Jag (Pandemic Sorrow #1)

by Stevie J. Cole

  I punched the wall, my fist going through the sheetrock as I kicked at the baseboard with my bare foot. Then I heard her slam the door.

  Instead of going to rehearsals, I took a couple of Xanax and passed out. Completely numb and unable to think, I wrapped myself up in the blanket of a blissful high.

  I didn’t care about going to the awards, I didn’t care about my career, my life – I didn’t really care about anything. That was the beauty of staying fucked up. I didn’t have to care. I had a housekeeper, someone that did all my shopping, and someone to handle my finances, a lawyer to handle all the shit I got myself into. I had a person to handle every damn aspect of my life, except there was no one to handle me.

  Chapter 10

  The next day I sat there, completely alone in my house. I slung back a bottle of bourbon. A large bottle of bourbon.

  My vision blurred, my body grew numb, and when I got up to try to take a piss, I fell over my own damn feet, laughing hysterically as I slammed into the floor. I just laid there, my head throbbing from smacking against the cold marble floor, cackling at the ridiculousness of the situation. My phone had been ringing off the hook because I was supposed to have been at the venue an hour ago. The managers were flipping out because I hadn’t shown up to rehearsals the day before and, honestly, I didn’t feel like being bothered with any of it. What did I care? They were at my mercy. I was Jag Steele. I was Pandemic Sorrow. They needed me if they wanted their damn money.

  Forcing myself up to my knees, I slowly rose, stumbling and falling against the wall as I made my way into my bright-ass bathroom. I felt a lump rise in my throat. My body threatened to retaliate and expel the poison I’d selfishly guzzled back.

  I let go of the doorframe and hurtled myself to the sink. I tried to focus my double vision to stare at my reflection. For a minute, I looked an awful lot like I’d remembered my father looking. Then my mind wandered to Layne. My chest tightened, because alcohol wasn’t enough to keep those emotions from rearing their ugly heads. How the hell could she have done that? And look at you now! Just a fucking sperm donor. Thank God you passed your genes on before you turned into a lowlife. Maybe that way the kid has a fucking chance. I took a piss, then came back and leaned into the vanity, just glaring at myself. Really thinking about what I’d done with my life, thinking about my dad, and the fact that I had a kid no one knew about and whose mother didn’t want him to know he was mine. And hell, when and if he ever did find out, he’d probably be embarrassed.

  I pulled my fist back and punched my reflection square in the face. Veins crackled their way across the mirror, and a sharp jolt of pain shot up my arm from the shards that I’d just embedded in my knuckles. I held my fist over the sink, watching the crimson liquid drip into the white basin, and for a moment I felt some sense of freedom. I can’t explain why, but it was like there was a release watching myself bleed. I wouldn’t let myself cry because it was pointless; I knew tears weren’t enough, they never had been. No, I needed something more violent, more brutal to let these damned feelings out.

  The next thing I knew, I heard a loud crash in my living room and then James yelling out for me.

  “Jag…Jagger?” His footsteps echoed through my house as he came barreling through rooms, screaming my name a little louder each time I didn’t answer him. Turning, I leaned against the counter and grabbed a hand towel to wrap my pulsating fist up in. His footsteps grew heavier. “Jag? Damn it! Jag!” He sounded utterly terrified.

  About the time he probably saw the smashed guitar in my floor and the holes in my wall, I heard him mumble, “Damn it. Please tell me you didn’t kill your fucking self. Shit…”

  I heard the wood crunch under his feet, and then James appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled. When his eyes found me, his face relaxed and his shoulders fell as he blew out a sigh of relief to find me standing, not lying dead in the floor like he’d feared he would.

  He gripped the doorframe to balance himself. “What the hell?” he shouted, and clomped over to me, snatching my arm up. The towel fell to the floor and James held my wrist, staring at the gory mess. “Jag?” He tossed my arm back by my side and ran his hand down his face, studying me.

  I fell against the counter, laughing. “You think I’m that bad off I’d kill myself? Fucking idiot. I’m not that far gone yet,” I slurred.

