Semi-Final - The Memory Girl

[James]

The playbills and the hot, incandescent lights of the marquee named her Natasha Mnemosyne, but to the public and the critics she would always be known simply as the Memory Girl.

Plucked from obscurity, become an institution, tickets by necessity could be awarded only through lottery, and disseminated out from there by charity, and byzantine competition, and the furtive, ardent whispers of the artists’ black market.

Her own theatre was a sweeping four-story cathedral of balconies and mezzanines stacked to the ceiling, but when the curtain rose and the lights fell, every sold-out audience would swear they were alone.

Would swear that they were moved by some magic to an empty darkened cafe below street level by the Seine, where piano plinked invisibly from the shadows as they sat and sipped Bordeaux at a round table with a candle at its centre, so close to the stage that they could smell the burning calcium radiance of the single aged limelight, and hear the rustle of her dress in the empty heartbeat between words.

She was soft wax and fresh snow and mirrored glass. Changed moment to moment by the sweep of whichever psychic force was radiated by the human mind. Becoming something special to every observer. Every show unique, every word evoking some hidden secret of every member in her audience so that they knew, knew in their hearts, that she was speaking just to them.

She was perfect, and I loved her, and I destroyed her utterly.

[James]

ENTRY ONE

Reflection

The playbills and the hot, incandescent lights of the marquee named her Natasha Mnemosyne, but to the public and the critics she would always be known simply as the Memory Girl.

Plucked from obscurity, become an institution, tickets by necessity could be awarded only through lottery, and disseminated out from there by charity, and byzantine competition, and the furtive, ardent whispers of the artists’ black market.

Her own theatre was a sweeping four-story cathedral of balconies and mezzanines stacked to the ceiling, but when the curtain rose and the lights fell, every sold-out audience would swear they were alone.

Would swear that they were moved by some magic to an empty darkened cafe below street level by the Seine, where piano plinked invisibly from the shadows as they sat and sipped Bordeaux at a round table with a candle at its centre, so close to the stage that they could smell the burning calcium radiance of the single aged limelight, and hear the rustle of her dress in the empty heartbeat between words.

She was soft wax and fresh snow and mirrored glass. Changed moment to moment by the sweep of whichever psychic force was radiated by the human mind. Becoming something special to every observer. Every show unique, every word evoking some hidden secret of every member in her audience so that they knew, knew in their hearts, that she was speaking just to them.

She was perfect, and I loved her, and I destroyed her utterly.

---

Warm morning air and laughter. Little voices and blurring colors. A bright blue sky dancing in the branches of the trees that hung over the old, wooden playground, its creaky planks and mulch filling the air with an earthen aroma. Little tennis shoes, flashing red with each step, untied laces and Hello Kitty band-aids.

I sat on the rough asphalt, painted with white stripes where a makeshift basketball court had once been, watching Canada Geese soar overhead, imagining where they’d come from, where they were going. What it was like to look down on the world from so far above.

A football came whizzing past, smacking with an airy thud against the brick wall of the school beside me and then bouncing, rolling, stopping against my leg.

“Throw it here!”

The ball was too big for my hands. I’d never really thrown one before and I thought I’d be bad at it. I chucked it up sloppily, spinning and flipping through the air until it made an abrupt and clumsy descent a few feet away from the players.

And a shrill scream broke out across the playground. The sharp sound pierced like an arrow, ricocheting off of every surface, disguising its origin. Everyone on recess came to a sharp halt and spun and glanced. Slowly, all eyes turned to the wooden playground, and then to a girl sitting beneath the planks of the overhang, in a red sundress, a little bow in her hair, a mess of brown curls. Nat – she was in my class. Quiet and timid, but she looked right at me sometimes and it made my whole body flush and tingle with nervousness. But now she was like a stone, like an inanimate object, some invisible force hardly there at all, like the hollow cocoons that hung on the trees, so silent and unmoving and fragile.

Teachers rushed over and kneeled around and hurried the gathering crowd of children away. I backpeddled but kept my eyes on her, some broken thing, there on the mulch, dirtying her dress, when I saw the strange look come over my teacher’s face. And felt a breeze in the air that seemed to sweep away all smells and sounds, that brought some alien stillness over the playground.

My teacher put her hand over her mouth and turned away and shook her head. Was she crying? The other teacher fell back onto her elbows, her neck bowed back, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders, and she let out a gentle moan, a noise not like any I’d ever heard, not one I’d understand for years to come. One of the kids playing football fell to his side, scraping his fingers in the dirt, his jaw hung open, chewing the air.

I remembered, suddenly and vividly, like a dream playing out in my eyes, a moment in my mother’s arms, warm and soft, her face occupying nearly my whole field of vision, lit only by some distant candle or nightlight, and a sweetness that filled my breast and my belly.

And just as it came, lingering only moments, it vanished, and there was Nat, lifting her head, disguised by curls, tear-stained cheeks, and she looked at me. I wanted to hold her hand.

---

I snatched my dad’s car keys from the kitchen table and slid my shoes on, not bothering to tie them.

“Dad, can I take the car real quick?”

My father sat in his chair in the living room, half-asleep after a long day at work, football on the TV. “Mmmyeah, don’t be—” he mumbled. I hadn’t waited to hear the rest. I was pulling my jacket off the coat-hanger and stumbling down the icy stairs two steps at a time. Our old Hyundai was covered in two inches of snow. I felt all my muscles clench at once, no time to go back, I tucked my hands into my sleeves and brushed the snow from the windshield with my forearms instead. The passenger side and rear windshield could be spared. I slip into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition in one quick movement, and I flew down our little one-lane residential at fifteen over the limit.

Nat’s house was old and dark. It had the look of having once been bright red brick that had been deprived of rain for centuries, and now was a dark maroon with a looming silhouette, tucked away into a hollow of ugly trees. I hated to look at it – perhaps because I knew what that house meant to Nat. I knew the way it suffocated her.

I came to a skidding halt outside, my back tires sliding on the slick street. Nat came down her porch stairs like a tempest rolling over the horizon, a foaming, churning energy, her lips and nose curling, brow fallen, head shaking. I leaned across the center console and shoved the passenger door open as best I could. She fell into the seat like a sinking stone and slammed the door shut. “Please drive,” her voice cracked.

I could hear her father through the glass, in the distance, perhaps up on the porch out of my vision, shouting down at her. I slammed the accelerator and the Hyundai slid and skidded and finally caught traction and sped down the street.

