Chapter One: Trip Tracks

Driving sucks, and most people my age will probably say something similar if they got their license at eighteen like myself. I didn’t want to learn how to drive, but I did it because you can’t really go anywhere in Ohio without knowing how to vroom. I also did it because I couldn't get a girl without a car, though getting Lisa, my ‘01 Century, didn’t friggin’ help at all. Sure, she got me from A to B for thirty bucks an hour, but chick magnet she was not. Then again, my driving situation doesn’t matter at all. The only reason I even mention it is because the drive from Troy, Ohio to Philly is murderous without a Shotgun. Yeah, I had my ‘Troy to Philly’ playlist going the entire way, but even that just wasn’t sitting well with me, and that’s pretty unusual. Music does soothe the dorkly beast in my book, but for some reason the deeper I got into my playlist, the less I felt like listening to it, and the weirder my tastes started getting.

Me being me, I didn’t browse too much while driving since that crap can be pretty lethal, but when I hit the west border of my home-state, I took a few minutes to stretch my legs and surf Spotify, but Delta Sleep still hadn’t come out with anything new, Aesop Rock was getting to be a little mediocre, and I’ve heard everything Frank Sinatra’s ever put out two or three times. Shit was just old and I wasn’t really in the mood to let Pandora and its screwy algorithm mess with my music experience, so I dove into Soundcloud and checked out some stuff from the Curtis Group just to see if anyone had come up with anything over Fall Break. Surprise, surprise, no one other than Bryce and Maegan (It’s not Megan, trust me.) had posted anything, and I generally hesitate to listen to Maegan’s teenybopper, sad-sack, acoustic nonsense since it’s really not intended for twenty year-old dudes in college. There’s nothing wrong with the typical style she uses, I just lowkey don’t like Maegan, which would usually push me to listen to Bryce’s new tracks. If nothing else, they’d be interesting for a quick peek into the mind of the campus’ only open furry.

I didn’t even plug in to listen while I walked around the mostly empty rest-stop. It was pretty late into the afternoon with the sun already dipping below the horizon, which kinda creeped me out since I was alone in a place that looked like crystal meth was cooked nearby. Hell, for all I knew the derelict women’s restroom could have been the home of a lab, which really didn’t help the situation when I started thinking about it. It’s not that Bryce’s music was particularly unsettling for the most part, it was just his weird ‘Vaux Faker’ style songs that fucked with my head. The hearsay on the genre was that it’s based on frequencies beyond the human hearing range, at least as far as the ‘major’ artists went. I didn’t really know if it was true since I was one of the few people that heard pretty much any of the weird little messages in the songs brought to me, but there were supposedly fakes that everyone could hear. VF would probably take off if it wasn’t such depressing, creepy, drawn-out, and on occasion, depraved music. Seriously.

There was a lot of hesitation in my thumb while I dillied and sometimes dallied with the prospect of endangering my possibly/probably fragile mental health more than I usually tend to. I mean, yeah, reading up on horror, watching it, and seeing mutilation on the internet were all mind-warping in their own little ways, but there was just something sickeningly demented about true Vaux Faker songs, which is why the people who listen to the crap are usually considered insane by the people who actually know what it is. Granted it was pretty obscure in my freshman year, but Bryce, as eclectic as he ever was, had already been knee deep in the scene. Him being cool-but-weird meant that a couple of the less weird people started getting into it around campus, and then him being gay was basically a free pass into half the female population of the school. Me being friends with other people that were kinda weird but more weird than ‘less weird’ in comparison to Bryce’s weirdness eventually lead to him showing me a couple of his overall favorite songs. The Vaux Faker one, Shell of Soul, was just… Well, disturbing is a good word for it. When I’d first heard the song, I was a little into it since the bass had a driving force behind it, but then the absolutely chilling melancholy and bone-jarring dread set in. It was like I’d suddenly dropped into Srpski Film, completely aware of the fact that I was in said movie, and just happened to be one of the less lucky characters in the movie. Come to think of it, no one was lucky in that movie…

Moving on.

