“If it only brought you back, to me to me to me…”
“That’ll do Rich, you can come out now!”yelled Gary, his new producer. After 2.5 month of recovering, Rich was his old self again. Physically. But he wasn’t the ever smiling person anymore.Sadness and hate had made him deep inside a bitter and grim person. He wanted to show THEM, who he never called on with the name now,and so he practiced his singing a lot. He slowly regained his voice, with more strength and power than ever before.A record company had given him one chance. But what a chance.
Rich stepped out of the little studio and listened together with Gary to the song.”Um Rich..”started Gary carefully, not sure wheter or not to bring up the delicate topic. “Are you aware of it that FIVE will bring out the new single at the same time as you will?”
Rich shrugged.”Of course I do. That’s exactly why I’m doing it. My, that’ll be fun…”
“Rich? Ritchie, someone’s on the phone for you!”Shouted Billie from the kitchen. “Coming!” She heard fast footsteps and just a couple of seconds later Rich took over the phone. “Hi Gary” Billie heard him say. “What?! Really? Oh yeah, it’s fantastic! Thank you very much.Bye.”
“Guess what?” he asked, turning around smiling. Automatically she returned the smile. It had been long she saw him smile like that. “You won the lottery?”
Rich shook his head laughing. “Don’t be silly.I will enter the charts at no 1 Sunday!”
“Oh love, that’s great! I knew you could do it.” She kissed him on the lips and they stood close for a while. Rich pulled back and grinned evilly. Billie was shocked to see that on her lover’s face, she’d never seen that before. “I’d just DIE to see the faces of THEM right now.” He said with such hate in his voice Billie stepped back, afraid of someone she no longer knew.
“So Rich will be at the NO1-spot on Sunday”said Rob.
“Cool man. He’ll be happy about that”replied Scott.”I’m happy for him as well. He deserves it.”
“Defenitely mate.I’m with ya there”nodded J, and Abs and Sean filled in their agreements.
“You’re happy for him?!That means he beats us, don’t you realise?!”Asked Lance with a disbelieving look. Since two months he was replacing Rich and the lads were tired of his way of speaking, his continual interfering and nagging about their ex-member.
“Rich IS FIVE”said Abs sharply.He ignored Lance and turned to the other guys. Shall we send him something to say we’re happy for him and we still want to be his friends?”
“Good idea”replied Sean and without giving attention to Lance at all, they walked away.
The 4 lads wrote a nice card and bought a beautiful glass sculpture of a bird.
“Look Rich, what the lads got you!They congratulate you with your number one.Isn’t that nice now?” Billie was still hoping FIVE would get back together again, ‘cuz she wanted the Ritche she knew and loved back, and the reforming of FIVE seemed the only way to achieve it.
Rich cheek nervously twitched and he grabbed the present and the card. He read the meaningful words and sniffed annoyed. His blue eyes got a hard look, almost a mad expression. He clenched his teeth and stared at the seemingly happy bird of glass. He let out one angry growl,and crushed the bird between his fingers. The glass carved in his flesh and thick, deepred blood started running over his hand. Rich didn’t moan one time, onlyightened the grip, forcing the blood to run harder.
Billie screamed.
Totally out of control, Rich threw away the fragments and looked around for something else to destroy. He kicked the table upside down, and scattered almost in the same move a couple of cd’s over the floor. The fire of madness still burning in his eyes, he turned around to Billie and laughed evilly.”Get out of here, girly, ‘cuz I’m ready to start on people…”
Billie fled, Rich innatural evil laugh and the sound of cracking furniture haunting her.
And Rich would always bear the scars of FIVE.