My Piece of the Action

Moving on

'87 was arguably the most stereotypically 80's year in the 1980's; Bon Jovi's 'livin' on a prayer' spent February 14th through March 7th at number one, Whitney Houston was the first female solo artist to have an album debut at number 1, Robert Palmer's "addicted to love" won him a grammy. As for hard rock, Aerosmith made their comeback with Permanent vacation, but other then 'rag doll' and 'dude (looks like a lady), there was only Whitesnake, Great White and Billy idol, which were more weak/pop rock then hard rock. 'Dirty dancing' and 'three men and a baby' were the biggest movies that year and the songs on the radio comprised of over-produced sounds such as 'who's that girl' by Madonna, 'big time' by Peter Gabriel and Steve Winwood's 'back in the high life again'.
The next thing on the Guns N' Roses agenda was tge welcome to the jungle video shoot. It was a two day thing, the first day being all of the shots of the band in the intro of the video (Axl getting off the bus, Duff and Izzy out on the street, Slash slumped in the doorway, etc.), and the second day involved performing live. First they did the song with nobody in the room but them and the crew, then they opened the doors and let the room fill up with people before running through three times more.
Slash kept drinking himself stupid. There was no sign of the drugs Raven had become accustomed to seeing Slash doing, but there was twice- more then that even- of the amount of Jack Daniels. Nobody else took much notice, and Axl went as far as appraising Slash's decline of the use of smack, but Raven was beginning to think he'd just replaced one addiction with another. Alcohol may be legal, but it is, nevertheless a drug. Nobody seemed to take that notion seriously. Meanwhile, Axl was in a bad mood; the rush and hurry of filming was getting to his head and he'd been barking orders and snapping at people most of the second day. Izzy, who usually phased into the background, was standing quite still, immersed in his guitar. Axl stopped the song halfway through the first time they played it, only to fly off the handle at Izzy about stage presence. Izzy made an effort after that. Slash had a go at Alan Niven the first day for no apparent reason, and Slash couldn't tell anyone why he'd done so, only that he was much too drunk to think about such mundane happenings and that he felt no resentment towards Alan now, therefore there was no problem. The tension was high- Raven turned up throughout the filming with an overexcited one year old Renan bounding along beside her, and though she couldn't be there constantly, she was satisfied with how much she did get to experience, even if it was tense.
It was that night that Raven lay awake, tossing and turning, restless. She couldn't sleep. Nothing was what it should be.
"Axl should be mine." She murmered quietly. "Slash should be mine." She knew she was acting melodramatically, but she felt justified. She was on her period and all because of her stupid pregnancy a year ago, now she never got to hang out with Guns. It frustrated her to no end. It wasn't acceptable for a baby to be at a bar or club or in the crowd at a concert, so she was limited and she missed out on all the fun. She felt like her one and only chance to really get to know her heroes had been stolen. It was all just a drunk mistake and now she'd been left with nothing.
She felt tears sting at her eyes, and turned onto her side for the tenth time that hour. Quietly, she sobbed. Raven couldn't call anyone, or wake up her dad. It was four in the morning! She felt so alone. Then she spotted the notebook on the side table. It was more then a year ago when she bought it. She was still pregnant with Renan at that time, she remembered what had gone through her head at that point. About her mother. Her original mother back in the future. God she missed her, and her nanna who passed away. She'd named her miscarried daughter after her. Bonnie Rose Cassel. Poor grandma Rosie. Poor little Bonnie. Raven sat up and pulled the little notebook from the bedside table and grabbed a pen off the side table. Normally she would only use the notebook for record of phone numbers, but it was there and in that moment it was all just paper.
She flicked to the first blank page and clicked the pen to write with. The little letters began to form words on the page and her tears fell every now and then, splashing out and blurring the ink slightly where they landed.
"I love my little boy. He is my life. This isn't the life I want. Where are the parties? Where are my guns, my roses?" She began.
"If only it could be different. If inly he was older. If only I could go on the tour, but he's too little. Just to see some of the things that will happen on the appetite for destruction tour would be a dream come true." More and more tears spilled forth,
