Wish You Were Here

I walk in the door with Loki trailing behind me. I close the door after him then hang up my coat and his leash then walk into my make shift apartment on the top floor of the music shop. I sigh and fall backwards on my bed, pull my favorite Blink-182 album off my shelf, open the case, pop in the cd in my cd player, turn it up to let Joe know I’m home and hit play. I grab my usual pen and yellow note paper that I write my songs on and start writing random words and chords while listening to “Ghost on The Dance Floor.” I hear a knock on the door. I turn down the music and tell Joe to come in. He opens the door and walks in closing the door behind him. I look at him over my paper then get back to writing.
Joe grabs hold of my paper and yanks it away from me, then sits back in his original position. I sigh and set my pen down and sit up next to him. He continues to look at the paper pad he has in his hands and then looks at me.

“When’s Cryptic Sin’s next show?”

Joe smiles slightly waiting for me to answer. I go to grab my pad back but he yanks it away from my reach. I frown and sigh my resignation.

“How should I know? I’m not part of their band, I just covered for their guitar player who couldn’t make it. I’m not ever going to be a part of that band.”

I look down at the floor still thinking about why Anna ran off stage crying like she did, and where she went to afterwards. I looked everywhere in that building and within a 5 block area. She was nowhere to be found. Joe looked back at the notepad, lays it back on my bed and slides it over to me. He stands up and stretches and opens the shades on the window next to my bed.

“A message on the underground rock music blog here in California. Bassist of Cryptic Sin calls it quits. She says Cryptic Sin is disbanding after tonight’s performance.”

Joe walks to the other side of the small room and sits in a chair looking straight at me, waiting for a reaction. I chew on my cheek for a second then look up.

“And? Anything else? If not I’d like to get back to writing new songs that I’ll put on a demo and send somewhere I won’t get any attention because I suck.”

He smiles and pulls a page of printer paper out of his back pocket. He hands it to me and I unfold it. On it is a picture of Anna of when she was younger. Around the time she was seventeen by the looks of it. She’s got one long pink stripe down her long blonde hair. I look at the picture then look at the title of the article.

“Cryptic Sin done. Bassist Anna Chase calling on old friends to come to California.”

Underneath the title is a smaller sub-title, no one would notice it unless you knew the band that was in it. I immediately recognized the name of the band.

“Chase goes from Anna to Fever as she tries to reconnect the members of hard rock band Katastrophic Breakdown.”