  “Drunk? You’re drunk? You’re supposed to be pretending you’re clean, Jag! Motherfuckin’ clean! Not a drunk.” James paced back and forth, stopping to stare at me before he tossed his hands back up in the air and let out a frustrated growl.

  “Well,” I said, pushing myself off the counter. “I ran out of cocaine, or I’d just be high right now.”

  James rolled his eyes and pulled his jacket out. He reached down in the breast pocket. “You can’t go on stage like that!”

  Shoving past him, I made my way into my bedroom, stepping over the guitar in the middle of the floor and plopping down on my unmade bed. “Not goin’. So you don’t have to worry about it.”

  “No. You’re going. You signed a contract to do it. You’ve got to go. We’ve just got to get you sobered up real quick.” James swiped things from the corner of my dresser and dumped a chunk of cocaine out. He quickly pulled out a credit card and, just like a professional, cut the lines up. “Come on. I gotta get you outta here.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re already late. Let’s fucking get a move on!”

  I knew I didn’t have a choice. As much as I hated to admit it, the label owned my ass. I rolled out of my bed and went to the dresser. Leaning over and grabbing the straw lying on top of a shirt, I snorted back several lines, then lifted my head and glanced at myself in the mirror. I ran my hand through my hair a few times, laying some of the stray waves back with the thick mess framing my face. Within a few minutes, I felt completely sober. The room had stopped spinning, my speech was no longer slurred, and the pull of depression faded to a feeling of power and control, while my crumpled ego inflated with a quickness.

  “You good? Need another line?” James asked, placing his hand on my shoulder.

  I ran my tongue over my gums, waiting for them to tingle and go numb. “Nah.” My teeth began to grind against each other. “Nah, I’ll be okay…till we get there, at least.”

  James patted me on the back. “All right. I got you, I got you, Jag. Let’s go.” Walking to my front door, he chuckled to himself and said, “At least you know how to make a damn entrance.”

  Chapter 11

  The next morning I woke up and waited on my eyes to focus. Once again, I had no idea where I was. I blinked a few times and rubbed my fists in my eyes. Apparently, I’d checked into a suite at a hotel. Again. Rolling over, I saw a girl lying next to me in the bed. She was facing the other side, but most of her naked body was exposed. Her nipples were hard, and her dark hair cascaded across her shoulders into the middle of the large bed.

  I glanced down and found raised scratch marks all across my chest. “Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath as I wiped my hand over my face. I pulled the sheets off of me and kicked the empty, tiny liquor bottles out of my way as I fumbled around, searching the halfway destroyed room for my clothes. I found my shirt and boots tossed by the door, my jeans thrown across the dresser, and my boxers balled up by the open and empty mini-fridge. I flipped my pockets out, looking for my coke, and only found my silver straw. As I gripped the cold metal in my palm, panic swept over me. That was a shit-ton of cocaine. I was still alive, and if all the coke was gone – my eyes darted over to the girl. My heart thumped in my chest as I waited for her chest to rise. Please, God, tell me she didn’t OD. I let out a sigh of relief when she tugged the covers back over her. Thank God.

  Making my way into the bathroom, I flipped on the lights. The fluorescent bulbs flickered and cast a harsh yellow over the white tiled walls. I groaned and braced my arms against the sink. For a moment I feared I was spiraling out of control, sinking deeper into the cold depths of depression hidden by mountains of coke, bottles of bourb
on, and an endless supply of girls, but I didn’t want to admit that. I shook my head and closed my eyes. I was fucking Jag Steele. I had to get a grip.

  Glancing down at the marble counter, I saw a tray with perfect white lines cut up on it. A rolled up one-hundred dollar bill lay next to it. Those lines sat there, begging me to snort the elixir of all the wrong up my damn nostrils.

  I slung my head back, rubbed my clammy palms down my face, and groaned. “I don’t have to do it. Just gonna do it because I can. I don’t need it,” I said. I hadn’t talked to myself in a while, but then again, I was all alone. I was my only true supporter. And loneliness is a bitch.

