Seen (Mis-shapes #3)

Prologue

To fall off stage once is comedic. Twice I can label as performance art: very dramatic, attention-seeking, would recommend. Three times, however, veers on tragic.

But four?

I sprawl on the cold concrete floor. Not because I can’t get up, but because, for the first time in forever, the spinning in my head fades, dulled by the pain of the fall. Tangled in amongst the dusty cables, the foot pedals, the discarded fag packets, I feel at peace.

“Shit. Are you okay, Neil?” A rough voice, belonging to Jacko, our drummer.

Hah! Okay? These last few months? I’ve never been less okay. And somehow this still isn’t rock bottom.

“Never better, Jacky boy,” declares the Neil everyone expects me to be. “Never fucking better.”

“You sure?” A tinge of doubt. “People are starting to suspect you have a problem, mate.”

I swallow down a sick feeling which has nothing to do with the pain lancing through my hip bone, the rattling of my teeth in my skull, and zero to do with my bust lip either.

Houston? We have a fucking problem.