Obviously, the Bukowski Bros.’ fan club had missed the show. But why?

As it turned out, there really was a Western Canadian Youth in Technology Conference being hosted in Regina that weekend, and Shahla’s parents, after conducting a brief internet search to confirm the existence of such an event, were beyond pleased that their daughter had been selected to participate.

This meant that the dismayed Shahla was forced to do an evening of dull research to back up her story. She determined who within the organization chose the participants, went into their files—which had fortunately been backed up online in a google drive account she accessed by hacking into their email—added herself to the list of invitees, and sent herself an email welcoming herself to the convention.

On top of losing over an hour to this project, she had to suffer the sting of not having been invited in the first place. Small indignities such as this were the downside to keeping a low profile on the computer science scene.

Shahla’s whole family drove out, which at least had the benefit of appeasing Ayla. Her parents permitted her to bring one friend, and so Maggie came along and plans were made to sneak away from the hotel for the Saturday night show on the edge of the city.

This plan was also foiled when Shahla's mother bragged to certain high-ranking people sitting on a panel about the future of AI, resulting in Shahla being asked to give a Saturday evening presentation on a project from the year before. (She'd disassembled and rebuilt her teacher's computer overnight and returned it to him the next morning with the ability to predict exactly which websites he was going to go to and at what time, and open the pages automatically only seconds before he thought of going there. He'd reported a 92 percent success rate. She'd thought this project was actually pretty basic, so she'd also reassembled the body of the computer in the shape of his favourite animal, an English bulldog. This was a teacher she held in particularly high regard.)

So, on the night of the show, the three Bukowskiphiles found themselves partaking in rice crisps and non-alcoholic punch in a brightly lit conference hall surrounded by nerds. Maggie was not impressed.

"Ugh, I'm sorry," said Shahla for the tenth or fifteenth time. She'd just finished her presentation, followed by a question period, followed by some obligatory schmoozing with university-type characters. She'd stood miserably rooted between her parents, her mother firmly gripping her shoulder to keep her from slipping away.

She slumped in front of her napkinful of snacks feeling utterly beaten.

“It’s not your fault,” said Maggie. She unselfconsciously produced a miniature flask from her shoulder bag and tipped a golden substance into her Styrofoam punch cup. She offered the vial to Shahla, who shook her head.

“I’m bored,” said Ayla.

“Why don’t you do your, colour on your thing, your book,” Shahla muttered to her.

Ayla unzipped her backpack and brought out her Bukowskiphile Bukowski File—a pink duo-tang full of BBBFB notes and pictures.

“I’ve brought you to the most boring event in the most boring city in the country,” Shahla whimpered to Maggie. “I’m a monster.”

“I thought so at first,” said Maggie distractedly, casting a twinkling half-smile over her shoulder at a boy in a sweater-vest who’d been staring into his laptop at the next table. He blushed.

“We should be hanging out with our favourite band, meeting and flirting with talented artists whose works have gotten top reviews around the country!”

“Relax. They’re probably insufferable. Besides, you dilute your fan-girl worth by spreading it out among too many artistes.”

Shahla sighed. “I’m choosing where we have lunch tomorrow—my parents owe me that. So, we can at least check out the pub where they played and see the stage and interview the staff.”

“You’re a stalker after my own heart,” Maggie smiled. She turned back to the other table and beckoned the boy with one finger. He looked behind him, then pointed to himself questioningly. Maggie nodded. Shahla rolled her eyes. The boy picked up his laptop and joined them. A moment later, so did his mother.

Despite a slight initial language barrier, Maggie had soon engaged them both in conversation about topics she knew nothing about. The boy was studying programming; his mother was the CEO of a small but successful app company.

Shahla slumped in her chair, letting exhaustion overtake her. She watched Ayla doodle in the border around a smiling photo of Jaymie she’d pasted in the centre of a page of pink construction paper.

“I know him!” said the sweater-vest boy’s mother suddenly. She was pointing at Ayla’s book.

“You know Jaymie?” asked Maggie dubiously. Shahla knew Maggie preferred to think the bands she liked were obscure enough that nerd moms wouldn’t be familiar with them.

“Yes, I gave directions! Looking for famous artists’ house. Very nice boy,” the woman said.