As I was saying, I had the heeby-jeebies like even I couldn’t believe, and Bryce was fine and dandy like he’d just gotten back from getting fro-yo, which he had. That was my initial encounter with the accursed collection of noises. My second and previously last run in was, oddly enough, near the tail end of Fall Break the year before. I couldn’t remember the song and probably wouldn’t have tried that hard, even if I wanted to. However, I still wanted to give the genre one last go since there technically wasn’t a type of music I didn’t or wouldn’t listen to, other than VF. I figured that Bryce’s unnecessarily friendly disposition and generally laid-back demeanor would mean that his music would be equally chill. About thirty or so seconds after hitting play on his song Real Ambrose, I was proven horribly, terribly wrong. The shrill, banshee like undertones and the crashing, syncopated beat just made my head hurt, and the lyrics…

I had to look up the posted lyrics because I wasn’t sure of what I’d heard, but the words had indeed been ‘Fracture! Shatter! Break! Mend! Rip the foetus in half! Eat the brain; Begin again!’, which was pretty much the mental image I was entreated to. That was enough to get me the hell out of dodge and back onto the road, wide awake and ready to get to my comfort philly cheesesteak in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I could have waited until I actually got to Philly to get my sandwich, but I was four hours into my drive and after the adrenaline died down I was starving. Breakfast was good and all, but a man’s gotta eat, and that being nearly five hours behind me meant that I was ready for an all-American snack. Meal. Whatever.

I didn’t drive deep into Pittsburgh since it was friggin’ dark when I got there and I didn’t want to get steeled to death. That meant that I headed towards the ‘burbs and some of the lesser known local joints that some of the Pennsylvania natives on campus had been to. Nelly’s was my favorite place to get salisbury steak, but I was in the mood for some provolone and chopped steak since there really wasn’t anywhere to get one in Ohio that I knew of. A decent one, I should say. There were plenty of places that offered philly-style sandwiches and even a couple pizza places with their own philly-style pizzas, but nothing beats a hot, greasy, cheesy sammy on a brisk autumn night. Especially after you spook yourself with Devil music.

I got my sandwich and ate it at the late-night diner, chilling pretty hardcore while trying not to doze off. The fries definitely helped with that, the subsequent dryness of my lips enough to aggravate me all the way back Philadelphia County. Thankfully for me, I’m too broke to live in the dorms on campus and too rich to live on the dorms off campus, which both lowkey suck. Being middle class gave me no real scholarship opportunities and no real financial aid, but the partial ride I got to Curtis was good enough to pay for tuition, books, and most of the equipment I didn’t already have, so I considered myself lucky. Still had to pick up a job when I turned sixteen to fund my dreams, still had a part-time job waiting for me when I got back to Philly, but the steps I took to further my goals usually seemed worth it to me.

By the time I got back to The House, everyone had either gotten back themselves and were already passed out in their rooms or were already up and at their own jobs. BB (Bartimaeus Bones) worked the grave-shift at a gas station I’d never been to, so I wasn’t surprised to see that his Civic was gone. Shelly Gaul’s Malibu was exactly where I’d seen it the first time I’d met my housemates, and it had been some time since anyone had asked her if she was going to move it, and Ruddy Rodney’s stupidly jacked-up F-150 had seemingly drove fresh tracks through the rut he had his bastard truck he’d been building for awhile. I wasn’t surprised to see that Marissa was over, and as I unpacked, I vaguely wondered whose room she was sleeping in on that particular night. It wasn’t really worth the iota of brainpower I devoted to it since I was the only one who wouldn’t sleep with her as far as The House goes. Yes, Shelly was bisexual, and yeah, it was totally hot, but no, I never took their invitations to watch seriously because I highly doubted that Kara would be half as okay with it as she said she was.

As my mind drifted to my melodramatic lover-lady, I unlocked the side door to the house so I could prop it open and unpack my car quietly. When I started getting my stuff inside, the only things I left behind were a couple of new knives that Dust had bought for me, including the ‘Dust’ painted karambit-balisong that depicted the map from COD: Modern Warfare 2. I probably shouldn’t have left it in my car in all honesty, but I had a few more to go along with it, and my Ohio mind wasn’t exactly used to Philly knife laws. That being said, Kara usually reminded me to leave my autos and spring-assists at home, but I still usually took a little pen knife or something with me to school so I could whittle on lunch if I needed inspiration for a song. I’m not a psycho, but I do have a small knife fetish.

