The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

"Twenty-six" (Draft 2)

"Look at him, he's gorgeous!"

Julien stepped away from them and wound his arms about Morpheus from behind. "This is Morpheus, he's my lover," he said to Andrew.

"He's very pretty," Andrew said.

"Come play this," Morpheus said.

Julien moved to his side and took control of the keyboards.

Morpheus saw that Opium was on stage and that Jean-Daniel had arrived. And then he saw a small figure, grinning madly at them. This was Robin, one of the Pix. He hated Opium, and he hated Jean-Daniel. But he didn't look eager to cross either in such a crowd. He was content to show them he was there.

The bed rose from the stage and Joy went to sing on this bed as she did every show, but there were others laying about it so that as she sang and writhed about there were hands constantly touching her.

At one point Amadeo left the piano to Thierry and went about dancing then finally crawled onto the bed and sat an Incubus atop Joy. Shade retreated to the top of the piano as the dancers began slamming into each other more wildly. And then during the last song Julien turned to Morpheus with a wicked Vampyre smile and picked up one of the keyboards by its end and threw it to the stage. They stepped on it with their boots, making a horrible sound, and then as others moved out of the way Julien picked it up again and moved closer to the audience where he smashed the thing against the floor till it broke into pieces. And then he stomped on the debris before jumping down into the pit full of crew and guards where he reached into the audience and plucked three children up from the crowd.

Morpheus recognized them as they climbed onto the stage, Daniel, his girlfriend Karen, and her sister Anne who was Daniel's best friend. They danced about with the others.

They cleared the stage then and set up for Robert's Pill's set. Opium told the others to stay backstage, they'd had enough fun for a while. Morpheus kissed Julien and ran up onto stage.

They went through their set as usual, then Opium walked about a bit in the dark and fog pretending to drink water and sweat. Morpheus took off his shirt. And then Shade came on stage, as he did for certain shows, so that they could play songs with more live guitar parts. They did some covers of old songs they knew. And then Athen and Amadeo came on stage for no good reason and Athen snatched the mic from Opium and sang in a slow deep voice the line, "every day is Halloween." And Amadeo just jumped about.

Julien came on stage and ran forward to throw his shirt into the audience. And then he ran back and kissed Morpheus. Shade walked back to them. "Do a heartbeat," he said to Morpheus. Morpheus walked forward after Shade and played something that sounded a heartbeat, and then Shade started a tortured cry coming from the strings, something loud and tangled. And Opium made up some loud jangly stuff. Maya gave up and then guitar noise filed the stadium. Shade bean really stumbling around as he played and careened into Morpheus, and then Morpheus lifted his guitar overhead and smashed it on the stage. Opium threw her guitar into an amp. And then Shade made the most terrible sounds before smashing his guitar then setting it afire where it lay.

Morpheus went to the mic and said, "Thank you, we're Robert's Pill." Then he ran off the stage.

He drank a couple of Cokes between sets. Stood and let Julien kiss him while he listened to Amadeo and Pam talk about the next set. "It's the last concert, everyone knows it's the last one, and it's Halloween, we should just fuck around on stage," Pam said.