Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Fliss

It was Saturday night and everyone was out. I sat alone in Vans bunk playing my acoustic guitar quietly, Tom Waits, Don Mclean, John Smith, all the quieter songs my dad had always liked playing when it was late in the evening and he was growing melancholic.

They'd not been gone too long, an hour at best and though I knew Van would be back any minute I couldn't help but feel a little lonely on my one.

"If you sit down with this old clown n take that frown and break it, before the evenings gone away I think that we could make it..." I sang another throwaway line and closed my eyes.

I wasn't so much as sick anymore, but terrified. A swirling mess of guilt, self pity and horror. All the things I'd kept at bay with the coke and the pills and the alcohol, all of it had come crashing down the moment my fever had faded, and now it was too much. I couldn't bring myself to be the Fliss I was before, because it felt safer to sit and do nothing at all than to make a wrong move and ruin it for the rest of them.

I'd thought about telling Saffy several times, I'd thought about telling Alice when she'd come in on her own and asked me about Andy. It would have been so easy. It would have all been over by now. But then again it might not have been, and she might not have believed me anyway.

I thought about acquiescing to Van then next time he asked whether he could talk to management about it. But they wouldn't believe him, and there were so many angles they could twist that story, so many ways it could work out exactly as Andy wanted it to.

"Sorry Van its obvious isn't it, the girl was just using you, you caught her out and now she's lying to you so you don't leave her. She was using both of you,"

"You were a career move mate, sorry lad but girls are just bitches,"

"She's making it up la, she's gone in with the classic, indie band sexually exploited us, wanted to make it look like they were feminists, and now they're going to try and publicly shame you in order to get their screen time..."

No. I couldn't risk it.

So I stayed put, wrapped up in a blanket, bloodshot red eyes, shivering, skinny and small slowly shrinking out of everyones view. If they started to forget about me maybe Andy would too.
If I started to look strange, too skinny, too sick, maybe Andy would lose interest all together.

I heard the door open in the next room and let out a little sigh. This would be Van, come to cuddle me better as he put it, come to kiss my forehead and run his hands through my hair, to check whether I'd taken my painkillers, to ask me where it hurt.

I carried on picking at the strings of my guitar quietly, but I changed the song. I didn't want to share my dads repertoire with anyone.

"Fliss," it wasn't Vans voice and my heart stopped. I put my guitar down, looking up, eyes fixed on Andy as my world caved in. "Oh no don't stop playing on my part," it was a cruel kind of smile.

"Its fine, I was done anyway," I said, cold eyes unrelenting, "what do you want?"

"I came to see how you were, I miss seeing you on that stage babe,"

"I'm not your babe..." I said icily trying to hide my fear from him.

"Oh?" He asked, cocking his head to one side, the same crude smirk on his lips, "you have short term memory loss or?"

"Andy..." I started, shifting away from him as he closed the door behind him, he came closer, his shadow standing over me.

"Come on Fliss," he smiled down at me, my guts twisted, my skin crawled. "Stop messing me around," he crouched down in front of me, took my chin between his fingers and forced me to look him in the eye.
His nails were digging into my cheeks, it hurt. "Come on sugar," he smirked, "give me a kiss..."

My breath caught in my throat, my lungs froze.

I tried to shake my head but his grip only tightened yanking my lips closer to his. I struggled against him, hand clasping his wrist trying to prize his fingers from my face.

"Fuck," I growled digging my fingers underneath his fingers, scratching my skin in the process.

"Don't be like this Flissy," he said other hand tugging down on my hair forcing my neck back and my mouth open futher. "Don't be such a drag,"

"Andy!" I hadn't noticed the door open, but now Vans shadow blocked the light from the hallway and it broke the scene like a knife cutting between us. "What the fuck, are you doing?" He asked, cold voice, strangely smooth, quietly threatening.

Andy dropped me, the force as he pulled away throwing me to one side, left hand holding my cheek in shock.

"Van..." he started, and suddenly he seemed scared. Not nearly as powerful as I'd thought.

"Get out." He said slowly, eyes dead as he stared him down, "now!" He raised his voice. I flinched. Andy flinched. He opened his mouth to argue, defend himself, twist the story. He glanced back at me over his shoulder, showed me the whites of his eyes and then nothing.

He left.