The relief of being out of the house was like a pressure valve being turned in Nat’s heart, and she spilled out into sobs, gasping and weeping, bouncing her head against the side window with little thuds. I came to a halt at a stop sign and put my hand on her knee. “Hey. It’s alright. We’re gone now. We can go wherever you want. It’s alright now. Hey. Come on. Calm down.”

Her gasping slowed, her sobs lessened, and a heavier air filled the car, a quieter atmosphere. Her brown curls hanging over her shoulders, little pink lips, big cheeks, those hazel eyes – so sad and solemn. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it…

And as though my blood pressure dropped in an instant, my limbs felt like deflating balloons, my head adrift on an unstable foundation, rolling over my neck until my whole body slunk away from me, down into some dark pit, like a hole in a mattress, gently lowered into some deep black warmth, backward, deeper, down, down, falling away from myself.

And there was Nat. But Nat was just a girl, just the little girl on the playground, she and I alone in this new void, me scared and disoriented, her a perfect thing, wiping at her nose, brushing the dirt from her red sundress, picking up the bow that had fallen out of her hair.

“Nat?”

She looked right into me, right past my eyes, right down past it all, into the void where I’d fallen, and I knew that there was nobody in the world but us. And the world around us became brighter, and the blue, with white and grey, and textures solidified into the dashboard, the windshield, the steering wheel, the rear-view mirror. I turned and saw her there, in the passenger seat, curled up and quiet, eyes opening slowly, and then looking up to me.

---

“I don’t really like the sound of it.”

“I know you don’t. But I really think I need it. I really think this is what I’ve needed for so long.”

I sighed, turning back to the laptop screen. ‘Commune’ has always meant ‘cult’ to me. There’s something suspicious about anyone who feels the need to separate themselves entirely from the rest of society. Doubly so when those same people claim to have cures and solutions that are superior to those of modern medicine and psychiatry.

“What if they’re, y’know… weirdos? What if it turns out to be…”

“- a cult? They’re not a cult, come on. Did you read that thing I sent you? They know what I’m going through. The way they described it… they’ve seen this before. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone describe what happens to me. They get it. Nobody else gets it.”

“I get it.”

Her face fell solemn, “I know you do.” She reached out for my hand. “I know you do. But this can’t be your burden. This is a community of people who can all help. I can heal there. Learn to control it. They said that I can learn to make it into a gift. Something that helps, that provides a service, that does some good rather than just… happens. Suddenly, horribly, without…”

“I’m just afraid that they’re going to… change you.”

She big her lip and turned her eyes up, welling with tears that she didn’t want to fall. “Maybe… I want to change. Maybe I don’t want to be like this.”

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, “I didn’t mean it like that. I know you don’t. You deserve to get to feel better. You deserve to not have to deal with this. I just… don’t want to… lose you, I guess. That’s selfish, though, I know.”

She shook her head and squeezed my hand and turned the me, tears rolling down her cheeks, her eyes locked into mine. I was in love with her. I was in love with everything about her – I loved every feature of her face, every expression she made, every feeling or thought she had, every word she said. I wanted nothing more in the world in that moment than to grab her and hold her and to never let her go.

“Will you take me there?” she asked.

---

The commune had no telephones. Communication, they said, should be personal and intimate, between two people who can reach out and touch one another. I knew that because I had read every article, watched every video, studied and researched every single website that made even the slightest reference to the place. Nat had been there for three months now. We had kept in contact through writing letters for the first few weeks, but eventually they had stopped, and I’d had no other way to reach her.

I turned my anxieties to studying every aspect of the place, trying to convince myself that she was in safe hands, that she was simply healing, taking time to herself. I was to go get her in three months, we’d set the date from the start, and I’d expected to hear from her, a letter, maybe a call from a borrowed cell phone, that she was ready to be picked up. But I hadn’t heard anything.

And so I drove there, two hours out of the city, just on the outskirts of the national park, full of anxiety that simply would not shake. I didn’t know if she’d be ready to come home. I didn’t even know if they’d let me in. But I knew I couldn’t just wait, couldn’t just do nothing. I couldn’t take it any longer.

Winding up through the foothills of the Appalachians, climbing the ridges and descending into the valleys, eventually I found the little dirt road that I had driven up three months ago – the last time I’d seen her, her knees bouncing, full of anxiousness but full of hope. We’d stopped at the gate, a big wooden, haphazard entrance with the word ‘PEACE’ carved into it. I held onto her and hoped that she’d just stay there, with me, held tight. That she’d change her mind. But I watched her walk through the gate, to the woman in the white, lacey dress, who hugged her and waved at me and led her into the distance. Where I sat, watching over the steering wheel until they’d disappeared and still watched.

Now I pulled up to that same gate, left my car outside of it, and followed the footsteps she’d taken in.

“Hello?” I called out. Walking past little tents, little shacks, poorly-constructed cabins, a little garden. “Hello?”

Finally, a figure emerged from the largest building, pale and wide-eyed.

“Hey, uh. Is Nat here? I’m looking for Nat. Natasha. I think she was supposed to come home today?”

The woman glanced around her at the quiet, empty buildings and motioned for me to follow her inside. I did, peeking through the door before entering, checking all directions, peering over my shoulders, suddenly feeling deeply wrong, unsettled. Something wasn’t right. Something felt different about this place than when I’d dropped Nat off.

“Where’s Nat?” I said in a tone more demanding than I had intended. My heart was hot and violent. My fingers trembled.

The woman clasped her hands around the back of her neck, pulling her elbows in across her chest, tugging her head downward. She whispered, “They’re gone.”

Flames in my chest, burning, vicious energy whipped around in my body like a brewing storm. I felt screams behind my teeth. I wanted to tear the world asunder. “Where… the fuck are they? What the fuck are you talking about? Where is… where the fuck is she?”

The woman wiped tears from her cheeks. I imagined strangling her.

“He took her. William. He took her and he left us. William has left us all.”

I could’ve killed her. Right there and then with just my bare hands.

Sometimes I’m surprised that I didn’t.

William was the “father” of the community, the founder, the author of all those articles that had lured in Nat, naïve and in pain, just looking for some direction. Such easy bait. Such absolute innocence. Nobody knew where they’d gone. He and Nat left one night, vanished without a trace. They’d taken the community’s only vehicle with them. The woman asked if I could bring them groceries – it was then, in that precise moment, that I would’ve killed her.

