Every Night

Chp. 5

We walk out onto the stage, everything is already set up, and Ben and Platz are already in their perspective places. Wayne gives me one more pat on the back, and I walk over to my mic stand. I turn around and see Wayne putting on his gold guitar, and getting everything plugged in.

I turn back around to face the empty floor, in just a few hours this place is going to be packed to the brim with fans, it still seems surreal. The lights are tad bright at first and I shield my eyes, our lighting guys turns it down some, and I'm good.

We start with just running through some riffs, and then we practice a few songs. We're about to do the chorus to Demons, and the guys ask me, "You up for this Dan?"

"Yeah," I say, turning back towards my mic, and just bring myself together.

I can feel the pain creeping towards my heart again as I sing. I don't cry as much as the other night, but I still get pretty teary. I walk over to Wayne and just put my face on his shoulder, carefully reaching around his guitar he gives me a pat on the back and whispers to me, "I'm here bud, I'm right here, nothing's going to get you."

I look up at him with a small smile, and walk back towards the front of the stage. "You want to run that again?" Mac yells over to me.

"Sure."

We start the chorus up again, and even though it hurts, I make my way through it. After that's done they want to run through Shots. But I'm just worn out and ask if I can go back and rest some. Mac agrees and we break away from sound check.

I go into the green room and just lay on the couch looking at my phone. I'm tempted to post something to twitter, but I don't want to get everyone worried, so I decide against it.

I'm placing my phone back in my pocket as I see Wayne walk towards me. I sit up and let him take a seat next to me. I put my head over on his shoulder, and he asks me, "are you sure you're up for the show tonight, it's still at the time we can cancel if you're not."

"No, we aren't cancelling, I don't want to disappoint more people than I already have."

"Hey, you aren't disappointing anyone, I know how the tour can start to get to you, and how you just want to be home. I get it. But I know you're stronger than any darkness."

I sit up and Wayne gets off the couch for a sec, and brings me back a glass of water. "Here buddy, you need to drink."

I take the glass, I only intended to take a sip, but I'm so thirsty I gulp down the whole thing.

Wayne sits back down and holds me some more until the others get back to the green room.

Mac walks over to me, "Are you able to do the show tonight?"

"Yeah...."

"Okay, well we better start getting ready, they just opened the doors."

The crowd tonight is so loud I can hear it even sitting in the green room, at least they're excited. I sit facing the mirror and I just give myself a small pep talk as I can hear our first opening act, Halsey, taking the stage.

I look down from the mirror for a second because it's getting hard to look myself in the eyes without seeing the darkness. I look back up and I see in the reflection, Wayne is behind me. He slowly rubs my shoulders and says, "Hey buddy, just think, after tonight, there's only 7 more shows."

"That feels like 7 too many" I sigh to him.

"Hey, you can do it, I believe in you." He reaches around me and gives me a big hug.

I smile just a bit, and turn around and hug him back. I walk over to grab another glass of water, when I hear stage call, it's time to get ready to take the stage, I'll be fine without the water, I hope.

We all gather together backstage and get a 5 minute warning, and we do a few group chants, and then the intro track begins, we walk up the ramp and into the light of the stage.

I get the first song done pretty good, but my throat starts to get really dry for some reason. I chug down my entire water bottle they put for me on the stage. Give a little talk to the crowd, and start the next song, I'm So Sorry.

I start going so hard at my drum solo, I don't even notice how it's slowly getting harder to breathe, or the darkness creeping into my vision. I'm just about to stand up and run back over to my mic. But as I stand up, I lose my balance, and fall into my bass drum, crashing it to the ground, with me on top of it. And all goes dark.