by Kellyanne Lynch
3 May 2001, 10:30 PM - 4
May 2001, 1:40 AM
Disclaimer: This story is based on real events. My two
main sources are a local Los Angeles paper from November, 1996, and the VH1
Behind the Music special on The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I do not know the Chili
Peppers, but I feel for them, for the hardships that they have had to face in
their lives. The television program and the article have made me think about all
that has happened to them and inspired this fanfic. This is for everybody who
loves the Chili Peppers.
Summary: Flea visits a friend on the brink of
emptiness.
Rating: PG-13
Please e-mail
dearjoan@mikeypower.com with questions, comments, theories, complaints, or
words of
wisdom.
---------------------------
Flea sat
back in his seat. Tapping on his steering wheel, he stared at a luxurious
Hollywood Hills home. The sun sparkled off white marble steps. Beautiful ivory
columbs stretched skyward, framing the double-doored entrance to the
mansion.
Birds chirped. Children laughed in the distance. A breeze
caressed Flea's tensioned shoulders, tickling his ears. And he sighed. He did
not want to enter that house.
Rubbing his eyes, he prayed, "Please, God,
let it be different this time." He grabbed the brown paper bag beside him and
got out of the car.
As he ascended the front steps, Flea glanced over his
shoulder. Folks were out on midday strolls, walking their dogs and their
children. Each set of individuals meandered about in their own little worlds.
They might have glanced at this house, at its splendor, and wonder who could own
such a palace. But nobody knew about the man inside. Even if they learned that
man was dying, slowly and in agony, they wouldn't care.
Flea shook his
head and rapped his knuckles on the door to his right. The effects from his
car's AC were wearing off; his golden curls tightened and writhed in the midday
glare of the sun. Perspiration speckled his upper lip and saturated the
underarms of his white cotton tank top.
"Come on, man!" he muttered and
knocked again.
"It's open," rasped a voice from inside. 'Open?!' Flea
turned the knob and pushed. The door glided open.
Scents assaulted his
olfactory as Flea stepped into the house. He smelled the circus, the zoo, a
chicken coop. It was like stepping into a giant litter box. A pair of jeans hung
off the railing of a staircase. Jewel cases scattered the floor, some open, some
with CDs spilling out. A heap of clothes sat by the stairs. A stack of mail on a
chair. Flea stepped forward, and his foot sunk into a green-tinted pizza.
Cringing, he raised his foot from the pizza box and wiped it on a flyer just a
step away.
A trail of clothes and trash led Flea to the entryway of the
living room. He caught sight of a print of DaVinci's 'Mona Lisa'. She smiled out
at the crux of the house's whirlwind, a dingy red couch in the midst of more
garbage. Draped across the couch was the skeleton of a man, whose pasty skin
barely stretched across the bones. His eyes seemed to bug out from their sockets
and stare... just stare. The gray flannel shirt wrapped about his torso hung off
his body, holding on solely by three buttons across his rib cage. Fuzz and
stains clung to the shirt and to his khaki pants, peppered with cigarette ashes
and with burnt holes.
Long, gnarly fingers clung to the neck of an
acoustic guitar, its blackened bloody nails resting against the frets. They
played across the strings before swiping through the owner's greasy shocks of
black hair. They caught on a tangle.
"Damn," the skeleton's
drool-infested lips croaked, tearing his fingers from his head. A clump of
knotted hair came with it. He flicked them to the side, still staring...
staring.
Flea's eyes watered, and he clenched them shut. Then opened them
again.
"John?"
Glazed eyes shifted onto Flea, still seemingly
staring into nothingness. Focussing, recognition flashed momentarily across
them. Then stared through him.
"Yeah," John's voice scraped through his
throat. "I'm here. Here in a sense, gone in a sense. Senses don't make sense.
But when did anything?"
His left hand slapped down on the scratched
coffee table beside him, and Flea jumped. The hand scanned the surface of the
table, unaided by sight, and slipped over a pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes.
