Darkness Taking Dawn- Lars Ulrich Fanfiction

Dead From the Neck Up

Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles
Take a bow take a bow take a bow
It's what you feel now
What you ought to
What you ought to
An elephant thats in the room is
Tumbling tumbling tumbling
In duplicate and duplicate
Plastic bags and
Duplicate and triplicate
Dead from the neck up
Guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed
We thought you had it in you
But no, no, no
Exactly where do you get off
Is enough is enough is enough
I love you but enough is enough, enough
A last stop
There's no real reason - Radiohead

I looked over some tour dates I had scheduled at the time while running my hand through my hair. We were practically booked for the next three months. I sighed putting down the schedule a looking around the barren house that once harbored my family. Three failed marriages most of which have ended in divorce. Only Rita has left without leaving a sour taste in my mouth, and yet  whenever I thought back to that day in 2000 I always grimaced when I relived those moments of fear only to find out that she wasn't there anymore. 

I went searching through my room only to find a lone box that had 'Ellsberg' sloppily written overtop of the box. 'Damn.' I thought to myself. 'I didn't open this up in decades.' I buried her along with any memorabilia of her. I hadn't seen this box for almost 20 years. Dust has accumulated on the top of the box due to it be hidden for so long. As I opened the box I realized how it still held her scent. Despite being dead for all these years she decided to spite me with her lingering scent that would not seem to fade away like her body and mind has. 

She lived just as she has died; alone. This whole interview was becoming a pain in the ass. Between seeing Lilly again and having the producers just trying to make a quick buck off of a woman's dead dream and body is sickening. It was truly ironic she hated the mainstream yet in a way she became the mainstream. She was falsely elevated like any other suicidal burnt out rockstar  with a  distorted dream and a gun.

With Rita I had experienced the beauty of simplicity and minimalism. And with her I finally understood and knew the answered to the decades old question, 'What happens to a dream deferred?' For a while now I thought it would dry up and fall off like a scab, yet when you looked at Rita it crusted over rotted then exploded into the abyss. She had these  wild dreams of being one with the stars and having something she could finally be identified with and could definably say was hers, yet once she found it it was gone. She found it and 'achieved' it yet there was always something missing. She thought she had it in her but no. She understood it then went off the rails trying to catch it, but she fell attempting to capture it. 

Don't get me wrong there was always a sense of emptiness blatantly evident within her nearly translucent eyes, but once she finally got the recognition that she deserved and yearned for she metaphorically and artistically came to a brick wall. What else was there left for her to do? She achieved her dream, but now what was she without that dream. From that point on she was dead from the neck up, and I think that all this time I had a small inkling of acknowledgement when it came to her mental health she knew that she was stuck. It was time for her to take a bow. She knew that enough was enough.

While glancing through the box I could see a plethora of old pictures with her and I laughing and smiling, along with some old torn journal entries and some old drawings and sketching of hers. However, what really caught my eye after all these years was the bright pink book that gave off this safe almost feminine vibe to it. Yet, once again upon further inspection it was anything, but the blackened figure that stood front and center on the book seemed more distorted and out of place than usual. The figure somehow stood out more and emanated the feeling of despair and isolation than it first did back in 1981. It reminded me of the shared sorrow that she must've felt when reading about this character. 

However, out of instinct immediately after I picked up the book I flinched and threw it across the room. It reminded me of her more than anything else in the box. Even old worn out pictures of her didn't make my skin crawl as much as that book did. It felt as though the  blackened figure's nonexistent eyes were boring into my very soul and being despite being nothing but an inanimate object. That book consumed me with fear. It had Rita's scent all over it and only served as a sick reminder of Rita's despair and lack of humanity. Yet, after all this time I never dared to read the book. I remember at the will reading everyone got a book from her, but out of everyone that should've and could've received the book I out of all people did. It held a note designated for me and me alone, but everyone's book held a note that they would never discuss outloud towards anyone. However, going off of the fact that the books were specialized and individualized I only assumed that the notes were as well. But after reading the note for the first time I didn't want to read it again. To me it only served as a reminder that she was gone. I guess it was meant to give us some sort of closure, but I refused to believe that she was truly gone. Even to this day when I see a bunch of teenagers wearing a shirt with her face on it I can only imagine her standing next to me calling them a bunch of 'posers' and 'teenage douchebags' while I could only help but laugh at her attitude.

I looked down and saw the mess that my bedroom was now enwrapped in due to my time reminiscing on her. I sighed yet again and looked back down to a picture of her when she was caught rarely smiling. Looking back at that picture perfect smile to her glassy washed out eyes made realize that she was there to only watch me fall down like dominos. Yet, I my tingling when looking at her almost friendly and happy aura that consumed the entirety of her face. But whenever someone who didn't know or understand her they would mumble to themselves, 'What a dreadful looking woman!' But her glass white eyes and creeping smile sent shivers down any man's spine and left him with the profound feeling of revulsion. And the more you stare into her glass white smile the more you felt an indescribable yet overwhelming feeling of unspeakable horror when gazing in to emotionless yet fear inducing features. She was so freakish to look at yet still managed to come off as unclean and even nauseating by her soul piercing expressions alone. 'Exactly where do you get off?' I thought aloud to myself.

Yet despite all of this she was still my Rita. I loved her, but enough was enough. This had to be the last stop in my sorrow. Now, looking at her made my eyes water; both in dread and from the loss of a loved one. She made me feel dead from the neck up. There's no real reason. I guess I'm stuck.