Infinite

Putting Myself Through Hell

• ♫ •
I guess I should've told the truth
I thought you'd burn me at the cross
I know I shouldn't assume
You would tear me apart
And I gotta say
There's so much I could've done
Instead of putting myself
Putting myself, putting myself
Instead of putting myself
Putting myself, putting myself
Putting myself through hell
• ♫ •

"We've got a name to make," Julie said to herself, finishing off the second song. She actually felt like they'd made progress the night before. Even if they should've probably tried to write more of the songs they needed for Coachella. Or, any for that matter. "Luke, are you in here?" She asked into the seemingly empty room. It wasn't uncommon for them to hide and (try to) sneak up on her when she least expected it.

"Yeah. What's up?" He asked. He didn't usually hide from Julie, it just happened when he tried to look through the old memories that had gotten preserved over the years. "Oh, is that the end of the second song? Let me see." Luke grabbed at the paper, forgetting completely that, if she was holding it, he couldn't. After over a year, you'd think he'd learn. But boys will be boys.

"Alright, just relax for a second. I need to put it down first." Julie set it down, which triggered Luke to snatch it up the moment he could. It didn't take him long to fall in love with what she'd written, and only a few seconds longer to start humming along to the melody she'd written down.

"This is sick." Sick, meaning a whole laundry list of things that did not exist in 1995, was one of the many slang words Julie had a hard time believing actually came out of his mouth. Kind of like when your grandfather uses "dope". Just wrong.

"I don't ever need to hear that word come from your mouth ever again," Julie commented, with a visibly ill look present on her face.

"Then tell Mari because she's the one teaching me all of these words." Luke blamed the use of new words on his "girlfriend" (they still hadn't put a label on it despite the number of times Julie, Reggie, and Alex asked).

"I will. Anyways, I have to go to school before I'm late. Do not come to school under any circumstances and do not ask me if I want to skip. I don't. I will see you in nine hours." Julie had to beg them to not come to school every single morning or else they'd forget. Whatever it was that coursed through teenage boys' minds, it did not help them follow orders. Or behave. Or act even slightly mature.

"Okay, geez. No need to be so salty." Luke used the slang term to grate her nerves, but all it did was earn him a glare as she walked away. "Alright, I'm done."

In a mansion perched on a cliff in all its glory, a man with a thousand regrets stood staring at the view below. The ocean crashed into the stone and packed sand. Stretched to the horizon, the water glittered a certain kind of blue-ish green that no painting or picture could ever capture. He'd tried for years to do so himself. With how it looked, standing at the top, looking through the walls of glass, he should've felt like he ruled the world. Once upon a time, it did. Now, it solely remained as a reminder of what he'd done wrong in his life.

"Trevor, this is your final reminder. The demos for the next album are due at the end of the week. Please don't be late this time." All Trevor could do was stare out the window. The voicemail beeped, letting him know the message had ended. He loved his music, he really did. Lately, though, the spark had faded.

Ever since he saw his birth name written on his mirror just over a year ago. Trevor hadn't used that name in over a decade, when his mother—the last of his relatives who knew his birth name—passed away. He couldn't even say he was torn up about it. All of the members of Sunset Curve had parental issues. It was the thing they bonded over. He missed a thousand things he couldn't make up for with Carrie, and regretted almost every one of them, but at least she knew he loved her.

She did know that, right?

"Carrie, you know I love you, right?" Trevor asked, confusing his daughter immensely. It was a rather odd question and out of complete nowhere.

"Of course, dad." She didn't even think about the answer. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Shouldn't you be at school?" Trevor looked to his daughter, and she gave him a guilty grin.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" He shoved her out the door to head to school. She was right; he did have work to do. Namely, writing songs.

Trevor groaned.

He had two options, writing songs or drafting up some kind of statement for the public. He'd been thinking about retiring for the last couple years and, maybe, it was finally time. It wasn't like any of his newer songs—his actual songs—were doing as well as what Luke wrote in the 90's.

"I've left a legacy behind/tried to make a name for me," Trevor decided to finally reveal the secret he'd hidden for the last two decades. He wanted to apologize to the people who really wrote the songs. And after seeing them play with Julie (however that worked), he knew it was the right thing to do.

Reggie appeared in the very room Trevor stood in, a handful of feet behind him. Luke and Alex were close behind, but they didn't know that Reggie had visited relatively recently. They both assumed he'd moved on just like they had. What they didn't know was that it took a long, long time for him to move on from anything.

"Reggie, what exactly are we doing here? It's not like Trevor's going to give us our songs back," Luke reminded him, but Reggie knew that. It didn't change anything, not in his eyes. "Plus, we have our own songs."

That's when Bobby sang another couple lines that popped into his head. "I guess I should've told the truth"

They shut up instantly. The three boys also didn't know what he meant by that, but it had to be something important. Maybe it was a song he really liked. Nothing more than that. Yet, a little voice in their minds also told them that the line Trevor just sang meant more than nothing. It had to. His voice nearly cracked with those few words.

"Guys, are you getting a weird feeling about this?" Alex felt like he was looking in on something he shouldn't. Like when Ray started spilling his guts about he and his wife's anniversary.

"No, let's just wait." Reggie knew a fair bit more than they did. Well, technically anything was a fair bit more when the starting point was nothing. "I think Trevor's going to do something."

"And how would you know? You're not him," Luke pointed out.

"I just do, okay?" Trevor turned around to face them. His face, much to their surprise, was not filled with a smile. They could all see the pain that painted every worry line on his face. He looked like guilt had been eating him alive for years and he couldn't take it anymore.

"I'm sorry, okay?" They all took a step back.

Could he see them just like Julie and Mari could?

"You guys never deserved all that I did to you." He seemed to be staring right at them. All Trevor wanted was to give a real apology, not just standing over their graves shedding as many tears as it took to get rid of the pain. They were going to be legendary.

Now, they were just memories.

Trevor walked straight through them, his body passing through Reggie's and Luke's spirits and his hand through Alex's arm. The feeling of lifers walking through them would never feel any less weird, no matter what they did. At the same time, however, they could also feel exactly what he felt. That had never happened with another lifer. Ever. Not to them, at least. Once they turned around, Trevor had taken something off the wall—a landscape of a mountain range that spanned half of distance—they saw what Bobby had been talking to.

He'd been talking to them.

Not literally, obviously. But a collage of pictures from when the four of them were all alive together. Some were serious (though not many), but most were fun. There were pictures of them eating street dogs, dated weeks, months, and years before their death. Pictures of the four bandmates at a festival were dotted across the huge array of snapshots of their life.

"I have to tell the truth. About everything." And he knew he could lose everything.

Author's Note: My favorite line of the whole series is in this chapter. "They were going to be legendary. Now, they were just memories." If you like this chapter or even just those lines, vote and let me know in the comments. All the best, MistyRider921.