Joints bending, the bones and tendons wrapped around the box and drew them to
the pit beneath John's rib cage. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and threw
the box back to the table.
Drawing the cigarette to his lips, he inhaled
a third of it in one puff. Ashes rained over him, a glowing ember embedding
itself into John's left forearm. John took another drag.
"Sh**!" Flea
brushed his hand across the ember, which sunk into the carpet. He sighed and sat
on the coffee table. Closing his eyes, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "John,
are you ever going to get off this couch?"
John exhaled a puff of smoke.
"Nothing to do. Nothing to do but run the maze, play the game, run in circles
until you're blue in the face, and red, and..." his eyes focussed upon the bag
in Flea's lap. Fragile, brown teeth peeked out from behind his drooping lower
lip. "Did you bring me a gun?"
Flea furrowed his eyebrows, subconsciously
clutching the bag tighter. "Why would I do that?"
"'Cause I'm needing a
gun. I'm needing a gun like this world needs to go down in a big flaming,
glowing, yellow destruction."
Flea held back tears, knowing that they
wouldn't help anything. But he had no idea what WOULD help, what he could say or
do to get John out of this place. He gulped.
"I didn't bring you a gun,"
he breathed, reaching into the bag. He puled out a six-pack of Boost and set it
on the table. The cans clunked against the wooden surface. "I brought you these
drinks."
"Why?" John gave him a hollow stare.
Flea bit his upper
lip and tasted salt. Closing his eyes, he asked, "When's the last time you ate
anything?"
"Does it matter?" John flicked ash onto his chest, and Flea
swept it away. "Does anything? What are we doing?" John dug the tip of his
cigarette into his forearm.
"F***!" Flea snatched the cigarette from the
feeble fingers that held it. He pressed it into an ashtray on the table. "'the
hell were you doing?"
"Doing things there's no reason to do," John
scratched his protruding neck veins. "I don't know. I don't feel."
Flea
swallowed hard. "Can you just drink these?" He gestured toward the
Boost.
"I'll try. Though trying's not worth the effort."
Sighing,
Flea reached into the bag again. He lay a jewel-cased CD on the table. A little
red-headed girl smiled from the cover. "I didn't know if you would want this,
but it's our latest CD..."
" 'Our'?"
"The Chili
Peppers'."
Light in the room intensified, and Flea looked toward the
window facing west. The sun was making its daily descent, passing by the side of
John's house as it passed. Its rays flickered off the jewel case, off the covers
of other jewel cases, a glass on the floor, the metal zipper of a pair of
Levi's, the boom box by John's dangling hand...
A needle half under the
couch.
"Why don't you go on home," John rasped as his hand reached for
his cigarettes. "I'll drink to life and all, but I want to be
alone."
Flea's eyes were still on the needle. What could he do? John's
mind was set on opening doors for himself while keeping everyone else locked out
of his life.
"You know you can call me whenever you want," Flea reminded
his friend. "Even when I'm on tour, you have my cell phone number. I'm always
just a plane ride away."
It was all he could do. And he hated it. He
hated himself for it, and he hated John for bringing it to this.
John
nodded, dark oily locks dripping over his face. Flea watched him draw the
cigarette to his lips. And inhale its toxic innards.
Dropping to his
knees, Flea flung his arms around his friend. He felt the bones in John's chest
imprint themselves into his forehead. He held him tight, receiving nothing in
return. No embrace, no pat on the shoulder, no movement. Flea was hugging a
skeleton of a man wanting to leave his body. Still, Flea held on, until his
triceps ached. Then he stood and admitted himself out of the house. All he could
do at this point was pray, always feeling that he could never do
enough.
Flea would hold out his hand as long as John was down or high or
wherever he was. But John would have to reach for that hand. He would have to
care about life
again.
--------------------------------
"My
friends are so depressed
I feel the question
Of your
loneliness
Confide... 'cause I'll be on your side
You know I will, you
know I will"
- The Red Hot Chili Peppers, "My Friends"