Disclaimer: Hard Core Logo, Joe Dick and Billy Tallent don't belong to me, but you know that already, eh?
Summary: This is a little vignette that's a companion piece to a larger work in progress that's about Billy during the missing years between the time that the band, Hard Core Logo broke up and the start of the movie. This is entirely speculative on what Joe might have done the morning after Billy left the band the first time.
A. Kite (Feb. 2004)
The lump moves on a bed with sheets so old and gray that they look grimy. Joe Dick turns over and tries to open an eye. His head pounds so hard that opening that eye sends a shot of pain all the way through him. He closes the eye again and tries to take a deep breath before trying again. What the fuck did he do to himself last night?
The air in the room is stale. It smells of spilled beer, cigarette smoke, semen and blood. Blood? Joe sniffs the air again, and yes that's blood. He squeezes his eyes tight and tries to think. Fuck it, that isn't helping a bit. He puts a hand out to wake Billy, but his hand hits an empty mattress. The place beside him is long empty. Billy isn't there.
Joe groans and levers himself off the bed. Fuck, he needs a beer. He staggers around the room until he finds the beer. It's warm, but he drinks it down anyway. That one is either so good or so shitty, he pulls the last beer off the ring and pops it open too. He decides it's not so shitty and drinks it.
He belches and scratches and then digs around in his bag for a clean shirt. There isn't one. He finds the cleanest dirty shirt and pulls it on. Next the tattered green commando sweater that he finds on the floor. Bending down to pick it up, he sees the blood on the sheets. Billy's blood. He puts on the sweater and stumbles down the hall and out the door. The smell in that room - he has to get away from it.
He stumbles down the steps and out onto the sidewalk. The sun is up, and it burns his eyes like welding torches. His shades are somewhere. Somewhere back in there. He's not going back to get them.
Joe walks down the sidewalk. He takes a couple of deep breaths, trying to clear the smell from his nose - his lungs - his head. His breath plumes out in the cold air, and in that air there's the smell of someone frying bacon. One whiff of it, and Joe is puking in the gutter.
He stops retching and straightens up. He walks on, feeling more alone than he's ever felt in his life. He sees a playground. In spite of the cold, there's a man there. He's pushing a little girl on a swing. She's laughing. Her high-pitched squeal hurts Joe's ears. He wants to scream at her to shut up, but he doesn't. He moves on. Shambling down the sidewalk trying to come down - come down off the high that had cost him his best friend.