We Made It

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Sitting in his basement at age 14, scribbling his demons into their paper prisons.

Snapping his rubber band on his wrist in time to his pulse, his beat.

Writing line after line, tearing some up, mixing and matching to find the right combination, fitting the words together like puzzle pieces.

Tyler couldn't take much more. The silence was deafening and violent and hateful, clawing at the backs of his eyes.

He had to make it stop.

.........

"Sometimes, quiet is violent." Snap.

"I find it hard to hide it." Snap, snap.

"My pride is no longer inside." Snap-snap-snap, in quick succession.

"It's on my sleeve." More snaps of the rubber band on his wrist.

"My skin will scream." Tyler glances down at his wrist, raw and torn from snapping his rubber band against it.

"Reminding me of who I killed inside my dream..." Snap...snap...snap...

.........

The performance had been unique, uplifting, inspiring. Tyler headed straight home from High Street, yanking the old keyboard he had received from his mother out of his closet.

He hit a note, one single note, and it was like running a sword through one of his demons.

It was like being free. 

He needed more, and kept hitting the keys, the first couple of hours producing nothing but noise.

But he would not give up.

Ever.

.........

Tyler hated reading for school, but it was a necessary task. Did he really have to read the entire play, though? He would read the first few chapters, he decided, and that would be way more than his classmates would have read.

He cracked open the play, All My Sons.

And didn't put it down until he had finished.

.........

He had done it.

He had started a band. 

Sure, it was slow going, they were lucky if even ten people came, but every chord he played, every note he sang, was like a wave of destruction, sweeping away the bad ideas and nagging thoughts that were always lurking in the back of his mind. 

"If it wasn't for this music I don't know how I would've fought this."

.........

Chris was leaving. Nick had already left.

They were beginning to grow more persistent.

Tyler, hands shaky, reached out for the blade...

Then snatched his hand back. 

He would never give in again. He had promised himself, and he would stay true to that promise.

Instead, he reached for the rubber band and snapped it against his wrist again. And again, and again.

"And the wrists of my mind have the bleeding lines that remind me of all the times..."

..........

Joshua William Dun.

He had fought back the demons with Tyler, and helped him bring back the light.

The band was still very unknown, barely getting any listeners.

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