"Conquest" by Vic Rubenfeld

HOW IT ALL GOT STARTED

Actually it was kind of spooky.  I'll never forget the day because my girl friend just broke up with me that same morning. She just finally got fed up with me for being the way I am. She was excitable. She didn't mind that I wasn't excitable, but it was the way I wasn't that finally she couldn't take any more. I'm just sort of a, get up every day, get the job done, don't get distracted by stuff, just keep moving forward kind of guy. I sort of feel like a tank on a battlefield. I just keep going. Stuff can be blowing up around me, so what, I don't care, I'm still going ahead. Meanwhile she felt like I was a snail, just going along too slow, getting nowhere. Like I said, she was excitable. She started getting crazy about it, hysterical. Which didn't even faze me because I'm like what I said, and that drove her even crazier, and so it was just that same morning that she just said she was breaking up. Which was kind of like, I mean, even to a tank, a bomb goes off right underneath of you and you're going to feel it. So I was trashed and in no mood to go anywhere, much less to an audition.

From "Rock Charisma" by Joan P. Cooley

Dale Rhodes paced the concrete floor beneath his feet like an animal in a cage...lean, lithe, and brooding. As dangerous as a trapped panther. Or a man headed for the gallows. Just then, he felt like one. And not at all like the biggest rock star in the world, with an arena full of fans outside…screaming for him.

He stood backstage alone, in the VIP dressing room...trying to prepare. The show was at Pickens arena, 5 miles outside of Los Angeles. The venue had sold out in six minutes. And a crowd of twenty thousand people waited for him to grace the stage. They called his name. Pleading, demanding that he make his appearance. They chanted the name of his band. "Wick-ers! Wick-ers! Wickers!" He could hear their cries, muffled by the 8-inch-thick walls surrounding him.

Their voices didn’t move him. They only added to his misery. He was trapped. Pushed into a corner. He rubbed at his eyes. And he was tired...bone tired. In no shape to sing. The cinder block paneled walls seemed to close in all around him. He shook off a feeling of dread. Lately, nothing felt right. Ever since that letter had come. It had changed everything.