Survival Of The Fittest

Forbidden Riffs was a small new-and-refurbished instrument shop wedged between an incense store on the one side and a rotating cast of frequently-bankrupt fast food joints on the other. It had a gloomy sort of atmosphere, with its black-painted walls and small selection of touristy ‘occult’ themed accessories near the cashier. Despite this however, it was one of the few places that Max could reasonably be called a 'regular' at.

((Maxwell McCormick: Pregame Start.))

The bell above the door dinged, and the black-clad teenager made his way inside, hands firmly shoved into his pockets. Behind the counter today was Katie- a thoroughly goth-looking girl who he happened to know didn't play a single instrument herself. Offering her only a curt nod, he made his way to the shelves arrayed along one of the walls, and his eyes were dragged, as they usually were, to the Stratocasters on the top hooks. Damn near every time he came into this shop he swore to himself that one day he'd own one of those, but for now the four-digit price tag kept him far, far away. Instead, he hefted an acoustic model off the shelves, took a seat in the area marked out for customers to try the merchandise and slowly began to strum.

Hmm. This one wasn't quite tuned right. He experimented with a few chords, then reached up towards the head and began to twist at the tuning keys. "Laaaaa...." he muttered quietly to himself, trying to get the right note in his head, then slowly tightened the strings until they had gotten into harmony. Rinse and repeat for the other strings that had strayed away from their original course. Once he was finally satisfied, he paused, not entirely sure what he was actually going to play.

Some people might have been surprised that Max came to a store to play guitar. After all, it wasn’t as if he didn’t own any himself, and he was notorious for not being the most social of creatures. Why then, did he come here? Why, because sometimes it was nice to stretch your legs and get a breath of fresh air. Or as fresh as air filtered through a mask could be, he supposed.

Eh, screw it, it wasn't like Katie cared that much- the one advantage of her being on the desk was that she seemingly hated any and all rock and/or pop music equally (why she was working at a music shop Max would never figure out), and thus, any music you played would be equally unacceptable to her. Glancing up at the sign that he was pretty sure had been up since the mid-seventies, his fingers slid along the fretboard, and he strummed out the first few notes. Although there weren't any other patrons that he could see, he still tried to keep the noise level down.

It was probably up there as one of the tenth most iconic riffs of all time- Smells Like Teen Spirit. Although Max didn't sing himself, Kurt Cobain certainly took the wheel of the voice inside his head. Load up on guns, bring your friends/It’s fun to lose and to pretend/she’s over-bored and self-assured/Oh no, I know a dirty word.

Hello, hello, hello, how low…

|| Ash Graves, Thread 1 ||

Riffs had picked the most specifically wrong time in history to be a small brick-and-mortar and only got away with it because it was a passion project by an owner who could've retired ten years prior. Classic local vibe- small store with a flavorful aura that was hidden among all the other tolerably just-as-indie spots.

Narrow windy cobble streets outside, perfect to get lost in when the morning fog rolled in to hide the serial killers and their bodies. More of an annoyance to navigate in more mundane lighting. An annoyance much in the way one's own body dysmorphia was- it was a familiar travesty long-since imprinted onto memory, and an easy to navigate one.

Ash's actual destination was the organic gardening store the adjacent block over. All gardening implements were organic by default as far as Ash was aware, but that's what they called themselves. She had ten minutes to get what Amy had asked her to get. Twenty minutes afterward to book it back to school for practice. Family car on Salem's streets portended Ash's inevitable death by vehicular accident at a harrowing ten miles per hour, but thus far she'd managed to stay alive.

Ash gingerly opened the door, mindful of how loud the hinges could be sometimes. Ash didn't recognize the person manning the counter today. Not like she came here all that often when her only reason was spending time she typically didn't have contemplating things she wouldn't buy anyways.

She recognized the person trying on their best Cobain though. Ash had never been a big fan of grunge and the specific fingering of the riff escaped her.

