Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

It hits him like a ton of bricks, all at once there in the crowded aisles of the too large supermarket where you can get everything from milk to motor oil and any and everything in between. Gene is tired, so tired and hungry and clueless as to how to make all that stuff Sam used to make for him and there he is in the bloody organic food section of all places when he hears it. A hundred emotions, things Gene has been holding in since they found the car, feelings he can't even name, they all come boiling to the surface when he hears the song, the one Sammy loved even more, sang even louder because it drove Gene nuts.

Gene has to get out of there, out of that godforsaken place, or maybe out of his mind, perhaps even out of his own skin. He leaves behind the half full cart of stuff, huffs it to the Cortina parked out in the far end of the huge lot because Sam always said if they were going to drive everywhere maybe they could at least park far away for the exercise and dammit if Gene can't break the habit now. He sits in his car for a few minutes, hours, a day? He can't be sure of the time, can't be bothered with its precise nature, the way it comes and goes every day, the way the bloody fucken sun rises every day, without fail and without Sam.

He stares a good long while at the passenger side, a place he has to admit he hasn't let anyone else sit in since, well since Sam went missing. No, there is no one on this God's green earth that's earned it, and he's pretty sure, almost willing to bet his life that no one else ever will. He throws his arm around the passenger seat and glances into the rear of the car where Sam's box of new fangled cassette tapes sit, neatly lined up and alphabetized of course. Gene thinks to drop them in front of the car, rev her up and crush them, maybe crushing some of this pain inside him in the process.

's not healthy, Guv, all this anger. Gene hears, clear as day, so clear that he turns his attention again to the empty seat beside him. He throws his hands up in the air and chokes out a half laugh, half cry, screaming something about how Tyler can't even let him have his way now, now that he is gone and Gene is alone. Alone. That fear that pain and God that anger start to grip around his heart again and he grabs at the box of cassette tapes to busy his hands. He picks one up, wanting to crush it to bits, yank at it and pull on it until it is nothing but dust in his hands, at least it would be real and tangible, something he could see, something he could mourn.

"I'm talking about mourning a bloody fucken plastic piece of crap tape that plays bloody awful music." He says and immediately hears Sam's voice in his head again, telling him that the metaphor is good, that the music was Sam's and of course he wants to hurt it, it reminds him of Sam, and then he turns the cheap plastic around in his hand and sees the glaring yellow cover and that Nancy boy with the pink jacket and girlie shoes and big sodding ugly glasses and against better judgment he puts the tape in to the player and hears the beginning of that song again, the one that made him flee from the market to come and sit like a mad man here in his car, alone with the ghost of Sam and the broken pieces of his mind. He listens to that soft piano sound that Sam was always fond of and lets his mind go back to another time, another place....

It's 1973 and Sam is drunk. Off his knickers drunk, the sort of legendary drunk that Gene had only seen Sam take part in a handful of times over the years, the sort of drunk that resulted in them getting together in the first place, being that Sammy never would have had the balls otherwise to finally make that move. Gene remembers it like it was yesterday, can smell and practically taste the air, if not the whiskey on Sam's breathe. They are outside the still shiny Cortina, in the middle of the otherwise quiet street Sam lived on, in the middle of the night and Sam is trying to, he still isn't sure now eight years later, maybe it was dance? There he is, swaying and singing to the song, this song, turned up much too loud in the quiet night. And there is Sam, singing it, word for word save for the few that were muffled by Gene's lips. Yes, that would be when Sam first kissed him, there up against the car, in the middle of the dark street and listening to the flake of all flakes, the king of the fairies himself, Elton John. Gene laughs in the present, thinking it fitting, and laughs some more at the memory of the night and at the way it is marked forever in his brain, like a picture. Sam, all drunk and needy and cuter than any man should be, and then he hears it, the line that Sam had whispered against his cheek, drunken tears streaming from his eyes.

Maybe you'll get a replacement, there's plenty like me to be found.

Gene laughed at him then and pulled him in for another kiss before they headed up the creaky old stairs leading to Sam's flat, leading to Sam's heart really. Gene hears the song now, in the present, feels the words stab at his heart and then the tears, they finally come. They come in heaving sobs, in a very un Gene like way as he remembers always calling Sam Dorothy, or Samantha, or Gladys or Nancy, but more Dorothy than anything; Dorothy and her damned Yellow Brick Road.

They have a ceremony of sorts, once they realize....Once they accept that Sam is gone. Gene says some words, at least he thinks he does, later on when he tries to remember any of it. He thinks the tribute was rubbish, he holds out hope that one day, he will see Sam Tyler again, someday in the future, beyond that Yellow Brick Road.