When I was a sophomore in college, the guy I'd been hooking up with had a collection of old DVDs in his Greenwich Village apartment, and one of them was Fight Club. I'd mentioned that I'd never seen it, and when I say this boy dropped everything (including me, literally) we were doing so that we could watch it, it was then I understood the definition of why it was considered a cult film.

I did like it, minus some of the overt nihilism that I was sure guys nowadays just quoted to seem intelligent. But my favorite part of it was when the narrator was talking about an article he read about people referring to their own body parts in the first person. I am Jack's raging bile duct. I am Jack's smirking revenge.

Well, I can finally relate Jack, because I am currently Sienna's bloody, bruised ego.

I hadn't touched my whiskey sour (no, me and my bruised ego would never be calling it a New York sour), desperate to keep my gaze away from Devon as he sauntered around the wooden raised platform stage on the outside patio of Sweet & Vicious, doing whatever it was lead singers of bands did before a show. He'd shed the hoodie he was wearing earlier, and I had to look away from the way his (yeah, you guessed it) fully tattooed arms as they flexed against the tight sleeves of his black t-shirt. It was a hazard to my eyesight, like staring at the sun too long.

Instead, I hyper-fixated on a drop of condensation that slithered down the side of my glass, blowing out a breath as I propped my chin into my hand, my elbow balanced on the wooden table.   

"I still can't believe you tried to take his drink," Lyanna snickered.

"I did not," I insisted, sitting up straight. "How in the hell would I have known he'd ordered the same exact drink I did. And by the way, why would you not tell me that the proper name for that drink was a New York sour?"

Lyanna sputtered out another laugh. "I'm sorry, how is that my responsibility?"

"Because that first time we went out to Stumble Inn last fall, you're the one who was like..." I paused and sat up straight, mimicking Lyanna's higher-octave pitch. "Oh, Sienna, you should add a splash of red wine to your whiskey sour, my brother drinks it like that and he said it's really good." I paused again and shot her a deadpanned look. "However, you neglected to tell me that the drink had an actual name. Apparently I've been ordering it like a tourist for the past 10 months."

"Oh." Lyanna flipped her braids over her shoulder in casual nonchalance. "Yeah, I guess I remember that."

I rolled my eyes at her. "Great, thanks for the validation."

"Oh shhh, they're going on." She tapped my forearm, trying to force me into returning my attention back to the stage. But I wasn't giving in quite yet.

"You're actually looking forward to this?" I asked her, my eyebrow arched in skepticism.

"I'm curious," she replied pointedly, then paused for a moment to carefully assess the next thing she was going to say. "And the drummer has...piqued my interest."

There it was. I rolled my eyes and nodded. "Sure, sure."

Said drummer (no longer a gangly spider) and the lead guitarist (no longer a manager at Hot Topic) exchanged a few words. The drummer sported a floppy, intentionally messy hairstyle, more reminiscent of the early 2010s boy band craze instead of the early 2000s MySpace goth scene.

Raf stood off to the side with his arms folded over that faded Ramones t-shirt of his, supervising like a dad watching his kid playing t-ball - he hovered to mitigate the possibility of whatever mistakes would be made, but he didn't want to upset the kid by getting too involved.

The kid in question took his place at the center of the stage behind the microphone stand, fiddling with its placement and generating a beat of screechy feedback. He winced and cleared his throat before speaking. "What's up, we're the Green Inferno, and uh...we're gonna play some loud music for you guys."

I'd been so annoyed with him earlier, I hadn't really listened to him. His speaking voice amplified through the microphone was exactly what I imagined the sound of a hot knife slicing through butter would be - thick and smooth and warm enough to melt you just a little bit. If I hadn't been exposed to what an ass he was first, I might have been. I am Sienna's inflamed sense of annoyance.

He was met with a smattering of applause and a few hollers. No culty gathering going on here, it seemed.

In those final few moments before they started, I realized I had no clue what to actually expect. But when he started singing, on his own with no music, nothing could have prepared me for what I heard. I am Sienna's unhinged jaw.

Fuck you, and you, and you
I hate your friends and they hate me too
I'm through, I'm through, I'm through
This that hot girl bummer anthem
Turn it up and throw a tantrum

When the music kicked in, I was reminded just how metal these guys actually were, replacing the original version of the song's hip-hop beats with heavy guitar riffs and drums.

Beside me, Lyanna was in shock too, but far more amused and entertained than I was. "Okay, that's freaking awesome, admit it."

In theory it might have been, if I hadn't felt so entrapped by the sound of his voice. It wasn't like he had a future on Broadway or anything - he was a little edgy and a little pitchy, but unexpectedly, unrelentingly captivating all the same. To keep myself from being totally spellbound, I had to remind myself that somehow, someway, this was the same guy who'd been doing all that screaming before. And the fact that he called me Polly Pocket.

