In the Year of the Cat (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

Birdman's Eye View: Leave No Trace

December 1, 2017

I wake with a start.

It's about five in the afternoon now, but the light outside is already fading.  I'm taking it easy, a night alone with Veronica before the grandchildren come around tomorrow.  I've been sitting in front of the telly for about an hour, just resting my eyes -a phrase that always makes my wife roll hers- while the BBC newsreader babbles on about some new crisis, some new hindrance to Brexit, some more press about Donald Trump (Isn't there enough to talk about on our side of the pond, without us having to go nosing about in America's affairs?), whatever the new problem is.  It's always something, and never anything good. It's definitely not the same Britannia I grew up in.  That much I can admit.  The rest, I'll keep to myself.

But it's not some particularly horrendous top story that's roused me.  In fact, I don't know what it is.  Something just seemed to have pricked at my old decrepit brain, and now I'm feeling a little uneasy. 

But it's nothing an evening stroll won't remedy.

So I put on my shoes, tug a dark gray anorak over my head, and try not to wince at the craggy, old man's face I see in the mirror.  God, I look old.  Some people wear their age well.  Not me.  I'm sixty-six last August, and it shows.  But that's life.  In its own funny way, it's a privilege to reach this point, when you can look back at what you accomplished, and look at now, when you see what you have now.  Me, I'm content.  And that's plenty.

"Dear, I'm going for a walk," I call to my wife. 

"Be careful," she calls back.  "Dinner's at six."

"I won't be out that long," I assure her. 

I lock the door behind me, breathe in the cold, wintry air.  I love late afternoon walks.  I don't go on as many as I used to, things being as they are these days, but they're ever so relaxing. 

Usually, anyway.  Even after ten minutes of an easy pace through the neighborhood, I can't shake the feeling. 

I only feel this way whenever I think about my days with Queen- the tours and the parties and everything.  It's not a pleasant feeling, to be honest.  I have many, many fond memories of that era, that twenty-some-odd years of my life.  But right now, I have this more familiar feeling inside, the feeling I get when I think about Freddie- and, consequently, what might have been, if things were different.

It's been many years since I've had any dealings with those two, Brian and Roger.  I don't miss those days, actually- at least, not the days when only the three of us remained.  We should not have even called ourselves Queen after that.  Without Freddie, there is no Queen. 

Freddie is what made us, kept us together- certainly the reason I stayed the bass player for so long.  I don't dislike the other two, exactly, don't misunderstand me.  I respect them as colleagues and artists, and I make it a point not be a problem for them, whatever it is they do.  I just don't like what they've done with Queen's image.  With Freddie's image. 

I mean, just between you and me- it doesn't seem to end.  Robbie Williams, Paul Rodgers, and now this Adam Lambert fellow.  I don't know.  Maybe I'm just being a hard-nosed geriatric, but I'm not a fan.  The way I see it, if you have to spend half the concert telling the audience that you're not Freddie Mercury and you don't intend to replace Freddie Mercury and yet at the same time you have to throw an image of Freddie Mercury up on the screen, just constantly reminding people that he's gone- to me, that's defeating the purpose. If your intent is to move on, then move on, be your own separate unit.  But don't say that's your goal, and then keep milking the past, and drawing on the spirit of a dead man because you can't stir any excitement all by yourselves.