Lunacy by R.A. Sears Page A

that day comes, I’ll keep sitting here… Chained and barred,
collared and fettered… Still a thing to be toyed with…” Everything
silenced but Jynxx’s guitar and Teigan on the keyboard. “Used and
abused, beaten and bruised… We’ll see if they push me to the limit…
Today…” He held that last note like a drowning man with his last
breath, his voice shaking as he finally let it go.
    The entire crowd was so quiet that you could have
heard a pin drop, and then everyone burst into an uproar of
applause and cheers that could have shaken the building off its
foundation. “Thank you!” They all spoke into their microphones as
one before going into the next song.
    I was stunned, but didn’t have much time to revel in
it as their next song was apparently a crowd favorite, and a
get-your-ass-kicked-in-the-pit tune. Although I had help from Take
My Revolution, I still took a few solid elbows to the ribs and
back, along with having to duck under a windmill kick. When their
set was done, they said their thanks again and started packing up
their gear.
    “You alright, girly?” Aya asked, lightly nudging me
with her elbow.
    I nodded, inhaling deeply to catch my breath now that
the crowd had spaced out a bit so I could try to return my core
temperature to normal. I was sweating like I’d been doing laps in
the river of fire, and I was fairly certain that my hair was frizzy
as fuck. I sighed and told the blonde girl that I was going to go
grab a drink before the next band, Blunt Trauma, played.
    “Want me to go with you?” she asked. I just shook my
head, mouthing “I’ll be ok.”
    Outside of the crowd, the air was so much cooler than
it made me shiver, telling me that I was much more soaked in sweat
than I’d thought I was. Gross! Not exactly a good state to be in to
try to impress Jynxx.
    Wait… Since when did I give a damn about what he
thought? Especially when it came to the way I looked. I shook my
head to clear my thoughts, stopping before a vending machine and
frowning as I saw that it contained nothing but soda and energy
drinks. I decided that a strawberry soda would be the best thing to
restore all the sugars I’d been sweating out, so I leaned down to
extract my wallet from my left boot, earning a whistle from someone
behind me.
    It startled the hell out of me and I spun to face the
guy, wallet in hand behind me as though I was going to make a
projectile out of it if he tried anything funny. Seeing who it was,
I was reluctant to lower the improvised weapon at all, but I did so
slowly. I turned away from him just long enough to pop my money in
the machine and hammer on the button for the soda with my closed
fist. Spinning back to face him, I ducked down and blindly grabbed
the bottle from the machine with one hand and slipped my wallet
back into my boot with the other. Coming back to my full height
with the boots on, I was nearly as tall as he was.
    “What in the hell do you want, Alain?” I made a point
of letting him know that I wasn’t pleased, and had no reason to be
friendly.
    He smirked a little, his expression telling me that
he liked that he’d unnerved me. He held up his hands as if to show
me that he was unarmed, but I wasn’t fooled. He’d changed a lot in
the last ten years, but so had I. He’d been pudgy before, but the
onset of puberty, dieting induced by his mother, and lots of time
in the gym had filled Alain Reece out in all the right places. His
hair was blond on top with black beneath it, fashionably mussed as
if he’d just spent an hour or two in the backseat. His dark eyes
that matched his natural hair color set into that tanned skin were
alluring enough, but it would take more than a pretty face and a
fat wallet to draw me in.
    We’d had minimal contact as we’d been growing up even
though he lived right next door, but I’d still never forgiven him
for trying to kiss me when we were eight. And although it had
healed properly, I could still see the small imperfections