Shahla and Maggie exchanged a look.

“He was by himself?” Maggie asked.

“Oh yes, all alone, getting chilly,” the woman said cheerfully. “Scared and lost,” she added.

“That doesn’t sound like Jaymie,” said Shahla.

“That’s the house we were hoping to visit,” said Maggie. “Can you tell us about it?”

Ayla took out a finer-tipped marker and turned to a clean page.

“Of course!” said the woman. “All you want to know.”

***

Aaron threw open the door of the room.

"Rex, get off of that poor boy," he said. "We’re having a band meeting."

Reacting on instinct, Rex cast him their best teenaged glare—a soul-shattering cocktail of disgust and indifference that would have sent most parents to therapy—before remembering they'd just been worrying that he was locked up somewhere, and they were supposed to be thinking of a way to escape. Fortunately, Aaron was not a parent; he returned a mocking squint and ushered Rex out of the room, unfazed.

“Ever heard of knocking?” muttered Rex.

“How do you know when a drummer is knocking?” said Aaron.

“The knocking keeps speeding—”

“We don’t knock. Who is that fucker, anyway? I don’t like the look of him.”

“That’s not how that joke goes,” said Rex, but Aaron was already gearing up for the speech he’d been practicing in his head. He faced Rex and placed his hands on their shoulders.

“Rex, look, I know you want to be in an arts collective,” he began.

“It’s ok, I—”

“But I promise you there will be other opportunities.”

“Yeah, I think we should—”

“With people who don’t have a weird hero-worship fetish for Jaymie—”

“We need to get out of here,” said Rex. They told him about their strange conversation with Ronan. “They’re making something. If not art, then… something.”

Aaron thought of the woman who’d told him about the collective’s “fame”, and his uneasiness deepened.

Jaymie and Jo were waiting for them in the van, Jo reclining under a blanket in the front seat with her eyes closed and hands behind her head, Jaymie jotting feverishly in a note pad. The meeting had convened.

“Jaymie, I think these people aren’t as talentless as they’re letting on,” Aaron began.

“We need to plan a visual art workshop,” said Jaymie, distracted. “I promised them one tomorrow morning. Do you still do those fun little doodles?”

"Listen. I met someone when I was trying to find my way back here." He related the woman's fractured description of the house. Jaymie looked thoughtful for a moment, before going back to his notes. He'd always been able to speak lucidly while reading or writing something completely different from what he was talking about. It drove Aaron crazy.

“Aar, you know that cliché that happens in movies, where the girl is like, ‘Oh, I can’t sing at all, I’m sure I’d be just terrible,’ and she refuses to sing, and then finally someone catches her singing somewhere all by herself, like in the shower or backstage when she thinks everyone else has gone home, and it turns out she’s amazing and she has the voice of Jennifer Hudson or someone like that and she learns to have self-confidence…” He crossed something out and chewed the end of his pen.

“Sure, I—”

“Not so much confidence that she gets annoying, mind you—and she gets famous and she falls in love with the guy who was spying on her when she was singing all by herself because he always had faith in her?”

“I’m following.”

“These people are not that girl.”

Aaron sighed. “Ok Bukowski, so you’re the only real genius here. But there still has to be more of an explanation for all of this.”

“They’re completely talentless, Aaron. I hate to say it. They have even less talent than if you just took a random group of twenty-five strangers and averaged out the talent amongst them. Like, I don’t think they’ve even tried. Ever.”

“I know how horrifying that must seem to you,” said Aaron. Jaymie continued to scribble, and he lost patience. “Jay, if you don’t start listening to me, I’m going to tell Miranda and her friends our birthday is really January 15th. See if they still adore you when they know you were born seven weeks before Buk died.”

“You’d never,” said Jaymie without bothering to look up. “The whole success of this band rests on suppressing those seven weeks.”

“I’ll show them my driver’s license,” Aaron snapped.

“I’ll tell them you were born premature and that’s why you’re littler than me.”

“I’m not—you’re not even half an inch taller!” said Aaron furiously. “And that’s not even possible! You can’t have one—”

“Aar, these people believe I’ve spent my entire life possessed by the ghost of a dead writer. I think they can accept one premature twin.”