"Didn't know you played Max." She didn't know much about him in general. Juanita did, but Ash didn't make it her business to know her friends friends if nobody asked for her to be involved. Ash consciously felt the typical adjustments to her body language in real time, all subtle because she never had to think about them that hard. Straight spine, casual smile. People defined what constituted a rude stare differently, and Ash preferred her own gaze to be on the more aggressive end of the spectrum. Way she liked to see it, she never benefitted from being the first person to blink. She was dressed down- tank top, short shorts. Color matching with Max, each of them black as their own respective souls probably were.

I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.

Just because she didn't bother to memorize his songs didn't mean she hadn't read his suicide note back to back to back. Imagine having empathy unironically in the 21st century though. Faux pas territory. Ash spoke with Max parallel to perusing the nearby keyboard, discount because it was newly returned, like baby shoes never worn.

The bell above the door dinged, but Max ignored it. He was in his own little world of music, eye closed, enjoying the small bubble of grunge he had constructed around himself. It was comfortable, familiar music, even if it wasn’t his all-time favourite.

The bubble was popped by a semi-familiar voice. Ashlyn Graves. Fuckin’ Graves. When he’d first heard her name being read out he’d assumed she was one of those annoying Wicca girls that changed their names to be all edgy, only to find out that no, Graves was apparently her actual birth surname. He had to admit, it was a pretty cool surname. Still, surname aside, his brain was turning a blank as to why he happened to know this girl’s name. There had to be a connection here somewhere, to someone or something he knew…

The gerbil that powered his brain started peddling faster, and the connection was made. She was one of Juanita’s friends. He finally opened his eye, his hand coming away from the body of the guitar to brush away at the locks that had tumbled down over his vision. She was on his left, which forced him to shuffle around a little to get her into view, and then he raised his head up, to look at her properly.

Straight back, good posture. Short shorts, tank top. She screamed ‘athlete,’ to him, but athletes could enjoy music as well. Most of humanity did, in one form or another, with maybe Katie excepting. One eye met two, and he found himself surprised at how bright hers were. Most everyone in the McCormick household had been blessed with shining emerald eyes- their defining feature, as one well-meaning but rather poorly worded compliment had once stated. To see someone with eyes as bright as he saw at home was a rarity. She was almost staring him down, which he thought was slightly strange. Probably best to hold the eye contact then if she was going to try some bullshit power play on him.

“I could say the same about you,” he responded, hand retuning to the fretboard. He plucked a few notes idly, no particular song in mind. “You a fan of Nirvana?” He wouldn’t call them his favourite, but it’d been what he was playing. Something safe to talk about, if this staring contest was meant to be taken seriously. He hoped it wasn’t though.

Nine minutes now. She could spare a few.

Max didn't flinch when she scoped him out. Good on him, and he might've noticed the subsequently less stiff stoniness to each corner of her smile. By a miniscule amount, but it took less muscles to smile so there were already less for the limbic system to modulate.

"I don't play, it's more like, I wish I could." Technical truth telling when she didn't think too highly of her own clandestine songwriting. The potential energy of the technical had a grip like thorns around reality's skinny and pretty neck: technically, Ash could easily have spontaneously blown her aorta and dropped dead there and then from factors entirely beyond her control.

She eased up, casually contemplating the rest of Max besides his soul, plonking along at the keyboard's white keys, stoically miming her best Mozart and murdering cats with the dissonant nonsense that came out of the keyboard's speakers.

"And I never was much of a grunge fan. Closest I get is stuff like Bikini Kill. One degree of separation from the man himself though, I guess?" She asked questions without much additional tonal modulation. Her lilt was that of the killer robots deployed to start apocalypses, bzzt bzzt, statement, dead.

"Grunge died fast though, so you'd think I'd relate." She gave up on the piano promptly upon further ruminating on how her fingers had mutilated the attempts at chords. One elbow to the keyboard's face, one hand to support her chin, she stooped over slightly to relax. "Maybe that bit of existentialism is more your speed."

She had stopped staring him down. Had he passed some hidden test? He would have frowned, except he had a resting bitch face, so no further action was required for that to happen. His hand came up to swipe away the strands of hair that had fallen back down over his face, and as he did so Ashlyn moved. Rotating the stool he was on to keep her in his narrow frame of vision, Max repressed a wince as she hit the first off-note on the keyboard, something which proved her point wonderfully. "Shame. It's not hard when you can put the time in." He struck a particularly clean chord and held it, letting the sound ring out. "Some folks have other priorities though," he continued, voice free from judgement in its monotony.

