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Somewhere in Asia

#21

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Nothing had made sense since Wednesday two Wednesdays ago. Their record executive, who told her she'd never make it big, started glowing faintly blue and humming like a vending machine, who knew secrets but wasn't gonna snitch unless you asked nicely. From as far back as she could remember, the thought of living a mediocre life felt both dreadful and inevitable, a string of disappointments and an endless series of unfortunate events.

Fucked up didn't even cover it. Reality had gotten drunk and decided let's make you the protagonist of a nihilist fever dream.

In her lap, resting gentle but loud like a joke, was a golden plaque. It had shown up that morning, not in a velvet box but stuffed into a bubble wrap cocoon with a grocery receipt taped to the front. There was no note, no call. Just a six-pack of indifference and that shiny, beautiful lie of an award.

She just stared at it.

Three years of shaking hands with suits who smiled like sharks, only to ghost her when her songs were shit that apparently meant her soul was no longer profitable. Three years of greenroom sandwiches, losing her voice in Rio, crying in the bathroom of a club in London while someone in the next stall threw up. Three years of playing nice, playing smart, playing every goddamned part they told her to just to keep her foot in the door of an industry that would lock you out the second you stopped smiling.

She touched the award again, feeling its smooth, heavy smugness. This thing, this monument to a hit song she wrote while drunk on cheap wine and heartbreak meant nothing and everything. It was proof she'd done something but also a sharp little reminder that the universe had accidentally put her on the wrong track, like she was meant to be a botanist in Seattle but slipped into the rockstar timeline through some celestial paperwork glitch.