Paper Ghosts Read online

  Car-crashing your own heart

  Burning your mind

  And that was it. Everyone in the crowd jumped around madly, singing along as they did.

  It was hard not to feel nostalgic remembering all that. And Lewes hated feeling nostalgic.

  After the band split up – same old story, half of them wanted to see their girlfriends, the rest was simply bored – he tried his best to avoid every bootleg, every music video they had created during those three years. He also moved away and went to Uni again.

  He wanted to be a stranger; not to the people who loved the band though. He couldn’t be a stranger to them, because, in a way, they all owned a part of his life. Disturbing but true. No, he wanted to be a stranger to himself. He wanted to get rid of the guy who wrote ‘She. Were’ He wanted to get rid of that story.

  But he couldn’t prevent someone from liking the song, could he?

  ‘It’s okay mate…Hey, I may have a studio mix somewhere… I’ll give it to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Rockstar!’

  ‘If you stop calling me Rockstar, that is.’

  ‘I’ll try my best – hey, can I ask you something about the song?’

  He hated this kind of questions. ‘Go on’.

  ‘The girl who sings the chorus with you. The fan. Where is she now?’

  Oh dear.

  *

  This Band Was Killing Us

  Posted by JaneHere at 3:57 a.m.

  Imagine you’re twenty, and you go where the sound is good enough. Imagine spending your days and nights listening to that brand new EP. You don’t know anything about the band. Just these songs, and that cover song. That punk anthem they turn into something new and exciting. You’re burning to know who sings these words. Imagine spending a day travelling the entire country to see them play in some dodgy pub.

  That’s the way it goes.

  Imagine arriving in that city-upon-the-sea and finding the pub. Loads of people there. Some of them go on stage. And when the moment comes, when the song starts and you know you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, you close your eyes, because only the riff matters, only the words matter, and only that voice matters. Of course it does.

  Open your eyes now. Watch him play like his entire life depends on it. Find his eyes, those big blue eyes that would later burn through you. Look at that giant body wrapped around a guitar.

  That voice.

  Later that night, you’re sitting with him, talking like you knew each other for ages, seeking coincidences, sharing favourite records and other stories. You confess your obsession for writing; he admits he loves literature and tells you how he would love to be a teacher. You give him an amused look, just because you’re a bit tipsy (or rather wasted).

  You spend the night with him, of course you do. You spend the two following years in a blur, waiting outside venues, carrying amps & jacks, joking with the boys, travelling in a van, listening to their music. He says you’re a kind of star to him. He loves your writings. Then imagine, he asks you to sing on that song, that pretty song he wrote not so long before. You spend a day in a gloomy studio up North and you do it.

  One day, you’re waiting as usual, and he doesn’t even look at you. You don’t exist anymore. There’s that pretty girl stuck with him. Just like you, two years before.

  You go back home. You’re almost 23, these years passed in a blur; you say you don’t regret anything.

  You burn almost all the pictures; you erase your previous life.

  You get on with your new life and you work too much, drink too much, dream too much. You review their first album. That’s part of your job. Your voice is trapped in there.

  One day, you hear that they’ve split up. He came back to the city-upon-the-sea. He followed his own kind of dream.

  When people ask about your voice, he says you’re ‘a fan’.

  Someday, when I sit on a train to that city-upon-the-sea, I’ll think about you.

  Fan

  1 comments

  T. said...

  Check your e-mails, please =).

  It has to be done.

  *

  Where is she now?

  Tom didn’t know how many times that question had come up in his mind. Sometimes, when one of the students spoke, he would remember the unique softness of her voice. Was she still hunting words and turning them into stories? Did she come back to the same city she escaped from just to see him play? Lewes was thinking about it more than ever on that Saturday morning, while he looked for the tape.

  It seemed to have disappeared anyway.

  He couldn’t find it, even in the old cardboard boxes full of flyers, posters, pictures and stuff from the band. He hated feeling nostalgic.

  Still, he was a romantic. Looking at those old pictures didn’t help. He soon found a picture of himself with a woman. His heart missed a beat for a second. It wasn’t her. It was after her.

