Thread: The Outsider [CntDestyr & YellowSmoke]

From an outsider's perspective looking in, Rick knew that the band was doomed to fail. It wasn't just that their music sounded terrible, it was the personalities to heir band. The beautiful Alissa was the singer, and the guitarist Kim was great too, but after their first album went live, the sweater truly started to unravel. Things were fine, or at least they seemed that way. The band was signed by Sub Pop Records and it was a joyous occasion, but since then, the quality of their music had gone way downhill and the members in the band just stopped caring. The big nail in the coffin was when George Miner died. George was their drummer, and a damn fine one at that. He was like a music prodigy, able to play anything that he heard, able to string together seemingly random notes from the drum and make it sound amazing. Hell, even his stage presence was something that the most casual fan noticed. Before their second album was released, George unfortunately was involved in a head on car crash and died instantly. After George's death, the band began the disputes with the label companies and Rick saw his friend Alissa fall in with the wrong crowd to say the least. It was all so sad, it really really was. He had a good job, was a social drinking, and was dating the love of his life. She was living in what seemed like the slums - halfway houses, graffiti, and the highest crime rate in the city to boot. In Seattle, every part of the city was mostly habitable, though with most cities there were some areas that were more rundown than the others. Of course, she chose one of those areas. It hurt Rick's heart to see the deterioration on his friend, but he couldn't afford to jeopardize his career or his life by hanging around her. From the start, he was there. More recently however, he was starting to fade back into the hustle and bustle of the city, only checking on Alissa every now and then, doing what he could to try and break her out of this little funk. The catalyst to the whole thing, was when Alissa started hanging around that Julio character, that lead to her moving in with Hayden and Gregory . Two characters that were unsavory to say the least, Hayden in particular. Today was one of the days that Rick had arranged time off to go and meet with her. He was unsure what was going on in the tiny apartment with the three of them all living there, and he was fairly sure that his friend was being taken advantage of. Today was like any other meeting day. He would take her out to lunch, pay for an expensive meal, then plead her to consider changing her habits. His pleas would undoubtedly fall on deaf ears, but as he drove his brand new BMW X5, he could only hope that she would come out of the apartment quickly and get in the car. Getting out of his car, he paid a homeless man twenty dollars to watch over his car and make sure no one broke out the windows or did anything, with the promise of another twenty dollars when he made his way back down. It was literally the easiest forty dollars he would make, probably in his life. Trotting up the stairs, he knocked on the door, finding that it was already cracked open. Whoever was in there didn't latch the door shut. Pushing it open, he poked his head in and glanced around, wondering where Alissa was, but also wondering where Hayden and George were. Those were the two that creeped him out the most. The apartment complex was dirty and rundown. On his way up the flights of stairs, he saw a dead rat. A fucking dead rat just in the corner of the stairwell. It stank like it had been there for a few days, and the fucking thing was huge. He almost puked walking by the thing. He was wearing a suit, a nice suit to come to this little area. The walls were brown with creeping mildew, which brought an entirely new odor and a few of the stairs looked like they were ready to give out. Whatever Alissa was paying for this place was too much, Alissa! The man called out into the apartment, hoping to make things quick. He needed to get back to his car, and he wanted to be gone by the time Hayden and George showed up. Besides, he only had an hour or so for lunch. Hope the post is alright