Once I got everything back in my room, I crashed on my bed, thankful for the reasonable size of the room, granted where it was located. It was honestly bigger than the room my brother lent me for my stay at his house, and it was a little colder as well, perfect for literally and figuratively chilling. So much so that my Super Deep Chill playlist made its way into the moment, starting with the entirety of Bonobo’s Black Sands album. By the time it moved on to some of Emancipator’s work, I was ready to close and my eyes. I can’t say I was really annoyed when Logan, the House Dad-Guy-Person, came in just a few seconds after I’d gotten my eyes closed. Irritated was closer to the mark, but the guy was generally so hopped up on caffeine that it wasn’t worth saying anything off color to him, just in case he got into one of his old-people rambly moods.

When he peeked into my room with his manic little eyes, he gave me a grin in the low dawn light. “Hey there, champ, you just get back?”

I suppressed a yawn, politeness driving me to answer. “Yeah, about an hour ago. What’s up, Low-Lo?”

The stocky fellow let out a few of his odd little chuckles, more wheezy than laughy. “Ah, that nickname’s not going away until you graduate, is it?”

I cracked a smile. “Aww, c’mon, you know you love it, old man. Anyone pull anything stupid while I was away?”

“Nope, but we got a party comin’ Sunday, and you’re not invited until you let me hear that secret project of yours.”

“Bluffing is bullcrap and you know it, man!” I chuckled, not taking his threat seriously.

“I mean it this time, La-Loner, you can’t get away with staying cooped up in your room half the day and start prowling around at night. I’ll be up to niggle and nag at you now that I’m working second.”

“Ooh, that’s rough. Looks like I’ll be shifting my schedule around to avoid you a little longer.”

“Little bastard!”

“I’m bigger than you, gramps. Speaking of, who’s Kisser with tonight?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, but she ended up with Ruddy. Apparently his girl left him.”

“Weird, but not unexpected. I wonder if she’s passing anything around yet.”

“She says she just likes the vibe here, but you never know what she does in her own time.”

“True. Here’s to Marissa and her selectively promiscuous ways.”

“Here, here. I’m almost surprised she hasn’t come after my young, handsome self.”

I propped myself up to give Logan’s silhouette a more obvious once over. “If you had more hair and didn’t happen to be built like a fridge box…”

“Aww, now you can go right to Werther’s class if you want to say crap like that!”

“Wow, that’s a little rough, isn’t it?”

“What, Binary Theory not your thing?”

“Why are you even up right now? What time is it?”

“It’s a little after seven, I thought you knew the time?”

“No, I just knew I didn’t get home too long ago. Is there something you actually wanted, or just someone to talk to for a sec?”

“Won’t complain for some company,” Logan shrugged.

I smirked, though I doubted he could see it in the low light. “Grab me a cup of that old McNasty and we’ll talk.”

“Reminds me of the fact that the coffee’s actually been drinkable straight out of the pot while you’ve been gone.”

“Double Redeye or I must die,” I replied easily.

“Caff-fiend,” He snorted.

“I don’t hear coffee being poured.”

“Get up and make it yourself, kid. And don’t touch my booze!” He stepped out of the doorway, leaving it cracked.

“I don’t drink!” I called back, though it was still at conversation volume as to not wake anyone else up on the weekend.

It took me a few seconds to get up again, more than just a little weary from the drive. One small bathroom break saw me in the kitchen with a hand-pressed cup of mud, perfectly deadly and positively slightly disgusting. Don’t get me wrong, I like my coffee, it’s just that everyone always skimps unless I buy it, and when I do, I have to keep it in my car unless I want it all to be gone in a day. Good coffee is worth the extra effort, especially since the good stuff’s the only stuff worth drinking half the time. As far as I’m concerned, if you can get a gallon of it retail, then I wasn’t too concerned with its quality. I suppose you could say I was every bit as picky with my coffee as I was with my circle of friends.