  He knew she would be waiting at the venue. She used to do it every now and then, when they were all too poor to bring her along with them. Lewes couldn’t wait to see her, to give her her copy of the ‘She.Were?’ mix. He used to be proud of that song at the time.

  What happened and why she left was the same old story again: the great gig the night before, the student party, the vodka shots. The pretty girl in the corner. Five minutes had been enough to waste everything he’d accomplished. Best way for him to pass the time. The morning after he woke up vaguely hungover and later on, when he saw her waiting as usual, he knew he’d screwed up. He didn’t look at her. And the pretty girl stayed.

  No one in the crew asked about the redheaded pixie. Hearing him scream ‘Car- crashing your own heart’ every night was enough of an answer.

  He found the tape, finally. Hidden behind a big pile of flyers.

  Time to forget.

  *

  How odd it was to ride that train again, years after. Of course, she often thought about seeing him again, just to see if…

  Except now it was tangible.

  It had started with the blog. She’d originally planned to use it to promote her work, but it had slowly become something more personal. The more she confessed about herself and her previous life, the more people would read and comment on it. That guy, Tom, was one of these people. He seemed so passionate about the music and memories she wrote about that it was impossible to ignore him. Then she learnt that he was one of Lewes’ workmates, as well as one of his fans. The opportunity was way too beautiful to be missed.

  She’d written down that story, their story, on purpose. As expected, Tom had sent her an email. He had been easy to convince: he gave her Lewes’ address and phone number.

  It was time to move on.

  The town hadn’t changed much. Some pubs had closed down to be replaced by some weird diner restaurants, but that was all. The sea was still beautiful to behold. She stood on the Pier for a long time, trying to remember what she would say to him. All those years.

  She was struck by the silence around her. Those years.

  *

  Lewes was on his way to meet Tom when it happened. He was walking down the street, not paying attention to anything but the sea. That was why he’d come back here, years ago.

  The sea. The calm he felt at its sight. That, and the fact that the local university was the only one in the area who wanted him. Those details had made a difference.

  So he walked. And his heart missed a beat, again.

  The redheaded pixie was there, standing on the Pier. It wasn’t a coincidence. It simply couldn’t be.

  They went to a pub. It was all happening again. Him talking, his ocean-eyes burning, her smiling, listening to his odd stories about weird and bored students. The waiter tuned the radio to some college station and that made them laugh. When she talked, his heart leaped again. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. Was it too late to make amends? She smiled a smile that shattered his heart, once again.

  Of course, she spent that night with him. And the one
after that.

  She left on an early morning. She didn’t even look at him.

  When he woke up, he found a picture on the kitchen cupboard. Two people, holding hands and smiling. A redheaded pixie and a huge ocean-eyed guy. A note scribbled on the back:

  You, car-crashing my own heart. Me, burning your mind. Years of nothing.

  Ghosts everywhere. Time to forget.

  About the author

  Vanessa grew up with British pop and punk music, then made several attempts to play some of that music before finding peace writing about it (The 405, Converse or Not Converse). She then moved to the British soil, and now listens to said music when she's not writing stories.

  Paper Ghosts is her first collection of short stories in English.

  You can follow Vanessa's ramblings on Twitter @Veeee and read some music-and-comics-related goodness on her blog, Geek Pessimism. You can also follow related news more closely by subscribing to the newsletter.

  Note from the Author

  Thank you for downloading and reading Paper Ghosts. I really hope you enjoyed this little collection of words! And hopefully you could hear the music too...

  See you next year for Heaven Tonight, a novella about music, tours...and ghosts, yes. Some things don't really change, do they?

  Vanessa

  [email protected] 

  ***

  Coming in 2014…

  Heaven Tonight

  Going on your first solo tour with your best friend and mentor? Nothing wrong with that! But when said best friend is a ghost asking you to play his music for him, and the tour is led by the flamboyant Ava & The Mechanics, an enigmatic and overexposed band, the situation quickly takes a tricky turn for singer/songwriter Heaven Mitchell. Heaven Tonight follows Heaven's journey through music, friendship and self-discovery, soundtracked by her own songs…with love.