Chapter Three: Syncopated

I was too excited to sleep, and it was hard for me to blame me. Other than for the fact that I’m me, I couldn’t blame myself for my level of hype because I’d just seen magic in person for the first time, and it wasn’t some David Copperfield, Chris Angel type crap: it was true blue magic with its own little quirks and perks. There was nothing I wanted to do more than dive right into the world of music all over again, but Bryce hadn’t told me anything about… Well, anything. Him being him, I knew that he’d want to keep me in the dark for as long as he could so he’d have a reason to screw with me. Even if it was just for fun, I took my interests too seriously to learn under Bryce in any capacity, so I took to the next best thing:

The group chat.

Beyond the normal tract of a young males reach lies the group chat where all information is sourced and stored. Within the group chat I learned that Bryce wasn’t the only one into Vaux Faker, and through a little a digging I found out that Jeanie, aka Jeanette Jill Jameson, was into VF as well. She just so happened to be in my study group, so I knew she had a focus on academics and would be the best source of knowledge, but when I contacted her about learning more, she sent me a message that ultimately equivocated to, ‘Nah man.’. With that little lead down and dead since I don’t like pushing people to do things, I surveyed my options and resolved to listen to more VF songs to see what would happen. The result was that I could actually listen to the music, it just sounded different than before. Where the bass had once been thrumming and heavy, it was now a little lighter and less oppressive. There weren’t as many harsh changes in the vocals or pitch, nor were the guitar chorus’ terribly bad either. The more I listened to VF, the less I hated it and found that I just generally felt better during some songs and stronger during others. There weren’t any hallucinations or other impairments to comment on, so it was a pleasant experience altogether.

After a few hours of sleep, I was woken up by Marissa shaking me awake with a smile on her face, breath smelling of maple and cinnamon. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”

My eloquent response was somewhere along the lines of “Ugh.”

“Sounds about right. Come on, La-La, Logan made tons this morning.”

“Doesn’t Drexley need you or something?”

“Nope, no classes for today, just like you~” She tried to tickle me under my chin.

I mussed up her hair because she was messing with me, making her leave me alone to fix it. “Give me like, five to actually wake up and I’ll be down.”

“Ruin my hair, why don’t you.” she grumbled irritably.

“Shush. You know you love me.”

“You’re lucky it’s a weekday, otherwise your ass would be stitched closed!”

“I have jokes about that, but I doubt you want to hear them.”

“Asshole!”

“Vaginal mucus.”

Marissa scrunched her face up. “Why’d you have to take it there?”

“Assholes have poop. Vaginal mucus is cleaner than poop.”

“Shut up before I have Shelly spank you.”

I sat up and stretched, not worried about her idle threat. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, grab me a cup of coffee, will you please?”

“You’re lucky I like you Ladron, otherwise you’d be stuck getting your own coffee.”

“I’ll give you a kiss for some peace and quiet while we’re saying things.”

“Speaking of kisses, how are you doing without Kara?”

I raised a brow and folded my legs, rubbing some excess blurry out of my eyes before grabbing my glasses. “Shit, I’m barely noticing she’s gone to be honest with you. It’s nice to not have to worry about someone or that kind of shit.”

“It’s nice to have someone to cuddle. I was thinking about asking Shelly if she wants to make it official, but I don’t know if she’d go for it.”

“I was thinking about asking Shelly out, but I don’t really want to be in another relationship right now.”

“Then why don’t we both ask her out and I’ll keep her busy?”

I chuckled at that, knowing that Marissa was being all too serious. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to watch.”

“Do you really just not want to?”:

“It’s not that, it’s more like I don’t want to beat my meat in front of you.”

“If it makes you feel any less awkward, I’d think it’s hot.”

“It really doesn’t, but thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now hurry up and come get breakfast!”

“Keep your hands off my ass.”

“But you have such a nice ass for a guy! It’s a bubble butt!”

“Do squats like me and you’ll have glutes like me, honey. Seriously though, let me get some breathing room and I’ll see you in a sec.”

“Mwah, La-La!”

“Bye Felicia.”

