Here is the unedited prologue of my work in progress.
“Baby” is my current WIP (work in progress). I am on chapter nine of the writing and… I love it already.
Summer 1977
The sold-out crowd erupted with frenzied screams as the drums rumbled and the guitars blared. Mickie Crash took center stage for one last encore, marking the end of both the concert and the U.S. tour. As the red velvet curtain separated the audience from the band, the sweaty musicians exited the stage to join the ecstatic groupies backstage for the kind of party they craved: a wild revelry of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Mickie, too, had her share of admirers. More than anyone else in the band. A swarm of beautiful women rushed the stage, lavishing Mickie with praise as if she were a goddess. And indeed, she was.
Mickie Crash was a rock star.
Fans swooned in awe, not only over her but also over her custom blood-red Fender with curves that melded perfectly with her body, making it more like an extension of herself. The chords from her instrument were nothing short of hypnotic. Through her fingertips, she turned into a music deity, one that fans admired and worshiped.
She relished the attention and the lavish lifestyle that came with her celebrity status. It was a life of luxury, riches, and sex, but it also came with a downside: drugs.
As four women willingly pressed their bodies against her, Mickie walked off the stage, leaning on her road manager for another hit. A small spoon delivered a shot of white powder into her nostril as she snorted. She didn’t even bother to wipe away the remnants as she lovingly caressed her guitar, internally thanking it for another incredible show.
Behind the stage and throughout the corridors, hordes of people gathered, either snapping photos or seeking autographs. Some girls even bared their breasts in the hope that someone from the band would accept their sexual proposition.
Yes. Mickie Crash loved her life.
They all filed into the dressing room. Dougie Fowley, her manager, closed the door after the entourage, which kept the reporters and photographers out. The afterparty was on the horizon. They planned to wait for the crowds to disperse before heading back to the hotel, where another all-nighter would cap off the tour.
Dougie grabbed one of the five champagne bottles, shook it, and then released the cork. A frothy geyser of bubbles shot into the air and showered the small group of women who Mickie brought back to the green room. She avoided the spray, placing her beloved guitar on the sofa, then joined the drenched women, savoring the fruity liquid as it dripped from their ample breasts.
Yes. Mickie Crash loved her life.
Dougie dropped a couple of Quaaludes into a glass and handed it to Mickie, who downed them and champagne in one fast gulp. She ran her tongue over the topless woman’s body, then settled on the sofa beside her guitar and tugged the woman’s pants down. As the voluptuous lady straddled her naked body over Mickie, their mouths met in a lustful kiss. Their tongues danced, and Mickie’s fingers worked magic between the woman’s legs.
“God, you taste good. What’s your name?” asked Mickie, in between breaths.
The woman’s back arched with her perky breast popping forward. Mickie took one into her mouth as the woman said, “Shelby.” Her breath deepened as she thrust her hips into Mickie’s hand, then repeated, “Shelby Shane.”
With one hand wrapped around Shelby, who might not have been of age, Mickie lifted herself up and let her pants drop to her ankles. She settled back onto the sofa and guided Shelby’s hand between her legs.
“Here’s what you really want,” said Mickie, her neck craning back to enjoy the ride.
Others wanted to join in.
A brunette snuggled up beside them, mingling with them in an erotic game of Twister. On the opposite side of the sofa, the beautiful guitar pulsed with colors as if it had a heartbeat beneath the surface. A half-naked blonde gripped the fretboard with her dirty hands to pull it away from the sofa, looking to get into the middle of the sexual escapades. When she did, a guitar string snapped from its pegs, swung up, and struck her in the eye, cutting her eyelid and causing her eye to bulge out. Although she screamed in pain, her distress went unnoticed within the cacophony of laughter, moans, and the overwhelming ecstasy induced by the mind-bending drug hallucinations.
The rogue guitar string slithered into her open mouth, down her throat, and coiled into a tight knot that constricted her airways. She frantically clutched her neck, trying to cough, much like summoning up a hairball. Instead of it popping out of her mouth, the metal wire lump dropped down her esophagus until it hit her stomach, where it unraveled into an explosive lasso, cutting through muscles and flesh. It burst through her skin like an alien creature from a science fiction movie. Her mangled torso collapsed to the ground atop the guitar.
“Hey. No. Don’t fuck Baby,” said Mickie, in her psychedelic trip, only witnessing the fall and not the aftermath.
As the woman lay motionless, Mickie turned her attention to anyone else in the room. Under normal circumstances, she would have forbidden anyone from touching her guitar, but with the kaleidoscope of colors swirling in front of her eyes and long, slender fingers fucking her hard, she didn’t dare move from her position.
“Come on, get her away from Baby. Bring Baby to me,” she said, almost whining as she reached out her hand.