“Shut the fuck up for one fucking second Jaymie, I’m telling you, we’ve got to get the fuck out of here before some weird shit starts to go down.”

“Ah. There it is.” Jaymie put down his pen and paper and looked at him, disappointed and clearly unsurprised.

“I’m not having a paranoid freak-out!” Aaron insisted, feeling his face redden.

“No, it’s true,” Rex broke in. “They need us for something. Ronan says they’re not going to let us leave. They want us to be part of some kind of… ritual.” Their voice caught in their throat. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

Aaron forced himself to swallow his anger. He reached to squeeze their shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” said Jaymie, finally paying attention. He knitted his brow in consternation.

"Yeah, so, I went to smoke a J behind the house and about six of them converged on me," said Jo from her hangover throne. "That guy Steve stopped me, thought I was trying to leave. They were fine as soon as I explained what I was doing. Actually, they offered me some they grew themselves. It was really good. My point is, they're watching us. And there's a hell of a lot of them, aren't there?" The calm way in which Jo related this incident suggested she was still benefiting from the effects of the cult members' gift. "Also, the van's dead."

The four sat in silence. A minute passed, then two.

“So… they’ve had some career success,” said Jaymie finally. “This we know. How much, we’re not sure. Because we cannot, at the moment, google it.”

“Because all of our phones have been stolen,” said Aaron. “Correct?” He looked around as they all nodded.

“So, what do they need us for?” asked Jo.

“Well, obviously they’ve got writer’s block, or whatever, right now,” said Rex. “Or they wouldn’t be complaining about not having skills.”

“Unless they’re pretending,” said Jo. “For reasons unknown.”

“Maybe they’re going to keep us locked in the basement as art slaves,” said Aaron gloomily. “And sell everything we come up with and get famous.”

“Our music doesn’t make us famous,” Jaymie pointed out. “It doesn’t even make us any money. And it’s not like they could go out and perform it.”

“I think that…” Rex hesitated. “I think they genuinely just need a leader. They’re that type of people. And their old one seems to have mysteriously disappeared. After this ritual.”

“What about Miranda?” asked Aaron.

“She’s not a leader, she’s an administrator,” said Jaymie. “Doesn’t have an original idea in her.”

“Fuck it,” said Jo. “I’m going to go hassle her. Even if I don’t get answers, it’s something to do.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Aaron. “Strength in numbers. And in, you know, strength.” He gestured vaguely toward her bicep.

“Ok,” said Jaymie. Then he seemed to regain his pep. “Look, they brought us here to provide them some education. Which we haven’t done so far. So, let’s begin by doing what we said we’d do, and maybe when they’re satisfied and we’ve hammered home the ‘10,000 hours’ idea, they’ll let us go. That’s my plan.”

“But if one of us gets an opportunity, let’s run for it and call the cops,” said Aaron.

“Just to be safe,” Jaymie agreed. He winked brightly at Rex, who still looked disconsolate.

With that, the meeting concluded. The band exited their broken vehicle and gave awkward waves and smiles to the ten or twelve people casually watching them, pretending to rake leaves or trim dying tree branches or share a cigarette in the front yard.

***

There are a few things worth knowing about the “arts collective” that Jaymie was now guiding.

First, the group had not twenty-five members, as the Bukowskis had approximated, but at least forty and possibly more, all of them, apparently, still living at the house. Secondly, they were not hopeless at the fine arts—not by a long shot. Not only had they created decent art, they had won four notable awards, received recognition in various literary and arts journals, and earned significant sums in payment for paintings sold, novels published, and a small business creating purses out of recycled Dasani bottles which had been bought by a larger company. One of them had designed a jewel encrusted badger skeleton that must have cost a fortune to create. It had sold to a major gallery.

All of this was discovered by Aaron and Jo the following evening, while Jaymie gave a workshop on stage presence and Rex facilitated a circle in which people could share and give notes on each other’s writing. The day had passed in a flurry of activity and had, despite their lack of freedom, not been entirely unenjoyable. Most of the residents of the home were friendly people and enthusiastic students. Rex couldn’t help enjoying Ronan’s company in spite of everything, and Juniper was so helpful and lovely toward them that none of them could be angry with her for being complicit in their captivity.