All anyone knew was that William was from New York City, that he always talked about it, that his family had been a part of the artistic community there for generations and that he might’ve gone back, that there was nowhere else that he would have known anyone, had any ties. I considered going straight to New York, but I had nothing to go on. Instead, I drove home, I called work and called off for the next week – a death in the family, I’d said – and I got online. I looked up everything. I searched for every name, I searched for phone numbers, I called people, I asked everywhere, I looked everywhere. I called the local police and I called the police in New York City. I didn’t sleep that night. I don’t know if I slept the next night. Time faded into anger and determination, and those turned into despair, and despair turned into hate, and hate reminded me of my love, of Nat, and I cried and I screamed.

And then in the fog, somewhere in the insomnia, in the self-destruction, somewhere in the darkness, I heard a voice on the other line. “I think he’s been working with his brother on that show. God, Rob really hit the jackpot with that one. Everybody in New York is going crazy about it.”

“What show? What’s the show?”

“Uh, it’s called the Memory Girl.”

“What is it?”

“What d’you mean what is it?”

“What the fuck is the show? Where is it? Who’s in it? What the fuck is the Memory Girl?”

“Hey, buddy, listen, don’t start getting fuckin’ hot with me, okay? I don’t even fuckin’ know you, bro. Why the fuck am I even talkin’ to you?”

As he spoke, I had typed it into Google: The Memory Girl.

And there it was.

“The Memory Girl: The Revolution in New York”

“Critics Say the Memory Girl is Transcendental”

“Is Natasha Mneomsyne the Biggest Thing to Happen in Theatre in a Generation?”

My phone dropped to the floor.

---

“Look, buddy, you can’t just buy tickets for Memory Girl, okay? You know how much those things go for? If I had a stack of ‘em behind this counter, I’d have been robbed twice today, get it?”

I pulled at my hair and turned away, facing the lobby of the theatre where elegantly-dressed New Yorkers funneled through to see Natasha. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Why hadn’t she told me? Questions that tumbled through my mind again and again until they’d lost their meaning. Until everything lost its meaning. I had to see her. Nothing else mattered. I had to know where she was. I had to talk to her. To ask her why.

I stormed out of the theatre and paced in the plaza. I asked a passing couple if they would be willing to sell their tickets – name the price – and they laughed at the preposterous notion. There were no scalpers, no resellers. Only the wealthiest bourgeoisie of New York here to see Nat, my Nat, and there would be no negotiating with them.

That I would see her tonight was less negotiable still.

I traced the outline of the theatre and found the alleyway that cut along its side. Toward the back of the alley, dim and damp, was a black, metal door, labeled ‘STAGE’ in old, stenciled lettering. Slowly, quietly, I pulled it open, until only the slightest crack emerged between the door and its frame. I pressed my body against it and peered inside – a dark backstage area, full of boxes and cables, ropes and pulleys. It was not the bustle of a big show, full of cast and crew. In fact, as far as I could tell, it was empty. In the distance, beyond the curtain, was the murmuring of a gathering crowd. I could see, beneath the curtain’s golden trim, the flashing of the lights.

I pried the door open just enough to squeeze myself through and slipped in, gently easing the door shut behind me. Slowly and cautiously I moved until, parallel with the stage, I could see straight across its wooden floor, a sole chair upon it, and beyond, two silhouettes, facing away. I tucked myself behind two large amplifiers, cast in the shadows of the unlit room, and there, kneeling, saw her.

Saw her in a gown, golden and regal, a necklace that glistened like the stars. Metallic high heels, her hair straightened. It was some alien impostor of the Nat I knew, gorgeous and awe-striking, but offensively unlike herself. There, next to her, a man, bald and imposing, sun-dried and with rigid posture. He kept a hand wrapped around her waist.

It was then that I noticed Natasha’s eyes, half-closed. Her knees threatened to buckle at any moment. The man was virtually all that held her upright. She moved with the weak motions of drunkenness, and the man whispered to her quietly as the lights from beneath the curtain went down and the pulley a few feet beside me began to spin, the great drapes parting and opening upon the lone chair on the stage. A beam of white light shone down upon it and, from the shadows, the two figures emerged to rancorous applause.

Natasha looked frail in the light. The man helped ease her into the chair and stepped up to the front of the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and thank you for coming. I have no intention on wasting any of your time tonight, and so, without further ado, may I present, the one and only: Natasha Mnemosyne!” Applause again. Natasha was unmoving, her head bobbing, her posture slumped. The man walked back to her, placed his hand on her shoulder for a moment, and turned into the shadows again.

And silence fell on the theatre. A silence that grew, that swelled, like a saturated raincloud up in the balconies, into the rafters, swollen around the chandeliers. The air grew heavy and rich and sweet and my body felt light and numb.

I knew what was happening. I knew why everyone came here. I knew what they all felt.

My thoughts came apart, dissolving, mixing and turning. I sank back, down onto the cold floor, and there in the void she came to me as in a hall of mirrors. There was Nat, the Nat I had always known, warm and bright, pink lips, hazel eyes, the curls of her hair. And there were a thousand images of her in all directions, a kaleidoscope in rotation, omnidirectional lights swinging around us. She stared at me, her face contorted, twisted, winced, as though she was overwhelmed with unspeakable pain. Nausea rushed over me as the Natashas in all directions transformed into the audience, a crowd encircling us, their eyes closed, some gasping, some moaning, some laughing or crying. Natasha flashed and sparked, a thousand versions of her colliding at once. I saw fractional glimpses of every form she took, every world she inhabited, the visions and feelings she awoke in each mind that got swallowed up by hers.

Her mouth opened softly, her whole body trembling with such a fine vibration, some electric hum, some violent ecstasy, some transcendental torture. I felt as though her soul was being shocked, that the vibrations that filled the air and stood my hair on end were like those of a steel plate struck by a hammer, the echoes of some thunderous attack.

Her eyes were swollen with tears. She came to me as radio signals, as feeling visions, as a reflection on rough water. She wept, and her eyes never left mine.

“Make it stop. Please. Please.”

“Nat,” I called, and reached my hand out to her. Voltage and ice, I was shocked and frozen, my eyes turned to pure white, my body replaced by radiant heat and an audible pang so impossibly loud that my senses entirely reset. Nothing but void, no room for thoughts or feelings, just void alone, like death, like eternity, a fall neverending.

But there emerged static, a ringing, and from the distortion came form. I found the floor, a solid floor, and the legs of a wooden chair. Golden fabric fell over my arms. I was alive. I rolled onto my back, gasping, regaining the sensations of a body. I turned to see Nat’s face, tears pouring down her cheeks, her eyes nearly shut, just nearly, looking at me.

And she fell. And it stopped. And the audience gasped. And a man ran out onto the stage. And I looked up into the rafters, up beyond them, where there were blue skies that, somewhere, shone over old playgrounds. And I cried, and people shouted, and men rushed to the stage. And Nat lay there, next to me, just a body now, just a reflection. And I held her hand.

