Mark Foster's Pearly Whites (book 2)

Pay the Man

The door to my bedroom opened.

"Hey, is everything alright?"

It's Evan. I was sitting on my bed, trying to look for some decent paying temporary job in the newspaper. His cheerful appearance enlightened my mood a bit. I was getting so frustrated because I couldn't find any damn job.

"Hey, yeah, I'm fine."

"Ok. Listen, I think we ran out of groceries, would you mind going to Target?"

Oh. . I have been saving money recently but I blew most of it the night Ponsi and I got insanely drunk at SHC. I have to get another job or else I'm never gonna get the money for my dad's surgery. I replied, feeling slightly uneasy:

"Um, you know, I don't really have the cash now. Can you buy them? Just this one time?"

"Oh, okay."

There was something weird about the tone of his answer. He didn't even add any sarcastic remark at the end.

"Is that okay with you?"

I asked carefully, afraid of the answer.

"Yeah, totally. It's just that...you kind of owe me a rent."

Shit. I completely forgot to pay him. All of a sudden, I felt the sensation of chaos and stressed creeped into my head. Everything has gone to shit way too fast for me to deal with it without loosing my mind. I have enough money to pay Evan the rent but I definitely don't have enough money to both save them for the surgery and for the rent.

"Never mind, you'll pay me some other time. I'll buy the groceries today."

I could hear the annoyance in his voice. He must be disappointed as well as I am with myself right now.

After he left my room, I laid flat on my bed and in attempt to clean my head, I close my eyes. 

Nothing. 

Meditation does jack shit for me. At this moment, the only thing that can help is music. I pick up my guitar, the chords to our new song and started to pick up on the guitar strings lightly.

I guess now it's the time to come up with dark lyrics, since dark times are coming.  

●●●

Fuck, something is missing but what? The lyrics just don't feel right.

Our brand new song Pay the Man that we've been working on with the rest of the band is finished as far as melody goes but we still have a long way to go with the lyrics. The reason this damn song is taking us such a long time to write is that we've decided that this song needs to be perfect. The lyrics need to depict exactly the mood and atmosphere of the the song and yet be thoughtful .

And that, my friends, is a challenge. A challenge I am willing to accept.

The first verse and the chorus are more or less done but now I'm struggling with the second verse. There is this one line that's really messing with my head.

 We're like the blind sheep                                                                                                                                 Who're competing to leap                                                                                                                                  On the first fresh meat 

Sean came up with it and the more I'm looking at it, the more it pisses me off. What a dumb verse. Okay, I guess I understand what he meant and where's he going with it but it's very strangely phrased. 

The metaphor with the sheep just doesn't work for me. I do, however, like how he described humanity as being 'blind'. That's pretty clever. Some people don't have any backbone and believe whatever they see...or hear. 

People can be blind and deaf. And they can be mute too. So many people are just too scared to speak up, too scared to really think about what they've heard and too scared to just open their eyes and see that world isn't perfect. Something is coming up. I can feel the inspiration slowly approaching.

The mute man said, what the deaf man heard and what the blind man saw.

No, wait that's not it. I just need to rephrase it better... 

The deaf man heard, what the mute man said and the blind man saw.

Fuck, no! I'm so close, though. The 'and' doesn't work. I just need to follow my instinct better. Hold on...

The deaf man heard what the mute man said                                                                                  

Then they all followed where the blind man lead.

I opened my eyes and felt a sudden satisfaction and peace. Something that meditation just can't bring to me.

This is it. This is the verse I've been looking for. Challenge completed. 

(Thanks for all your support, it's aways pleasure to be publishing a new chapter❤️ How was your day? I hope it was at least bareable😁 Anyway, take care everyone❤️! )