And I don't want the world to see me
Cuz I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

Stretched out across a great canvas, and he's open, drying, dying.

Didn't know he'd go half-conscious, semi-conscious, hyper-conscious, but yes. Aware and not aware and he would rather be all unaware but perhaps it's fitting that he go out too aware.

Too aware and it's a fever dream he thinks when he hears the voices.

"Bass! Damnit, Bass, why can't you be normal and non-anal like the rest of us and just leave your stuff out where a normal person could find it, so I wouldn't have to track you down on your day off and bug you like this."

Chris, and you never can predict Chris, so really, it's no wonder.

Drying, dying. Sunlight burning him open, husking him out into nothing.

Chris' voice stops dead when he pushes open the door and then there's jumping and pushing and you don't want to be shocked awake-aware-back into reality, but you are.

"Wake up, Bass! Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

Chris is jumping on the bed, jumping on you and he thinks you're just asleep. Let me sleep, let me rest, let me die. You allow yourself to be pulled up; you don't have any strength to resist, but if they bring you back now, you will be bitter and will hate them and will come back because you could never refuse any of them anything if only they asked, if only they knew to ask, except they didn't, they don't, and Chris.

Chris is looking at you, holding you. "What did you take, man? Your pupils are gi-normous! Geez, don't you know druggies don't get to go to space?"

Your breath hisses out and you want blackness, you demand blackness, but it seems you can't demand death anymore than you could command love or life or happiness or anything else and you want to sob but you're dried out. There's no liquid for tears, no wetness in your throat for words. Hot and dry and why couldn't he blow away? Why?

"Lance?" Chris is shaking him now. "Lance?! Shit. You stupid fucker. What the fuck did you take? If you OD on me, I'm gonna kill you. You goddamned bastard."

You are, you are that, you are, you are, you are. You'd laugh, but you have no strength and you think maybe you see angels. Great white wings folded gauzily, just one-half step out of the plane of existence. Two are standing behind Chris, flanking the window, and you wish they'd step in already and shoo him away, except, of course, you're not going to heaven and they must have arrived with Chris, must be his guardian angels because Chris is special, Chris is something and you're grateful you had part of that except now you don't and you realize, no. They're not angels. They're curtains.

There are no angels, and you should be dead except you aren't that either, and you need to dry a little faster, die a little faster, because Chris is cruel. Chris will keep you alive and you don't want that, not for pity. Not for pity or for obligation, but if he makes you, you will stay.

Stay and hate them for wanting you only because you complete the sound, only because you're the fifth and they need a fifth, they need what you can do, and you want to be wanted for what you are, except they don't; if they did one of them would have kept you, except none of them did, not one of them wanted you and.

If you're not going to heaven, it would have been nice to at least see the angels.

Except angels aren't real. And neither it seems is death.

Only pain.

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