[James]

ENTRY TWO

The playbills and the hot, incandescent lights of the marquee named her Natasha Mnemosyne, but to the public and the critics she would always be known simply as the Memory Girl.

Plucked from obscurity, become an institution, tickets by necessity could be awarded only through lottery, and disseminated out from there by charity, and byzantine competition, and the furtive, ardent whispers of the artists’ black market.

Her own theatre was a sweeping four-story cathedral of balconies and mezzanines stacked to the ceiling, but when the c
urtain rose and the lights fell, every sold-out audience would swear they were alone.

Would swear that they were moved by some magic to an empty darkened cafe below street level by the Seine, where piano plinked invisibly from the shadows as they sat and sipped Bordeaux at a round table with a candle at its centre, so close to the stage that they could smell the burning calcium radiance of the single aged limelight, and hear the rustle of her dress in the empty heartbeat between words.

She was soft wax and fresh snow and mirrored glass. Changed moment to moment by the sweep of whichever psychic force was radiated by the human mind. Becoming something special to every observer. Every show unique, every word evoking some hidden secret of every member in her audience so that they knew, knew in their hearts, that she was speaking just to them.

She was perfect, and I loved her, and I destroyed her utterly.

A mercy kill, if there ever was one. Perhaps any reader would wonder why they would find this on the first page of this book. I assure it’s no mere accident.

A tell-all needs no reason to hide the what. The what should already be known, and I’ve left the first page blank in hopes that one day such a worthy feat could fill its pages. And here it was. Tash, I must thank you.

The rest of this diary is the motive. The why.

There, dear reader, lies the real meat.

~

I still remain unsure if arriving in this city during the White Nights was a sound idea.

The sun does not rise or set. It does not even bother to arc upwards into the sky, but instead encircles us constantly. The sun dances and flirts and occasionally kisses the horizon, but it never dips below. It orbits and mocks our heliocentric sensibilities, to the point that if someone ran up to me to proclaim the Saint Petersburg was the centre of the entire universe, I would, at the very least, have to give the thought some entertainment.

There are no nights, and arguably, no days either, just a smear of endless twilight. Without its fundamental metric, the concept of time holds little sway here. The duty to be productive withers away, and the indulgence to delight in any sort of the carnivalesque begins to itch the skin.

Russia is more than happy to oblige.

Even I did not bother to stray from the Palace Square I would have already seen more than most cities could ever dare to hold. Indeed, cram what Saint Petersburg offers during its most renowned festival into any American brick and glass façade and the whole damn place would be ablaze with anarchy within days.

They soak up their re-enactments, lavish recreations of devious historical events that I have no knowledge of. To me, they possess that same brazen intensity as any Shakespeare. Costumes and betrayals and daggers flourishing together until the whole central square threatens to gush over with reimagined bloodshed.

I’m entranced, I’m exhausted. And the more I write the more I am seduced. Perhaps when the sun finally simmers back underneath the horizon, and night usurps the sky for its own celestial I’ll snap myself out of this trance.

Yet, I can’t see myself returning anytime soon. If the interview goes well and I get caught in the groove of this new career path, well…

C’est la vie.

~

Leaving Abigail behind was certainly the better choice. Until I happened to stumble upon her doppelganger in one of the cafes this evening, she had pretty much strolled into my unconscious and had remained there. She had always been unappreciative, entirely deflecting of my gestures. I can’t be upset about her turning down my offer to accompany me to this city, Instead, I should be well relieved.

She was always in it just for the money. A lot of girls are. They latch on to it. I can’t blame them, I would have been the same.

But I’m more than wealth, I put my mind, body and soul in there. And getting just body in return frankly isn’t good enough. And frankly, Abigail’s body was hardly worth much anyways.

Already, it fades from my mind.

~

Upon coming home this evening I took the steps three at a time. Muscles burned and my mind throbbed as I searched for this book to write down as many of the thoughts that passed through my head. Not even thoughts, but more akin to shards and echoes of raw sensory experience, each one a dying pulse in my head. I can only hope that by manifesting them through ink, to make immortal upon paper, that I keep a spark of what I’ve just seen.

I had been serendipitous enough to score tickets to what Saint Petersburg only dubs at The Memory Girl. The crème de la crème on all performance art in this esteemed city and that’s hardly an easy task. I could describe the circumstances that led me to collect the platinum ticket stub that now glints in my pocket–as valuable a treasure as any diamond–but I fear if I wax another word on the fine details I’ll surely miss the essence.

I must write about the Memory Girl, while she still glows fluorescent in my mind, her voice, her appearance, her hypnotic rhythmic waltz all outshining any other thought.

Sure my seats were tucked up into the stratosphere of her theatre (and what a theatre it is! A brilliant pastiche of every century dating back to glow of Medieval stained glass. And the building wears them all flawlessly, as if it cost little effort at all) but it hardly mattered.

Her voice.

It’s alpine air and satin chic and blushing harp strings, and I could keep writing ands until this pencil was reduced to mere nub, my fingertips dusted with led.

I was warned but I took no head of the dangers. Now that I’ve seen the Memory Girl, what other art can even be considered? Saint Petersburg is a mountain of art, culture and music, but I swear I’ve just witnessed its peak and vaulted square over it.

Everything else would simply be a descent.

~

The search for more tickets continues, but it appears my serendipity has run dry. Vinyl has sated me for the time being, but upon their grooves is something that is abstracted. An element removed, a veil that constantly shields from the intimacy of a live performance.

In the meantime, the cruel simulacrums will have to do. It’s a shame, my new position has acquired me a considerable amount of capital and I have no doubt I would be able to scrape together any funds that some scalper would ask. But, the officials are still stingy about any Black Markets popping up in concern of Memory Girl and I lack any sort of connections to get spun into whatever gossamer racketeering webs may exist. The Lottery is my only option, and such a pity that’s the one sore bit of communistic rust that the city still cherishes and embraces.

