Return Of The Knife Master

Three bangs on the door roused the singer from his dead-to-the-world sleep. His throbbing head, stuffy nose, and aching everything did not make for even an ounce of good motivation. He’d drank far too much the previous evening and wasn’t even sure if he’d made it to bed before the break of dawn. Three more knocks on the door came; two short, one long. He grumbled as he slowly, very slowly, rolled from his stomach to his side in an attempt to get up.

Hazel eyes peeled open, and dark brows furrowed as he glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was an old timey piece, with a large round face, two bells on top, with a little hammer in between that would undoubtedly make quite a ruckus when it went off. He obviously wasn’t in his room, but with as much alcohol as he’d consumed before crawling into bed, there was no telling where he was. When he was able to pull himself up to a sitting position, he furrowed his brows at the scratchiness of the pajama shirt he was wearing.

Wait, what? He went to bed shirtless and in boxers. Always.

Glancing down, he found himself to be in a full matching set of what appeared to be decently expensive pajamas. Upon further investigation, he found the shirt to be a dark nautical blue, intolerably starchy and stiff as if it had been ironed and had about a dozen golden buttons all the way down. What the hell? He didn’t do pajamas, did not wear long sleeves to bed, hated anything tight around his neck when he slept, and had never ironed anything in his entire life. What the hell was going on?

While he was tempted to retrace his steps from the night before, he knew he needed to get to the door. Maybe whoever was there could tell him where his regular clothes were. He gingerly moved his legs over the edge of the bed, and his feet promptly stepped on a pair of what he found to be wool lined slippers in, you guessed it, nautical blue.

Okay, this was getting weird. Little did he know, this would prove to be the most normal part of his day.

-

Zack woke up to a bone chilling cold permeating his room. He wasn’t awake enough to realize that shouldn’t be the case, but he was with it enough to feel around for his blankets. He jerked when his hands patted over what felt like….burlap? What the hell was that?

It took him a moment to breathe and calm himself from the sudden streak of fear that came with touching something he wasn’t expecting at what the darkness in the room told him was likely about two am, but he tentatively stretched his arm out to begin feeling around again. Not only was he not finding his covers, but he also began feeling what appeared to be rips and tears in his shirt.

“Fucking better not be,” he grumbled to himself, “this is a new shirt, and I’ll be damned if I have to buy another one.”

Getting up off of his bed, he furrowed his brows when it creaked and leaned. That didn’t sound right. His bed wasn’t that old, and it certainly didn’t lean. Wasn’t it also a higher sitting mattress than that? That was odd.

He went to feel around for his phone to use the light off of it, but quickly found his bedside table to be missing. Alright, what was going on here? He knew he’d gotten nearly black out drunk the previous night, but he distinctly remembered crashing at Matt’s house and—

Oh. That’s right; he sighed now. He wasn’t at home. He’d gone to bed at Matt’s. Okay, that made sense. Of course he wasn’t going to have all of his stuff because he was in one of the singer’s spare rooms. Now that he had settled that issue, he began to walk towards the door to see why in the hell the house was so damned cold.

-

Dark lashes fluttered opened at the sound of some sort of bird cawing from above the shortest Avengedman. Before he could even open his eyes at what he found to be the brightest, most intrusive light he could have imagined in that moment, half of his senses came back to him. This brought a hefty amount of pain to register in his brain. Good God, he hadn’t had that much to drink in years. He wasn’t quite as young as he used to be, and to consume that much alcohol in one sitting without even some sort of junk food on his stomach did not agree with him.

His tongue pushed out to wet what he found to be very cracked, dry, and borderline blistered lips and he grimaced.

“Matt?” he called out with a hint of a whine lacing his voice that he hadn’t planned on. “Brian, what did you guys do to me this time? And where….” He paused an extended moment now to feel around blindly for his shirt, because it felt like his skin was on fire. “Where are my clothes?”

Rolling over onto all fours, he shakily pushed himself up to a standing position to find not only was he outside, but his shirt also wasn’t the only thing missing. He was stark naked. Blurry eyes blinked against the insanely bright light, and he lifted a hand to shade them so he could try to see.

The ground beneath sunburnt feet was so dry that it was completely cracked as far as the eye could see. He saw not one tree, one bush, or a single, solitary structure for what seemed like miles around.

