Author's Note: As already mentioned, this is inspired by cm's challenge on lpffichallenge (although I think it might break some rules on the grounds that each segment is too long). Please, R&R. Thanks.

Power and the Glory

or, Five Things That Never Happened to Chester Bennington

i – alone

You sit on the bed and stare at the dresser. It registers that something is missing, but you can’t place what exactly. Everything seems different, but you’re much too self-absorbed to notice. For five years, the world has been your oyster. Everything has gone your way, and you can’t comprehend or remember now a world where it wasn’t always quite so simple.

You sit and you stare.

And slowly the missing object resolves itself. In front of the mirror there used to be a photograph in a beautiful gilt frame. It was taken back when you still remembered how to smile, before the destructive, abortive shot at glory, before the fame and the resultant dissolution of your life. She smiled and kissed your cheek, and you wrapped your arm around her, and held your son on your hip.

Gone, and as you look around you see more things that are not there. Or rather, you see the holes where things that should have been there are no longer. Her dresses are gone from the closet, her underwear from the drawer; and the expensive perfume you bought her is gone as well.

But she’s left you one thing. On the dresser, where the photo once was, is her ring. It glitters and refracts the light, and your tears bounce from its white gold surface. You slide the ring into the drawer and make a vow never to look at it again, so help you god, and the rest of her belongings you pack into bags. You look at these at least once a day. You put a lock on your son’s room, and sometimes you take out the key and sit in his room to cry.

You ask yourself questions which you cannot answer. Why has she gone? Where, and with whom?

And you have one last thought as the rot sets in: so this is how it feels to be alone.

ii – self-destruction

He asks no questions as he counts my money, and he points to a door. I force a smile and wonder which of his whores I have paid for this time. I feel like dirt. I don’t even get as far as opening the door before nausea claims me, and he swears as he scoops me from the floor. “Fucking fag,” he mutters as I am escorted to the entrance, money non-refundable…

I’m not entirely sure how I got from patron of his grim brothel to being just another guy with a jaded, glassy stare abusing his own body for an extra fifty to let some sleazy soak fuck him without a rubber. It was never what I had planned for myself.

I see myself in mirrors, rouged and painted. I wear collars to hide the finger marks around my neck. I cover the bruises with foundation, and wear kohl around my eyes as I strip. I am a sleazy sideshow oddity, a freak and an abomination. I am sex.

And time progresses.

I learn to hate my reflection. I learn to loathe the touch of another human being. I learn to fear the sound of feet in the carpeted hallways. I learn to know when the only way I’ll see daylight again is to play dead; come to understand what turns men on.

And there are things that I miss as well – I miss daylight, and regular hours. I miss my self-respect and pity my own self-destruction. I miss my life…

Most importantly, I miss knowing what a smile meant, and miss the time when sex was more than just ritual, more than just money, more than just cold hard cash and a roof. I miss having somewhere to go home to, and someone.

It takes a while, months perhaps, but it comes to me. I miss Sam.

iii – devilry

The telephone is a loud insistent trill in the silence of the house. I disentangle myself from my lover’s arms, staring down at him as I slip from the bed. He rolls onto his side, and I run a hand across my throat and my jaw. My skin crawls.

It’s too dark to see the display on the phone, and my voice is tired as I murmur an opening hello. My knees sag as I hear the voice that responds.

“Do you have some time to hear me out?”

His voice hasn’t changed, and I feel the smile on my lips. “Yes,” I whisper in response. “Yes, I have time.”

“I’m sorry for things, how it ended - the way that I treated you. I don’t know how to apologise anymore. I don’t suppose I ever did. But I – I miss you, and I know that now. Know it like I never did; understand that I can’t live without you. I love you. And I guess I never told you that often enough either. But I need you, Sam, need you so much. I need you to make it all alright again.”

I want to be able to find the words to console him, but they’re not coming. My voice only sticks in my throat and makes me feel sick. My stomach twists itself in knots.

“Are you there?”

His voice is identical; uncertain and demanding and completely unfazed by the hour. “Yes,” I croak.

“Please,” he whispers now, begging, “please come. I’m dying here, alone.”

I want to be able to tell him to just fuck off, that he can’t go from treating me the way he did to imploring me to return. And then I remember how it felt with him – the sex and the drama and the passion, and I compare it to the steadiness and the boredom I live with now. He never hit me or hurt me; only took me for granted…

And the irony doesn’t escape me as he moves within me, as my nails tear at his pale flesh and my thighs clamp against his creamy hips – I’m cheating on my lover… with my husband.

iv – decline

He lies awake at night and watches shadows on the ceiling. At 8am every day, he takes his first drink – Irish coffee, caffeine and whiskey. He can feel the dual burn. His brain is wired. This is his life now; drugs and sex, sex and drugs – one fuelling the need for the other. The alcohol merely helps.

As Chester drinks his coffee, Sam slips from his bed. Not everyday, but some days. She pulls on the clothes she discarded so eagerly the night before, and she kisses his cheek as she slips from the door. Her hair isn’t even damp, and the towels in the bathroom hang exactly as they always do. She must crawl into bed beside her lover still smelling of him.

He wonders what she tells her lover she does. He wants her to say she’s a stripper, like she used to be, back when they first met. But it’s more likely that she says night work for the Samaritans – voluntary, of course. She’s got no need to work for money.

It’s her that he thinks of when he snorts cocaine. He draws the line at heroin. Heroin might affect his career of choice, when his veins collapse and he’s comatose, staring at the ceiling. But coke is different. He thinks of Sam exclusively when he’s high. And sometimes when he’s not as well.

He remembers her words, days before she walked out, days before she left (and months before she returned): “You’re not a rock star! You’re a two-bit fucking talent, Chester. You’re nothing. You’re washed up. You’ve burned everything out. Your voice, your lungs. Love. Everything! All you are is a cliché – sex and drugs and rock and fucking roll!”

As luck would have it, she was right. Sex for money, money for coke – he’s a fucking rock star now…

v – eulogy

Now that it’s too late, she finds the tears for him, and she finds the time to grieve. She stands at his grave and weeps. It shouldn’t have been like this. He shouldn’t have been alone. Her voice breaks as she apologises. She tries to tell her new lover, but the words don’t sink it. She wants to shake his calm placidity and yell at him what she is – she’s a stripper and a barroom entertainer. She only stopped for her son, and for Chester, because Chester was beautiful and amazing and he was going to be a fucking star…

So she stands at his grave and lays flowers for him, and she tells him all the things she wanted to say when he was alive. She berates him for abandoning her, although she was the one who left, and then she whispers that their son asks about his daddy and she just can’t answer the questions.

Eventually she runs out of words, and that’s when she says that their son is living with her mom for now, because Sam’s in the middle of a breakdown. She just can’t cope without Chester – even Chester fuelled by whiskey and sex and badly cut cocaine was better than no Chester at all…

Which reminds her – there’s an off-licence near the crematorium. She needs whiskey.

At 8am, Sam takes her first drink of the day. Irish coffee – caffeine and whiskey – and she can feel the dual burn as it slides down her throat… She sits on the bed and tries to think what is missing from the dresser, but the images just won’t form.

And on the table beside the bed is a picture in a beautiful gilt frame, of her and Chester, and their son when he was just a baby. Soon he will be 3. She kisses Chester’s cheek, and he wraps his arm around her as he holds his son on his hip.

And yes – she knows that those things on her cheeks are the tracks of her tears…

FIN

© FyrMaiden – 12.12.2004