After a couple hours of catching up with Logan, I took my happy ass to bed and slept well into the afternoon where I got a shower, shave, and a start to my day. Logan wasn’t lying when he said I spent most of my time cooped up in my room working on projects, but it was all for a good reason. I mean, I had a public Soundcloud that did well enough with some of the sideworks I put out. It was under my real name, so no one suspected a connection between myself and my very own alter ego, Zephyr. I usually posted school projects on my Soundcloud, or stuff that wasn’t good enough for my albums or EP’s. Ladron Gadai had five hundred followers for his collection of odds and ends, but Zephyr had a couple hundreds of thousands looking after their work, and I’d been up to my usual business over break in between nonsense and partying. Vexed, Hiccup, and Blast Off/Launch Date were all worthy to go on My Brother’s Keeper, the second EP I intended on putting out as Zephyr, but Criminy was too ‘Electronica’ for the predominantly Lo-Fi EP, so I posted it to my main page. Path to Penance was as close to complete as I felt like getting it, so I posted both the EP and the LP and stretched my style a little to see what the response would be. PTP was supposed to be more of a Chillstep kind of album, but I had fans of the genre from what I’d already posted, and at the very least I felt I was staying true to myself in my music. Countless douches loved to say that I’d sold out even without having a record contract or anything, but those few haters get drowned out by the fans who generally support the variety of stuff I put out, even if I stray from their personal tastes from time to time.

As I got to work, I laid out the foundation for a new song by creating a basic beat and wondered what my inspiration, my muse, would be for the song before it hit me; the dissonance between creating content for yourself and doing it because you have to. For the first half of the song, I tried to use gentler, more ambient sounds that blended together well, the harmonies and cadences doing pretty alright by my book. For the latter couple of minutes, I threw together some crap I really didn’t feel like mixing and it sounded digestible, but not quite right, which was where I wanted the song to sit on someone’s mind. It took me a good portion of the night to fine tune and blend the fair-use vocals into the right pitches so nothing would spike or valley too noticeably. I honestly considered naming the song Montana after Hannah Montana, but it seemed really, really stupid in the moment. Thus, I named the song what I thought about naming it because taking yourself too seriously is a crime against your childhood.

Once I got it made up, I thought about the possible genres it’d fit into. Nu Jazz, Lo-Fi, and Nu Lounge were all contenders, but I rarely gave my music actual labels. If people wanted to call it something or other then that was fine, though I really just don’t give a rat’s tail as long as it sounds right and plays right. The only thing was that when I played Montana back, I heard lyrics in the song that I hadn’t put there. They were quiet when I first heard them, and I couldn’t pick it up from playing over that part of the song. It had to be from the beginning, or I wouldn’t hear the telltale ‘ding’ that started the hidden verse. It was still hard to hear on my fourth listen, but I could kinda make out ‘Fear not the sound; Fear in the ground’, which made no sense in or out of context. The vocals in the song were semi-chopped, and listening to them alone didn’t have the same ‘ding’ as when they were combined with the melody. It was confusing, but I was still tired from my drive and a little ambivalent since I was sure that I was hearing things. I mean, I could only hear the words every so often, and they weren’t disturbing. The song itself was a little wacky outside of the hidden message, but nothing too weird. I almost added it to my ‘To Be Posted’ folder, but something made me wonder if that was the right choice. It wasn’t my best work and it wasn’t really something I’d replicate in the future, so it went to my ‘Reject’ folder instead.

Being a good student and all, I didn’t have any work to get caught up on, and being mostly introverted meant that I felt no obligation to see if anyone wanted to do anything. There were still a few texts to be sent out just to let people know I was alive and whatnot, but everybody who knew me was well aware of the fact that I was probably doing something with music if I wasn’t online. Hell, even Kara had a general idea of when I wanted to be left alone, and that was without her even having to contact me. I honestly had it pretty good in life, all things considered. Good, affordable coffee courtesy of Shelly’s job (And discount) at Earth Fare, a spacious, quiet room to make music, a great circle of dope friends, and a beautiful, loving girlfriend who would never cheat on me. Yeah, I was drinking in the ambient awesome that was in the air Saturday night up until Kara sent me a couple of pictures on Snapchat. A lesser man would have been upset at the sight of his girlfriend ‘performing’ for a group of frat guys, but not me. I just went with CPA (Contingency Plan A) and texted Shelly to fill her in and ask for a favor.

