The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) (DRAFT)

The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) 6, Death Knocks

Chapter Six

Death Knocks

I stared at my spiral bound notebook. I had picked a pink one. It seemed to be the most creative color. I saw the existence of my songwriting in pink almost like the whole world was black and white, and then there was just my pink notebook. My song book. It was the book I created in. 

There were 15 pink notebooks on my bookshelf. Moonlight was pouring in the windows, and I had a light on only in one spot: On the page. 

It was still blank. 

I had Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream waiting for me in the freezer. My indulgence if I got the song right. 

I had been working on this song a long time. It was about finding the right boyfriend when your tastes ran to the troublemaker. The rake. Edward Cullen, I was thinking. No, Rhett Butler. Or the pirate, Johnny Depp? James Dean. The gang leader. Leader of the Pack.

Leader of the Pack. I wrote it down. That was better. I had 101 pages before this one with  a long stream of consciousness on some pages, vampires on some and poems on others, and bits and pieces on the ones in-between. I even doodled Mambo on one and called it Doodie. I was always making up names for him when I couldn’t get the song right. 

One time I made up new names for all my plants. Then I started naming the trees in the yard. I had begun naming the washing machine when it came to me, The big song. My biggest hit so far.

“When You Make It.” 

The song had poured out. I didn’t even have to make any changes. It was perfect. I heard the melody in my head. When I later used my Internet mixing studio, I heard another version of the song, with a live band and people singing backup to me. 

That was probably the future, when I rerecorded the song. 

That’s how creativity is. People are always asking, how do you create music? How do you write songs? 

I’ve given them many answers. I reply to anyone who asks. I even answer my fan mail. Well, sometimes. I set up a web site and I get on almost every day to see what my fans want. Sometimes I don’t answer any of them. I noticed the fewer I answer the more questions and comments I get. I tell them I’m too busy creating music and writing songs when they complain. 

The truth is I’m probably at Dr. Feelgood’s downing my third Cosmo and wondering how I’m going to get home if it’s a night Pablo isn’t working. Pablo was the local sheriff’s deputy who patrolled the area between Dr. Feelgood’s and my house in El Cid, looking for evil people. Serial killers, the guy who would steal Mambo and teen abductors. 

I love Pablo. He’s caught me driving drunk four times already and let me go home. By the third time I decided he was looking for me. To flirt. 

I had written some pieces of a song about Pablo, but never finished it. Pablo was meant to be a hero. He was young and handsome and looked like a Latino Dwayne Johnson. You know, the big football player wrestler guy who played the tooth fairy in the movie “Tooth Fairy.” Pablo spent most of his time catching people who weren’t worth catching. Like those who had literally had one too many drinks. Like they had two drinks instead of one, and they blew a .04 percent blood alcohol level on the fifth try in one of Pablo’s little plastic testing contraptions. And Pablo would write down .09.

I looked at what I had written. “Leader of the Pack.” So I was inspired by a teen angst song from 1964. “Leader of the Pack,” by The Shangri-Las. A whole burst of thought came into my head, almost as if I was choosing which song to write. I seemed to be hearing pieces of different songs. I thought about the 1960s British youth known as Mods and their arch enemies, the Rockers. Gangs. Gang leaders. American gang images came into my head. Every guy I had ever known who I found compelling in a dangerous way could have been a gang leader. Or like one.

I began hearing a rock rhythm in my head that I had been hearing for years but didn’t have words for, and then the whole thing began pouring out. 

I was into my third stanza when Mambo jumped up and began barking. It was the ferocious bark that means someone’s out on the street walking past the house. This usually happened a lot between after school to about 9 p.m. Now it was about 2 a.m. Mambo never barked around this time.

He was sounding more frantic, and more vicious. 

I was just about to scream at him to shut up when there was a loud knock at the door.