AN: I am not the original author of the story below my goal is to gather any stories from around the web and have them in one area so that they don't get deleted. If you are the original author and would like me to remove this story I will.

By the Light of the Moon II

"It's all right, Bett. I just took a spill off a motorbike," Paul said quickly, glancing at Tara who also looked very pale. He dabbed at his lip, which was starting to ooze copiously again, and was surprised by how red the handkerchief was.

"Oh, Paul, sit down here, let me call Ed Taylor, a friend of mine who's a doctor..." she trailed off, gazing at his lip.

"What, is that really necessary?" Paul asked in dismay. He looked from Bett, to her husband, to Tara. They all nodded. Paul got up, marched to the mirror hanging in the hallway and took a look at himself. He saw scrapes and scratches running the length of his cheek with bits of gravel embedded in them. There was a particularly nasty scrape along his left temple. The entire lower half of his face was encrusted with fresh and drying gore. He could also see his chipped tooth through the gap that his flapping upper lip revealed. Looking even closer, he could see the lighter pink meat of the muscle inside his lip where it had split apart.

"Oh, all right, then," he staggered back to the chair, feeling queasy, as Bett jumped up and called her friend, who agreed to come right away.

She had Paul put an ice pack to his lip, which was swelling quite quickly. Tara looked uncomfortable. "That'll probably keep you from singing for a while," he observed.

Paul just looked at him with dark eyes over the ice pack.

The doctor arrived and examined Paul's face, tsking and shhing as he cleaned and sterilized. "It'll need stitching," he said as he rummaged through his bag.

Paul raised his head to watch the doctor pull out a long needle and some clear thread. He widened his eyes at Tara in a staged look of helpless terror. Bett laughed.

"Oh, you," she said affectionately.

The doctor seemed more nervous than Paul as he struggled to thread the needle with shaking hands. Paul hoped he wouldn't sew his lip back together crooked or something. He could see it now on the covers of all those teenie-bopper magazines-him with a great, fat, twisted lip.

"All right then, got it. Steady on," the doctor said as he put the needle through the first half of the wound. Paul winced and tried not to jerk his head away. Afterall, it was a sensitive spot with no anaesthetic. The doctor's hand shook again as he pulled it through.

"Oh, the thread's come out-have to do it again," he said in agitation.

Paul's toes curled, but he sat still through it as the doctor tried again and pulled the two flaps of his upper lip neatly back together with several small stitches, covering the chipped and jagged tooth.

"Good as new!" he said in a jolly (and relieved) tone and began packing his things in his bag. "Keep ice on it for the swelling and be careful how you open your mouth-might want to stick to broths and liquids for a day or two."

Paul thanked him as best he could and Bett went to see him out the front door. Paul glanced at Tara.

"Jolly good wipe-out, that was," Tara said cheerfully, "Teach you to drink and drive, mate!"

"Shh!" Paul tried to form the sound, but his swollen lip made it come out like "Fhh."

Tara started laughing and Paul tried not to, but also began laughing, which stretched his lip tight across its stitches. "Ow, ow, stop it!"

"Keep a stiff upper lip, lad," Tara admonished, roaring at his own wit.

"Ow, knock it off, you bloody fool!"

Bett returned in time to see Paul standing over Tara with his hands clenched around Tara's neck. "Oh honestly," she muttered under her breath.

.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.

Nearly a week later, Paul dropped by at John's house to work on a song. When he answered the door, John stared at Paul and asked, "What happened to you?"

"Aye? Oh, the tooth-bit of a motorbike accident back at me dad's."

"Fall on yer face, did ya?" John asked amused.

"I was lucky that's all that happened, being as pissed as we were," Paul laughed.

"Oh? Who else?" John asked with raised eyebrows.

"Tara was visiting." Paul continued telling John how the doctor went about sewing him up as they walked to John's kitchen.

"I think being drunk and stoned help deaden the pain. Didn't really feel a thing-it was more the idea of a needle being stuck through my lip."

John shuddered as he filled the tea kettle. "Can they fix your tooth or are you always going to be this ugly now?"

"After the lip heals completely they'll cap it," Paul replied wryly.

"Tsk, tsk, don't be wreckin' yer pretty face, son. It makes us money!" John said in a wheedling old man voice.

Paul grinned, "Not to worry, not to worry. The stitches come out Friday."

But there remained a scar on his lip, and the chipped tooth wasn't capped until months later. It can be seen on the Beatles' Rain promo clip shot that summer. And, of course, the scar helped fuel the "Paul is Dead" rumor and was supposedly the reason why Paul grew that sexy moustache. But now you know what really happened that fateful night...by the light of the moon.