This is a rough draft of the first chapter of a story I'm writing about a man named Adam Holmes and the events that unfold in his life after a traumatic incident. I call the work in progress "The Schizo" to differentiate it from my other writing, but that has no bearing on what the final title will be. Let me know what you think!
Chapter One
"Can you picture what will be? So limitless and free."
-The Doors
Adam Holmes sat precariously on the edge of a black wooden chair, his leg shaking up and down in a tremble, his heel tapping noisily on the floor. His hands felt clammy so he wrung them like a cloth, squeezing his fingers over and over, rubbing the sticky sweat on the backs of his hands. The feeling reminded him of a humid summer's day, hours before the rain.
As the lights dimmed, he heard the faint shuffle of canvas flats across the smooth cement floor and saw her silhouette ascend the stage steps in the low bar-light. A lanky figure, outlined by the flair of a trench coat and bowler hat, skipped a step behind her and nearly tripped. Adam managed a chuckle. Through all his nerves, you'd think it was he putting on his first performance tonight. He half imagined himself stumbling up behind her, and smiled again. The lanky man positioned himself next to a cello and shuffled a few cords around with his feet before picking up a guitar that he began to tune. *Sound check.* Adam leaned forward in his chair, elbows to his knees, listening idly to the din of whispered voices around him. Casual murmurs. Happy banter. Finally a voice cleared its throat from an amplifier, and when the searing squeal of the microphone faded, the amplifier spoke.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Lu Menaires' Lounge proudly presents, for their debut live performance...the internet sensation, Vonegger & Pepper!" With a startling *clack* the stage lights hummed to life. Adam did not blink.
His sister sat still at the keys of a matte black baby grand. Adam lurched upright in his chair and clapped as loud as he could, yelling the most subtle "Wooooo!" he could muster, which wasn't quite that subtle at all. Pepper, his sister, shot him a quick "Shut up" glance, but he saw the smirk on her face when she did. As soon as he was quiet she hit her first key, and hummed a tune melodic and fine. The lanky trench coat, whom Adam knew as Pepper's boyfriend Edwin Thanes Vonegger (or E.T. for short, he once told him), picked up the tune with his guitar. E.T. was a nice guy, Adam decided. The mustache he sported, which he grew thick and curled at the edges, was oddly attractive, too. E.T. strummed simple chords, and hit a few sexy riffs to accompany Pepper's scat on this jazzy rendition of *AN AWESOME SONG*. Adam wasn't a fan of jazz, but Pepper had always had a way to turn the most unappetizing song into a mood-bending mirage. He sat back crossing his arms, and took a deep breath of the atmosphere around him.
Pepper was beautiful. Pale and radiant, her perfect skin shone unclouded. The luminaire's light chased faint pink shadows around the contours of her cheeks. Above clouds of silvery-blue eyes that blinked beneath a sunset of orange hue, she was framed by the starry blackness of her hair. She was sultry as he'd never seen. Her eyes on the room as her fingers stroked the keys made him blush harder than the other men, and more so than a few women who happened to catch her gaze, who, chasing straws around their drinks with their heads held down and eyes up, watched her play, bathed in her vibrato, their legs tightly crossed. Adam had to look away.
He saw Lu Gong making a few drinks behind the bar. Lu was the owner of Lu Menaires' Lounge and of the coffee shop next door where Adam worked. He was a Chinese immigrant, but Adam knew little of his history beyond his ambitions. Lu loved music; he came to America in the '80s to conquer his American Dream of opening a venue bar, but spent years building up to it. That's where the coffee shop came from. Lu worked tirelessly as the sole operator of the shop, saving little by little until he was able to purchase the lot next door, debt free. Scraping together every yuan in China to survive his childhood, he was never keen to owing anyone else money. He spent his teenage years grooving to the revolution-building tunes of The Doors, The Beatles, and Jefferson Airplane, which Adam surmised was where he learned most of his English. When Adam was down, Lu could be heard telling him things like, "You jus need somebody to love." Lu always managed to make him smile.
The tone on stage went a little mellow. They were playing a cover of one of Led Zeppelin's tunes that Adam recognized, a song he was quite fond of. Someone hooped and hollered from the pool room.
"It is the springtime of my loving...the second season...I am to know," Pepper sang low and soft, her lips rolling around the mic in passionate fashion. She had to be drooling everywhere, Adam thought. She gazed up at E.T. Vonegger as he flipped the dreads from his eyes and played. "You are the sunlight of my...growing. So little warmth I've felt before."
A hand clasped down on Adam's shoulder.
"I'd love to be your sister's warmth," said a warm breath in his ear. It was Max, Adam's best friend.
