Saturday October 6, 1990, 7:55 p.m.

Damien pushed his guitar amp up the ramp in the back alley. Once again, the fraction of an inch difference between the makeshift wooden ramp and the concrete step nearly caused the cheap, but irreplaceable piece of equipment to fly off the cart it rested on. Home sweet home. It probably served Damien right for being in such a hurry. Nonetheless, it was tradition, if only to himself.

He was so certain that by now he'd be able to return home to his old town on a large tour bus instead of Mac's beat-up old van. In all truth, he was surprised the damn thing had lasted so long. It even outlasted their lead singer, Alex. Damien and Alex were as damn close to brothers considering they both grew up on the same block together and were in every class in school together until they dropped out and decided to try taking their act on the road, all the way out to LA. Their engine overheated nearly halfway there, but somehow not only did they manage to fix up the pile of shit, Daddy's Little Girl got picked up by a record label. Sure, Drowned Creek wasn't large by any means, but it was sure as hell better than nothing.

Now after three years, the boys were coming home. Damien had stood in front of a payphone downtown debating as to whether or not to call his parents, or at least his little sister Denise. For some reason, he always thought of her as "little" even if he was only about three minutes older than her. He thought better of it considering that she might ask about Alex. She tried to hide it, but Damien knew that Denise had always had a crush on Alex. Even if Daddy's Little Girl was by no means famous, they usually partied like it. Damien wasn't aware of how crazy it got until he found Alex face down dead on a bar table with blood oozing out of his nose.

He was almost tempted to call it quits and just go home, try to go back to school or something, but by then it seemed like it was much too late. Besides, the other guys agreed that Alex would have wanted to keep going. This wasn't going to slow them down in their quest for fame and fortune. At the same time, it didn't curb their habits.

In Patrick's case, his addiction was whiskey, the shittier the better. The more it looked like it was made in someone's bathtub and the more it tasted like it could remove the paint from walls the better. Sometimes Damien wondered if between that and the amount of bleach and dye Patrick put on his head, he had gone completely nuts. It was strange, the more contempt Patrick showed for the audience and potential fans like spitting booze at them, pulling down his pants and shuffling across the stage, the more people seemed to love him. Maybe it was this act that had saved the band. The last few reviews they had gotten for their live shows by kids at local newspapers usually commented on their lackluster performance. Maybe Patrick was right when he told the other guys that if they wanted to be rock stars, they had to act like rock stars.

Damien wasn't so sure, but then again, he felt completely lost with Alex gone. Sometimes he'd have terrible nightmares where he would be talking to an obviously-dead Alex, fully decomposing and barely able to respond. Maybe letting Patrick take over wasn't exactly the best of ideas, but it was still something compared to calling it quits and going home to a "normal" job.

E to A, A, A to D, D, E to A, A, A to D, D, Damien’s middle finger went all the way up to each fret, and finally to B to E, E. Something about this simplistic act always brought peace to him no matter where he was or what his current situation was.If there was anything Damien knew, it was how to tune his rather tempermental Gibson guitar. With how many times he had dropped the case or Patrick had thrown it across the room in a fight, it managed to stay consistent, if only for Damien. He stood in front of the amp, feet firmly planted and knees bent as if bracing himself for a great wind to come out and knock him over. It never did. Sometimes he felt lucky to even get it up to eight without it exploding without so much as a decent tone without distortion.

Soon enough, his solitude was disturbed by Patrick dragging along his amp on a cart with one of the wheels broken. As usual, Patrick was muttering curses to himself, often kicking the amp for good measure. Damien just wanted to tell Patrick that there was nobody watching so he can just drop the act. Then again, even Damien wasn't so sure himself that what Patrick's antics were really "just an act" anymore. For the most part, Mac just kept to himself after Alex died, but continued driving along. Damien didn't think he got so much as two words out of any given conversation with Mac in the past year.