"Bikini Kill?" He voiced. "Never heard of them." Max's music tastes were mostly 'dad rock,' as some liked to call it. Pink Floyd, the Undertones, Deep Purple. He had a few favourites that his dad didn't listen to, of course- Dropkick Murphys, Black 47, Metallica. His dad was classic rock and metal, he was punk and a bit of indie. It was a good system, even if his brothers hadn't followed in his footsteps.

Then, she said the words that caused him to groan internally. She might not have changed her name to be edgy, but that was certainly an edgy comment to make. "I might wear all black, but I try to avoid thinking like that." Her fingers had stopped plinking at the piano keys, and relief he hadn't even known he had needed hit him. "Cobain gagged on a shotgun at 27 and lost fifty perfectly good years of living."

The cross around his neck rarely felt heavier. "I'm... Not so certain what happens after you shuffle off the coil these days, but I'd rather not rush to find out."

No counter-judgement for his nonexistent judgement forthcoming. She responded with a tone as amicable and prettily bland- in her own way, given the lack of radio quality to her voice. Dead air, one could call it.

"If I had the time," a shrug, "but like you said. Priorities." Her internal clock told her eight-some minutes. The way relativity worked Ash would feel she had less time than she did to pilot her perpetually sinking ship to shore.

Cobain was a heroin addict- fifty's generous.

"Sorry," she smirked, the most teeth she'd bothered to show yet, a bit playful, a bit awkward. "I try not to make people too uncomfortable with the edge. Bad habits, you know?"

She maintained eye contact. He had strikingly colorful eye- she mindfully remembered the other was a casualty of existing- and it was almost too easy to see herself reflected in the cut emerald.

"I mean, I think about it, but it's an idle thought. I don't mind talking honestly about it but I don't have to." Ash fixed up her posture a little. Less loaf-about when she put one foot in front of another and started to stack vertebrae in the up-down axis.

"I'm actually here to buy from another shop. Eden's, down the way. Not for me." Before he got any ideas about her being that particular kind of contrarian and edgy, if he knew his ecoterrorist Greenpeace aesthetics from his other variants of feckless hipster. "Feel free to invite yourself along, otherwise." Like everything else that produced a corpse, conversations could die of natural causes. Up to him to finish pulling the plug, right?

“I wouldn’t call it discomfort I’m feeling.” He pitched his head back, saved him from needing to keep adjusting his hair. “Not really casual talk though, is it?” She kept holding eye contact. It… Wasn’t something he was used to. He kept his head down, his hands in his pockets, his mask on his face. This was different, and he was certain he wasn’t a fan of it. After a few more moments, his eye moved elsewhere, down towards the keyboard and away from her face.

She was out to buy from another shop? One called ‘Eden’s’. Apparently not for her. “Not familiar,” he replied for the second time in the conversation. Feel free to invite himself along? No, no he didn’t think he would. He was nice and comfortable here. He did have a question for her though, before she hurried off to buy… Whatever it was one bought at a shop called ‘Eden’s.’ Probably something weird, since she had insisted it wasn’t for her.

“What kinda band’s Bikini Kill?” Why was he asking this? He wasn’t sure. Maybe he wanted to judge her for her taste in music. Maybe it was just his curiosity. Sure, that was what it was. His curiosity. His eye still couldn’t come back up to look her in the face, and so his words were projected somewhere into her navel, to be absorbed by the blackness of her clothes.

"For me it is." She turned the dial down on the knob labeled herself and finally stopped looking for his eyes in and among all the rest of him. She assumed then that he had the more Zoomer aesthetic about him- a conversation through and between and pockmarked by the presence of phones worked out best. The more barriers between faces the better. Ash honestly agreed more than she didn't. When she fished her phone out of her back pocket, converting the overt brick on her hip to flatness, she diverted the full fleshmelting intensity of her gaze onto something intended for her eyes only.

