as we played make believe rockstars? That theory was completely insane but it seemed to be the only logical one that I could come up with. How in the hell did he pull this off, you know, being dead and all?

I had no idea how the hell he did it, but the proof was literally right in front me. In the front row. I was shocked to see Zacky tapping his left foot, Matt smiling and nodding his head along, Brian pumping the rock on sign, and of course Jimmy joined in behind Johnny while he full out head banged and pulled out his air bass. I just smiled and chuckled to myself, making my way across the stage to my rhythm guitarist. I figured that as long as we had their attention, we might as well make the show worth their while. I twirled around and pressed my back up against Harper's backside. Knowing exactly what we were doing, each of us took our dueling stances and Harper and I gave the crowd the most amazing guitar duo on the metal scene they have seen since Brain and Zacky's dynamic duo.

Once we finished off our little guitarist love affair, I decided to gaze back into the faces of the members of Avenged Sevenfold. Johnny had his phone out recording something. Oh my God, he was filming our performance! Holy bucket of shit! I glanced over at the faces of Brian and Zacky and I was shocked to find that the famous dynamic duo were occupied drawing their jaws off the ground. It was so funny that I burst out loud into a fit of laughter. However, no one could truly hear my giggles due to the roar of the amps and the noise that our music was producing.

The longer our show went on, the more fun I had just playing music and doing what I loved, what all of us loved. It was amazing that Avenged Sevenfold had stayed throughout our entire set Hell, it was mind blowing that they stayed up in the front row the entire time. They even started a freaking mosh pit man. Zacky came out of that one with a bloody nose and I could tell that Jimmy was laughing at him. We played an hour and the crowd loved us. They were going bat shit crazy by the time we were done. I felt good to see the members of Avenged Sevenfold goofing off and just having fun. All of them. I hadn't seen them this relaxed since Jimmy's passing. I wondered if I was not the only one who experienced that comforting feeling. I gazed back out at Avenged and feasted my eyes upon Matt. He was looking down at a phone and he appeared to be hitting buttons of some sort. Why the fuck was he calling someone in the middle of a loud ass show? How was he supposed to hear anything. But the longer I stared at him, the longer I noticed that he never lifted the phone to his ear. He was texting.