Writers Craft - Descriptive Place Assignment

He could hear the shrill screams and cheers of the audience from behind the thick velvet curtain. They seemed to continuously be alternating from echoing, slow, low voices back to the high pitched squealing that made him squint. His heart was pounding at what felt like was a million miles a minute and it felt like it might bust out of his chest anytime soon. This wasn’t a normal feeling though, normally he was cool and collective before his shows; he’d done so many before. “Why was this one so different?” he thought. The rancid smell of cigarette smoke and spilled alcohol made him feel at home for a moment, this audience would be no different from his usual. Still behind the curtain, he peaks out occasionally and sees the dark silhouettes of his loving audience. The lights were so bright he thought someone has shone a flashlight into his bloodshot eyes at first. The repetition of the bass drum and snare are mocking his pounding heart, building up the anticipation for him to finally make his appearance. He reached into his breast pocket and took out his slightly chilled, plastic, ray ban sun glasses and slowly placed them on his face. Feeling the smooth paper between his fingers, he savored a drag on his cigarette as if it might be his last. The harsh smoke filled his lungs and sweet the taste of tobacco in the smoke that he breathed soothed him in his final seconds back stage. He dropped the butt on the floor, only being able to see the still glowing, red ambers sitting still in the darkness. The step he took onto the butt to squish it as far as he could into the ground, brought him that much closer to the blinding lights exposing the stage and it sent shivers down his spin. Someone put a guitar in his hands but he couldn’t see who. They yelled into his year over top of the drums and the screaming, “You’re on in 5 seconds. You smell disgusting, good thing those people aren’t onstage with you.” It as Jim, his manager, he always had a way of making him feel great before the show. But he did notice the rank smell on him now. It was a combination of beer, pot, cigarettes, sweat and the smell of a tour bus with too many people living in it. It was too late to do anything about it now.
His third step forward revealed his figure to the crowd that was impatiently waiting for him. He was awkwardly exposed with no way out: a deer in the headlights. Hypnotized by the single burning light that followed him, he stepped to the microphone that had been tolerantly waiting for him. Although he was wearing his sunglasses, the brightness of the lights reminded him of the piercing colours of the sun, who’s light still managed to seep through his eyelids when he did sleep on the bus. He couldn’t hear the drums anymore; he could feel them through the cold, wooden floor boards under his leather shoes. Every movement of his caused an uproar of voices that could break through the roof and crack the windows. He swung his guitar from his back to his front on the guitar strap, feeling a sudden pulse of confidence run through his body like an electrical current. He wrapped his left hand around the neck of the guitar and felt the cold wire strings on the calluses they called his fingers tips. Every sense felt over exaggerated, the smoke in the air seemed to burn the small hairs in his nose, the triangular pick in his right hand felt like it was the size of his hand and the silhouettes in front of him would multiply and grow taller, eventually surrounding and towering over him. One strum would shrink the monstrous shadows and another would eliminate them completely he found. The pill he had popped before he stepped on the stage wasn’t weak, and that fact that he took it down with a bitter and fowl tasting shot didn’t help either. He couldn’t do that for much longer, times were changing. He heard a voice and realized it was his and soon trailed of into the musical, peaceful world he dreamed of. His guitar and his words were his weapon against the shadows and the monsters. Society had no chance against them.