Attempting to ignore Patrick's "spectacle of the evening," Damien turned his eyes away from the stage to where their audience would be standing that night. A girl wearing headphones serpentined along on her merry way, sweeping up the debris of last night's revelry. She looked awfully young to be working in a dive like this, but then again, it wasn't like there was really much to do in this town anyway. Damien knew that first-hand. That was part of why Damien and Alex started the band anyway. One day while practicing in the garage, Denise complained about the noise and asked them to keep it down while she studied. Naturally, they refused, continuing to blare as loud and as obnoxiously as possible for good measure. After all, what did brat sisters know about musical destiny anyway? Denise promptly ran to their father with her complaint, who suddenly cut short their practice by cutting off power in the garage from the circuit breaker in the basement. Damien resorted to his favorite taunt of his little sister as "Daddy's Little Girl" and Alex happened to think that was a great idea for a band name. It held a sharp tang of irony, considering they were the sort of guys who fathers would fear would run off with their daughters: hard, fast and loud.

Even though it seemed likely that the girl would never complete her task of making the place seem "decent," she continued sweeping all the same. Damien found that to be oddly admirable, considering he stayed with this band even though they really didn't seem to be going anywhere except for one cheap booze dive after another.

Then again, there was something different about the Phoenix Ballroom. Even though Damien wasn't too crazy about his town, he always enjoyed playing shows there with the owner's under-the-table sale of alcohol and all-ages shows so at least the kids would have something to do on weekends. The only thing Damien had looked forward to growing up was when he'd finally leave. Yet he always came back.

Maybe it was the smell. It never smelled like the usual dive, vomit and booze-soaked with just a bit of sex added on the side for good measure. The Phoenix didn't really seem to have a smell outside of the usual smoke smell. Sometimes Damien wondered if the owner opened all the doors and let the air blow in now and again to clear the air. Sometimes it got so cold in there that he was tempted to keep his jacket on. However, once the crowd trickled in and the house lights went up, he knew that things would heat up pretty well.

"Thanks for coming out tonight, I know y'all have a busy schedule, considering you're in the middle of fucking nowhere and you'll probably die here you worthless little shits!" Patrick shouted into the microphone.

"Fuck you!" A not-so-entertained audience member retorted.

"Sorry, I don't like guys, faggot!" It was about half a minute into their set and Patrick had already flipped someone the bird. Damien had a feeling that the usual mooning of the audience would be bumped up a bit in the schedule.

"Get off the stage, asshole!" Some girl in the audience booed.

Unsure what else he could do, Damien started playing the intro to the first song in their usual set, "Over, Pass, Drive." It was the one Alex wrote about the accident Joey from their school had their sophomore year. Granted, they weren't friends with Joey nor did they even know him that well, but still, it was a pretty cool idea for a song. The driving chords were simple enough in rhythm for Mac to jump in almost immediately, and once again, the band managed to negotiate itself out of an audience lynching without even having to be diplomatic about it.

During the bridge where he had taken Alex's old solo, Damien looked around the audience. It was dark, and the glare from the lights made seeing anything in particular a bit difficult. Nonetheless, he was still able to make out figures in the crowd enough to know that the audience was pretty good-sized that night. He saw some guy up close to the stage in khakis with some girl in clothes which were a bit too big for her, a group of kids in the middle, and random loners off in the back.

One figure milled about among all the walks of life tonight. For a moment, he thought it was the same girl with the broom, continuing her rather futile task. Yet she seemed much taller than before. Once the figure edged toward the light, but still remained mostly in the shadows, Damien recognized him. He would have recognized that ugly green sweatshirt anywhere.

Was he dreaming, or was that Alex? No, it was impossible. Alex was dead. Even if ghosts existed, Alex died almost all the way across the country from this place. For a moment, it seemed like the figure was looking right at Damien. As if recognizing that Damien's eyes were on him, the figure moved more erratically in the dark, causing Damien to scan the large room even harder.

Shit. He already lost count of how many times he had gone through the final strains of the chorus. Usually, Alex and now Patrick sang the chorus about five more times before ending the song, but now Damien wasn't sure where he was anymore. Right now, all he wanted to do was to jump off the stage and go looking for this guy who may or may not be his dead friend.

But no, as they say, the show must go on.

Damien winded down the last chorus and slowed down before playing the closing chord. As it died out on the amp behind him, he could see Patrick out of the corner of his eye glaring like all hell at him.