Marissa threw one of my records at me while it was still in the case, which I was both annoyed by and thankful for. I was annoyed because it probably messed up my case, but thankful because the case had nothing to do with how the music sounded. Quite a few pieces of the collection I’d brought with me were irreparably damaged when I’d first bought them anyway, but my Adios Ghost vinyl had done nothing to that wretched woman, nor had my buttocks. I say the latter because because Marissa had the odd habit of treating my rear like it had bad-mouthed her mother, which makes me think of a different kind of shit-talking. That aside, I got my lazy ass out of bed and downstairs for a mouthful of om-noms, but that reward came at the cost of getting my ass smacked by Marissa. Getting bitched at by BB for being late to Logan’s mid-week bruncheon was worth it for the food, and watching Ruddy’s new squeeze walk around in one of the big bastard’s shirts wasn’t half bad. I’m wasn’t usually one for blondes, but she had a certain bounce to her that I couldn’t put my finger on. A certain perk to her that I couldn’t quite place.

Actually she just had a really nice ass, and it was constantly flashing as she walked.

After breakfast, everyone other than me pretty much scattered to go do their daily do’s, so I did what I wanted to do and made another pot of coffee, four more toaster waffles, and got my headphones on for a day of serious gaming. It was definitely a sandbox-y kind of day, and I was definitely in the mood for a little free-roaming, my wanderlust being sated by a little digital screwing around. There were plenty of things to choose from, so I never stuck to anything beyond a few missions here and there, just because I like to work on multiple projects at once. Even with my music, everyone in The House knew about the secret project, which I gained inspiration for from a little game called Borderlands 2, which I was on my billionth playthrough of. The D&D level gave me another idea for some interesting sounds, so I incorporated them into my mix and did a little more… Mixing. Yes. Blending, but with an M.

Anyway, it was well into the afternoon before I decided to shower, shave, and grab another something or other to cram into my intake orifice. It ended up being a grilled cheese and some chips which is always healthy, I hear. Shelly caught me butter-fingered during my escape to my room, the expression painted on her face giving me reason to pause, my jaws freezing in motion. She strode toward me, her short, silver and violet hair looking like she’d just been through the worst windstorm of the year. Before she could either yell at me or try to hurt my precious, precious emotionables, I plucked one of the leaves that had gotten stuck to her head out of her hair and pursed my lips.

Shelly blushed and ran her hands through her locks to check for more foliage, finding a couple stragglers. Her face flushed further and I gave her a moment to gather her words, but she evidently wanted me to talk first. “... So… You wanna get a coffee at Wake n’ Shake?”

She crossed her arms and scrunched her nose up. “I hate coffee.”

“We have some really good tea too.”

Her irritated, pouty expression wasn’t something I’d call ‘cute’, but it was still kind of attractive. Along with the array of colorful and occasionally dangerous bracelets, bomber jacket, and knife-pleated skirt, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kiss her or laugh at her, which I assume is good when looking for a romantic partner. It was also a plus that she was super cool and pretty much the only person I’d ever tell my sexploits to, but then again, taking her on as my girlfriend and potential wife meant that I couldn’t talk to her about sex anymore, which would suck. There were other people that would probably listen and tell their own stories, but no one would ever match up to Shelly and her vibe, which made me a little sad. Much sadder than breaking up with Kara overall, though not sad enough to cry. I wasn’t a bitch, nor was I that reactive, so weighing my options was more objective than it could have been. I could either chance a relationship with the very face of crazy as I knew it, or I could spurn her and potentially lose her as a friend. There was always the option that I was overthinking things and being super melodramatic, which was likely.

In any case, I still needed an answer from Shelly, and she was taking her time in giving it. As many of my elders have told me in life, the key to dealing with women is patience and understanding. For example, if you don’t understand, be patient, and if you can’t be patient, try to understand. As I was trying to be patient, Shelly said, “Look, Ladron, I get that boys will be boys, but you’re different, aren’t you?”

I looked to the left and to the right. “... I’m like, one of the only guys I know that doesn’t like beer, fast cars, or sex.”

“But you still found Kara attractive in some way, right?”

