The Citizen Soldier (DNF)

31) Talent Show

*Dream POV*

I scanned the room, looking at the turnout and feeling quite impressed with how many people actually showed. Eret once again explained.

"The mental hospital hosts the town talent show, but the talent show itself is acceptant of everyone, with a fee of five dollars for each contestant. It's a semi-annual fundraiser."

"So this is a fundraiser, and we don't have to pay the entry fee?"

"Well it would be rude to make the recipients of the donations pay, now wouldn't it?"

"Wait, the donations go to us?"

"Well, of course, it goes to research, equipment, medication, stuff like that." He smiled at me.

I smiled back at him, now nervous about the fact that we had only had three days' practice for my number.

Eret placed a calming hand on my shoulder. "Something wrong buddy?"

I nodded. "What if everyone else is better than us at this, and it's because of me and my recent contribution to the band?"

"It'll be okay, that routine could get stuck in a deaf man's head." he patted my shoulder. "You do a good job with your stuff Clay. Don't let anything discourage you. I'm not promising that we'll win, Drift normally prevents that from happening, but it's for fun for us."

I smiled for real this time, feeling much better after some words of encouragement. The amp was set up beside the stage already, though it was a bring your own amp situation. I stood with my foot against the wall like someone from a 2012 magazine cover and tried not to chew on my nails while waiting for my band to show up. Drift showed up first with his drumset and set it down side-stage. Nuts was helping him out with a few of them, though Drift insisted that he did it himself. Nuts and I made eye contact and nodded, both agreeing that Nuts never helped him.

Nuts then disappeared for a while while he was getting his own guitar, and though I offered him mine he turned it down, saying that he doesn't play the electric. When I told him that it was basically the same for both of the variants, he still turned me down. His loss, my guitar is super cool. I was still on the fence about which guitar I would be using in my official performance. My guitar, with my history, my background, and my childhood imbued within, is something I prized more than most of my possessions.

Then there was my dad's guitar, without a doubt it had more history and life within it, more memories and stories. But none of them belonged to me, other than the ones that he shared with me. There was so much life in this guitar, but also death. I didn't know how many stories this guitar carried in its weight. I didn't know how many people it had been loaned to, how many friends and fans had marveled over its design, what kind of concerts it had performed, or how long it was even here for.

Nuts returned with his acoustic a lot faster than I gave him credit for. I looked at the drapes, and there again I saw the word DREAM written within. It had become a regular occurrence to see it in certain places. I closed my eyes and shook my head, but it was still there. It didn't even make logical sense for it to be there like that, but it didn't matter, it was just a hallucination anyway. Even if it made me all the more anxious.

Scanning the room again, nobody really stood out to me, so I just started to talk with Nuts, Drift, and Eret about what to do in the performance.

"Okay so, how are we going to pull this off?"

"I think that we'll perform the song." Drift just pointed at Nuts to show his confirmation, and Eret did the same. I sighed and rubbed my arm.

"I'm just nervous, that's all." My face twisted into a worried expression. Drift took a couple of unstable steps towards me and latched onto me. I hugged low and patted his hair awkwardly, looking at Nuts, who just shrugged at me and looked elsewhere. I patted Drift a couple more times, hoping that he'd get the hint, but I didn't have the heart to push him off of me, so it appeared that I now had a new Drift accessory.