A guy in the room yanked the guitar out from under the body, unnoticing of the fresh flesh entangled in the strings. His large hand clutched the neck, and as he began to move toward the back of the room, the guitar strings heated up like the coils of a toaster, scorching his hand to a smoky crisp. He hollered and tossed it away.
The guitar soared through the air, smacking against the wall before plummeting to the floor. When the streak of red passed in front of her vision, Mickey rose up from the sofa. “Hey. Nuh-uh! Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
The woman who had been on the singer’s lap dropped to the ground with a thud, although she laughed. From her position, she grabbed the first cock she found and stuck it in her mouth with a moan.
Ignoring the groping hands and the pants around her ankles, Mickie stumbled over the lifeless girl on the floor and fell forward, inadvertently taking a wave of bodies with her. Screams and laughter filled the room as Mickie retrieved the guitar and planted a kiss on it. She then traced her tongue over the letters that spelled out ‘baby’ on the back of the instrument.
“God, I love you,” she whispered to the guitar, holding it close to her body, much like a woman held a lover, her fingers gently caressing the curves of its body.
“Want another hit?” Dougie asked, as he held a needle in the air, offering it to Mickie.
She lifted her arm while hugging the bloody instrument and allowed him to tighten a rubber band around her arm, then pressed the needle through her skin into a vein.
Just as he did, Shelby wrapped her arms around Dougie. “Me next. Me next.”
This caused Dougie to fumble. His thumb jammed into the plunger, shoving an entire syringe of heroin into Mickie’s bloodstream.
Within a few moments, her body convulsed, sending her nervous system into shock. Foam seeped from her mouth as people around her scattered, hollering and screeching in horror at the sight of Mickie’s overdose.
Dougie gathered himself and dropped to the floor, trying to help Mickie while another member of the staff shuffled people out of the room.
“Call an ambulance!” He hollered as the door opened.
The room cleared, leaving only a few individuals behind. Emergency crews were already on the scene due to the concert’s sold-out crowd. By the time they entered, Mickie’s body had fallen into silence. Her chest no longer rose and fell with breaths. Limp and lifeless, she was now in eternal slumber.
Dougie had made her presentable, pulling her pants back up to restore some semblance of dignity by the time the police arrived. He initially huddled in a corner as they pronounced her dead but then came forth when the police needed to question him.
He lied, explaining he wasn’t in the room when it happened but had intervened when someone mentioned they had entered the room and saw the horrific accident. It was then that he discovered Mickie had overdosed and another woman, who appeared to have combusted.
Shelby, who was nearby, corroborated the story, removing the blame from anyone other than the two victims. “I opened the door to get my jacket to find Mickie and that girl on the floor. There was no one else in there with them. I called for help.”
Once satisfied with the assessment, the police departed. Much of the chaos subsided as the medical examiner removed the two bodies from the arena.
In a foggy daze, Dougie staggered around in shock. The horror was enough to kill his buzz, as was the realization that he had killed one of music’s rock ‘n’ roll legends.
Around him, the auditorium bustled with heartbroken workers tearing down the stage and equipment. With the immense amount of work needed to be done, there was little time for grieving. Idle gossip and whispers echoed around him. “Some girl was murdered in there.”
“I heard she took so many drugs it blew out her insides,” said another.
Dougie didn’t even know what happened to the skanky woman on the floor. He hadn’t even noticed her. Much like all the other times when Mickie partied too hard, he cleaned up the unexplained messes, disposing of mangled hunks of hamburger that once was a person into a nearby trash can before anyone else noticed. This time, he couldn’t act fast enough.
So many times during this tour, he had wished to quit. Maybe this was freedom. Maybe Mickie’s death was just what the doctor ordered in order for him to get his life back. He worked twenty-four seven for the past year, living out of suitcases and motor buses. All for what?
With graying hair and a drug addiction he couldn’t kick, Dougie popped a couple pills, saying to himself he’d lay off the dope tomorrow; he only needed a little to calm the edge and stop the shakes.
“Got a few of those to spare?” asked a voice from behind him.
He turned to find Shelby, more presentable than the last time he saw her without any clothes, being fucked by his now-former boss.
From his stash, he gave her two without asking for anything in return, which wasn’t normal.
“Want me to blow you for them?” she asked.
He waved his hand, rejecting the idea, and walked away. Shelby lifted her palm to her mouth and dropped the little round pebbles into her mouth, letting them dissolve on her tongue.
When someone hollered at her and told her she needed to leave, she returned the message. “I need to grab my purse and jacket.”
Her items were in Mickie’s dressing room, which had been quarantined off by the police. She dropped under the yellow tape where she found her fake fur coat on the ground. When she bent over to pick it up, she noticed the lone instrument in the room, shimmering under the flickering ballast of fluorescent lighting. Its red coloring pulsated as if calling her. With a quick lift of her jacket, she stuffed the guitar underneath it and raced from the room, then out of the auditorium.