Rundown69

Part 1 : H

"Do you want me to love you?"

You cry out in your sleep,
All my failings exposed.
And there's a taste in my mouth,
As desperation takes hold.
Just that something so good
Just can't function no more.

Then love, love will tear us apart again.

H

The examination lamp was glaring brightly, hurting Harper's eyes. She was nauseated by the chaotic flickering of blue and yellow sparks in her vision under the white light. Pulling through the excruciating headache, she focused her best to remember where she could have left her glasses. Slowly, Harper's memories started to take shape. It was an exciting, violent night. Images of her dancing and screaming incoherent lyrics were vague, but the sore in her throat and tensions at her back and knees were definite. There was bruising on her right cheek. Someone had elbowed her face at the height of adrenaline in the mosh pit. Ahh, they broke – the glasses; and got lost in the moshing hazard. Harper sighed, even in flashbacks, she could not escape the harsh reality of her bad astigmatism. She was desperate for those old pair of red-framed glasses because without, her sight was but distorted ribbons of red and orange lights. He was a blurred ambiance of flickering red motions. Unless he stood within the radius span of her arms.

He?

He was a red, fiery figure, fogged with the stench of vomit and blood. The foul sensation evoked from the back of her mind. She remembered distressed gasps, and a gorgeous face with hair, cascading like blazing wildfire.

Then, suddenly, the images broke into disorder when the annoying buzzing of the nurses' voices became clearer and clearer. Harper felt a prick of discomfort when the nurse pierced the cannula into her thin skin. Gradually, the throbbing of her headache calmed down and pain concentrated at a specific spot just at the back of her head. Stuck in the limbo of consciousness, flashes of shrouded memories finally woke from darkness under the white lights and fused into meaning.

"...Someone ran over me, and I fell..." Harper murmured.

"Yes, Darling... I had to stitch your wound. You, young lots really party hard... foolish." And the nagging continued, "... You are lucky, you called for emergency just in time. That boyfriend of yours nearly died! Okay, all done, now... what is your name, dear?"

"What? Boy...friend? Ouch... oh, yeah, my name is Harper, Harper Tatebayashi..."

The intravenous painkiller helped placed Harper's memories into order despite numbing her consciousness. She was wasted alright, and it was a thrilling show, that gig. It was satisfying when she succumbed to the incubus. To Dap's coarse singing. His voice lingered in her head.

When routine bites hard,
And ambitions are low,
And resentment rides high,
But emotions won't grow,
And we're changing our ways,
Taking different roads.

Harper knew the song by heart. 'Love will tear us apart' was originally by the Joy Division. The original was not her cup of tea, but after she heard it covered by an underground indie band called Rundown69, she was seduced by the husky voice that reinterpreted the song. It sounded much like The Cure's rendition, but huskier and less aggressive similar to The Cure's Lovesong. 

The cover became a favorite in her playlist, and Rundown69's vocalist, Dap – became her favorite person.

"Urgh..." Her chest ached with every breath. She recalled moshing against the unruly wild audiences and abused her body as an anchor at the separating bar to prevent from drifting into the crazy whirlpool of drunken people. She had endured the suffocation, for her absolute captivation of Dap's singing. On stage, he appears like a messiah emblazed in fire. Maybe it was his flaming red hair or the dizziness from the blinding strobe lights. Maybe it was the high of the atmosphere. Whatever it was, there is indeed something awkwardly supernatural about Dap that mesmerized the crowd. Harper need not any stimulant to influence her. The live house was so confined, that one literally breathes in the pungent smog of opium, marijuana, and wafted alcohol.