"And I miss my family. My old family, in the future. I miss my best friends. I miss the good old times. I even miss Slash. He is the closest thing i have to family besides Renan. I like Slash alot. He only thinks of me as a younger sister, I can tell." Her frustration was nearly unbearable.
"I wish the clock would move more quickly. I just want my boys back. Bring me my boys. Honestly, if I had a chance with any one of them I'd be over the moon. If only this whole tour was already over. If it was over I could relax. I can imagine going on tour for a while, but not for all of it. Seeing some things but coming home for Renan's sake. That's what I should do. And then I could greet them at the airport when they come home to L.A. Slash would pick me up and spin me round the way he used to when we were just seventeen and none of it mattered, and everyone would come off the plane, exhausted but ecstatic. They all would have missed me, and they'd promise to be around more now they were home." Raven blotted the last full stop onto the page with a sense of finality. The paper in her lap was filled up with her brisk handwriting. Still she sobbed. Her head span, the whole room seemed to move. She was obviously very, very tired. She gazed longingly at the paper as a swift breeze picked up and swept her hair away from her face. Not for the first time, she realised that her window was shut, so there could be no breeze. She stared at the words as they began to glow bright. Bright enough that they became difficult to look at. The room span faster and faster and Raven realised her mistake. Everything went white. Her feet found solid ground and as she blearily gazed around she found heraelf in the crowd in an arena. There had to be thousands around her, moving to the music. Axl made the stage first and the others followed as the crowd got ever noisier, screaming their approval. It was spinning again all of a sudden and this time she was mid walk. She seemed to be in the lobby of a hotel. She stumbled slightly.
"You o-k, mommy?" A small voice asked from beside her, surprised, she glanced down. Renan was walking and talking and he had a good length of adorable, bouncy curls.
"Y-yeah baby." She stammered. There were loud laughs and Slash stumbled through the hotel doors followed by Izzy, Duff, Steven and a random guy she didn't know. Every one of them was obviously very drunk.
"Who are you?" She blurted without thinking.
"Mark- from fasser pussycahh!" He slurred drunkenly as he stumbled closer. She assumed he meant 'Mark from Faster Pussycat', who were an L.A. glam band.
"well- the lot of you are quite drunk. Get to bed." She demanded. The men did not argue. Each and every one if them made their way up the stairs to the rooms. Slash went into one, followed by 'Mark from fasser pussycah'. Duff stumbled towards the same door but stopped, standing there as though unsure. Izzy looked in too.
"Hey Duff," he said, "that guy is sleeping in your bed."
"Yeah he is, isn't he." Duff said,
"You gonna let him do that to you, man?" Izzy asked, "fuck that! He can't do that to you."
"No way! Fuck no man!" Exclaimed Duff,
"Who the fuck is that guy, anyway?" Izzy said.
"Yeah! Who the fuck does he think he is!" Duffed sounded angry "fuck that guy!" Duff stepped forward and Izzy helped him attempt to roughly wake him up. Mark was out cold.
"I know what we should do." Said Izzy, "let's tape him up and put him down the elevator shaft."
"Fuck yeah!" Came Duff's reply. Raven rushed forth just as Izzy pulled the end of the silver duct tape he'd somehow gotten from somewhere she didn't see.
"No. Don't." Raven demanded, but they made no reply. They simply began to hogtie the poor helpless guy and she couldn't do anything. They hoisted him up.
"No! Don't guys- please!" She chased them as they hit the elevator button for the floor they were on. The elevator arrived momentarily and Mark suddenly woke up and started squealing behind the tape. Izzy and Duff panicked, dropped him into the lift and bashed the button for the lobby. Everything was spinning- again. Slash was seated at a bar beside the one and only Nikki Sixx. They were both downing shots. Suddenly, Slash vomited pretty violently onto the floor between his legs. Nikki cracked up laughing, as did most people in the vicinity. Slash suddenly leapt off his stool at Nikki in an attempted tackle, but Nikki was much, much taller and quite a bit heavier then Slash. Nikki grabbed the front of Slash's shirt and slammed him on his back on the ground, before sitting on him. Everything span again. She was in a loungeroom. There were plush sofas and bits of paper scattered about. Again it span. She was in her own kitchen, in her hand was a pen and bit of paper. She scrawled quickly
"STOP STOP STOP".
The spinning stopped and she dropped the pen and paper onto the ground in relief.

Thanks for reading. Extra long one!! :)
Thankyou for all your patience with this book
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