Shelly told me to go to her room since she wasn’t home at the moment, the time being around eleven fifteen in the evening. Still in some home-clothes, I chilled out on her bed until she got back, but I barely had time to say, “Hi.”

“So is Kara still sending you those snaps?” Shelly asked, getting down to brass tacks, true to form.

I checked my phone, the last several snaps still available. “Just got another video.”

“Have you screenshotted anything yet?”

I blinked. “Wouldn’t she know if I did?”

“Yes, which is why it’s good that you didn’t. Download a screen recorder,” She barked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I chuckled.

“Ooh, I kinda like that. Call me ma’am from now on.”

“Whatever, Shells. Why am I recording Kara being a hoebag?”

“Because you’re an old white soldier boy with no swag, and if you don’t record it, you have no gonads.”

“Keep stealing raps and we might have beef, ma’am.” I rolled my eyes, searching my app marketplace of choice for a decent recorder. Once I had it, Shelly did the deed so I could claim innocence, and she even sent Kara a smile to go along with the charade.

I was about to take my phone back when Shelly pulled a move I wasn’t expecting, grabbing me by the shoulder and bringing me in for a kiss with a bumpy, wet surprise inside. The flash on my camera went off, I tried to think about how I was feeling at the moment, and Shelly was sending the snap to Kara. She handed my phone back to me and I stared at it for all of two seconds before it got snatched out of my hands again, courtesy of Shelly and her ‘take charge’ personality. There was no point in asking what she was doing while she had her She-Devil face on, so I took a moment to see if Shelly’d done anything to her hair. It never stayed the same color long, and at the moment it was silvery at the roots, fading to a nice purple. Her long locks framed her face, the light of my phone screen reflecting off of the Coke-bottle glasses she wore, despite being able to see reasonably well without them.

There wasn’t enough time for me to ruminate on Shelly further since she thrust my phone back at me and asked, “So does this mean you’re open to that little offer?”

I blinked a couple times before I took it back, a little taken aback. “You mean… With Marissa?”

“Yeah, we both get off on being watched, but it has to be the right audience, you know?” Shelly said, giving me a shit-eating grin.

“If I say yes, you two are probably gonna try and molest my pickle.”

“It’s more like a gherkin, La-La.”

“And your chest has a couple of mosquito bites, but you insist on calling them ‘breasts’.”

“Oh my god, you fucking boob! I don’t call my tits ‘breasts’, and they’re big enough to catch an eye!”

“Where’d my tissues go again?”

“You prick! I just helped you and offered to show you a good time and this is how you repay me!?”

I gave her a cheesy grin. “I already have your next two essays written out.”

That made her crack a smile. “See? This why I’m serious when I ask if you want to watch, dude! Like, you are that guy though!”

“Watch it, Hot Teriyaki, I might take you up on it some time,” I lied.

“No you won’t,” Shelly deadpanned.

I rubbed my cheek. “Damn, I didn’t think you were actually for-realiously being seriously serious.”

“One thing you severely need to learn about the fairer, better sex is that we don’t take our kinks lightly.” She thumbed her nose and sniffed like she was telling me hard facts.

Honestly tempted to give her a look, I held back and just said, “You take your intercourse more seriously that your coursework.”

“Who even says intercourse!?” Shelly groaned.

“I might have a Y chromosome, but that doesn’t mean I’m immediately a horndog, Shells.”

“God, I swear you’re asexual.”

“I am.”

“... You know, that’s probably why Kara pulled this shit with you. Wouldn’t have done it like that, but a woman needs what she needs, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, did you already watch all the crap from Snapchat, or is it gone?”

“Screen recorder, duh. How do you get like, perfect grades again?”

“I’m nailing Dean Hotly,” I answered, using my most serious tone.

“Bullshit!” Shelly laughed. “You wouldn’t know what to do with Hartley’s hands, let alone anything else on that woman.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Why do you think you know my sex life?”

“Um, because I make you tell me about it and all Kara does in the group chat is bitch about your limp brat.”