I couldn’t help but furrow my brow at that. “Kara had a nice body, squishy in all the right places. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“... Do you even think I’m cute? I mean…” I almost cut her off, but I felt like it was time to be patient. “... I just don’t get you, dude. Here I am, never had a problem getting a guy for at least a couple months and you just friendzone me from day one. There you are, annoying, snorty-oink-oink girlfriend attached to the chillest guy, and everyone’s telling you that she’s screwing around on you but you don’t even listen! Like, what’s your deal!?”

“... I do things that are bad for me?” I shrugged and shook my head. “I dunno, maybe you should convince me to smoke meth so I’ll marry you.”

“Pff- No! I’m not laughing at that!”

“You’ll laugh at my dick, I promise you,” I replied forlornly.

“Will you get serious for like, two seconds? I’m trying to talk to you here!”

“Let me level with you, Shells. If I wasn’t dating Kara by the time I actually talked to you, you would’ve been an option. At the moment, I’m not trying to rebound right into another relationship that might ruin my favorite friendship, but I’m open to the idea of a thing between us.”

She inhaled and exhaled like she’d surfaced from a deep sea dive. “... Do you even want a girlfriend?”

“No, I want you.”

Shelly smiled at that, little more than a curving of her lips. I knew it’d been the right thing to say, even if I’d just spoken the first thing that came to my mind. “Cheesy fucker.”

I held up my sandwich. “Irony.”

“Don’t tell me that’s a grilled cheese.”

“It’s not a panini.”

“Are grilled cheeses paninis?”

“Are they pressed?”

“Huh. Point Bubble-Butt.”

“You’re just jealous that my ass is nicer than yours,” I scoffed playfully.

Shelly puckered her lips, uncrossing and recrossing her arms. “That’s just not nice, dude.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure yours feels nicer.”

“Sure.” The flatness of her tone could have made a mesa considerably more level.

“... Want my grilled cheese?”

“What were you gonna do tonight?”

“Well, I-”

“And you’re already wrong, my guy! Tonight you and me are going to collaborate like you’ve been promising forever.”

I gave her a mild look. “You didn’t know if I was gonna say that or not.”

“Were you?”

“No, but I very easily could’ve,” I sniffed haughtily.

Shelly bag-tagged me for being snooty and started dragging me toward stairs by the wrist. “Come on, we’re wasting time!”

“Ow!”

“Get over it.”

I kicked one of her feet into the other and made her trip over herself, nearly taking both of us down in one move. She looked back at me, her smoky mascara and eyeliner making her glare seem that much more severe, the fullness of her lips a little more pronounced as she started the ‘Y’ of, “You little fuck! Next time, I’m kicking you in the dick!”

“If I had the upper body strength to lift a wet paper bag, I’d throw you over my shoulder and lock you in a closet.”

Now, by no stretch of the imagination was Shelly what I would call ‘fat’. Dummy thicc, yes, and she wore it well. Still, mentioning the fact that I was weak and implying that Shelly was stronger than me meant that she wrapped me up in a bearhug and tried to pick me up. She actually managed to do it and accidentally slammed my head into a wall while trying to carry me up some stairs. We laughed it off after she nearly dropped me on our way upstairs, but she almost dumped my ass on the landing because I was apparently too heavy to climb stairs with. Me being me, I had to prove that I could carry my new quasi-partner up the damn stairs, so I made myself look like a jackass and did it through willpower and carbo-loading. Once we were upstairs, however, Shelly put me in a headlock and dragged me around until I said ‘Auntie’ because she’s weird like that, but once my face wasn’t pressed against one of her boobs we got to making sweet, hot, passionate music.

With Shelly providing vocals to lyrics we came up together, I started in on getting a steady beat made with a few hiccups for flair and thus we had the bones of a song, having technically worked backwards. I debated on whether or not to let her know that I was the guy who’d produced her favorite EP of our senior year of high-school and decided that I would tell her when we were ready to post the song. After a few long hours of editing and a few more recordings and rerecordings, Bangtwig was made and Shelly was super hyped to hear the final mix, as was I. The last edit had been made half-blind, so I was ready to hear the rest of the song altogether, having taken over after Shelly did her part on the program. Overall the song turned out to be good, which I took to be something of note since I’d been on a sort of dry streak when it came to ‘good’ music. Adequate and passable songs were all well and fine, but something worthy of being called ‘good’ hadn’t been produced in a couple months, and I was glad to hear something satisfactory for once.

