AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Very short, and where it's ending. It was meant to end in Ciarán's perspective. This is his story, after all.
***
She pushes through the crowd and steals his anonymity, as the lights around them race faster and faster. His eyes focus on her, losing the sheen of confusion.
“I didn’t remember what city this was,” Ciarán explains, his heart in his mouth. How many people have to defy death? he wonders. He had seen his parents together, in the hospital, in the scratchy half-sight of the recovering. Their hands connecting automatically, almost unwillingly. Seen Bono’s eyes trail after Ali when she left, and how nonetheless he couldn’t let Cath go. Ciarán didn’t want to make a choice of any kind. As soon as he could stand up he announced he was going back to America. Some blind knowledge pushed him there. He had to go, he explained once again. He didn’t know why, but he had to.
“I knew, but I didn’t remember,” he says again, biting his lip. The music so loud it shakes their shoes and squeezes his heart. Lights flash into and through his eyes and vibrate his bones.
“Are you alright?” she asks, when he stared into the lights.
“Fine,” he says, frowning slightly. Twinge of pain in his side, a strange feeling, right at that scar he doesn’t remember. It remembers her, though, his body remembers almost dying for her.
"I'm fine", Ali tells them. The band had dropped by, confused. "You know he'll have to come back", they said. "For us." It's the bassist who leaves last. She's unsure what that means. She can feel Adam nearby. Sudden, strange overwhelming sense of that deep sound and the angst in it.
Unsure. Unsure. There's a chord in her head that won't leave. Then it comes back. 1986. That look in his eyes.
Fine now, an unspoken sentiment echoes between Bono and Cath. The colossal hurt of those early years gone. He cried, embryonic, in the hospital. Here, he doesn't feel that. He's seen the surprised look in her daughter's eyes. Shocked to realized the hurt in him could change to gone. They make up for lost time slowly. He feels so much it's overwhelming. Strange, how he forgets who's beside him in the morning. Crayon scribbles all over the cover of 'Boy'. Lost time is five years old.
He can feel ghosts of impressions there already, clustered in fits and surges in his fingertips. Static buzzes when they meet her skin.
“You were staring,” she laughs.
“I had the strangest feeling. Like you were gone but now you’re here.”
There's a gap in his memory, roughly the shape of a man, roughly the burn of alcohol and bitter liquid.
“I couldn’t look for you, because I didn’t know your name. Those entire two years, no-one called you by name.”
“And I’m the one with memory loss.” He whispers something in her ear. She raises her eyebrows.
“Our names sound really similar, don’t th—“
Static, drumbeats, heartbeats. So close her words are cut off. Everything thunders around them.
And Ciarán feels some rhythm he remembers, racing in his body as he gives up talking to Corinne. So much music, overwhelming him. The lights so bright they pierce his skull. Their skin so thin maybe even memory passes from one to another. When he pulls apart from her is when he notices. Hands. His hands have ceased being shadows and mergings of other hands. He just knows them as—his.
“If you won’t leave,” he says, noticing this strange phenomenon, and the way the light threads through his hands and hers, and he knows she won't, “I have no reason to go back. I told them I’d be gone awhile.”
His life doesn't need to be a satellite of anyone's, he'd realized in the hospital, the sheets a crushing weight on top of him, the sight of the-man-and-the-woman-just-there-in-front-of-him mindboggling. Even before remembering—everything he could—he remembered how many times he'd tried to be on his own. And that he needed to succeed, for once.
Flashing lights in between their hands. Thud of a bassline under their feet. Pause in the air. So many people, and none know him (except for one). So many miles in between he, his parents, everyone. Anonymity. Blank passive spots replacing things he doesn’t need to remember. Clean slate. Sometimes the silence in between means more than the drumbeats themselves.
****
The end the end the end the end I am done with this, happy holidays everyone.
It was a long, difficult, entertaining ride. That sounds wrong.
***
Epilogue
She pushes through the crowd and steals his anonymity, as the lights around them race faster and faster. His eyes focus on her, losing the sheen of confusion.
“I didn’t remember what city this was,” Ciarán explains, his heart in his mouth. How many people have to defy death? he wonders. He had seen his parents together, in the hospital, in the scratchy half-sight of the recovering. Their hands connecting automatically, almost unwillingly. Seen Bono’s eyes trail after Ali when she left, and how nonetheless he couldn’t let Cath go. Ciarán didn’t want to make a choice of any kind. As soon as he could stand up he announced he was going back to America. Some blind knowledge pushed him there. He had to go, he explained once again. He didn’t know why, but he had to.
“I knew, but I didn’t remember,” he says again, biting his lip. The music so loud it shakes their shoes and squeezes his heart. Lights flash into and through his eyes and vibrate his bones.
“Are you alright?” she asks, when he stared into the lights.
“Fine,” he says, frowning slightly. Twinge of pain in his side, a strange feeling, right at that scar he doesn’t remember. It remembers her, though, his body remembers almost dying for her.
"I'm fine", Ali tells them. The band had dropped by, confused. "You know he'll have to come back", they said. "For us." It's the bassist who leaves last. She's unsure what that means. She can feel Adam nearby. Sudden, strange overwhelming sense of that deep sound and the angst in it.
Unsure. Unsure. There's a chord in her head that won't leave. Then it comes back. 1986. That look in his eyes.
Fine now, an unspoken sentiment echoes between Bono and Cath. The colossal hurt of those early years gone. He cried, embryonic, in the hospital. Here, he doesn't feel that. He's seen the surprised look in her daughter's eyes. Shocked to realized the hurt in him could change to gone. They make up for lost time slowly. He feels so much it's overwhelming. Strange, how he forgets who's beside him in the morning. Crayon scribbles all over the cover of 'Boy'. Lost time is five years old.
He can feel ghosts of impressions there already, clustered in fits and surges in his fingertips. Static buzzes when they meet her skin.
“You were staring,” she laughs.
“I had the strangest feeling. Like you were gone but now you’re here.”
There's a gap in his memory, roughly the shape of a man, roughly the burn of alcohol and bitter liquid.
“I couldn’t look for you, because I didn’t know your name. Those entire two years, no-one called you by name.”
“And I’m the one with memory loss.” He whispers something in her ear. She raises her eyebrows.
“Our names sound really similar, don’t th—“
Static, drumbeats, heartbeats. So close her words are cut off. Everything thunders around them.
And Ciarán feels some rhythm he remembers, racing in his body as he gives up talking to Corinne. So much music, overwhelming him. The lights so bright they pierce his skull. Their skin so thin maybe even memory passes from one to another. When he pulls apart from her is when he notices. Hands. His hands have ceased being shadows and mergings of other hands. He just knows them as—his.
“If you won’t leave,” he says, noticing this strange phenomenon, and the way the light threads through his hands and hers, and he knows she won't, “I have no reason to go back. I told them I’d be gone awhile.”
His life doesn't need to be a satellite of anyone's, he'd realized in the hospital, the sheets a crushing weight on top of him, the sight of the-man-and-the-woman-just-there-in-front-of-him mindboggling. Even before remembering—everything he could—he remembered how many times he'd tried to be on his own. And that he needed to succeed, for once.
Flashing lights in between their hands. Thud of a bassline under their feet. Pause in the air. So many people, and none know him (except for one). So many miles in between he, his parents, everyone. Anonymity. Blank passive spots replacing things he doesn’t need to remember. Clean slate. Sometimes the silence in between means more than the drumbeats themselves.
****
The end the end the end the end I am done with this, happy holidays everyone.
It was a long, difficult, entertaining ride. That sounds wrong.