~

People say that Memory Girl’s ‘Siberia’ is her masterpiece, but I’d have to disagree. It’s magnificent, of course, but I think her true magnum opus is in ‘The Atom Effect’. Controversial, yes, but people are too engrained on the surface level, mistaking the lyrics for a cheap rally cry for Nuclear Disarmament. But it’s not that simple. I can remember her playing it live, the soothing glissandos of the studio version having a frosted, jagged edge to them. And there lies the secret. It’s about long term relationships, about the phalanxes of passive aggressive nonsense people pile upon one another. Until, unlike the Cold War, there is a detonation. Memory Girl in it condemns people who simply do not know how to speak their minds. Those who are tethered and confined to the norms of human etiquette. If we all just said what we believed, acted how we wanted to, than such heat would not build up. She recognizes and realizes the faults that pretty much all humans succumb to. Listening to it live, I can only remember vividly my parents, ensnared in the same games. How their criticisms would snap off the coattail of other innocuous remarks, like tiny pinpricks of winter on the fringes of an autumn breeze. As a child, I only had a fraction of the understanding I possessed now, but as an adult, through her song I now see the past for what it really was. Through the Memory Girl, everything shines transparent, a previous opaque ocean sea to be an aquarium.

~

I have witnessed another performance.

Even that word feels inadequate, like trying to encompass the cosmic glory of an Aurora with the word “nice”. “Witness” will not do for Natasha. Experience, soaked up, seduced. Rubbish! They all fail.

I’ve scrawled every variation of the sentence. But none serve Natasha justice. Her existence sublimes the written form. And, as I think, neither will “performance”. Performance connotes some sort of lack of authenticity. A staged artificiality. Machinations and scripts and rehearsals.

All I saw on that stage tonight was truth. Truth in its purest and rawest form. A coal compressed into a diamond singularity.

~

I think the most poignant memory I had during Natasha’s last performance was during ‘Adrift’, a song clearly about those who have partaken in any sort of life crisis. It wasn’t even so much a memory, as it was a sort of revelation. The song’s breezy three-four time, accented by its flutes and keys and well as a Jinghu, make it almost cloudlike, near effortless. Perhaps some would associate that with the idea of being adrift, but I think it’s more a contrast to the song’s darker ambitions. Natasha, in the final rousing chorus, finds her purpose. She strangles it out from the melodies and every instrument suddenly falls into place, submitting to her dominant rhythm. That’s where the rub lies. The instant starburst of passion. The sudden crystallization of a goal and purpose. But, the revelation. If this song doesn’t assert my perspective on my last relationship, I can hardly think of a more firm piece of evidence. Abigail was okay. But she was adrift. She would always be adrift. She will always be adrift. I invited her with me to Russia, but she refused, justifying her excuses with claims about me and my own possessiveness. Truly, it was all just a lie, a shield to hide her from taking any sort of risk. To embrace in bland conformity. That is what is so refreshing about Natasha’s song. It relishes in the singularity of passion. The tunnel vision of following ones dreams. While most will fall out, under the guise of self righteous excuses, the true artists of the world will hold faith. That’s what separates the great from the forgettable. And the ending lyric, needless to say, but it haunts me.

We can fade away, or we can go out like stars.

I wholly intend to be the latter.

~

I’ve taken up sketching again.

There’s something immensely meditative about the experience. A jettisoning of all other thoughts from the mind, to let them scatter like mist in the wind. The final product is as much a result of talent as it is in your ability to devote your mind, body and soul to the piece.

The talent will come to me, eventually, but for now I do have the devotion. The ambience of the room invites it in, each sense pampered in the most delectable way. The scent of burning candle wax for the nose, the dance of flame for the eyes (left to the peripheral of course, my retinas will mostly drink in the parchment before me), the hiss of the radiator for the ears. Taste is tea, emerald green. Touch is the lead, grooves in the pencil forming due to my grip.

The female form is an enigma to draw. Seeing it ravished up in silks and nylons and billowing cataracts of whatever other myriads of fabrics cascade down those dresses betray nothing of the bare form underneath. I’ve heard of the mechanics of how they contort the body, and I wonder if my breasts are too firm, too sharp, too upright. It’s imperfect, but it’s only my seventh attempt. I’ll fix the jagged edges. Repetition can only lead to perfection.

~

Finally.

~

Looking back upon my last entry, I can only smile and excuse myself. There was only time to write down a single word due to a swift lightning strike of luck. Simply put, I’ve managed to secure a steady supply of tickets to Natasha’s performances. As much as I’d like to divulge the details of my adventure in Saint Petersburg’s less…enchanting parts, I’ve sworn a blood oath (literally? You may ask, but I pray not tell).

The first date it within two hours. Natasha will be ravishing I’m certain, and I’ve taken to the task of cleaning myself up as well. A new dinner jacket to start, as well as a hot shave. It’s a wonder what well-fitted clothing can do. I feel I’ve set the clock back ten years.

~

Tash’s performance tonight. I need not apply any sort of qualifier to it, the sentence should speak for itself.

Perhaps there are a few qualms about the setlist–a tad too nostalgic for her debut album, when she really ought to embrace ‘Ephemeral’, her latest. The record is far better than critics give credit for. But, that sliver of criticism aside, the segue from ‘The Atom Effect’ into ‘Bloom’? Marvelous!

She was stunning and her looks matched it. A cream, shimmering dress that seemed to shiver of every color on the spectrum when it caught the light, her own body a prism to see all. White opera gloves to match and white stockings beneath. I’m assuming nude or white panties as well, in order to avoid ravishing the thoughts of any stray perverts in the crowd.

Make up? Brilliant. Astral, star like fractals of eye shadow curving off of her face, extending down upon her cheeks. More of a mask than anything else. Ultramarine lipstick, only she could pull it off!

And call it confirmation bias, but I know we met eyes at one point. Perhaps I am just a silhouette to her, the darkness of the crowd enveloping me, but I know her eyes brushed over mine.

But, for the purposes of keeping records! The setlist:

Canary Falls

Fragmentation

Viola, Jack, Heart Attack

The Atom Effect

Bloom

Rainshine

Adrift

Mount Fuji

ENCORE

Siberia

~

Unable to sate my own impatience, I’ve started to dabble in songwriting. Tash’s Ephemeral can be seen as a first for any LP. An album cliffhanger, its closing track ending in the shrill sawing of a string section crying out. The violins and violas are pleading! Pleading for our heroine to turn around and rush back through the door, but...nothing…

All of Ephemeral is a poem, and within it is a narrative. In the opening song, the wound is already revealed, gaping raw and fresh. It’s non-fiction. An affair from Tash’s husband. The devious act is manifested in the lyrics as well as in the brass section, the trumpets carrying the burden of reminding us again and again of a lover’s cardinal sin with a simple four note melody. Its presence lingers in every song, it haunts and slips below the surface of the narrative.

The critics called it an attack. A one-sided retelling of a much more complicated separation. Yet what makes them experts on Tash’s private life? If he did cheat on her–which I’m certain he did–than whatever her response maybe is not only justified, it’s necessary.