We both liked the song well enough, but Shelly was in love with it. “Holy crap, dude, you know who that sounds like?”

The song was still playing when she’d asked her question, so I raised a brow. “It either sounds like you or your twin sister, I’m guessing.”

“No, eggfart, it sounds just like freaking Zephyr! This could have come straight off of Wendigo Quotes!” The excitement on her face was heartwarming to say the least, but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if…

“Honestly your vocals are a lot cleaner than Molly Hart’s and Fool’s Bridge. They send me messy crap all the time and expect me to make something worth listening to.”

She snorted. “Yeah, like Molly Hart would send your ass anything, let alone a legit clip for a song.”

I whipped out my phone, unlocked it, opened Soundcloud, and went to my alt account. “Mmm… Not her directly, but her manager likes to branch out.”

Shelly rolled her eyes. “Next thing you’re gonna try and tell me is that you have Skylark on speedial.”

“Fuck that prick. Tried to claim a sixty-five cut on the bullshit-ass revenue from that collab. That’s why the Cocoa Steam EP only had part one and two of Nice to Eet U.” I passed Shelly my phone.

She glanced at it before doing a double take, giving it another look. After a little digging, Shelly gave me the most amazed look I’d ever seen on a person’s face. “... The fuck.”

“Language, deary.”

“Motherfu- Ladron! You gotta be shitting me right now!”

I popped my neck because it was stiff. “If you’re this loud during sex, we’re not having it.”

She opened her mouth to say something else before she stopped and looked at my laptop. “... I just did a collab with Zephyr. Zephyr just remixed my vocals. I wrote a song with Zephyr…”

“Yeah, and you’ll get half the revenue from iTunes and all that shit.”

“... Dude.”

I thought that she might pass out or faint, but all Michelle did was sit down and finger the piercing in her left ear. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was actually a little pentagon. “You alright?”

“Uh… Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine… Did… Did Kara know you’re… Well, that you’re Zephyr?”

“Kara likes Country.”

“Right. So… You’re lowkey famous…”

“Kinda. I’ve got Soundcloud hype, but I’ve still got a ways to go before I aim for a record deal.”

“You have at least three hundred thousand people ready to buy a CD from you at the drop of an album,” She said numbly.

“I have like, a hundred people ready to buy a CD. Everyone else pirates shit.”

“Ladron, how do you not see this as a big deal!?”

“... Because I live my everyday life as Ladron Gadai, not Zephyr. I don’t do gigs, don’t go to venues, make most of my money from Patreon and Bandcamp… I mean, I’d love to make music for a living, I’m just not sure if I want to do it with the scene as volatile as it is.”

“It’s not going to get any better any time soon. People don’t want someone who sticks around and just makes the same old boring music, and that’s not you. This year alone you’ve released like, two albums, and a crap ton of singles! Like, I see why you’re in your room all the time now. I really do.”

“It’s obviously not for my health,” I chuckled.

Shelly cracked a little smile. “No, it’s for your wealth. How much have you made from being famous so far?”

“First off, I’m not famous. Second, I’ve only made like, a part-time jobs worth of money out of it. Even then if I wanted to go pro, I’d have to figure all that crap out, which is kinda what I planned on doing my junior year to see if I wanted to actually do the DeadMau5 thing.”

“So… Let me get this straight.” She set both of her hands in front of her. “You want to make music, but you don’t want to get the main benefit from making music people listen to.”

“That’s… Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I just want to be heard, not seen.”

“You would be such a good villain for like, a comic book or something. Like the White Violin, but with a contrabassoon.”

“I’d say something racist, but it’s racist and I like Asian food too much to be racist.”

“You’re only half white, I wasn’t being racist.”

“That’s a little racist to say there, Kai Lan.”