The only sour notes were when Jaymie and Rex tried to test the boundaries of their confinement on the pretense of going on a cigarette errand and a jog, respectively, and were immediately and forcibly escorted back to the house by seven or eight apologetic residents. It seemed Jaymie's status as their chieftain did not exempt him from the rules.

Jo hadn't yet had opportunity to interrogate Miranda, but she and Aaron did, on that second day, come across an old bathroom on the top floor with a sign on the door reading "out of order do not enter." It was the "do not enter" part that caught their attention.

The bathroom turned out to be filled with files, photographs, articles, and paperwork. Manilla folders were stacked in the bathtub, piles of magazines teetered on the toilet seat and under the sink, books and photos were heaped on the floor beneath the chipped and stained white paint of the bathroom walls. Perched on the sink, a small gold trophy depicting a musical note was barely reflected in the grimy mirror.

The two bandmates sifted through the stacks of material, reading adulatory literary reviews about a book of railroad-themed poetry, perusing pictures in a magazine from an awarding-winning photography show depicting rural Saskatchewan, and so on. Less interesting but more informative were the copies of contracts, sales records and, almost too conveniently, a complete list of everyone in the collective as of August 2019.

This information also helped solve the mystery of how twenty-odd people lived comfortably without seeming to ever leave for work.

They sat in stunned silence for a few minutes, taking it all in. "Very prolific," Aaron's guide had told him. No element of her assessment had been lost in translation.

“So where are the other twenty members?” asked Jo. “Did they just leave all the sudden last month?”

“Maybe they live off-campus,” suggested Aaron, not really believing it.

“Sure, it seems like this crew welcomes frequent comings-and-goings.” Jo shot him a sarcastic glance.

"Rex said that Ronan mentioned their old leader, Sheena. She did this ritual, and then they needed a new leader. So, they're either allowed to leave after they do it, or..." He left the thought unfinished.

“Great. Well, at least the mystery of the great ritual will be cleared up next weekend. When I’ve been fired from my job and all my plants have died of thirst…” She must have realized she was in danger of upsetting him because she stopped herself and began cleaning up the documents they’d spread around the bathroom floor.

"They're never going to let us leave, are they?" said Aaron, after a brief, quiet panic attack that Jo politely pretended not to notice.

"No, I doubt it," said Jo. "We're probably going to die here." She looked around. "Just like the other twenty members."

"We don’t know they died… I guess there's no point trying to escape right now, while they’re all awake. What should we do?"

"Go back downstairs and drink?" Jo suggested.

Aaron sighed and wiped some of the nervous sweat off his face with a piece of toilet paper. "The thing about people who panic a lot," he said tentatively, trying to remember the way his cognitive behavioural therapist had phrased it. "Is that it's a sign you have a lot of...hope... about things..." It sounded tacky when he said it. "Otherwise you'd just give up and not care about anything."

"I admire that you care about things a lot," said Jo glumly.

"It's probably also some kind of hormonal imbalance," he admitted. "But still."

"I could really use a toke right now," said Jo.

"Are you listening to me at all?" asked Aaron. "Christ, it's like hanging out with Jaymie."

Jo looked at him in surprise. She suddenly thought of the conversation they'd had in the library, and she felt a stab of guilt. She'd made out touring to be a delightful adventure that Jaymie would guide them through like the unfailing and indefatigable captain he was, and instead they were imprisoned by a bunch of creeps. It was so easy to put complete faith in Jaymie's confidence and capability. She realized she may have overestimated him.

On the other hand, it had only been a couple of days, and they still hadn’t made any serious escape attempts. Jo wasn’t sure if it was curiosity or politeness or the joy Jaymie was obviously getting out of being able to help and influence people that was keeping them from total panic.

She shook her head clear and got to her feet. "We won't speak a word of this to any of these…artists," she said. "You help Jaymie give his classes like nothing is wrong, and I'll wander around like a dumb stoner and figure out their intentions with us.”

Aaron nodded in relief and picked up the list of members. He folded it twice and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then they headed back downstairs, calmly greeting a woman who was lurking in the stairway under the pretense of heading up to use the bathroom she'd forgotten was out of order.