All our lives

Chapter 11

Denial. Anger. Depression. Bargaining. Acceptance. The cycle that was supposed to lead to a normal existence. In the last five days, he had circled that cycle multiple times, a lot more than he could have ever imagined it was possible. Sometimes he had even randomly jumped from one stage to another just to come back to spinning in that circle of emotions, a veritable hamster wheel from hell.

It was one thing to accept that you could enter another universe and a whole another one to accept that you've got stuck into a miserable one because you were an idiot who couldn't control his temper. For four days he had tried to put all those little pieces back and reassemble the watch, but no matter how many combinations he'd come up with, they'd never seemed to correctly fall into place.

He supposed that was the denial phase and one hell of a Sisyphean job. There was always one moment when desperation engulfed him and brought him to the edge of throwing that thing across the room once more. Anger phase. He had never done it, but the bits he hadn't yet figured out where they fit had defied gravity a few times. He probably acted like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum out of nothing but, for a split second, he was feeling better. And then the depression followed, almost instantly, and he was not able to do anything else but lie on the bed with incoherent thoughts running through his mind. Or with gloomy ones. There was not much of a difference anyway.

Luckily, there were things that required his presence outside the room, otherwise he would have rotted there. Concerts and their routine had become his lifeline, the only things that could provide a hint of normalcy in all that madness. Just to win himself some time, he had yielded and had not dismissed 'Saturday nights' from the setlist. He had had to ditch the questioning looks and raised eyebrows by invoking a momentary lapse with a nonchalant 'I simply don't remember how it goes', but everybody accepted his inexplicable memory loss without further protests and they had rehearsed the song until he had contently declared that his memory had been restored.

On the first night he had played that song on stage, he had wondered if that was not some kind of bargaining he was doing. Like he was a little boy saying 'Look, mum, I've finished all the broccoli! Can I have cake now?' It was as ridiculous as that. If he had to do something against who he was or how he usually behaved to win himself a chance to access that dream again, then agreeing to play a song everybody but him liked could not be it. It would be too simple. He didn't even know where that idea had come from. Maybe it was just desperation. Maybe it was just his need to believe that there was still something he could do. He was truly in need of something to believe in and that seemed like a good idea. Wasn't like that in movies? Didn't the characters stay in others' bodies or trapped in some weird situations until they learned something? Didn't they need to understand something about themselves to free themselves? But those were just movies. His situation was different because, no matter how implausible, it was real. And what was there to be learned anyway?

He was now grateful for that chaotic itinerary of the tour. It distracted him from all those little voices inside him, that screamed that he was fucked, for enough time to not get stuck forever in the depression stage. During concerts, things felt strangely normal, because in real life the new normal meant Richie was not there. Richie was not there for more years than he was missing here. Jumping and running like he was in his twenties, throwing his arm around Phil's neck more often, way more often than the man was used to in any known or unknown universe, singing his soul out probably irretrievably destroying what was left of his vocal cords, fueled only by a energy he didn't actually have, he could easily create a micro-world where no hazard had happened. But it all lasted until that chant began.

When the voice of the crowd reached him, he could not hide from reality anymore. Richie was gone and it was entirely his fault. And just like that, he was again thrown in a stage of anger heavily infused with frustration and desperation. Why hadn't he followed the instructions? What on that list had made him believe it was all just a joke, something only a drunk mind could say, something unworthy to take into consideration? What on that list had hurt his ego so bad that had crushed any warning signs that that last line should have risen? Was his past self so different from how he was now? So stubborn that no one could change his mind, not even himself?