“I’m Vietnamese and you fucking know that.”

“I don’t know Vietnamese. I don’t even know Chinese. Should’ve watched more ethnic children’s shows.”

“I feel like you’re distracting me from something.”

“The fact that it’s five in the morning and you have stuff to do soon?”

“... Shit.”

“Are we kissing goodbye yet, or…?”

Shelly shook her head and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Earn one and you’ll get one. That means I expect a dinner and a movie before these lips go anywhere.”

“Didn’t you kiss me like, less than a week ago?”

“That was before I was playing hard to get.” She said the words as if they were supposed to make sense to me, but I thought that it was firm Shelly logic.

“Alright. Any ideas on where you want to go?”

“... I want some jasmine tea.”

“Trip to Teavana?”

“More like a discount at Wake n Shake.”

“My kinda gal.” I gave her a big, cheesy grin and Shelly came in for a fast hug before ducking out of my room and downstairs to her own portion of the domicile.

Domicile. Odd word, but let’s not focus on that and instead focus on the fact that I’d forgotten to tell Shelly that I’d learned more about Vaux Faker. It seemed like it would’ve been impossible to miss during the hours we spent in each other’s company, but we’d somehow, someway, gone the entire night without talking about the magic within music. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I’d purposefully left it out of our conversation, a familiar feeling of anxiety over my fingertips. ItT was almost as if there were ants beneath my skin, crawling about in circles around my digits. Drumming my fingers against my leg assuaged the feeling easily enough, and getting in touch with Bryce made me feel less nervous. It took him awhile to reply, but when he did he told me that he was going to be going to his Mistress’ house after classes that Friday. The invitation to go along was appreciated, but the more I thought about life as I knew it past my homecoming, the more unsettled I’d become. Professor Dorset’s warning blared in my head all over again, but I didn’t have his class until after my shift at Wake n Shake.

My shift went by without complaint, though Phoebe did mention that I was going to have to pick up Wednesday of the next week to even my schedule out. The schedule had me starting my work week at Thursday and going through the weekend anyway, so starting a day early didn’t really bother me any. It was also extra money in my pocket, so I wasn’t complaining. Yes, I technically made enough from music to not have to work my way through college, but I honestly just liked working and doing things other than composing or learning from time to time. After my break from scholastic monotony and melodic harmonization, I dove right back into it head first and got to Dorset’s class before anyone even showed up. He was present and accounted for at his desk, looking somewhat like an old hawk that was comfortably perched with its beak in a book. Whether he was reading for enlightenment, enjoyment, or to look smart, I don’t know, but I do know that his book was in danger of falling out of his sleeping hands

I stepped forward and knocked on his desk a couple of time to get his attention, his eyes snapping open as he jolted awake with a dadsome grunt. Once he laid eyes on me, he shook his head. “I already know why you’re here, kid. If she’s got the seal on you, you’re on her team. Now or later you’ll see things her way and you’ll decide-”

“What.”

“... I just assumed again, didn’t I?”

“Yes sir, I believe you did,” I confirmed uneasily.

“Have you met the Head of Strings or Head of Percussions in person yet?” Dorset asked quietly.

“... Uh… No?”

“So you haven’t met the Dean?”

“Not since the student tour thing.”

“... Did you dig-”

“Music is magic, just gotta find the right song, right?”

“That’s such a dumb way to put it, but it’s accurate so I can’t fault you.”

“Sorry sir.” I said, trying to see reasons not to spit on his desk and ditch his lame-ass class for the day.

“No you’re not, and I don’t blame you.” Dorset rubbed his salt-n-peppered fuzz. Why he kept it so low, I couldn’t have told you. “No, no… It’s for the best this way. We’ll talk more after class, but for now I need to know who taught you how to hear the Synch.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Did you go through Hell, wake up as an animal, then meet Paul Bunyan?”

“More of a buff grandpa in a red pimp-suit,” I explained.

Dorset sighed pretty damn hard for a man with his diameter. I was a little surprised it didn’t sound like a reed whistle when he exhaled so heavily, but then his breath caught in his throat. “Wait…”

“Yeah, he wasn’t Santa. Guy was kinda jacked for having a snow cap.”