It’s clear to me, in whatever next album that Tash conjures forth, that her husband must be punished. Such a sin is unforgiveable. The heroine deserves better. Such scars cannot heal but returning to their source. No, they must find a fresh pair of hands to mend.

The lyrics I have so far, scrawled haphazardly on a less deserving piece of paper (I dare not replicate them on here until they’re finalized). For now, I just reveal the first track’s name. Set in stone, I think. ‘White Nights’.

~

In anticipation for another perfect performance tonight, I’ve sketched out my anticipated set list. Taking in the ebb and flow of each track, as well as a generous balance of old and new, I really believe is Tash were to play this, the whole crowd would go comatose.

Viola, Jack, Heart Attack

Medley for two (Acoustic!)

Paris, in love

Adrift

Stranger in the Crowd (Every good setlist needs a deep cut)

Bloom

Canary Falls

Adrift

ENCORE

The Atom Effect

~

Another brilliant performance. Although, again, Tash really seems to be playing it too safe. Siberia for the encore is predictable. It’s what everyone is expecting, and perhaps what newcomers want. But for us Veterans? Those of us doing our diligence for every show? It’s bland. It flies in the face of the music she’s trying to make. The cognitive dissonance between the innovation in the tracks themselves, but the conformity of her song choices is falling her into a trap!

Of course, she looked brilliant as always. Custom scarlet dress, even when she was motionless, it still danced like a flame around her. A golden cloak, molten under the limelight. I’m guessing black panties. And heels that a Greek Goddess would have worn, enthroned atop of Olympus.

Setlist:

Ephemeral

Fragmentation

Bloom

The Atom Effect

Adrift

Mt Fuji

The Amber Lake

Flawed

ENCORE

Siberia (Shame!)

~

I feel my sequel to Ephemeral will make people appreciate the prior more. Sometimes, the true luminosity of one such object cannot be appreciated without something to contrast it with. Give Tash a true love. A proper love. Show how vile and frivolous her last lover was. Sorry, but I refuse to call him a husband. A husband connotes a sense of longevity. An eternity. He was nothing. A flash in the pan.

Tash agrees of course. I know she does. Why else call it ‘Ephemeral’ then? The follow up, ‘Eternal’ as fitting a name as any, does just that. Introduces someone better. A foreigner, someone who is not indoctrinated to Tash’s outward mask of fame. He sees that, of course, (how could one not?) but he also sees a human. The vulnerable person beneath. He’s immune to the enchantments that others are seduced by.

No cliffhangers on here. The future is certain.

Potential tracklist so far:

White Nights

Façade

Unmasked

His Touch

Solar Flare

~

Siberia? Again! I can’t fucking believe it! Can Tash really think that she’s going to maintain her most loyal fans by playing the same overrated sludge every encore?

Throw it out early in the set! Third or fourth song. The casuals won’t care when it is. They’ll soak up that song just like any other. Tash, it hardly matters when you sing it. It barely fucking matters what you sing to them! They all love your voice. Don’t just settle for your biggest fucking song every performance!

You’re betraying yourself. It saddens me. And you’re also betraying your most devoted fans. Those who worship you at every performance. The others are fleeting, but every night we sit in the crowd, every night we understand the true potential of your work. Every grace note, every trill, every high ‘C’. It’s scripture to us, while to the rest it’s simple escapism.

Fuck those people. If you don’t have the patience to sift through her deep cuts then you’re hardly deserving of an audience with you.

Fuck them fuck them fuck fuck them fuck them.

~

I’ve decided, after a fair bit of deliberation, to send the lyrics for ‘Eternal’ to Tash.

Her home address was worth the effort to scavenge. Such work doesn’t deserve to get lost amidst the usual jet stream of fan mail. Really, it will get lost in the process of PR agents and interns. I can’t allow that. It has to be her eyes that see it and hers only. She’ll be the only one who can really understand it. Take it for what it really is.

I don’t expect her to wholesale rip it off, but hopefully incorporated. I feel White Nights deserves consideration amongst her better hits, it took me a while to get the poetic flow of her lyrics but…I feel it has elements that would put it snugly with the singles from Ephemeral.

Perhaps even as a guiding beacon, I have no doubt that her newest album will incorporate similar thematic themes. Tash deserves a happy ending.

She knows it. I know it.

~

A brilliant setlist tonight! I’ll let it speak for itself.

Ephemeral

White Nights

Paris, In Love

Adrift

Bloom

The Atom Effect

ENCORE

His Touch

~

No, wait, even better!

Ephemeral

Unmasked

Adrift

White Nights

Paris, In Love

Façade

The Atom Effect

ENCORE

His Touch.

~

I…

They got back together.

~

It honestly makes no sense.

From an artistic standpoint, from a realistic standpoint, from any standpoint, she compromises her personal life and safety, her next album, her career, Tash is being a fucking fool! And it really just makes Ephemeral looks more cheap, a half assed, emotionally manipulative, corrosive piece of garbage just like him, how can such an artist be so fucking blind, can she not read her own lyrics, can she not see the portrait of abuse she painted? How is she such a fool, how can she be so blissfully unaware and even seeing her perform tonight, seeing her on the stage and every song is so fucking happy and joyous, no melancholy, all happy go lucky, all healed scars and still fucking Siberia as the fucking encore, it’s ridiculous, and I bet he’s back in the audience as well, sitting among, us, pretending he cares about her, pretending he’s anything but a leech off of her fame, all of them are leeches, him and the rest of those single concert goers, Tash isn’t something can be understood in a single night, she’s complex, she unfold over the course of several nights. Only those who stay are rewarded. The rest are blind, blind, blind, blind, blind, blind.

~

Bitch.

~

I can see her crumbling. The setlist tonight was near garbage, a reduction of every album into some vacuous Greatest Hits compilation.

There’s more to this than what her stage presence suggests. I can see it her eyes. A pleading. A frantic call. The happiness is a lie. This re-marriage is more than a publicity stunt. How can it not be? The sharp contrast between Ephemeral, the raw passion of it, compared to the brevity of the Tash on stage now, makes little sense. Other elements are at play, between him and her.

~

A leech, as I said before. A parasite. He cares little for the creative talent. He’ll abuse her and punish her and do every other sort of imaginable harm until she corrodes to dust.

She sees it too. And she’s pleading. Why else include Adrift as the encore tonight? Fucking Adrift! Passion, breaking free! It makes complete sense.

~

He’s controlling her.

~

I can’t, I won’t, I can’t be passive. I won’t sit in the audience, watching the world’s greatest performer be reduced to a shadow of herself.

