To Be Named At A Later Date

The blood curdling scream was loud enough to strike terror into the band mid-sentence.

Steven was on his feet and running to the source in an actual flash with the rest trailing behind him.

"Oh my god..." She was on her knees on the bathroom floor in a position that made them think she must have fallen.

"Connie." Steven crouched down to hold her to his chest. "What happened?"

Anna stepped forward to gesture for the phone in her hand. "Oh... Connie." She wrapped her arms around her. "It's her parents."

Stevens face went ashen. "P-Priyanka and Doug?"

Connie sniffled. "They got in an accident." It was all she said for the rest of the day.

The only other person in the group who'd become strangely close to The Maheswarens was Jacob. Priyanka had kind of stepped in as his mother. "Are they okay?" She looked up at him and reached out a hand. He kneeled and grabbed it. "Connie, are they okay?"

She could only shake her head miserably as she started sobbing into Steven's shoulder.

The next few months were blurry and stressful for all of them. The Maheswaren funeral was one of the hardest times the band had together to date. Connie stepped down as a vocalist for the moment, opting to help write songs instead. They filed them away and took a break as a band altogether, stating in one article that it's not TiBNAALD without all of the members present and happy.

"It's not that she's our best friend,"

"And life partner,"

"It's that we made this band together, so we do everything else together too."

It was a welcome break honestly, they got more time to screw around and just relax without something pushing for them to keep making more. Connie was quiet for a long while, sparking a fight between the power couple and unsettled bandmates. Steven and Connie were definitely, for all jokes aside, the Mom and Dad with their constant encouragement and kind natured spirits and insistence that everyone eat regularly. So when they were tense, everyone was, even though they tried to play nice in front of everyone.

Steven hated being shut out, especially when he was hurting about it too. It wasn't the fact that their sex life stopped in its tracks (in fact it hadn't even crossed his mind), it was the fact that she refused to be comforted. Sometimes she was blank in every movement she made, and others she'd sit in the shower and cry so hard she would gag. She rarely acknowledged his touch anymore, and after crying she'd go back to being empty.

Connie Maheswaren had gone numb, and from the personal experience every band member possessed, that was not something they could just let happen.

Various attempts to show her they were there carried out poorly. Sometimes they could break through the blankness to find confusion or irritation, but that was about as far as it reached.

The way they cracked her was completely out of pocket and unintentional.

On the first day of October, Steven had coaxed her out to sit on the ginormous couch in the commons with the band while they goofed off and drank wine.

Connie, being a woman of refined taste (believe it or not) had finally nodded and tried for a smile which put her husband in a cheerful mood that had spread to the rest of them. She was conversing more with them now and had even cracked a few more genuine smiles here and there.

"You guys remember how we said we were going to make an all explicit album with an actual name?" Steven asked as he finished his can of beer. He peered inside for a moment. "Rated E For Everyone."