“You know, why don’t you skip class today and go… Well, I hate to encourage this, but go try some drugs or something, Ladron, because you probably won’t regret it that bad.”

I stared at my college professor, a teacher and leader at one of the foremost outstanding universities in the country, and wondered if he’d actually told me to do drugs. “.... Sir, did I hear you right?”

Dorset shook his head, not breaking eye contact the entire time. The juxtaposition of his still body and eyes against his swiveling head was intimidating as it felt like an automaton or a metronome was counting down the beats to my finale. “Green eyes, white hair, red suit, friendly smile. He has ruddy cheeks and big hands, big feet, and big teeth.”

“... Yeah?”

“What was your spirit animal?”

“Some kind of burrowing thing. I had an orangey snout. It was kinda cool.”

“... Most likely a fox then. I don’t know what mischief your Spirit might get you up to, but that Legend is going to get you killed. Make your peace with it, Ladron.”

I flipped him off. “Blah blah, ‘You’re gonna die!’, blah blah, ‘I told you so!’. What-”

“In fairness, I did tell you so.”

“Quit trying to feed me bullshit, Dorset, I know danger when I’m in it.”

“Do you now?” He asked blandly.

I had a funny feeling I was in it. “Something about this whole thing means I’m not on your side, doesn’t it?”

“Yup.” Professor Dorset blinked lazily and picked his ear with a finger to show dominance. Or to be a prick, whichever.

“Ah… So… Should I go do drugs now, or…?”

“Well…”

“I’m not leaving this classroom alive, am I?”

The smile on his face made me wonder why I even bothered to leave my coffee on my desk. “Why, Ladron, whatever would give you that impression?”

I turned to run, but my two steps only carried me far enough to make it hurt more when I fell to the deafening, horrific bass that blaring from Dorset’s desk. I could’ve sworn my eyes were vibrating, let alone my bones. The experience was nauseating to say the least, and it wasn’t long before my previously delicious breakfast became significantly, unmistakably less delicious. Blinded, deafened, and effectively paralyzed, there was nothing I could do to make my situation any better or to stop the aches in my body from spreading and intensifying. To make matters worse, Dorset probably threw a paperweight or two at me, which caused an inordinately blinding amount of pain. I assume they were paperweights since he had a few on his desk, but I didn’t know for sure because I was too busy doing the bone-deep electric boogaloo.

A few seconds or minutes into what one might call the world’s most intense seizure, Professor Dorset himself came over and said some things to me that I couldn’t make out, mostly because I was hearing plenty of things at the moment. My vision started fading after the first blow whatever it might’ve been, which was kind of lame. I expected to get kicked three or four times, then have a villainous monologue play out before someone I knew or didn’t know swooped in to save the day, but you know what they say about expectations and the ones you’re supposed to have of bad guys. Blacking out was nice because it meant that I was taking a nap, but waking up from getting knocked out is never fun. At least it wasn’t the last time I did it, and that was good enough for me to make a general assumption.

Outside of my secondary worries, like my aching sides and head, there were a couple of primary concerns that I had with my situation after I came to. Namely the fact that I was bound and tied to a desk that looked like it had come straight out of a high school movie from the eighties. My imagination took a backseat to a feeling of irritation, which was odd because it really felt like I was about to be tortured to death and people generally have a hard time accepting that. For some reason I just had a hard time believing that I was in any real danger until I looked to my left and saw a small folding table with many, many sharp things either stuck into it or laid across the top. Quite a few of the pointy bits had some dried ketchup on them, and when I looked at the floor around the chair, I saw that someone must have loved their ketchup a little more than your average Joe Blow. It didn’t take a genius to know that my personal ketchup was about to be tasted if I didn’t figure something out, so I did what seemed natural in a man-versus-man survival situation.

I kept my mouth shut.

