“Who’s ‘they?’ If such a thing is even true, so what?”
“Right behind ya.” The voice came from one of the interview crew, a lad of perhaps twenty with a black cord looped over his shoulder and a mop head of beach bum blond hair.
The bloke shoved a cardboard bookcase into an empty spot behind Brian and Jonnie, leaving a cloud of patchouli fragrance in his wake. He pulled items from a messenger bag and stuck a cheap vase and a neglected bonsai tree into one of the empty shelves.
Adding a romance paperback with a rip across the cover that tore Fabio’s body in half, the guy nodded in triumph. “Spruce up the joint a little bit.”
“It’s a spitting image of my living room.” Jonnie’s deadpan response startled a chuckle out of Brian. The rhythm guitarist winked, his usual cheekiness on point.
Brian treasured his closest band brother. A commitment to professionalism shone through in how Jonnie curated and maintained his image. Plus, the man had shared his mum’s secret curry recipe with Brian. All around good people, Jon was, someone who’d earned the gift of Brian’s tested trust.
The interviewer rejoined his colleagues in affixing cameras to tripods and fiddling with wireless microphones.
“As you were saying.” Brian matched Jonnie’s conspiratorial lean, coming close to laughing at his own furtive behavior.
“I went out on a few dates with a bird who said she’d escaped some weird cult. Long story short, around two weeks ago her cult sponsor, or recruiter, or whatever the fuck they call them drives her to a West Hollywood mansion for some kind of leveling up ritual. This person puts a hood or mask over her face and leads her into a room. When nobody’s looking, she peeks, right? Claims she saw your boy Joe standing in the middle of a pentagram chalked on the floor, chanting with a book in his hand. According to her, there was an A-list actress levitating in the pentagram with him. Someone you’ve definitely heard of.” After dropping his bombshell in a rapid whisper, Jonnie sucked in a loud breath. “A being floated in there, too. An inhuman creature.”
Air fled the room, leaving Brian’s lungs tight. A chill threaded up his spine. His rational mind grasped for purchase, though Jonnie’s piece of gossip came too close to Tilly’s account for logic to gain much traction. “What did Joe do with the actress and this inhuman thing?”
Jonnie’s olive complexion paled to the color of putty. He splayed a hand over his flat belly. “According to my date, Joe cut…he took out organs…removed parts of her to make space for this entity. The entity went inside her body cavity.”
A dark, empty feeling settled in Brian’s lower belly and seeped outward, leaving him with an upset stomach. Tilly had reported chanting and cutting, but minus Joe. Brian was the record label’s most dependable ATM machine and bankable cross-platform product, though, meaning hurting him didn’t align with Joe’s best interests.
He didn’t like or trust the man, but at the very least he wanted to believe that the two of them existed in some semblance of a symbiotic relationship where Joe got to enrich his brand by attaching himself to a top act, and Brian got nods of approval from the big shots over Joe’s head.
Plus, Jonnie’s piece of tabloid gossip made no sense. For all of his foibles, Joe wasn’t capable of murder.
When Brian’s rationalizations failed to soothe him, he asked, “Who was she?”
Jonnie named the woman. Brian’s jaw fell at the mention of the award-winner. The actress was alive and well, and if the ritual in question actually happened, no way would she survive it.
The dressing room’s four walls, cinderblocks painted a drab eggshell hue, advanced in a claustrophobic squeeze. Grimacing as he pictured this ghastly scene Jonnie had painted, he bit a knuckle and ran through his memory log. Jonnie’s date could have lied, but to what end?
“I said hello to the actress at a fashion show the other day, and we made small talk.”
“I don’t know, mate. I’m repeating what I heard. Take it for what it’s worth.”
Many questions remained. Chief among them in Brian’s mind: who the fuck was Helen Schrader?
His heart jumped in with answers.
Someone caring and tender and disengaged from the fake celebrity rat race, whom he could appreciate every second of getting to know.
Someone with a network of freckles dotting flawless skin he longed to kiss and touch.
Someone who inspired him to create again. Someone he could be his best self around—who saw his best self.
Or so he thought. He shut off his heart’s wishful thinking.
Jonnie returned to phone land. “I know that was outrageous and utterly bizarre. The source was a classic unreliable narrator, in any event. Dragged me to a Kabballah meeting after she told the whole weird story. I stopped seeing her when she tried to recruit me to join her latest multi-level marketing obsession.”
Brian managed a limp nod, sickening imagery still branded on his brain.
A purple-haired, heavily pierced girl of perhaps twenty dashed into the room. “Woot, woot. Who’s ready to get the old stallion ready for the auction block? Spoiler: me. Now sit back and let Miss Teagan work her totes awesome sorcery.”
She unfolded a wheeled table, slapped it, and unrolled a soft makeup palate the size of a computer keyboard. Using tweezers, Teagan attacked Brian’s brows.
“Nobody’s looking at my bloody eyebrows.” Brian rubbed his stinging forehead, but he couldn’t patch the holes burned into his stinging heart.
“Gotta keep those fangirls swooning for as long as possible. I’d say you got five years, but maybe ten. Technology’s magic these days. For example, this we can fix in post-production, since you refuse to get work done.” Smacking red lips, Teagan traced the line down his face, her fingernail scratching his cheek.
She returned to pruning and dusting and
