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Death #16 – Let’s Get Fired Up!

“This club… is so high… and you light it up, it’s ready to blow. Hands up… Don’t stop… If you’re sexy, then get out of control…”

Nick was in the recording studio, laying down vocals on a new track for his upcoming solo album. It was a club song if he’d ever heard one – not his usual style, but he’d fallen in love with the beat, and the lyrics he’d co-written with the Swedes were damn catchy.

“Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up! Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up! Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up! Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up!”

Outside the sound booth, AJ looked at Howie and asked, “Does this song have any other lyrics?”

Howie laughed. He and AJ had been planning to meet Nick for lunch, since the three of them had barely seen each other since the tour wrapped, despite living in the same city. But Nick had texted to say he was running behind on account of being stuck in the studio, something about a guest rapper who had shown up two hours late. No problem, Howie had replied. We’ll just swing by the studio and leave from there when you're ready.

He hadn’t planned on sitting around to watch Nick record for another two hours. It was well past what could be considered “lunchtime,” and he was starving.

“Rami, can you lemme on that mic a sec?” he asked the producer, whom he’d known since the Black & Blue days. Rami stepped back from the mixing console, and Howie used the intercom that connected the control room to the sound booth to ask, with some desperation, “Hey, Nicky, you about ready to take a break and get some food?”

“In a few!” came Nick’s voice out of the speakers, and through the window, Howie saw him hold up his hand to indicate five minutes. “I just really wanna get a good take before I call it quits. That okay, man?”

“Yeah… sure,” said Howie glumly, his stomach grumbling. He sat back down next to AJ, and the two of them watched Nick get ready for another take in the booth. His work ethic was admirable; he had really thrown his heart and soul into this solo project, and his newfound maturity showed. He’d classed up the studio with flickering candles that gave off a warm aura of inspiration, and he was even dressed better than his usual t-shirt, track pants, and baseball cap combo, though Howie had a feeling Lauren might have had something to do with the wardrobe upgrade. She had definitely inspired and tamed him; Nick seemed happier and healthier than Howie had seen him in many years.

“I’m burning up… and up,” Nick sang, as the techno music played under his vocals. “I’m burning up… and up.” He was getting into it, bobbing his head along to the beat. “I’m burning up… and up… so all you sexy people burn it up…”

“See, AJ? It does have other lyrics. ‘I’m burning up… and up,’” Howie sang, and AJ snickered.

“This is bullshit. I’m fucking starved, dude. We should get his ass back for making us wait this long.”

Howie looked over at AJ, his eyes lighting up. “Got anything in mind?” He was always game for getting back at Nick, after all the pranks Nick had pulled on him. He just wished he were more creative at coming up with good ones himself.

AJ thought for a few seconds and then nodded, a devilish grin creeping across his face. “We’re gonna need some string.”

They looked all over the studio, but couldn’t find any string, so they settled for tying their own shoelaces together, out of sight of Nick, who was too busy recording to notice they’d left the control room. When they snuck back in, Nick was still singing – with his eyes closed – so they were able to tie one end of the length of shoelace to the door of the sound booth and the other end to the door on the opposite wall, effectively locking him inside the booth.

“C’mon, let’s go, before he catches on,” AJ hissed, beckoning furiously to Howie and Rami. “He’ll freak out when he opens his eyes and finds out everyone’s gone… and even more when he realizes he can’t get out.”

They convinced Rami to leave the control room with them, and the three of them stood outside the closed door, snickering into their hands and waiting for the track to stop and Nick’s angry shouts to begin.

Inside the sound booth, Nick was too busy dancing to notice that they had left. “The way you shake, shake, shake, shake that ass…” he sang, and he couldn’t help but wiggle his butt around. “It makes me wanna come, come, come get it fast…” He was so into it that, at first, he didn’t even notice that on one of the “shakes,” his ass had bumped into one of the pedestals on which he had perched a lit candle, for ambiance. The pedestal toppled, but with the backing track blasting through his headphones, Nick didn’t hear the thud. “You got me thinking, ‘Damn… I wanna take you back home with me…’,” he sang, oblivious of the fact that flames were climbing the walls behind him.

It wasn’t until he actually felt the warmth that he bothered to glance over his shoulder. When he saw the wall of fire, he screamed, “Oh shit!” and ripped off his headphones. “FIRE!” he shouted into the mic, wondering why no one else had noticed this and come bursting into the sound booth yet, but then he looked through the window into the control room and saw that it was completely empty. “What the fuck?!”

He darted to the door and pulled the handle, only to find, to his horror, that it wouldn’t open. He tugged harder, but the door wouldn’t give. He tried pushing, thinking maybe he’d forgotten which way the door went, but that didn’t work either. It definitely swung inward, but every time he tried to pull it open, he was met with resistance, like the door was caught on something.

“HELP!” he screamed, feeling the heat intensify as the flames engulfed the tiny room. They were quickly creeping across the floor toward him like a pack of fiery hellhounds, nipping at his heels. “LET ME OUT!” He banged frantically on the door. “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE LET ME OUT!!!”

When he paused in between screams to draw breath in the increasingly smoky room, he could still hear the background vocals on the track singing faintly from his headphones on the floor. “Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up! Let’s get fired up! Get, get fired up!”

“OH GOD!” Nick gagged, turning in circles like a caged animal, desperately seeking a way out. He saw the window and wondered if he could break it. He leapt over patches of fire on the floor and grabbed the mic stand. Raising it over his head, he slammed it into the window, but the it didn’t break. He tried again and again, but apparently the glass was not only soundproof, but shatterproof, too. “NOOOOOO!!!”

By this time, flames had leapt onto the cuffs of his jeans and were climbing up his legs, scorching through the denim so that it melted to his flesh. He danced a spastic tarantella with his pants on fire, trying to put out the flames, but it was impossible, and there was no place to stop, drop, and roll because the floor had become a fiery lake.

He was helpless to stop the flames from spreading rapidly up his body, and as they burned through his button-down top and seared the skin of his arms and torso, his screams of agony were stifled by the smoke that filled his lungs. He coughed and choked, sucking in more smoke in his desperate efforts to breathe. The air was thick with it, the sound booth an inferno. The smoke scorched the inside of Nick’s throat, as the flames encircled the outside like a pair of fiery hands, strangling him.

The combination of unspeakable pain and lack of oxygen finally overcame him; he collapsed and was swiftly swallowed by the sea of fire. He was already dead by the time the flesh of his face started to melt away, leaving only a charred skull.

Out in the hall, Howie suddenly turned to the others, frowning, and said, “Hey, do you guys smell smoke?” He placed his palm on the closed door, felt the warmth, and looked down to see smoke starting to unfurl from under the door.

“Shit… Nick!” AJ threw open the door, causing the string of shoelaces to slacken, but it was too late. Fire was burning down the door to the sound booth, and the window was like a solid wall of thick, black smoke and white-hot flames. “OH GOD, NICK! NOOOOOO!!!”

In the following days, as they prepared for Nick’s funeral, people would question how they could have stood outside the door while Nick went up in flames and not heard his screams, his desperate cries for help. Howie, AJ, and Rami already blamed themselves, but how could they explain that they hadn’t heard anything over the sound of the music blaring from the studio?

To their dying day, they would be haunted by it, the incessant background vocals singing, “I’m burning up… and up…” while Nick was burned alive.

Chapter End Notes:
You know you wanna go listen to that song now! "The way you shake, shake, shake, shake that ass..."
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