Shattered By Broken Dreams

February 2009

Savannah sat in the lounge room of her apartment, with her feet up on the coffee table in front of her. Her band mates were scattered around the room, watching her closely for her reaction.

Crimson Sins had reunited in 2007 and had begun to play together again, although it had mainly been more for nostalgia purposes than an effort on Savannah’s part to get back into the music industry. Savannah had missed the feeling of playing, and whilst the band had played some small local gigs due to the cult status of their EP following her accident, she had figured that it was only a bit of fun. Now she sat with a slightly stunned expression as she looked at Erica, who was fiddling with one of the cushions on Savannah’s sofa.

The band had just broken the news to her that they had secretly recorded some of the new songs that the band had come up with, and they had had an offer from Warner Bros. Savannah ran a hand through her short brown hair, still not quite believing what Tommy had just told her.
“Well, say something!”, Erica exclaimed after Savannah had sat in silence for the better part of five minutes. Savannah shrugged, at a loss for words. Tommy laughed at her stunned expression.
“She’s just in shock”, he grinned, turning to glance at Erica. “I know it’s not every day that you find out that your dreams are going to come true after all.”

Savannah had thought that her dream to become a rock star had been dead and buried after her accident. She had spent two years in rehabilitation, gradually learning how to walk again, and whilst she still felt the occasional twinge in her back, she had made a full recovery. The same could not be said of her heart. She had changed significantly since the accident, and had become considerably colder and tougher, although to her friends she was still the same quiet sweetheart they had always known. One of the first things that she had done once she had been discharged from the hospital was to visit a hair dressing salon and have her long brown hair cut short and she now wore it in a very short style which she often messed up so that it looked like she had just climbed out of bed. Gone also were the conservative fashions that her parents had often forced her to wear. The accident had forced Savannah to become tougher, and she had relished the thought of breaking away from the constrictions of her parents and their old fashioned values.

She stretched while she considered Erica and Tommy’s words, whilst she picked absently at the seam on her black pants. Her short top rode up a little at the back as she stretched and showed the bottom of the large angel wings tattoo on her back. Another metamorphosis that Savannah had gone through following her accident was a need to express her individuality, and she had chosen to do so with an updated style of dressing, and the addition of tattoos. She now sported seven tattoos in various locations around here body which varied from her large angel wings to a small musical note behind her right ear.

She glanced at Tommy again, shaking her head slightly as if she was trying to shake some sense into herself.
“I just find this so hard to believe”, she admitted. “And we’re going on tour?” Erica and Tommy grinned, but Savannah could tell that there was something that they were omitting from the conversation. Knowing that she probably wouldn’t be getting anything out of the two, she turned her brown eyes to the band’s drummer, Kyle Flint, and raised her eyebrow.
“OK, so who are we going out on tour with?”, she asked. “Those two are acting secretive as fuck and I wanna know what’s going on?” Kyle’s eyes widened and he looked like a deer startled in headlights.
“Um, er, well we’re going out with Avenged Sevenfold”, he admitted. Erica and Tommy cringed as they noticed Savannah’s eyes widen.
“We’re fucking what?!”, she roared.
“Hey, it’s a fantastic opportunity’, Erica exclaimed. “They’ve done really well for themselves and it’s going to get us back out in front of the public again.”
“Hell, I know that”, Savannah grumbled. She felt a sick feeling in her stomach, and even though she and her band-mates often saw Matt, Brian, Johnny and Jimmy she had deliberately stayed away from gatherings with the entire band and as such she had not seen Zacky since the night before her accident. She sat up abruptly, her booted feet dropping to the carpet. She felt the same sinking feeling in her stomach whenever she thought of Zacky Baker. Whilst she had mostly moved on from the heartbreak she had felt at Zacky’s abandonment she was not sure that she could face him, even after all this time. He had been her first love, and whilst she was now a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of girl, and never let a man anywhere near her heart, she felt a pang of heartbreak whenever she thought of Zacky. She would never be able to forgive him for what he had done, as he had shattered her young heart into tiny pieces and she had never been able to, nor had she wanted to, put her heart back together. She knew that the men she met now thought of her as a cold ice princess, and for her at the moment that was enough. She had a sinking feeling, however, which was exacerbated by the way that her heart rate had picked up upon just hearing the name of Zacky’s band. Somehow, she just knew that this tour would turn her world upside down and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to face whatever was coming her way.