I shrugged. “If I cared more about getting laid-”

“You care more about making music than you do getting laid,” She scoffed.

“And your point?”

“Dude! My guy! It’s college!”

“I know I sound like a dork beyond lameness in words, but I really couldn’t give a shit less about dipping my dick into some drunk chick’s sketchy nethers when I could be at home, making music that you don’t need an erection to enjoy.”

Shelly shook her head at me and I rolled my eyes. “Ladron, you have got to be like, the most boring guy I’ve ever met. Like, you have no star quality about you. Seriously, who turns down the alternative to the ‘I wanna watch’ joke!?”

As we looked at each other, she dropped her mock disbelief when she saw that I wasn’t phased. “I do. It’s nothing against you or Marissa. In fact, I’ll probably take you up on it now that Kara won’t have a justifiable reason to jump my rump about it. If anything then just to see what all the fuss is about.”

“Wow. Sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“You’re too old to be a girl.”

“Look here you lil’ shit,” She started, stopping because I was snickering at her already. “Alright, keep laughing! See how hard you’re laughing where the sores show up on your lip.”

That killed my buzz pretty quick. “Knowing Marissa, that’s not funny.”

“I’m telling her you said that!” Shelly gasped, slapping my arm.

I tilted my head. “Do you think she’d really care?”

“Uh, yeah! You know she polyamorous, not just some slut!”

“Sleeping with multiple people ups your chances for the clap and its pals. That’s just hard facts on brioche right there.”

“Okay, you know I’ve slept with like, twenty dudes.” I shrugged and she continued. “What? You think I’m a slut too?”

“From what I’ve seen, no. I haven’t seen or heard of you bringing multiple people over for sex, or taking a partner over somewhere else to get action. I haven’t walked in on you blowing Ruddy or BB while their girlfriends are in the living room. You don’t do slutty stuff to get called slutty, as far as I’m concerned.”

She nodded. “Damn straight, but you know slut-shaming-”

“Is morally wrong, something blah-blah, women empowered through sex but men are pigs because of it, whatever.”

A finger was pointed in my direction and then dropped. “You know, I never really thought about that last part. What’s up with that empowerment through sex thing?”

“... Why the frick my peepee hard?” I offered by way of response.

“No it’s not, your nose isn’t red.”

“... I’m not even going to ask. In fact, I’m gonna just-”

“When you have a woody, your nose gets red for some odd reason.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Michelle. I… I did not know that, nor did I know I needed to.”

“Oh, you didn’t, but you were talking about bullcrap and I figured I’d reply with your, what were they called? ‘Hard facts on brioche’?”

“Aww, you can’t use my own words against me!”

“Can, will, have, and done. Now you can either put on a striptease and let me get a video, or you can get lost, La-La. Favor completed and small-talk talked.”

“I mean, I was just going to skim over the kiss, but if you wanna bring it up-”

“I don’t like Kara and you’re a sweetheart most of the time. Like a piece of forbidden, limp fruit.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

I nodded, my cheeks flushing. “Right. I’m going to pick Option B and see you later.”

“Ta-ta, La-la!”

“Ew.” I gave her a quick hug for the little favor and went back to my own room, satisfied in, my steps to sweet, chilly revenge.

It took a moment to let the shock of being single wear off so I could be properly miserable about my angel being the centerfold. Not for the sake of dramatic irony or anything, but I played Centerfold by the J. Geils Band and it made me feel a little better. Not because of the irony. Definitely not. Okay, maybe a little, but I was honestly just surprised as I watched through the snaps Shelly had recorded in my stead. They were… Well, the first few videos were just eye opening, but there were a few included where she was performing… Services, that one generally doesn’t perform on two men at the same time. I’ve heard of vindictive people doing similar things, but on a much smaller scale and generally in passing about a distant relative or a friend of a friend. It’s different when it happens to you, and never had the feeling struck closer to home than during my third viewing.