  My eyes cut back over to the coke. Taking the straw with my name engraved on it, I leaned over the stereotypical silver tray that the movies always show cokeheads snorting off of. Really, this tray was the perfect representation of my life. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself, thinking of what a damn cliché I had become.

  I got a little too anxious and stabbed the inside of my nose with the edge of the metal straw. “Shit,” I huffed.

  My hand was steady as I lined the bottom of the tube up with the edge of the powder. I pressed my pointer finger firmly over my left nostril. One swift swipe, a long deep sniff, and one line was gone. Like damn magic. I took in a few quick breaths to make sure it had all gotten in there, then figured, what the hell, and bent over to do another line. Then another and another, until only trace amounts were left on the mirrored tray.

  I’d come to love the once uncomfortable feeling of the powder draining down the back of my throat. I dusted the residue from underneath my nose and crammed the silver straw into my pocket. It could be worse. I mean, it’s not like I’m hooked on meth or heroin. Coke’s no different than energy pills. Really. It’s not.

  I didn’t fool with washing off the black-as-shit eyeliner that was smudged under both my eyes. I just grabbed my sunglasses from the dresser and pushed them on my face. I pulled on the black t-shirt that reeked of cigarettes and bourbon and shoved my feet into my worn-in combat boots, not bothering to tie them.

  On the way to the door I caught a glimpse of myself in the window and stopped. “Fucking rock star,” I mumbled at the haggard reflection staring back at me. “What a fucking joke!”

  Glancing back toward the bed at the girl I’d done God only knows what with, I reached for the door. I didn’t even know what she looked like, I could have passed her on the street thirty minutes from then and never would have known, and I didn’t care. I was a damn wreck, a tabloid’s wet dream come true, and I couldn’t have cared less. When you’re famous, you’ve got an image to uphold. If you’re a whiny actor you got to make sure you always look like you walked off the pages of a damn Vogue, but when you’re a rock star – and I mean a true rock star – you’ve got to always look like you’ve just fucked the hell out of a couple of chicks, possibly a set of twins, in the stairwell of a hotel; like you’ve been out all night partying with the band, fucking shit up and living the life. A true rock star always looks like shit. At least I had that part down.

  I just wanted to go home. Just take a damn walk to my house, worry about where I’d parked my car later. But as soon as the door of the hotel swung open, the dumb-as-shit paparazzi were flashing their cameras in my face. I hated LA. Really hated this slum excuse of a city because the paparazzi were the absolute worst here. They were like damn piranhas chasing after a fat-ass hippo that had gotten its lazy ass stuck in the river. Those flashes are bright, and when you’re high as hell, those spots really get in the way of seeing where you’re trying to walk. Depending on what drug you’re on, they can completely derail you. One time after the MTV music awards, I’d taken way too much LSD, and when I came out of the venue, I just stood there trying to grab those fucking spots floating around in front of my face. Evidently, I was screaming that someone had trapped my voice in the spots and if I didn’t get every last one of those spots back, I was going to sue. That little show landed me on the cover of the next Star.

  “Jag. Hey! Jag. Can you look over here?” one of the guys yelled as he walked backwards, trying to get a good shot.

  I ignored him and shoved my hand down into my jean pocket, trying to stare down at the ground like they’d told me to do in rehab to “just block the bad things out.”

  “Jagger. Just one good shot,” the same guy said over the loud clicking and whirring of the cameras. “You and River really done? What do you think about it? Can you tell us?”

  “Yeah. Sure, dude,” I said with a large grin. I stopped and stuck my tongue out like a member of Kiss, then flipped him the bird. “Good enough for you?” I put my hand back in my pocket and turned down the sidewalk, the cameras still flashing.

  “Fuck you!” he said in a shaky voice.

  “Really?” I froze. The heat of drug-induced rage traveled across my chest and up my neck. My pulse, already accelerated from the coke pumping through it, quickened and felt like hummingbird wings flapping in my chest. I just wanted to beat the guy’s face in. “You wanna fight, prick?” I cocked my head to the side and peered over the rim of my glasses at the scraggly little paparazzo.

