1446 Words.

III. Catastrophic Hymns From Yesterday
When I opened my eyes, Tré was gone. In a dizzy haze, I stood up and wandered out of the room, looking for Tré. Next thing I knew, I was in the lobby (our hotel room was on the third floor, eighth door to the right, thank you very much). My eyes felt dry and everything around me felt so damn numb. And slightly pastel. I put it off to my just having woken up and walked out into the street.

Out there, I saw things that, quite frankly, surprised me. An Underbelly riot. Whatsername -- well, Davey as Whatsername, really -- stood at the front of it. They charged toward me.

“Hey! Saint Jimmy!” Davey -- or Whatsername -- yelled. “Come on! Let’s go!”

“What the fuck?” I asked, cocking my head.

“Didn’t you get the message about the riot? I knew your friends took you out for partying last night and parked you at this damn hotel, but I swear I told you! Maybe it’s the hangover?” Davey shook his head. “Anyway, come on! We’ve got fucking buildings to burn!”

“Um. Okay.”

I walked down the steps, still disoriented. Was I really still here in the City? Everything felt so surreal… had everything I could remember happening in the last three years really have been a drunken dream? It all felt so damn real. Is it really possible to have lived three years all in my head? Well, I had to admit that Davey breaking up with me was kind of fucking crazy… but, then again, so was most of what he did.

Whatsername -- well, I guess since he was Whatsername at the moment, I should call him that since he certainly wasn’t Davey right then -- grabbed my hand and jerked me to the front of the crowd amidst screaming and the all too familiar smell of smoke.

“Everyone -- welcome Saint Jimmy to this crowd of pain! Are you ready to fuck shit up?” shouted Whatsername, throwing his hands in the air as he said so. The reply was tremendous, a roar of hell- and fuck yeahs, general purposeless screaming, and other such incidences of insanity. The crowd -- the Underbelly, to be more precise -- shouted a rhyme that almost made me sick to my stomach.

“Saint Jimmy’s coming down across the alleyway! Up on the boulevard like a zip gun on parade! Lights on his silhouette! He’s insubordinate! Coming atcha on the count of one, two -- one two three four!”

And I answered them in a scream, no matter how wrong it felt then: “My name is Jimmy and you better not wear it out! Suicide commando that your mama talked about! King of the forty thieves and here to represent! The needle in the vein of the establishment. I’m the Patron Saint of the Denial! With an angel face and a taste for suicidal!”

The crowd went seriously wild then, screaming and holding up everything from hand grenades to unlit torches and lighters to -- yes, in fact -- shovels. I grinned at them and threw my hands in the air and both Whatsername and I lead them through the City, down to the Town Hall and the seat of the government here.

My own words echoed in my mind: “Jimmy… suicide commando… needle in the vein… Patron Saint of the Denial… taste for suicidal…”

Of course, the second sweet refrain of that started out: “Cigarettes and ramen and a little bag of dope. I am the son of a bitch and Edgar Allen Poe.”

But all the mention of suicidal in the old chant, the old wartime song reminded me of something from the so called dream. I had tried to commit suicide during that, hadn’t I? Didn’t I then throw the gun into the bay and decide that that was the Death of St. Jimmy, and that I was just Billie Joe afterwards?

I guessed then that the whole past three years that I thought I’d experienced was just a dream -- I didn’t just guess it at that point, really, but that’s when it pretty much solidified in my mind that the past three years had all been one, huge, drunk and or high dream. It made a shitton of sense, really. I mean -- why would Davey (Whatsername?) ever break up with me? I don’t think I could piss him off that badly, right?

The first sign of madness is talking to yourself.

In my dream, hadn’t I said that to the one called Tré? I guess he was my boyfriend in the other world of my subconscious mind, the other world unlocked when I drift easily off into sleep after drinking my weight in alcohol.

So that’s why everything was so damn fuzzy… damn hangover.

Then I guessed -- I speculated, I assumed, I knew -- that I’d recently dosed up on Novacaine. I mean, otherwise I’d be driven mad from withdrawal, right? Novacaine has pretty damn bad effects that will in fact drive you mad after a long enough time. That is, until it’s all passed and that’s when you sleep off the last two weeks of pain.

I sighed once more and ran my fingers through my shoulder length greasy black hair. I definitely needed a shower -- I made a note to myself to remember to tall that to Davey when we got back to the headquarters.

The headquarters… Tré and I had went there in my long, fucked up dream, hadn’t we? The Underbelly had long since dissolved in that other world… so had the group I guess I had created, the Class of Thirteen. Well -- it didn’t dissolve too long before the end of the dream, did it? Just after they all thought that Tré and I were dead. That’s when it ended.

“We are the Class of, the Class of Thirteen! Born in the era of humility! We are the desperate in the decline! Raised by the bastards of 1969!”

Wasn’t that our -- the Class of Thirteen’s war cry? I mean, it had to all have been a dream, it wasn’t even 2013 yet! It was 2009 or 2010, I was sure of it. It couldn’t have been any other goddamn way. It all had to have been a dream -- again, one long, very fucked up dream. I wondered what I’d been doing the night before and found that I couldn’t remember. Damn… whatever it was had to have been some pretty nasty shit.

My thoughts had carried us all the way to our destination of the Town Hall in the middle of the City, amidst sky scrapers and tall hills.

Whatsername grinned at me and gave me a hand grenade. “On three, fire,” he whispered.

All was silent as we looked upon the building in the early hours of the dawn. All was silent until Whatsername suddenly shouted: “Fucking bastards, give us our City back! Give us our fucking freedom back! This is the land of the free, isn’t it? One -- two -- three!”

Everyone screamed, a dedicated Underbelly war cry, as they pulled the pins and lit the torches and threw all their firepower at the old, creaky government building. The fires all exploded on impact, a blazing inferno of freedom and dissidence. The sound of the fire, the heat of it -- it all suddenly felt so distant as I turned to look at Whatsername. He didn’t stand there. Instead, in his place, there was the current Davey, smiling, his long black fringe framing his face. A few tears sparkled in his eyes. I ran my fingers through my hair again, looking strangely around as a few blonde strands fell in my face.

Oh-kaay, that was some nasty shit I did last night.

“Oh my God, Billie Joe -- we all thought you were -- didn’t you -- you’re alive!” he said.

The fire wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the Underbelly. We were back in the café where Tré and I had first met, where Davey and I had patched things over -- right?

Davey wrapped his slender arms around me, sobbing quietly. “We thought you and Tré died in the fucking fire! You’re alive, you’re alive, god damn it, you’re fucking alive! I’ve never been happier to see you and holy shit you’re alive!”

His words blurred around me, as did the scenery.

I awoke with a start in the old hotel room, in Tré’s arms. He was sleeping peacefully now. And I knew exactly what we had to do.

Rejoin the Class of Thirteen. Not as its leader, but as its fighters.