"Shut up, man!" he countered, shrugging of his hand. "She's doing so good, though, I wish you could have heard the first few songs. It's like she's a totally different person up there."
"It's like she's glowing," Max said.
"I hardly recognize her."
"Lu made us drinks, dude. Here," Max slid a blue concoction to him in a tall cup. "He calls it an 'Alien Ale'. Wants to know what we think about it."
Adam picked up the drink and sniffed it, as he did with most new things. It smelled fruity, with a little spice, so he took a taste. A small slurp rolled across his tongue, and instantly he was on fire. He took in deep breaths and looked at Max wide-eyed, who was watching him with a smirk, right when the hotness faded to a tingle akin to pop-rocks. Adam thought he might have been shocked more than anything by the far-from-fruity flavor, because now that he had calmed down, it was rather interesting. And definitely a bit alien.
"Huh," Adam smacked, subtly, nonchalant. Lu was leaning half-way over the bar, nodding with his "A-ok?" fingers lingering questionably in the air. Adam threw a thumbs up at him. Lu clapped with a chatter-toothed grin.
Meanwhile, Vonneger & Pepper played.
"... flee from me Keepers of the Gloom. Speak to me only with your eyes. It is to you I give this tune."
Halfway through their set E.T. and Pepper had the crowd clapping and swaying like a roomful of roadies. For their final song and in salute to Lu Gong, Pepper had chosen to play "The End" by the The Doors. Lu even got on stage and played the tambourine. It was perfectly dark for Pepper's taste, but she managed to play it up with enough gusto to have the bar patrons woooooing just as loud as Adam at the end. He beamed. They all beamed. It was a great show.
Afterward, Lu treated them all to more drinks and his famous leek and mushroom pizza, a strange but delicious bar favorite. Adam realized he had forgotten to grab dinner on the way over. Suddenly starving, he dove right in.
"Hayzeus, bro!" said Pepper, throwing a wad of napkins at Adam. "Calm down a bit, will ya? Don't embarrass me in front of my adoring fans."
"Shurf, you're jusht afhraid a'll eat allsha pitza."
It was true. Pizza was Pepper's favorite food. It had been for so long, in fact, that when Adam was about five years old, which would have made Pepper barely two, he remembered watching her on their grandfather's knee, legs kicking excitedly as Grandpa Pat pulled a piece of pepperoni from the hot box on the dining room table. Their father was out of town those weekends, as he usually was, making money for the family by playing gigs at dive bars around the state. It was a tradition they both loved; a vacation full of spoils that grandparents gave to their grand children. Candy and cookies and bacon aplenty. They even had a stash of old matchbox motorcycles in the spare bedroom's dresser that Adam couldn't stop playing with while he watched Tom and Jerry on their mint 1970's television set.
When Pepper and Adam would have dinner with their dad, he never ceased to remind them that when Grandpa Pat would lay a piece of pizza on his plate and look away just for a moment, glancing at the TV or just to check the time, he'd always look back at his plate to find that all of the pepperoni on that slice of pizza--every single one of them--would have magically vanished in an instant. And there was little Elise Holmes, kicking excitedly on his knee like she was frolicking down the road, and smacking those little teeth through a mouthful of dark red meat. Grandpa Pat nicknamed her Pepper because of that. And it stuck. And he loved her so much.
Pepper had piled half the pizza on her plate as Adam watched her lovingly. She smirked that familiar flair of her lip at Adam and shoved half a slice in her mouth, smearing sauce all over her face on purpose.
"Y'know babe, if you choke," began E.T., "I'm not giving you mouth to mouth." Pepper stuck out her pizza-piled tongue that muffled a laugh.
"Mmm, I take that back. Only you could make something so disgusting look so delicious." E.T. squeezed her shoulder and pulled her close.
"All right, who wants another round!" exclaimed Adam, standing up at exactly the same time as Max, who looked equally as disgusted. "Ha, c'mon buddy. Let's leave the love birds alone," he patted Max on the back, who gave him a threatening glare. Max had a thing about touching. He didn't like it. It amused Adam to see him so uncomfortable.
They found Lu at the bar doing his best Elvis impression to a couple of would-be attractive girls, had they not dressed in such tightly bound latex skirts.
"Prostitutes?" inquired Max, head cocked slightly.
"Wouldn't surprise me. Hey Lu!" Adam motioned him over. Lu finished his little shuffle, causing the girls to reel back in their chairs. They must be wasted. Lu laughed and did his little "whatever I'm not that great" gesture with his wrist and walked over.
"Weren't they great tonight?" Adam said it more like a statement than a question, choosing to dismiss the whores altogether.
"Oooh, yah! I had so much fun! Thank you!" Lu still seemed beside himself after that little tambourine number.
