Death of a Rock Star: A Boy in the Band Novella by NJ Frost Page A

those who do the irony will be bittersweet. I notice Sylvie and Alex Denton exchange a look.
    The pallbearers pause for a moment right by Sylvie, and I see her body react. She visibly tenses and recoils. The coffin, up close, has a similar effect on me. My decision to turn down the offer of being one of those pallbearers now seems like a wise one.
    Why I feel so freaked by the coffin I don’t know. I think it’s the harsh finality of it. It’s pretty fucking weird to imagine someone so larger than life reduced to the contents of such a nondescript box. It seems so conventional, so not Jamie at all. His spirit was epic, too vast for this church even. It’s long gone – moved onto a bigger and better party.
    As the coffin makes its way down the central aisle a strange hush gathers over the congregation, there are a couple of strangled sobs that sound just horrible. I notice that Sylvie is sitting utterly rigid. She looks sprung tight like she about to snap.
    Before the coffin has even reached the front, Sylvie puts her mouth to Denton’s ear. I see him pivot to give her a concerned look, but she whispers something shaking her head and then slinks out of her seat. Her gaze never leaves the floor as she rushes past me, but the spark of tears is unmissable. Her face etched with utter distress. Everything about her tense energy screams panic. I know that feeling. I’ve battled it often enough myself.
    With her departure, everything feels even darker, more hopeless. The walls feel like they’re closing in. My £100 tie gets tighter around my throat. I take the hipflask out of my jacket pocket and take a huge swig, but even as it warms my throat I know the Jack will barely take the edge off.
    The vicar starts his patter.
    “We’re gathered here today to remember and celebrate the life of Jamie...”
    I have very little time for organised religion. I get why some people need it, the comfort it gives them, but it’s not for me and it wasn’t for Jamie either. Which begs the question, why are we all here? And not on some fucking crazy bender, scattering his ashes from a mega yacht off the coast of Ibiza. That’s what he would have wanted – a great big glorious orgy of a send-off. Not so parent or elderly relative friendly I guess. So here we all are, going through the empty motions, with a guy who never even met Jamie trying to sum up his life in PC sound bytes. Trying not to offend, or state the obvious, or address the huge fucking elephant in the church.
    Instead of the wishy washy banalities that are being spouted, Jamie’s eulogy should really go something like this,
    Jamie Grimes. Mad man, genius, lover, artist, nihilist… too fucking beautiful and too fucked up for this world. The. Fucking. End.
    There should be lots of crazy pyro shit, an empty spotlight fading to black. The curtain should fall and we should all just go and get wankered.
    I finger the small plastic bag in the inside pocket of my suit jacket.
    That’s what I’m going to do. Right now.
     
     

     
     
    I haven’t felt such an unbearable crush of panic in a long time. Not since the day of my Dad’s funeral. That emptiness of having no one to catch you when you fall is a heavy burden to bear. I’m not really sure why I’m feeling it now. Jamie was beautiful and brilliant, but he wasn’t safe. Far from it. He led an explosion of an existence. He lit my heart up like a nuclear blast, and he annihilated it with that same force. In the aftershock of his going, I should feel a sense of peace, of calm, of things settling. I should be making snow angels in the fallout. Instead, I’m running. Panicking and running.
    The fucking Paps are out here in force, watching through their brutal lenses, hoping to catch some celeb pain and tragedy to peddle to the masses to make them feel better about their shitty little lives. They’re not really interested in me though. Jamie and I somehow managed to keep our relationship under the radar. Working so closely