My clearest memory is the day I looked in the mirror and didn't see myself. It was on the most terrifyingly awful day, when everything came to a shuddering head that I glanced up into the silvery pane of glass that reigned high over our hotel and saw my own face for the first time in a week. I walked in a daze over to the panel, ran my fingers through my hair, pawed at the circles under my eyes and the lines on my face, but I didn't know the person staring back at me. I couldn't recognize the frightened kid in a weary mask, trying to be something he had long ago tired of being. I knew it was me, but I didn't want it to be me. Of all the things that could have done me in, it my own reflection that finally broke me.
The horrified face that stared back at me is the last thing I clearly recall of that day, but I don't think I'll ever forget the dark circles under his eyes, the tremor in his thin shoulders, the faded, overgrown hair that hung there. The scared expression, like a puzzle with all its pieces snapped and scattered. I say him, because I can't imagine that it could have been me, even now after all these years.
I think I broke the mirrors. The suite had been full of them besides the one I caught my tired reflection in. They paneled the walls and hung in the bathroom. Too many mirrors. I must have broken them, because when we left the next morning all there was of them were sad granite slabs, framed pathetically by the shards that had managed to stay on with sharp daggers littering the floor, and my hands were laced with carefully bandaged cuts. None of us ever spoke of the mirror, not in words at least, just like none of us ever spoke of that tour. Just like none of us ever brought 1966 into the others minds, too afraid were we of stirring up memories best left forgotten.
I couldn't sleep that year either, because every time I tried to the nightmares would come even before I could close my eyes, flashing mockingly behind my eyes and taunting the cracks that had formed in my armor. The dreams were different every time, but they always ended the same way, me yelling for help, I couldn't hear myself screaming in the world of my dreams, but there would always be sound coming out in the real world, once I woke up.
When the images started to come, I left my bed and wandered out into the front room of our suite to drink myself into oblivion with the bottles of alcohol so diligently stashed in the cupboards of every place we ever stayed. I always drank them all, every single one I could find, until my vision doubled and I blissfully forgot where I was. Those bottles were overpriced and tasted like lighter fluid, and of course Brian always had my head later, but they were there, they were much too tempting.
And god, did I need to sleep.
When getting drunk didn't work, which was becoming a more and more frequent as the days went by, I concede to stay up all night with a pack of cigarettes and my favorite guitar. I strummed and sang my increasingly twisted thoughts until the sun rose to start a new day, and then collapsed where I stood. It was always easier to sleep when I didn't have to worry about what lurked in the dark, both imaginary and real. I wrote some of my best songs in 1966, in the early hours of the morning with a guitar in my hands, stuck in a foreign city whose name I could never remember because it changed at least every day. Alone, despite how the others would usually join me to sit in the main room with too many thoughts in our minds. We never spoke. Talking would have broken whatever spell of normalcy we had cast upon ourselves, because all we ever wanted to talk about about was what was happening outside, what would happen to us once our fortress crumbled. We wanted to talk, but talking would have only scared us more, so we kept it to ourselves until it was all too late.
I still have a long, white scar straight across my left palm, a token of reminder from the day I broke the mirror. I look at it, sometimes, and run my opposite thumb across its length and remember, because time enough has passed now that remembering doesn't hurt so much.
But there were other things that were broken in 1966, other scars that haven't closed and healed. And those ones still hurt just to think about.
A/N: Here's a new story from yours truly! I really wanted to try something like this for a while, and here it finally is! This chapter is more of a prologue. The rest of the story will be first person present tense. There will be no romance or slash in this story, apart from real-life Beatles wife relationships and short trysts with groupies. I've rated this M for semi-violence, very strong language, blood, sexual references and situations, and... psychological trauma, I guess would be the best way to put it. I'll put warnings at the top of each chapter so you can avoid anything you don't want to read.
I'd like some reviews to see if anyone likes this, any suggestions and whatnot. Also, any guesses as to who the narrator is? It'll be clear in the next chapter, but I always think it's fun to guess. So anyway, reviews are LOVEly, PM me if you have questions and I'll do my best to answer them, or just leave them in a review and I'll answer in my next author's note. Finally, this story is kind of AU-ish (well, all stories are, but you catch my drift). I'm trying to keep everything factually correct, though, and if you have any issues with something like that just say the word and I'll fix it! This doesn't take place in the same universe as Family does, though.
Lots of 3333,
Claire