"You've got some good beats, Lu," remarked Max.
"I got the shimmy shimmy, shake shake!" He wiggled his butt. The whores cackled. Lu gave Adam and Max a double high five, and Adam couldn't help but smile.
"Oh, it's too bad for Peppa, no?" Lu said, motioning Max to look at her and E.T., the two intertwined like snakes on a pole, nose to nose, kissing each other softly on the lips. A small group of friends approached them casually and started talking. They were obviously fans of the show.
"All dat fame, all dat love. She don't know she missing something great," he said with a nod to Max. Max looked at him, stunned for the moment, then back at the couple and sighed deeply.
"McCartney say, 'In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make,'" offered Lu.
"Yeah, man, she's her own girl. You can't be upset about it if you never asked her out in the first place," Adam said, arms crossed. He looked over at Max who was overtaken by a sullen expression. "But, well, we'll find you a girl, man. Lu, what about those girls over there?"
"Oh no, they mine!" he jested. "Say, you boys want anotha ale? My treat!"
Adam looked at Max. "Hm. Naw," Max said. "I think I'm gonna hit the road. Thanks though, Lu. See ya, Adam," and without another word he walked with his hands in his pockets toward the back door of the bar. Lu gave Adam an empathetic look.
"Sure, Lu. One more won't hurt."
When the hullabaloo died down and Adam and Pepper and Edmund Thanes Vonegger had their fill of pizza and booze, the couple retreated to the stage to pack up their belongings. It was about 1:45 on Sunday morning, and Adam didn't care that he had to open the coffee shop for the church rush in the morning. It had been a good night, and he was still high on the buzz of how well his sister had done, how beautifully she had sang and played the piano. Their dad would have been very proud, too. He helped E.T. unplug the amps and wind up the cords, packing them into a light weight container that Pepper took out back to E.T.'s van that was parked in the alley behind the bar. With Pepper gone momentarily, Adam used the opportunity to ask E.T. a few questions.
"So, dude... You and my sister," he was nodding when he talked. He kept nodding even when he wasn't talking. He didn't know why. Already this couldn't be more awkward, and he hadn't even asked him anything yet.
"Yeah dude. It's pretty good, isn't it?" E.T. told him. "Say, while we're alone, I want to ask you something. I know me and you haven't gotten to know each other all too well, y'know, since Pepper and I have been together, but...well, she's like the best girl I've ever known, y'know?"
"Yeah," Adam breathed. He didn't like where this was going.
"Well, uh, I was thinking, of y'know, you see. I know you two live together and everything. But I was just wondering if you thought Pep might want to..." he paused.
"Yeah?"
"Move in. With me."
Adam was about to pick up one of the amplifiers, but he paused, half bent over, hand on the handle of the amp. For a moment he didn't move at all. E.T. fumbled as he placed his guitar in it's case, nearly knocking it to the floor. Adam stood up, finding his confidence, and smacked his lips expectantly.
"E.T., Eddie, look, I'm not saying you're not a great guy, or that my sister doesn't like you. But right now, she--"
A blood curdling scream filled the bar from outside. Adam and E.T. had only moments to share a horrified glance before Adam's nerves sent him crashing through the bar, knocking over chairs as he made his way to the back door. Outside, the side of E.T.'s stark white van glowed a dim blue in the moonlight. The street lamps were off, burnt out or broken. All around him was the sound of crickets chirping, and just within it he thought he heard the faint thud of footsteps running far in the distance.
"Pepper?" he called, moving slower than his body wanted him to. The back doors of the van were still open. His arm were shaking. His legs were shaking. He needed a weapon! Did he? Where was she?
"Pepper!" he shouted again, and listened. Breathing. He heard breathing. He was at the back of the van. The container of foot peddles and cords was busted on the ground. A few pieces of equipment were strewn about the alley way. He thought he saw blood on the ground next to them. Where was that breathing?
Suddenly he saw her shoe poking out from beneath the van. He dove down and looked under to see Pepper sprawled on her side. There was blood coming from her...blood was coming out of her.
"Oh no, oh God, Pepper?" he reached out and shook her leg. "Pepper! Pepper what happened, are you...are you okay?"
She made a sound like a wet cough, but didn't move. Adam got down onto his stomach and inched his way under the van. His elbows and his shirt were wet and warm when he reached her, but he couldn't see. He reached awkwardly into his pocket to find his cell phone, pulled it out, and shined it's light on her. All at once the panic rose with his heartbeat to his throat and his entire body trembled. He brushed the starry blackness of her hair from her pale face. Her eyes, like overfilled pools, gazed sidelong at him. But they weren't looking at him. They weren't looking at anything anymore.
Pepper was gone.
