I'm having a nightmare. Amy is sitting on our tour bus. There are no seats. Situated in the middle is a huge organ, which she sits at, playing in a regal red dress with a huge red plume in her hair. She has four arms, two of which play the organ, the other two playing a theremin.

Her back is to me. Slowly I approach her. There's something...Wrong. Not even the setting itself, which is obviously very incorrect, but with Amy. I stop when a flash of light catches my eye. I go to the right and look out the window. It's pouring rain, but I can't see anything else besides the fact that it's night out.

I look back over to Amy. It's then I notice her four arms are dripping blood. So I start walking towards her again. When I get to her, I pause. With my hand shaking, I touch her shoulder.

"Amy?"

Her head falls backwards at the neck, crumpling at an accordion not being used. Her face is gone, and just a skull stares up at me. Somehow, the skull grins.

"Hi Tristan."

I jolt awake. Bewildered, I look around myself.

Ben is gone. Outside my hospital window there's a storm, pouring rain, lightning and thunder. I look at the clock across the room--it's shortly after midnight.

I don't want to be alone. I am so sick of being alone through all this. There's no way I'm going back to sleep because I'm afraid half-dead Amy will come back. And I'm worried about my friends, and I'm worried about my boyfriend, and I'm worried about me because my side hurts again...

So instead of sleeping I simply cry.

~

"I think we have enough material for a new album!" Orion all but squeals a few weeks later.

The band is all over at Orion's house. Well, I guess it has kind of become our house? I've become a permanent fixture. I still feel weird referring to it as "our" house, though.

Everyone is in the basement. Amy and Ben are bowling. Jake is off playing pinball. Orion is sitting on the couch, legs crossed, laptop on his legs. I look at him sitting at my side. I was playing a video game, but I'm now completely focused on him.

"What?" Amy squeaks off to the side. I look at her in enough time to catch her trip mid-swing, causing the ball to bounce and go flying into the gutter. As Ben laughs at her, she rushes over.

"Yeah," Orion tells her. He then waves over his head. "Yo! Guys, come here!"

Once everyone is gathered around, he points at his laptop. "We've recorded an hour and a half worth of music. We could easily work around that and have an album that comes in anywhere from forty-five to sixty minutes. Depending on what we pick, we'd have anywhere from ten to twelve tracks."

"Are you serious right now?" Amy squeals.

Orion tips his head back and grins up at her. "Yeah. Assuming everyone else wants to record an album?"

"I'm game," Jake says immediately.

"We haven't done one for awhile," Ben says, "I'm sure our fans would appreciate it."

Amy starts jumping up and down and clapping. "We're doing an album! We're doing an album! My name is going to be on a Saturn Mutants album!"

"Alright," Ben says, grabbing her shoulders, "calm down before you hurt yourself."

"Should we set up a tour?" Jake asks.

Amy immediately stops jumping and grows serious.

"That'd be fun I think," Ben says. He looks at Orion. "Only if you're up for it, Ori."

I can see him mule it over for a while. Then he nods curtly. "Yeah, I'm game."

Amy sits down. "Oh my God. I'm going on a tour. I think I might literally faint."

"Woah, easy there," Ben says. Then a moment later, "Guys, get her some water. I think she's literally going to pass out."

Orion vaults over the couch and rushes to the bar that now has nothing but juices, soda's, and water. He rushes back, chuckling softly. He opens the bottle and kneels, rubbing her back.

"Breathe, Aims. Put your head between your legs."

I go on my knees and peer over the back of the couch at her. I'm a bit amused, I have to admit.

"I'm fine," she mumbles.

Orion laughs softly. "No, you're clearly not. Just take a few minutes, yeah?"

After about five minutes she's fine. In fact, she's more than fine. She's right back to being ecstatic, chattering like a chipmunk.

"Ben said something to me the other day that I absolutely adore, and I think would be perfect for the album name--no, wait! Even the tour name! Both! It should be called, Welcome To The Bazaar. Because I'm new. And everyone knows how crazy this band has been, with its ups and downs and fights, and with Orion's issues being out there now, it'd be perfect!"

Everyone is just looking at her, blinking. Personally I'm shocked any human being can speak so quickly without breathing. I don't know what everyone else is gawking at.