"It's...interesting," I finally admitted.

I wasn't an avid concert-goer or watched many bands perform live, but even I could tell there was something off about his vibe. He kept his tattooed hands wrapped around the microphone, occasionally tapping a few of his fingers against it to the beat or moving one hand down to grip the stand for a bit. There was a lacklusterness to his energy, almost as if he didn't actually want to be there.

When the second chorus hit, somehow he found my eyes in the crowd. At first I wasn't sure if it was just one of those things performers did where they picked something to stare at to steady themselves. But they lingered on me, and I was close enough to see something terrible in them. Vindictive. Taunting. Smug.  

Fuck you, and you, and you, directly at me.

The girl playing bass joined in, and only then did he look away, walking over a few steps to press his shoulder against hers to share the microphone. It was the most he'd moved the whole song.

I knew the song well enough to know that there should have been another verse there, but instead, they let their drummer bang out a solo.

Lyanna nudged me in the side and mouthed, hot.

I shook my head at her with an amused smirk. While that was going on, Devon nodded his head to the beat, slowly swaying back and forth with the microphone stand like a drunken dance partner. He raked a sweaty chunk of hair off of his forehead in what felt like slow motion before he started to sing again. Hot in temperature perhaps, but decidedly infuriating in concept.

I tried to ground myself. It didn't matter what I thought. This band (whatever kind of band they were) was mine now, and I had to take care of them like I would any other client. My job quite literally depended on it.

⋆ ★

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

That was another quote I remembered from Fight Club, that I was also sure I'd seen in some guys' Hinge profiles (guys in Brooklyn, mostly). The longer I spent in Sweet & Vicious listening to the Green Inferno just doing angry covers of a bunch of semi-popular songs and nothing original, watching Devon sway around with his microphone stand and looking away every time his gaze wandered in my direction, the more that quote began to resonate with me. 

Lyanna dipped out when they were done, claiming she had to feed her cat Isis. Convenient.

"You know, I think I've figured it out," she'd said to me as she was getting ready to leave.

"Figured what out?" I asked, sucking down my second whiskey sour.

"Why there's something inexplicably familiar but interesting about his voice. He's like a siren, if a siren was a guy." She gestured to Devon, who was alternating between wrapping up cords and slugging down some unknown drink in a Yeti tumbler.

In a weird way, it made sense, and I scrunched my nose up at the thought.

"That doesn't seem like a good thing," I snorted.

She shrugged. "Not if you're a sailor, I guess. Which you are not."

"This is true." I raised my almost empty glass to her as she slung her Prada bag over her shoulder and blew me a kiss goodbye.

"Good luck." She smirked at me over her shoulder before leaving.

After collecting myself and grabbing a glass of water from the bar, I sought out Raf. I figured it was time to really know what I was getting myself into (professionally speaking, of course), and after all, why else would he have invited me here?

He gave me a warm smile as I approached the table he'd been sitting at - the one closest to the stage, obviously. It was after 9, and the bar had begun clearing out. They'd traded the Green Inferno playing covers for softer indie folk music playing faintly from the speakers in the corners of the patio.

"So, whatcha think?" He asked as I sat down across from him, his drawl even thicker in the late haze of the night. "Not what you were expecting, huh?"

That could have been the understatement of the century, but he did not need to know the specifics.

I returned his smile. "Well...no, I did not expect to hear a cover of a rap song."

Raf let out a chuckle. "Yeah, well Devon's always been good at that. I mean, taking something that's not a rock song and making it a rock song. He's got an ear for music that most mortals do not."

I almost wanted to scoff. Maybe Lyanna had been onto something with the whole siren thing.

"So is this the reinvention you mentioned yesterday? Rap song covers?" I hated it the second it came out of my yapping mouth. "Sorry, I just mean...I need to understand what's going on with them, from the business side of things."

Raf let out a tight breath and folded his arms over his chest, seemingly undeterred. "They are in the process of making new music. The covers and stuff...it's just easier for Devon right now. They can't perform most of their old music anymore because of Devon's vocal restrictions, and he's not quite ready to put their new music to a crowd yet."

I arched an eyebrow. "Vocal restrictions?"

Raf must have heard that record scratch sound effect in his head the moment it came out of his mouth, and he winced.

"Look, Mr. Salinas-"

"Raf, please." He held his hand up.

I nodded and offered him a reassuring smile. "I know you know this, but this is going to work a whole lot better if I know more things about the band upfront."

"I know, I know," he nodded and heaved out a sigh before glancing over at the stage. They were all gone, as was most of their equipment. "Devon had surgery last year. He had damaged a few of his vocal cords, so they cut him open and put some synthetic supports in there. He's gotten a lot of vocal therapy over the last eight months or so to get him back to performance levels. So he can sing, but no more screamin' bloody god damn murder."

