Time To Live

Chapter 06: Bleed

Ricky sat on the barstool, a notebook with a blank page facing up at him as he tapped his pen on his bottom lip. He considered the music that his bandmate had just played for him, the chord structure and the hook that the vocalist was aiming for, and his mind came up blank. He shrugged. "I've got nothing."

Seated at the counter across from him, Chris sighed. "Do I need to play it for you again?"

"Nope," he shook his head feverishly and his long, black ponytail bounced. "I've just got nothing. I'm going to have to think on it, because nothing is coming to mind right now. Not even a general theme or concept."

Chris nodded. "Alright. Let's move onto that bit that you e-mailed me the other day – with the super heavy breakdown." He paused to chew his bottom lip in concentration. "I think you named the file something like 'Heavy AF'."

Rick nodded excitedly and sat up straighter. "Yes, I know the one."

"It totally speaks pissed off," his bandmate grinned. "So, I thought about what would work with that lyrically, and I had some ideas." At this, he pushed his notebook toward his friend and smirked. "I feel like I was really inspired with this one. I know it's fucking dark but see if you can hang in there."

Ricky glanced over the sheet of lyrics. His eyes focused first on a line in the second verse – "I hope you bleed for your sins" – which flowed perfectly into the macabre chorus, which was centered around the line "Everything we had was a lie". It wasn't as bleak as Chris could get, for sure, until you hit the third verse of the song, where he spoke of this woman as "nothing but a cunt to use," and stated unequivocally, "No matter what you say, I will never believe the lies / I hope you and your bastard bleed and die."

Shocked at the brutal hatred that was emanating from the page, Rick frowned. "Do you really want to put these words on an album? Forever? You'll never be able to take them back or erase them, they'll be on the record forever."

Chris actually laughed at this. He raised a hand to his mouth and chuckled, as though his words were entirely amusing. "Flip the page!"

Rick did as directed and found a second set of alternate lyrics, similar to the first but far more grotesque. Here, his friend detailed a relationship gone awry, and then went off on a tangent with a gruesome fantasy of murdering the woman and her child both, dismembering their bodies and scattering them to the wind to hide his crime. He wasn't certain, but Rick highly suspected that his face had paled, and there was definitely bile rising in his throat.

Chris smirked cruelly. "Now you see that I did censor myself and I stand by my edited lyrics."

Taking a deep breath and trying to fight back his instant bout of nausea, Rick nodded slowly. "That is.....that is awful, man. I don't, you can't.....We can't record a song with lyrics like that!"

"Why ever not?" Chris folded his hands beneath his chin and gazed at his bandmate as though Rick were the one that was losing his grip on reality. The effect made him look entirely unhinged, and Rick felt a growing sea of uncomfortableness rise between then.