I knew I was torturing myself, but it was like a tragic accident. I’d describe it as the same sickening feeling that drew me back to Vaux Faker during my drive, except there was no compulsion to hit the stop button. No fear or dread. Just an ache that could have hurt more in truth. Having never been one to dwell on the problems I know I can’t solve, it was an odd turn for me to keep watching Kara smile at the camera as guy after guy and the occasional girl drew and wrote on her. After the ninth time I watched everything, I got one last video from my recently denounced ex-girlfriend, and it was just as sickening as the entire event, if not more. I made sure to record it and send it back to her via text so she could see herself, and so that she would know that I had it forever. The flood of texts she sent me were full of anger and spite, but that made me happy. Being happy because someone else was upset made me sad until I reconsidered why Kara was mad. I didn't even have to spread the gif to mess with her, and there was always the fact that she’d sent them to me, thus making them my property.

Now, someone with less morals than me would have immediately posted the crap she sent me out of hurt and anger, but someone with patience would take the time to photoshop her face out of the pictures, blur her birthmarks, and then walk an hour to a rinky-dink pawnshop, buy a burner-phone in cash and post them from say, Mcdonald’s using their wifi. I can be a very patient person and a very diabolical one at that, so I carried out the footwork of my CPB (Contingency Plan B) over night, but held off on posting the pictures. I even left the burner in a plastic bag in a special little place I knew no one would look for it, and by Sunday proper Kara had stopped sending messages.

I hadn’t been able to sleep all night, so I just spent the time making music, playing with different sounds until I made something that resembled a song. I called it Somnus and released as a single under my ‘pen name’, but listening to the song after I posted it bore odd results. I blamed it on being sleep deprived at the time, but I could decently make out ‘Dark’s as fast as light; Whispers causing fright; Fists of fury fight; Blood is shed tonight’, and then some mumbling that was unintelligible. I sent Somnus and Montana over to Bryce since he and Bodie, another friend of mine, were the only two people other than myself that I knew that could hear real VF lyrics. I didn’t bother sending it to Bodie since I knew his Farmer John, ‘It’s a fiddle, not a violin’ self would be happily asleep. Bryce, however, was on Discord, so I sent him my stuff and he subsequently told me to listen to his three newest songs in order, back to back. One of them happened to be Real Ambrose and I straight up told him that his song gave me a panic attack or something like it. Another odd thing to add onto my return to Curtis was Bryce telling me to ‘Get over it, puss’, which is something he’s waaay too nice to say to someone. Ever.

I’ll admit to being goaded by the furry; can’t lie. I almost made the playlist then and there to prove I wasn’t a kitty or the other half of the genitalia equation, but I could imagine a few hundred things I’d rather do than listen to VF for fun, and that included licking Kara clean after her little party. After almost managing to change the subject, Bryce roped me back onto the topic at hand and asked whether or not I’d meant to include hidden messages in my songs, which I hadn’t. I told him as much, to which he replied with; ‘Listen to the songs and I’ll explain everything after break, fag.’, which was a floored gauntlet if I’d ever read one. It was nearly enough to make me do the thing without question since I can be a little fool-hardy when it comes to trash talk, but I just had to ask one last thing. When Bryce read my message, the typing indicator popped up and stayed steady for a minute or so before flashing off with no message attached to the action. The same thing happened a few times, my question still going unanswered. I’d only asked why/how I’d made VF songs by accident and when he finally replied, my own odd mongoose (Bryce’s Fursona) basically said, and I do paraphrase for politeness sake, ‘If you don’t know how you did it, then maybe you should stop making music.’, which was ludicrous from the very get go.

As far as I was aware, everyone that spent more than a few days around me knew that I loved music more than I loved most of my extended family and even my closest friends. My Mom once grounded me from music for a week in my freshman year of high school and it only lasted a legendarily short twenty-six hours because I couldn’t calm down without Doris Day or Beirut at that point in time. Bryce had heard the story and I knew he remembered because he’d teased me about it before on numerous occasions, which just made his message that much more confusing. Hell, Bryce Ulbrich was one of the nicest people I knew, only ever really getting aggressive when he was playing something competitive. The guy wouldn’t really hurt a fly and saying mean crap for the sake of saying it wasn’t really in his wheelhouse, so I figured he was trying to taunt me into doing dumb shit for a good reason.

I told him to fuck off for being rude and got some cake after the party downstairs had died down. I mean, who am I to let peer pressure decide what I do?