“Where the fuck am I? Zack? Matt? Guys. This isn’t funny!” he called out, his voice growing in volume and intensity with each word, and now caught sight of the bird that had woken him up a few moments ago. It looked to be a vulture, and it circled menacingly overhead. Lower, and lower, and lower it soared, to the point it almost seemed like it was taunting him, which only added to the steadily increasing confusion of the heavily sweating bassist. It continued its downward spiral until it actually buzzed his head, and suddenly broke the otherwise mind-numbing silence by letting out an ear-piercing screech as it did so.

Letting out a terrified scream of his own, he turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn’t know where the fuck he was, or what was going on, but he sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out!

-

“Nathan,” a young woman with a decidedly southern drawl called out gently. “Nathan, darlin’. Are you all right?”

A pained sound left the chocolate eyed man’s mouth. He was never going to drink that hard again, he swore to himself, God, and any other being that may run the universe who might be listening. His skull felt like it had been put through a trash compactor. His ribs ached, hips stung, and it felt like his entire left side was bruised to shit.

“Nathan. Nathan?” a sigh left the younger woman as he began trying to rouse and her voice seemed to move away briefly. “Didn’t you say his name is Nathan? He ain’t sayin’ nothin’.”

“Matt?” he groaned now. “Jimmy?”

“There you are sweet pea. I thought you’d done died and gone on to the sky to be with God ‘n Jesus! Are you okay?”

Sleep sticky eyes slowly peeled open and struggled to see against what appeared to be the noon day sun. A petite form came into view, but it took a series of blinks and a wipe of the palm of his hand over his face to get it to clear up. A strawberry blond with beautiful blue grey eyes stood over him with a hand shading her sun kissed face.

“Can you hear me okay, sugar?” she drawled, with a soft smile now.

“I can hear you. I just…..” struggling to sit up, he took the hand she offered and cried out at the sharp pain that instantly stabbed through his entire left side. “Holy fuck!”

Sounds of other people gasping in the distance made its way to his ears, but he wasn’t able to focus on that. He was in far too much pain. A huge wave of nausea came with his coming upright, and the next second had him lurch forward, where he swiftly vomited all over himself and the poor girl’s dusty shoes.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry,” he rasped and began to wretch again.

“Seth, can you fetch me some water?” she called over her shoulder, and squatted down in front of him. Her ankle length shirt domed around her frame and feet.

A hot wave of bone-dry air blew past them, which came with a side of dirt that hit the side of the guitarist’s face. This caught him off guard and the little surprised noise that left him threw him into a coughing fit. An oddly clean hand came up to his mouth as he sputtered and choked about there in the gravely dirt.

“Ugh!” leaning ever so gently to the side with a wince at the lightning quick jab of pain that encased his ribcage, he spat into the dirt.

“Confound it, Nathan! Where are your manners, boy?!” a man scolded off in the distance.

“Oh, darlin’, he pret’near died this morning! He doesn’t have his wits about him! Leave him be!” another woman reprimanded the man in turn, and it caused Brian to glance over that way.

A couple of pigs squealed and rushed around in the sparse grass while being chased by a blonde little boy that couldn’t be more than two or three. Large livestock grazed nearby, and makeshift tents lined the area all around. A fire burned about a hundred feet away, with what looked like an old-fashioned coffee maker fixed on top.

“What the…what’s going on? Who are you?” he asked as he lifted an arm to wipe his mouth on what he found to be a well-worn, powder blue long sleeve shirt. Who the hell’s clothes were these?

“Oh, my. Beggin’ your pardon, sir. My name is Alma Jean. I’m one of your neighbors here in the train, though I’m not sure we’ve properly been acquainted,” she said with another soft smile that lit up bright eyes. “You fell off the wagon and rolled down a little hill onto some pretty large rocks. Banged your ribs up real good and did a number on your poor noggin’ too. We all thought you were a goner, but Mama May made you some of her famous Get-Well tea, and you managed to nurse some of that down. By the looks of you, it worked just fine- you’re alive and-a breathin’!”

“Fell off the wagon?” he grumbled. “I’ve never been on the wagon. Being sober isn’t really the rockstar thing to do.”

“That’s a funny thing to call yourself, but I reckon you are.” An airy laugh rang out of her lips, and she stood now. “You sure ain’t talkin’ like you’re okay, but Mama May knows what she’s doin’ and my Pa sent for the doctor. We heard there was one somewhere in the train, and he should be here by dusk, we hope. Now where is Seth with that water?”