Book 4: My Hands Are Tied (Axl Rose FanFic)

Ch. 9: New Fan

"Axl grabbed the mic in the middle of the song and just started running up and down the walls, screaming and wailing like someone had his pants on fire. I had never heard such a sound in my life. It was like some otherwordly banshee cry. I was stoked." -Steven

"I'm going to be dead by the end of the year."

Her words echoed in my head for days as I tried to decipher what exactly it was that she had meant by that. Though I had pressed Cook for answers in the moment, she simply shook her head and refused to say more. I even tried to rile her up by calling her by her full first name, but all that got me was the most dirty look I'd ever received from a woman (which was saying a lot) and an order to "get the fuck out" as soon as I was well enough to walk again.

Did she have cancer or something? But, other than being a bit on the skinny side, she really didn't have any other outward signs of cancer. Her hair was still in tact from what I could tell, and she seemed otherwise pretty healthy. Healthy enough to be picking fights with grown men outside of bars, anyway.

Maybe she had seen a psychic, and she was taking whatever the psychic had told her very seriously. Honestly, I didn't totally hate this possibility. I was also very open to superstitions, past-lives, psychics...all that wild stuff. It didn't seem totally out of the realm of possibility. Or Cook could also just be basing it off of her own premonitions, which was something I was also familiar with. If anything, this theory just further confirmed that she and I were basically made for each other.

Or maybe I was just hoping that that was the case.

Nevertheless, did it really matter? Terminal illness and fortune tellers be damned, whether this was true or a figment of Cook's imagination, I was determined to dig deeper. I needed to know what she was so worried about, and I needed to convince her that it didn't matter. None of it mattered. As long as we could be together, that was all that mattered.

Oh...I'm just crazy.

I chuckled wryly to myself when I realized how obsessive I sounded.  It was very typical of me: all gas, no brakes. The sudden random laughter made Steven, who had been idling nearby, eye me suspiciously.

We were all pacing around the backstage area, waiting to be called forward into the limelight. Steven was standing the closest to me, and so he had heard me even when the others hadn't.

"All good, Ax?"

I smirked over at him devilishly, eyes gleaming like brimstone. "Just pumping myself up a bit."

"It's a big crowd!" He agreed, perking up a bit. "Might be our biggest one yet!"

"Definitely our biggest yet!" Duff shouted back at us, easily peering over everyone's heads and out into the audience. "It's been getting crazy ever since-"

He stopped himself.

Still, no one was mentioning the Hell House or my subsequent arrest. Not around me, anyway. Duff must've nearly forgotten himself in all of the excitement.

"Since, uh...hearing about the Geffen deal," he said, rapidly switching gears. "It's all anyone's been talking about."

Even though Duff caught himself, I felt a flash of the familiar anger as a shot of adrenaline forced it through my veins. I opened my mouth to say something combative and snotty, but was quickly cut off by a hand on my shoulder. I jerked my head to snap at the person, but halted as my fiery eyes met a pair of familiar muddled, green-blue eyes. They reminded me of the Earth, of solid ground. The flames in me fizzled out, and I could feel myself coming back down into my body again.