I'm Yours (PRN)

ix

Prince let's out a long sigh.

Running his fingers through his hair, he shoves the fedora back onto his crown, with a somber look in his eyes. "Okay," he aimlessly says. The entire band stands behind him staring. All they can do is stare. Nobody knows what to say or what to do. There isn't anything they could do, even if they did put forth more effort to try... He's mentally checked out for the day.

"You good, man?"

Andre's question rings through Prince's eardrums, practically knocking the musician's balance off. "I'm fine. Let's take it from the top!" Prince belts out in artificial excitement. The entire room can see that something is off. Much more pale than he usually is, Prince lacks his usual glow while signaling Bobby to to step down on the kick drum. Lisa and Matt, his second keyboardist, play their parts in perpendicular relations. With the lack of connection to a real horn player, Prince often wrote in a horn part for Matt whenever he wasn't adding the true synthesized sound to the band's music. "I wanna do ya'..." Smack-dab in the center of Prince's singing, he begins to cough. As previously instructed, the band goes on playing. That is, until during Prince's third wheeze comes a gallon of orange chunks. The leftover pizza he'd eaten for breakfast comes back in a plasma's form.

All stopping in scattered motions, the band surrounds Prince. Andre stands beside him gawking at the vomit covered trench coat his best friend wears. "Aw, man," Andre sighs with his hands resting on his hips. "Man, you've gotta go home– Just go home! We'll rehearse but you look bad." Prince's head shakes. He could put a jackass to shame with his stubborn ways. "Go home, Prince!" Andre pushes his friend as Lisa picks up the microphone Prince used its wire. It is trashed, completely covered in vomit.

Dez howls, "He fucked up the mic, man!"

"Don't be such a dick! You see he's sick, Dez." Lisa retorts back, her right palm roughly shoving Dez as it successfully forces him to stumble back. Her attention reverts to Prince, "I can come home early if you want..."

Waving his friends off, Prince smoothly strides out in a fashion as to where you wouldn't be able to tell he's been sick since the early dawn of the day. Though, on the inside, Prince's brain is throbbing in a syncopated motion to match along with his aching abdominal cramps. As he drives home, he is forced to pull over and regurgitate twice. He thinks he is in the clear until third time taking place at a red light. Upon his stumbling into his home, a light mentally dawns on the 21-year-old man. "What, I've got the flu?" Prince asks himself as he shuts the door behind him. "I was fine until... Until I..."

He pauses.

The idea of even blaming such a potential suspect would break his heart, if that were still somehow possible. "Nah, it's not her fault. I probably ate some bad takeout." He chants this to himself multiple times for the rest of the night as he hopes that his mind will eventually learn to believe the lies his body does not know how to.

Misty eyes of his quickly shut. He groans dragging his heavy size eight feet down the hall and into his bedroom. Stripping down into the bare nude, Prince crawls beneath his blankets with his bathroom's garbage can directly beside the edge of the bed. A light buzzing lingers from the portable heater that sits near the edge of his bed. Prince picks up his guitar, laying it on his bare chest. Somberly plucking at the strings in their correct musically-alphabetical order, his eyes remain closed.

He's brokenhearted.

He is not only genuinely heartbroken but he is also embarrassed. He knew Monica wouldn't budge. He knew the moment she stopped answering his calls, sent back all of his letters and gifts. He often said Monica could have at least yelled at him before their departure. It's a two way street and he knows it can't be all on him, or so he has always thought. These days, he is beginning to believe he is responsible for quite a bit of he and Monica's fiasco. This thought has been intensified since Monica sat before him in bliss as he gave her everything he had in him and still felt the need to do what she has done.

And so here Prince is, sick as a dog, as it all really settles for him. How foolish he behaved, how much more mature he should have responded. Monica only used him to get over her temporarily damaged heart that may even be seen as hurt feelings in Prince's mind. It aches more than it should because he doesn't regret mending her temporarily wounded heart. Just as he told Monica upon their final splitting... He wouldn't take it back in a million years.

His mind often traces back the feelings and events of the night whenever he sits in his bed alone.

Prince shakes his head, his finger dip down into her wetness causing her to stiffen. Quickly remove his index finger, he shoves it into her mouth. She sucks on it, innocently staring back at him with a gaze of lust.

He slides down her body, fingertips of his still toying with her nipples. Prince takes his tongue to trace the outside of her lips. Monica sucks in a sharp breath, she squirms a bit out of anticipation of what is to come next. His lips collapse around her clitoris. A deep suckle pushes Monica over the edge. She's no longer screaming, she's squealing. Her high, falsetto-based hollers coach Prince not to stop. Dragging his tongue up and down her folds, Prince laps within her juices. He flattens his tongue to curl it into her. With every oral penetration, Monica squirms more as she falls beneath his erotic spell. The more she squirms, the harder Prince squeezes her breast.

Though Monica's taste still lingers on his tongue, a volcanic force pushes the last little bits of fluids sitting in his abdomen to erupt. Prince leans on his side, face in the garbage can, hacking the poisonous feeling of his leftover memories. As he let's go of the fluids, another fluid brings him pain. His recollection of the last time he saw Monica brought blood filled arteries that leaves him with a painful erection.

He is in pain.

Across the region, in a dormitory, Monica sits in her bed. She somberly stares out of her window. She's got two-day-old hickeys that she cannot get rid of. It is as if God wrote those on her soul to be a semi-permanent reminder of who's heart she may have broken she feels horrible about it. Monica got on her knees for Prince without a second thought. Then, she left... Without a second thought. When had she become such a cold hearted bitch? Monica couldn't figure it out. She reminds herself that it's Prince's fault. To her, it's all his fault. Prince did not try hard enough when they were together. He should have came to see her anyway! That's what she thinks. She knows she would have given him a hard time but he'd given up way too easily. Though she threw his flowers and cards out for the next two days, he didn't contact her— not even when she'd come home from college— and for that, she resents him.

Monica's roommate stands, leaning against their room's doorframe. "Hey, Monica... You want to go to this Sigma party with me?"

"Like, the Sigma Phi Epsilon? The Exciting Eps?" Monica asks, searching for clarification.

Her roommate nods.

Monica's head shakes as she turns back to her window. Her roommate knows good and well that William is a proud top-ranking brother over there. "No, don't ever ask me that again." Her roommate exits mumbling profanity and sarcastic apologies.

Left to be alone and think over her current situation, Monica gets up and shuffles over to a nearby mirror. Out of habit, she plays with her hair. Something in her is persuading her to do something crazy to it but she knows that she'd regret it. These are the kind of things that Prince would encourage her to do. He believes once regret settles, it becomes a lesson and the lesson turns into character. His goal is to be the most colorful character the world's ever seen. He was trying to show Monica how living that way goes but it never worked out. Just the single thought of Prince makes her never want to return to Minnesota. However, she isn't too fond of her current location either.

"I don't want to be here," Monica says to herself in the mirror. "I don't know where I want to be."

She's lost.