Flash Fiction - "The End" - Final Draft

Flash Fiction: ‘The End’ #1

I was walking to school, listening to a live recording of The Doors on my walkman. My older brother made the mix tape.
It was almost “The End” as the great man stepped up to the microphone.
“Hey, mister light man! You’ve got to turn those lights way down!... I’m not kidding – you’ve got to turn those lights way down! ... C’mon!”
I could picture the audience crowded around, a mass of hair, mud and drugged-out haze, gazing up at the main stage, vibing off every word.
There was a pause as, I imagine, the lights remained at their level of obtrusive but professional brightness.
To this the great man said “Ah, wadda we care.”
And he began to sing into my ears as I ascended the stairs to my first lesson.
***
Sitting in English with a pen between my teeth, I listened to my teacher as she recited the monologue from As You Like It, introducing The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s performance of Romeo and Juliet (14 minutes long).
With the feedback of rock ‘n’ roll still ringing in my mind, I thought “If all the world’s a stage, what happens to stage divers?”
Whether that thought was philosophy or Beavis and Butthead, we all dutifully perform our entrances and exits. Some stick in the mind more persistently than others – looking through the collected Shakespeare at school, I found my favourite exit, the exit of Antigonus from The Winter’s Tale: ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’.
But rock ‘n’ roll had the plane crash, drug overdose, murder, heart attack, electrocution (playing guitar in the bath), cancer, pills, drowning, skiing accident, the speeding powerboat, the shotgun.
Shocking, sad and intriguing, but also mysterious. Skatalite and trombone legend Don Drummond allegedly committed suicide while institutionalized in Belle Vue Asylum, Kingston in 1969. Jim Morrison’s fatal heart failure in 1971 is disputed to this day.
***
I saw a black and white seventies picture of his grave. Before his father placed the plaque reading ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ - "according to his own daemon", before Mladen Mikulin brought a bust for the vandals and thieves, before the French officials placed their shield (which was also stolen), there were the monuments.
Hyacinths, rosaries, charms, cigarette butts, cups half full in a final toast, abstract objects of personal value and, finally, his lyrics written in chalk – C’est la fin, mon merveilleux ami – loving tributes made by people that actually “got him”, that may have been washed away by Parisian rain, but if I close my eyes and press “rewind” on my walkman, he steps back into the spotlight.