Her new single got released. It’s a lie. A fiendish bastardization. A forced Cheshire grin while the eyes swell with unshed tears.

It’s not her. It’s not my Tash.

Just look at these lyrics!

Facing you, world weary, the realizations coalesce

Until only truth shines

The truth here is simple. A plea. A realization she’s made a huge mistake. I’ve known it all along.

We don’t know where we’ll be, we don’t know where we’ll stand, hands entwined or hands apart

Uncertainty. Regret. No true lovers would utter such lyrics. The relationship isn’t so much a rocky ground as it is an Earthquake. It’s explicit, far too explicit. These aren’t lyrics, but a cry for help.

I won’t be passive.

~

I need to save Tash.

That new album will be the final nail in the coffin. The single was met with a shrug and a sneer. She’ll lose it all, have the fame fall between her fingers like sand while that leech smirks in the background. The theatre will gain dust, not crowds. The lottery will dismantle. What remains will be the occasional tribute performance, an audience that responds with polite applause rather than genuine euphoria. A star that slowly withers and wilts until it’s a shell of its former self.

And they’ll all be indifferent. They’ll all shrug and turn their hands. And she will too. Tash will. But I’ll plead. I’ll know the truth. I’ll feel her agony for her.

~

We can fade away, or we can go out like stars.

~

It’s clear now.

~

In the end, I am surprised how easy it will be. A frayed fuse box in the basement was the catalyst, the rest was mere detail.

I slipped out of my seat before the encore started. I couldn’t bear to watch her perform that wretched song again, a product of the tyranny of the masses, stripping her of any autonomy.

The theatre is a relic in more way than one. Its electrical systems are miasma of Soviet Era circuitry that gnawed away at any sort of decent security standard. At any rate, it will be more of an acknowledgement of an inevitability than anything else.

That was yesterday.

Now, tonight. Fires of these sorts I’ve heard are the voracious type, consuming up buildings in a matter of minutes in a boil blaze of justice. I have no doubt the theatre will be the same. It’s only fitting. This was Tash’s throne. Let it be relieved along with her. Put it out of its misery. No others deserve to sing in its stained glass halls, no other audience deserves to hear any single further note from her.

Unappreciative, selfish bastards they all were.

No one on Earth deserves her. I’m certain of it now, and my resolve grows every minute. Looking at ‘Eternity’ now I can see how things should have ought to be. How they still can be.

Heaven is eternal. Heaven will treat Tash with the respect she deserves. This cesspool of a city only sought to corrupt her, conform her, turn her into another bland, emotionless puppet. To make her into the very thing she’s feared.

Tash has granted me with so much. Far too much. I was blessed to hear even a single note from her voice. It’s the least I can do to repay her. The very least.

You’ll find this diary long after the act has been wrought. You’ll know where to find my body.

But you won’t find me.

I’ll be somewhere else, somewhere far better. In the front row, my eye’s glazed at that silhouette in the limelight…

[James]

REVIEWS

ENTRY ONE
This is hard. You have two sections that are really well done and convey a lot of emotion¬ perhaps the writing is too ornate, but I can mostly forgive it, because a) the prompts was written as such and b) The guy is recalling memories, so I suppose he would have most of his thoughts dialed up to 11.

But the rest feels sort of like a novel condensed into a short story, with large lapses of time between sections to just nail in key moments, but at the same time I think a tad too much is overlooked. Then the conflict is just dropped on us, and it was hard to feel sympathetic because of course it was going to be a cult, and I really wanted to shout at how stupid our protagonist was being. Perhaps if you had framed the situation as more desperate, or had them interact with William (Also, I don’t really imagine a cult leader named William, I think he’d be more of a Bill), who at the moment is simply told to use as being the bad guy, then that could have been developed better.

There are lovely moments here, and no part of the story really degrades in writing quality, but the jumps in time need a purpose instead of feeling sporadic. Perhaps the protagonist is reliving them while they watch Nat from the audience during the performance?

***

I'm not sure if I like or dislike this. The concept is incredible in that Nat obviously has incredible powers and the narrator has incredible love for her, but at the same time I feel that things are disjointed. Perhaps there should be more explanation as to what is happening exactly, but that's not entirely on you. The descriptions are beautiful and the detail pressed into them are more than enough to describe the beauty and horror in every scene. If the subject were different, this would be a detriment, but this love story works in what it shows.

However, we don't see why they love each other or seem to at all. Sure, to some degree its clear that they mean the world to each other, but aside from escapism I'm not seeing the why. That's my only real complaint though. You did well.

***

This story is great, one of my favorite of the competition so far. You kept the ambiguity of the prompt intact, which could be seen as the easy way out, but I think is actually deceptively difficult to do well. The 'how' is not the important part of that prompt, IMO. So good on ya for showing restraint and not over-explaining things that didn't need to be. The story was lean, it maintained focus. There were a few times I thought the language was a bit over-indulgent, but for the most part, the prose was very solid. The phone dialogue was a bit much, kinda took me out of it.

There were no transcendent new ideas or themes on display here, my mind wasn't blown. But you took the prompt to its logical conclusion and it was a very pleasant ride.

***

I liked the vignette style. I think it was a good idea and the execution felt well done overall. However, stylistic choices within the story kinda lost it for me. There are a lot of runon sentences that really disrupt the flow of reading. The sentences just kind of meander. There's also a lot of repetition that borders on the redundant in terms of diction. My biggest complaint is that Natasha is supposed to be famous, the Very Best, but the protagonist appears to only suddenly hear of her. I would think he would have known about her and her act for quite some time. That said, I felt that your style really started to shine in the last few bits. The sentence structure and flow really worked and came together to create more feeling than the rest of the story put together. What I would have liked to see, though, is more tangible descriptions mixed in with all the abstract. In the end, I have no idea what Natasha is actually doing, only this metaphysical connection the narrator has with her.

***

This story had a lot of good and effective description, but I think lost a lot of its steam around the ending in which things became unclear and messy. In fact, the plot here was unfortunately the weakest part, especially as it developed in the latter portion. Things start feeling rushed and sloppy when the main character first goes to the "commune" and finds it empty but for a single person whose presence seems to be inexplicable. The main character's method of "infiltrating" the theater, essentially just walking in through the back door, is kind of nonsensical and jarring, and what exactly happens to cause the memory girl's death isn't entirely clear, leaving me very unsatisfied as a reader.

The best parts of this story were the smaller slices of life, especially in the characters' younger years. Those felt really strong, full of emotion and nostalgia, and were nice to read. It's just a shame that the whole thing couldn't be that strong.