  He backed up a few steps, most likely wishing he’d waited until tomorrow to pretend his balls had dropped, and then he puffed out his chest. “I mean, you think just because you’re a celebrity you can go around disrespecting people, flipping people off? You people think you’re so damn entitled!”

  The cameras were clicking faster now, sensing the impending show of testosterone.

  My fingers drew into my palms, my fists tightened, and my breathing became shallow.

  The guy held his camera down, and one side of his mouth flipped up in a mocking smile. “Jag Steele, rock star of the damn decade.” He laughed. “Fucking train wreck. Clean, my ass! You’re just a worthless damn cokehead with a decent set of pipes!”

  My knuckles cracked and I lunged at him. He tried to jump behind another guy, but I caught the back of his cheap shirt, tearing the material as I yanked him up to me. He attempted to block his face but was too slow. I punched him, hard. His nose exploded, blood spraying all over the place. Red liquid poured down over his shirt, and warm blood splattered all over my arm. Groaning, he stumbled into a garbage can. He held onto the edges of the wire waste basket, trying to steady himself. And I stood over him with my breathing coated in a growl. I coiled my fist back and swung at his face again. This time I hit him right on the side of his temple. The guy fell back again, landing on the sidewalk spread eagle. Out cold.

  “Don’t fuck with an entitled cokehead, dumbass!” I shouted as I wiped the blood from my forearm over the front of my shirt.

  I turned to walk away when one of the other men called out over his camera. “Hey. Hey! You can’t do that!” he yelled, still clicking pictures.

  I found it amusing that one of their fellow brethren had been laid out, and they were too busy snapping shots of me kicking his ass to help him. One of them was standing over him taking pictures of him lain across the ground with blood pooling beside his head. No damn decency. These guys were unbelievable.

  “Jagger! You can’t just walk off.”

  “Really? Looks like I just did, fucker. Take a picture of that!” I shouted, shaking my throbbing fist out as I strutted away.

  The cops came knocking on my door later and arrested me for assault. Kind of hard to deny you were the one whose knuckles left an indention on a guy’s face when there’s about fifty different rapid fire camera shots of the whole thing. Rock star or not, I still got booked in the slammer like anyone else, but seeing as how I had the show kick-starting our tour that night, James was nice enough to come bail me out. Like he said, “Those damn scumbags deserve to get punched in the face every once in a while.”

  Chapter 12

  Stone tipped his Stella back, crushing the empty can in his hand before he tossed it into the trash across the room. He pulled his guitar up in his lap and strummed out several chords.

  “Hey, Pax! Bro, toss me another
Stella, would you?” Stone said as he tuned his prized black and red Fender. He’d had the same damn guitar since we signed with Deviant six years ago and refused to get a different one.

  I heard the ice-cold beers inside the refrigerator clinking as he slammed the door, and I looked up just in time to see the white can whizz past my face.

  “Man! Watch it. You almost hit me in the face with that shit,” I grumbled.

  Pax leaned back against the wall next to the mirrors and snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Wouldn’t want to damage that prissy face of yours, right? Personally, I think it’d be pretty amazing if you stumbled out on stage all bloodied up.” He thumbed his fingers through his short, bleached hair.

  Stone laughed and popped open his beer. “God. Women would probably cry if something happened to that ugly-ass mug of his.”

  Stone may have been my younger brother, but from the way we acted, most people thought he was older. I told myself that he had been able to keep his shit together a little bit better because he wasn’t the lead singer. He didn’t have the amount of stress on him like I did. Not to mention that when Dad left, he was too young to understand. The psychological scars he had paled in comparison to mine. At least that’s what I told myself.

  Rush came out from the bathroom, still zipping his leather pants up and trying to adjust himself so that his dick would bulge out in just the right spot. He held up a clear bag and shook it in front of my face. After the awards the night before, it was no secret to anyone that I wasn’t clean. I’d held up that act as long as I could fucking stand.

  Without saying a word, I stood up and made my way over to the table where he was breaking up the white chunk of powder. Rush grabbed a guitar pick with the band’s logo printed on it and cut up several long lines. The beautiful sight of that blow caused saliva to immediately fill my mouth. There were two things that could get me excited: drugs and women.