It clicked, and I nodded in understanding. "Which was all of their old music."

"Bingo." Raf rapped the table with his knuckles. "It's not a secret per se, but...the band's still workin' through it."

By that I was sure he meant Devon was still working through it.

I nodded again, and Raf ordered us another round of drinks, the thickness of his accent out in full force. At the very least, Raf seemed the most sane out of all of them, and thankfully he was the person I would be working with most.

"Your accent...where are you from?" I asked him.

He smirked. "West Texas."

"So how does a guy from West Texas end up repping a metal band from New York?" I was genuinely curious, ever since Raf stepped foot into Martina's office. There were a few other things I was curious about, but this was a good starting point.

"Oh I've been here a while, and I've known Devon since he was little." There was a surprising fondness in his voice.

"Pre-neck tattoos I'm assuming?" I snickered.

"Yeah, no neck tattoos at age 9." Raf paused for a moment, looking around again as if Devon would just come swooping in out of the darkness. "My wife was his piano teacher. That's how I ended up here all those years ago, and..." he paused again and inhaled, maybe genuinely unsure how to respond, as if nobody had ever asked him about himself like this before. "That's also how I know that he's the real deal. He's too talented for dive bars and unreleased singles. I just need other people to see that too."

In the end, that was what sold me. There was something so genuine and sincere about wanting people to do well and succeed because you knew they deserved it. That was why I liked my job. Raf and I were the same in that regard.

"Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Of course."

"The Green Inferno. Where'd that come from?"

Raf chuckled. "Devon likes horror movies. They used to lean into it a lot more, but I don't think they're too keen on the whole cannibalism motif anymore."

I scoffed. "Well thank god for that."

I was starting to believe that Devon was the only actual person in the band since he seemed to be the only one ever mentioned, until the other three showed up at our table, grabbing chairs and squeezing themselves in. The drummer pulled up a chair right next to Raf and slung his arm around his shoulder. Devon was notably absent. 

"So, we're having an argument," he said to Raf, flicking his wrist out to the bass player who'd taken the seat beside me. She rolled her eyes as she chomped down on her fruity smelling gum.

"Nope," Raf shook his head at the drummer. "I'm not getting involved."

"You don't even know what I'm gonna say yet!" he protested.

"I told you he's not going to entertain you and your ridiculous conspiracy theories about sea monsters," she snapped back. "Which, by the way, are not real."

The drummer perked up when he realized there'd been another person at their table. Me. "Ask her."

"Me?" I asked for clarity, poking myself in the chest.

"Sienna, you don't have to humor them," Raf said with a chuckle, delicately removing the drummer's arm from around his shoulder as if it was radioactive. "If you couldn't tell by now, these heathens make up the rest of the band."

He gestured first to the third guy, his eyes glazed over in boredom. I'd almost forgotten he was even there, since he'd been sitting there silently judging us the whole time. "Clark, lead guitar." He then nodded to the girl. "Evie, bass guitar, and then this gem," he reached over and ruffled the drummer's hair. "Is Gareth, expert drummer and resident conspiracy theorist."

"Thanks for the intro," Gareth rolled his eyes and jostled Raf by his t-shirt sleeve. "And this is Raf, the fuckin' godfather."

It was funny, and I couldn't help but snicker.

"Sienna is from the PR firm I got in touch with," Raf continued, and his words pulled me up straight in my chair. "She's gonna be helping me with all the press and social media stuff on tour."

"Because you still have an iPhone 7 and think Myspace is still a thing," Evie chided with a flick of her wrist. She aggressively popped a bubble with her gum.

"Hey, I like my home button," Raf held his hands up.

"Nice to meet you guys," I offered with a smile. They seemed infinitely more agreeable than their fearless leader, albeit a little...odd. At least that part I almost expected.

"Okay so," Gareth scooted to the edge of his seat. "Have you ever heard of Anantashesha?"

"Um, no," I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"It's not real!" Evie huffed out a sigh and turned to me. The white blonde pieces at the front of her hair were tied into little braids, swaying back and forth like little pendulums as she shook her head. "Don't listen to him. He's willingly gullible."

"You wound me, E," Gareth clutched his chest dramatically.

I laughed with them, and for a moment, things were looking optimistic. I was almost excited at the prospect to work with them. Until Devon stepped out of the shadows and stood behind Raf and Gareth.

"Ah, the Prince of Darkness has finally graced us with his presence," Evie smirked at Devon. She was fully aware of how fitting it seemed, and even quiet Clark snickered at her comment.

"What are you guys doing?" he asked, his tone stony and cold.

"Debunking Gareth's sea monster conspiracies," Evie replied with a shrug, clearly undeterred by her band's prickly lead singer.

"Not conspiracies," Gareth rolled his eyes.

