All our lives

Chapter 5

Never in their existence had they been close to starting late because of him. Technical issues, unforeseen events, organizational problems, those were things he could not control entirely, and, once in a while, they occurred no matter how much ahead planning he was doing. Occasional excesses, especially in their early years, had perturbed their schedule, but to be late because he had overslept? That was unheard of.

He didn't even know how the hell had he been able to fall asleep in the first place. The fear and the shock should have kept him awake for a week. Maybe whatever had shorted out his brain and provoked those horrifying delusions had faded away and sleep was a side effect. It was a very likely explanation, one he had greedily accepted. He had made a mental note to never accept drinks he hadn't ordered, even better, to never drink something it didn't come with its cap on. Going out would probably look like going through airport security, but it was a minor inconvenience he was disposed to bear if that was what it took to maintain his thoughts in place.

Woken up by loud knocks on his door, he hadn't had the chance to check with his phone if reality had been entirely restored. As a matter of fact, his phone was still in his room, because in the turmoil of getting ready in less than five minutes, his phone had not been a priority. Later, at the venue, he had switched to the usual 'before concert' auto-pilot mode, a mode that didn't allow him to casually ask one of his friends 'So, tell me, is Rich still dead to you?'.

The overall atmosphere was still tense, however it was way better than the powder keg it had been earlier. He and Dave had barely exchanged a few words - and maybe a few unpleasant looks - but on stage, all disagreements had been put aside. He had gotten up on stage with the acute feeling he wanted everything to end as soon as possible, but after a few songs, the adrenaline and the crowd's energy had worked their magic on him. For almost two and a half hours, the outside world had ceased to exist, and everything was just fine. Maybe they would cut each other's throats when the show was over, but at the moment, whether mimicked or not, everything seemed just right.

They had one more song to do, the last notes from 'Always' were fading and the intro from 'Living on a prayer' was about to start soon, when something unexpected happened. One of the worst things that could occur while on stage. All the lights went off. With that specific sound that always accompanied a power outage, they had been left out in complete darkness.

"Oh no..." he whispered. "One more song, we had only one more song. How is this possible?" He didn't know what to do, what to check, or where to go first. Not that if he did, he could have done anything else except stumble on the first cable on his way. Night vision was not among his powers. His crew and the arena's technicians were probably out of their minds right now running in all directions to make things right.

He thought it would be nice to do one or two more songs to make up for this incident, if the power did come back soon enough, and his mind already started to browse through all their songs to find the best fitting ones. He could only hope Dave would not start again with his crazy options. Speaking of which, it felt kind of weird none of his bandmates had said anything. A gasp of surprise, a muffled bad word, nothing had come out of them and the feeling that he was the only one who didn't have a clue about what was happening started to take shape in his mind. And then he heard Dave's keyboard.

"So the power is not completely down," was his first thought. He expected the lights to come on or maybe the other instruments to kick in, but nothing like that happened. Only the sound of the keyboards continued, a soft mourning enveloping them along with the darkness. A small light flickered somewhere in the distance, then two, ten, a hundred, a thousand, and soon the whole arena was lit solely by cell phone lights.

"That's normal," he calmed himself down. "They want to see something."

But then the crowd started to hum and he knew right there and then that nothing was fortuitous in what was happening. The energy coming from the audience changed drastically, it felt more united, almost compact, as if those thousands of people had suddenly decided to think and feel alike. At first, he felt it coming towards him like a gentle stream but when the humming transformed into singing, it hit him like a tsunami and it took his breath away. He had never heard that song the crowd was chanting in his life, yet that didn't stop him from recognizing it.