"Oh, wait!" she continues, holding out her hand and shaking it excitedly. "We could even take it a step further and do costumes! Not everyone would have to, but I want to, and Orion definitely should. And it should be circus-themed, but it should be creepy--it should totally be creepy to go with the general aesthetics of the band itself--oh, wait! Oh. My. God. We could incorporate weird instruments into some of the songs, like a theremin, and a waterphone, and a pipe organ--hmm, although obviously we couldn't bring one of those on tour, so we'd have to figure something out--"

"Fuck, Amy, breathe," Jake says with a laugh.

Orion lets out his nervous, squeaky laugh.

Amy glares at him. "What?"

He tugs at his collar. "S-slow down there, Amy. We'll work with you, yeah, but you're fucking overwhelming me right now."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he says, taking her water from her and taking a deep gulp. He then hands it back to her.

She scrunches up her face. "Ew. Do you have STD's?"

"No!" he snaps immediately.

"Well I d'no!" she snaps back, "I mean you've been a rock star for over a decade now!"

He rolls her eyes and flips her off. "Well you're a skank--do you?"

Ben shakes his head. "Your relationship is weird..."

Orion and Amy both look at him and speak at the exact same time with the exact same sound of disgust. "What?"

"Dude--you just called your sister a skank."

"Hey, I call it like I see it, doesn't matter if I'm related or not."

Amy punches him in the shoulder, which makes him laugh. She then takes a swig from the bottle. "And for the record, no, I don't."

"Great!"

"Alright," Amy says, wide-eyed, "now that our STD panels have been cleared with one another--we should go to the studio. Now. Right now."

Orion laughs again in his unnatural range.

"What? It's not like we're doing anything else!"

"She has a point," Jake says.

"No time like the present!" Ben shouts.

"Well, okay. Since I'm outnumbered I'll do some warm ups."

I'm always startled when Orion goes into work mode. He's a completely different man. He is completely, one-hundred percent dedicated. Even when he's just practicing and there's nothing on the line. I watch him intently, leaning my cheek against my palm.

He starts in his lower range. I know absolutely nothing about music, so all I know is that it's really fucking deep. Even though he rarely sings that deeply, it's impressive he can drop his voice so low. He gradually works his way up until it's impressively high. Once again, I don't know what impressively high is, but damn he's good. When he's not belting out rock music, he sounds like an opera singer.

He's genuinely talented. As though to prove my point, a conversation breaks out.

"Aaaah--Amy!" he snaps at her, abruptly stopping the high note he was hitting and throwing a glare at her. "What the fuck are you staring at?"

"I just can't get over hearing you sing live. Like, damn. You're so good, Orion."

"Don't stroke his ego!" Jake calls from the side where him and Ben are now bowling.

"Seriously--what the fuck is your range?"

Orion has turned bright red. It's cute, even though he's clearly uncomfortable at the attention and praise. "Uh, well, technically I'm a baritone but I usually sing tenor, because it's easier for me. I'm a bass low E to a soprano high E...although my falsetto goes all the way up to G5...That's what I hit in the song Going Down..."

"What's that mean?" I ask.

Amy looks at me. "It means your boyfriend has a really fucking impressive vocal range that not a lot of people have!" She looks at him. "And your control over your falsetto is so out of this world--it's rich, controlled, it doesn't take on that airy quality a lot of falsettos have. Have you had vocal training, too?"

He's now a deep shade of red. "Um, yeah...I took choir in grade school. I went to a Catholic grade school, and at the insistence of my parents, I was in the choir..." He chuckles and shakes his head. "To quote them, they put me in choir so I would sing actual songs instead of just nonsense. And the instructor was impressed so she gave me free private lessons...Then when I first turned professional I hired a vocal trainer for a couple years..."

"You went to Catholic school?" I ask, surprised.

He shrugs. "Y-yeah..."

"Sorry," Amy says, pulling Orion into a hug. "Didn't mean to make you all uncomfortable again. I know I can sing well, but shit, I ain't got nothing on you!"

"T-thanks..." He rubs his face and then snaps his fingers at Ben and Jake. "Lets hit the studio before I spontaneously combust from embarrassment."