"Everything out back still needs to get loaded into the van," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We don't have roadies, remember. You guys are the roadies."

Gareth leaned over to Clark and whispered something in his ear, which got Clark to chuckle.

Devon clearly heard what he'd said and grabbed the shoulder of Gareth's t-shirt, yanking him up out of the chair. "I feel like I'm herding cattle with you."

Gareth grinned and squeezed Devon's cheeks between his hand. "Aw, and you are just like those cute little Australian cattle dogs aren't you?"

Devon shot him a lethal side eye, his face still pinched by Gareth's hand. "Bite me."

"Love you," Gareth replied in a sing-song tone before bopping away, followed by Evie and Clark.

I shouldn't have been surprised by the bands' earnestness towards each other, despite their clashing personalities. One of the few things I'd learned in my initial research was that the band's lineup had been the same since its inception, meaning they had to be more than just tolerant of each other enough to stay together. They actually had to like each other.

Devon lowered himself into the chair Gareth had been in, dropping that Yeti he'd been drinking out of onto the table with a clunk. His gaze met mine, and I felt myself tense up.

"You're still here?" he asked, his tone almost bored.

"I am," I replied coolly.

"Enjoy the show?" he asked, the corners of his lips twitching upwards just slightly. I assumed he was trying to hide his fangs.

"More than I thought I would." I mirrored his smirk.

"Well, I'm gonna go close out," Raf patted Devon on the shoulder as he got up. "And make sure Evie doesn't strangle Gareth with an aux cord."

Subtlety was obviously not a strength of Raf's. Devon nodded silently before taking a sip of his drink, his inked arm flexing against the sleeve of his t-shirt.

Until moving to the city, I'd never known anyone with even one tattoo, but that kind of thing tends to happen when you grow up in a town with 500 people who never leave said town. Obviously since then I'd seen my fair share of people in the city with them, but Devon was different. They seemed to be a living thing on his body, growing up his limbs the way ivy grows up on buildings, snaking its way into even the smallest spaces. There was no way for me to even begin to assess them all without staring embarrassingly dumbfounded for an extended period of time, but I quickly caught a few things. Three 3's in the webbing between his fingers on his right hand, a smattering of stars on the back of that hand and LOST in bold, gothic font across the knuckles. Spider webs clinging to the insides of his elbows. Two colorful koi fish circling each other on the inside of his right arm. The tentacles of the kraken on his neck wrapped around his skin as if it was getting ready to choke him. When he lifted his hand to take another drink from his tumbler, I could make out a few letters of something written across his palm. Who in their right mind got their palm tattooed?

That being said, there was no way Devon was in his right mind.

But that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt to be civil with him. While Raf was my guaranteed ally, Devon clearly mattered, to both him and the rest of the band.

"What's in there?" I asked, nodding to his tumbler.

"Blood, mostly," he replied, his expression as flat as it had been all night. "Little splash of vodka just to take the bite off."

Prince of darkness, indeed.

"Good for your throat, I'm assuming?" I asked with the faintest smirk.

"No, I just like the taste," he shrugged. "Why? Trying to swipe this one from me too?"

I heaved out a tired sigh. "I'm sorry about before, okay? I've lived in the city long enough to have a default setting when I go out to bars. That's not an excuse but..." I sighed, hoping maybe he'd just swoop in and let bygones be bygones. He was obviously not the type. So I pressed on. "Look Devon, we're obviously going to be spending a lot of time together in the near future, so...I really just want us to be cool."

He rolled his eyes. "Listen, I'm not really a fan of the whole insincere niceties thing-"

"Really? I couldn't tell."

There was a fleeting moment where amusement flickered across his features. Then he was back to stone. "I'm gonna do you a favor and be up front with you. I don't need you here. We don't need any help."

I pressed my hands into the thighs of my jeans, trying to swallow down a few things I wanted to say to him. This is my fucking job. Be fucking professional. Even if part of me wants to knock that smug, ill-tempered look clear off his face. "Okay...well, that in and of itself might be a bit of an issue, because Raf-"

He held his hand up to stop me, and it was long enough for me to make out what had been tattooed on his palm - of sentimental value. "Raf might handle the business decisions, but this is my band. Keep that in mind."

He got up from the table, and that was that. I half expected him to turn into a bat and fly away into the night, but he didn't.

⋆ ★

this is a beautiful man and i will not be taking any alternative opinions.

speaking of opinions, i think we all know at this point that i am a metal girlie and therefore do not agree with sienna's judginess, but that's what character development is for kids! sienna also doesn't really know or understand music, so her narration is purposefully meant to reflect that (using basic terminology or describing something that might not be totally correct).

that being said, i am loving writing in sienna's voice. she's definitely my yappiest narrator but i kind of love the chatty, somewhat spiraling internal dialogue she's got going on. would love to know your thoughts so far <3