In the movies, people always mess up by letting their captor know that they’re awake in the most obvious, loudest manner. While not being a movie buff, I figured that the poorly lit, finished basement I found myself in probably belonged to Dorset or whoever he was working for. I couldn’t see any cameras or anything from where I was sitting, and my wrists and legs were bound to the chair with zip ties, so I was feeling a little hopeful about my current circumstances. Wasting time seemed like a good way to get stabbed until I died to death, so I stopped doing that and started gnawing on the ties. If they’d been thicker I would have been a lot more worried about the possibility of getting out in time, but with that not being a factor I took my time as I needed and bit through the first one after a couple of minutes. The second went by faster, but that didn’t help me with my legs at all.

Luckily for me, my wrists are twigs and my ankles are still tree stumps from morbid childhood obesity, so Dorset had to use rope to tie my legs down. Untying my bonds couldn’t have felt any better at the moment, and it wasn’t because the left kot had been a little too tight. No, this bird was born to fly, and you can’t fly with the bonds of The Man holding you down, man! Whereas Dorset was the The Man, I was the guy with no compulsion to be even the slightest bit nice when it came to my escape. My captor had been unwise enough to leave quite a few people-pokers on the torture table for me to counter attack with, but just stabbing someone seemed like it was out of my wheelhouse. After all, I wasn’t really the stabbing type, having grown up in Strawberryville, so I did the next best thing as far as I was concerned and took one of my socks off. After filling it with nuts, bolts, and the occasional piece of scrap metal, I gave my makeshift flail a few test swings and saw that I would probably knock myself out just as fast as Dorset if I came across him.

Now that I had a weapon and half a plan, I started calling for help like I was confused and weakened, which I was. It was just that I was less confused and weak than I pretended to be, and when I heard the faint sound of laughter coming from above me, I had the funniest feeling that I’d just goofed. The mostly barren walls of the basement offered me little to no protection, and there was nowhere to hide other than under the staircase. I wondered how I was supposed to survive my current situation since I knew that Dorset would see that I’d freed myself soon enough, so I did the only things I knew I could do and grabbed a really sharp looking thing from the assorted coercion utensils before hiding under the aforementioned stairs.

Dorset stomped his way down one stair at a time, his gait indicative of the fact that he’d been waiting for me to wake up. The thought crossed my mind as he started coming closer, his footfalls echoing over my head as I prepared my own little surprise. Each time he stepped, I could practically feel my muscles tense up, my adrenaline surging. Every move he made was echoed in the beat of my heart, and when Professor Dorset’s right foot came down on the step in front of me, I struck, lashing out with the pokey-thing to start off. He collapsed under his own weight once I pulled the thing out and I wasted no time in exiting my hiding place, scrambling over the rickety railing, and swinging my flail into Dorset’s fearful arms as he tried to defend himself. The first gut-wrenching crack was accompanied by screams; one from Dorset full of pain and shock, and the other from me, carrying the tone of my desperation. The second blow was lighter than the first to me, but my former professor seemed to be equally worse for wear after it along with the second, third, fourth, and so on until my muscles locked up.

Both my sock and Dorset were unrecognizable, and that was pretty brutal to ‘wake up’ to. I realized that I’d ruined the pair of hemp socks my Aunt Frankie had gotten for me before I got to the murder portion of my plate, and I was honestly more upset about it for a little bit. Not long, but long enough to make me completely and totally doubt whether I would ever be okay after killing someone with my own two hands, being covered with their blood and bone and probably eye juice. I didn’t want to think about it that hard, but it was either that or trying to make my arm stop locking up which wasn’t happening any time soon. After like, three seconds of looking at the remains of Professor Dorset, I looked up and saw that the door to the stairs was closed. A piece of me wanted to immediately make a break for it, but something in me made me wrench the flail out of my right hand so I’d actually have a chance of using it for what I had in mind. After a trip to the stabbed stand, I returned to Dorset with two of his own tools. My right arm was still mostly useless from muscle tension, but my left arm was fine and dandy to put a spike through Dorset’s heart and head. Once I’d done that I felt like I was safe to leave for some reason, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Less thought was given to why I did it as to what it did and I stepped over Dorsets unmoving body toward non-ketchup stained silverware and bludgeoned people.

Honestly I don’t even know if it was ketchup in there… Could have been barbeque.