***

You had a very interesting story here, a sort of magical realism setting that also felt as a kind of coming of age story. However it really lacked development in the middle part of the story. You set up an interesting desperate search by the main character, to only resolve it in mere couple of paragraphs. It feels like the focus of the story would have been better with Nat (even though the prompt would not have allowed it). The main character was lacking the depth Nat had and the conflict seemed to have been with her character “off screen”. I still liked what you did with the setting, it just needed more time and to be longer so as to allow the main character to develop.

ENTRY TWO
You're a great writer. It's beautifully written and the sentences are lovely and the word-choice is always spot-on. It's eloquent and matches the flowery tone of the prompt well. The premise, too, is solid. The obsession route is one of the few good, natural ways to take this and I think you played the obsession card really nicely. I like that he falls in love with the music, falls in love with her AS the music, and then starts to obsess about her as a person. I like how absolutely nasty he seems. He's a gross, violent kind of person, full of urges. The choice to do it in a diary style makes it really feel like we're getting these intimate insights into a deprived mind - and, in fact, I think you probably could've taken that a little bit further. I think that's the strong point of this story, the deprived mind, the obsession, and I wanted even more of that. I wanted this story to just be dripping with his ugliness, his desires, his ego.

Instead of that, you do this almost essay-like critique and analysis of the music and the setlists. And I definitely think there's a place for a little bit of that, absolutely, but you take that a little too far. We, the readers, can only see a setlist so many times before we just lose interest in reading it and trying to identify changes in it. I like it, it's charming, especially the little notes he adds to it at times (as I write this I realize how real 'he' is and how well you did in making the protagonist feel like a tangible person unto himself), but it gets self-indulgent at times. It goes off the rails, which are very good rails, and starts to change the style and tone of the story in ways that I wish it wouldn't. I wish you'd really hung onto the heart of what makes it interesting to read and went a little more fully in that direction.

All that said, I think you did quite well here. It sucks that I can see so clearly the things that I wish you'd done differently, but they don't prevent it from being a genuinely good story.

***

This is a big one. I'm not sure where to begin here to be honest. You have really taken the time to explore your character and even though I normally disagree with a hard cuts, you managed to pull them off in a way that left me getting a real sense of how erratic and crazy your character was. To be honest, I didn't find the listing of songs interesting, but it was something that helped shine a light on the obsession of your character. Natasha isn't as much a character in this prompt as the other it almost feels like you high jacked the prompt for your own story. There isn't much I can criticize here except as well written story as it is, its not entirely faithful to the prompt.

***

I both like and dislike this story at the same time. On the one hand, I love stories like this, and I enjoyed reading this in particular; the journal of a character who descends into madness over the course of it, culminating with some kind of horror. But on the other, it feels almost lazy and cheap to put something like this, which is just an internal monologue, up against a story with more traditional prose like entry one and try to compare them.

More importantly than that, though, I never felt like the character's "descent" was appropriately conveyed. Jumping from "I need to save her" and being more or less coherent to "I'm going to kill an entire theatre full of people, including her" happens all in the span of one or two journal entries, with the rest of the journal never really convincing me of the character's total insanity or shocking me. The majority of the entries here are just too tame, too simple to justify the ending, though I do think that you gave an honest effort at accomplishing this, and for other people besides myself it might "work" just fine.

***

I think you really captured what the prompt was trying to get at, and you wrote a story that worked really well and had no significant flaws. Nothing about it really wow-ed me, though. Nothing stood out overall as this really impressive bit of writing except for a passage here or there.

The search for more tickets continues, but it appears my serendipity has run dry. Vinyl has sated me for the time being, but upon their grooves is something that is abstracted. An element removed, a veil that constantly shields from the intimacy of a live performance.

Is a brilliant piece of writing. The writing here is best when done in smaller segments. The larger paragraphs lose that style, and just aren't as powerful and interesting. Not to say that its poorly written, but could have been done better. I enjoyed the protagonist's slow descent into madness and obsession, but I think it would have made it more impactful if we had a sense of time. Maybe if dates, times had been written before the entries? Hardly necessary, just would have made it better, in my opinion. I did not dock you for that.

***

Okay. So. We're off to a rocky start by nature of format. Doing the journal entry thing is, at this point, rather trite. You really, really have to earn it if you're going with such an overused conceit and I'm not sure that you really did. I don't think the story needed it. What did it add, besides a bunch of line-breaks? All it did was take me out of the story, it kept fighting with your tone. Nobody would write in a journal like that. Maybe into a tape recorder? Maybe. Probably not. And that intro, that 'dear reader' thing, it's just so fucking kitschy it makes me want to tear my eyes out.

Once we get past that first line break though, the good starts to shine through. I still remain unsure if arriving in this city during the White Nights was a sound idea. That's a quality first line. I'm hooked. I want to know more. You have my attention. (Though for the record, I think 'good' would be better than 'sound', but that's nitpicking.) You go on to paint a very pretty picture, with only the occasional stumble into cliche or overwrought language. Good stuff. More of this please.

Then we get to Abigail. I thought, for a moment, that she might be a character. But she's actually a prop; set dressing. And that's fine, I guess, it's just when she showed up again later, I had already forgotten everything about her.

At the core of this story is a choice, in some ways, a subversion. Throughout the piece, you try very hard to ground things in reality. In contrast to the first entry, you give us details. Natasha is a singer. She sings songs. Songs with names and lyrics. You throw the magic of it out the window, which is certainly a strong choice, but I don't necessarily know that it's a good choice.

Perhaps it is not my place to tell you what your story is about, but it seems to me that this is not, as the prompt might imply, a story about a transcendent, world-altering performer. But simply a tale of an obsessive fan embellishing reality and becoming more and more entitled until he does what we know he will do. And that's fine. That's a story. I just don't think it's a particularly interesting one. By naming songs, giving us (rather cringe-worthy) lyrics, you rob Natasha of all her power. Especially towards the end, when our protagonist grows bitter and disaffected with her music. She's just a singer, which again, is fine, but I think it ignores all of the interesting stuff in the prompt. There's special here. You've turned The Memory Girl into A Girl That Sings.

***

This is definitely the creepy story. Yet at the same time I like it more than I thought I would. We get a deep look into the psyche of a crazy obsessive fan. It definitely fit the prompt a bit more than I thought it would at first and the story evolves into the crazy burnout shitshow that I was expecting it to. We get a story that has been done before done well. That's always a good thing.

However, I think a few things were left a little too ambiguous. Sure, it might've distracted from some details, but the nature of how he did some of the things he did might've brightened up some of the details of the story that are missing. Overall, I think this was done superbly.