"Scrappy, DIY, radical feminist. Also known as my Tinder bio." Her voice bounced off her phone case, which had even more eyeballs than were currently involved in the conversation and was sculpted into the faux texture of flesh and bone and blood. Not cheap looking either.

"I have them on here if you wanna listen." Whatever she'd been looking at had been replaced with her Spotify app. Bikini Kill - Alien She. Paused on 0:35 out of 1:41 total. Album cover was dressed more modestly than Ash was. Ash's body language didn't broadcast that she was in a hurry- she wasn't looking at him any more, but she also wasn't looking at the exit. In the most superlative interpretation of the word 'subtle' she seemed interested in checking out the cashier with a casually wandering gaze.

"I got time for a song trade. I've been kinda in the market for new listens anyhow."

She took out her phone. So could he. A good excuse to not have to deal with looking her in the face. "Fair enough," was all he said on the matter of typical conversation, Max's thumbs hovering above the screen of his phone. "Never been one for Tinder," he continued. "From what I know about it, it's all about first impressions. Not good at those." His face still hadn't changed from its sullen expression. "A huge surprise, I'm sure." The inflections that marked out sarcasm managed to slip into his voice.

She offered to play him some of her music. "Sure. I don't think she'll mind." He glanced up from his own device to Katie, and then to the phone held by Ashlyn. "Not sure if my tastes are going to be a huge surprise to you though. His appearance screamed 'I have Irish heritage,' he was a teenager, and here he was in a music shop strumming at a guitar. His thumbs navigated to Spotify, then one of his playlists, and then down onto the album cover of Rise Up. The Big Fellah was their most famous song and it was probably one of the better ones to introduce the band to someone.

He fast-forwarded through to about forty seconds into the song, just as the intro petered out and the instruments really kicked in. "Ladies first," he looked up for just long enough to nod at her.

"What little my opinion counts for you did alright. Shifty eyed about it but that's common for Zoomers."

No matching exaggeration of her tone to battle sarcasm with more sarcasm. Maybe she'd meant what she said. Her attention was still elsewhere. The girl working the cashier looked like she knew her way around a pair of combat boots, totally Ash's speed. She stopped being distracted by that particularly pleasant thought in time to stride over to him. Efficient, each step forward a conquest of the territory between them.

"M'lady," she casually riposted, a finger doffing the invisible brim of her theoretical fedora. She confidently gripped his phone in both her hands, only conscious of the possibilities of an unintended drop. "Am I supposed to skip the intro on this one?" The earbuds she had at her disposal were out of the box default Apple, boringly sterile and sleek. Each scuffed only a bit, the rubber protecting the tips of each bud slightly worn. Business like she tapped the play button, and pulled back a bit to give him more personal space than she assumed was necessary.

Only a few seconds in she grinned. Wide, shamelessly as she started to nod emphatically along to the snare hit.

"Nice..." Another few seconds for the vocals to come in. "His vocals are mixed too clean for my tastes, but the brass bits are awesome."

He smirked somewhat at the fedora tip, before nodding. "Yup. It's not a bad intro, but just for showing you the song I skipped it because it's not really representative. Now, he looked at her face again. He wasn't very good at reading people, but luckily, he didn't need to be because she clearly approved. "It's their best-known song for a reason." Still, he was glad to introduce someone to the band.

Now that he knew she was enjoying, he fumbled for his own earpods. They were a nondescript black workout pair, rugged, rough, and hooked neatly around his ears. They also had the added advantage of tangling themselves less than a regular set. Fixing them over his ears, he waited as she nodded along to the song, the guitar set down to the side and forgotten about. "Black 47. Celtic rock." He reminded as she finished listening to the track, taking his phone back and then firmly grasping hers.

He tapped the screen to start the song, and then... Huh. Hmm. He raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out how he felt about the song currently running through his brain.

"I'll listen to some other tracks, for sure. If you have any recommendations of their discoreo, they're welcome." Another minute and change lost on the song. Ashlyn's demeanor had settled and stilled like corpse contaminated water. Being loudly approving of something someone risked their ego to show off to you was either a little white lie or it wasn't, but either way it was a social nicety that could overstay its welcome. Too much enthusiasm felt gross on the skin the way only cringe could reverberate through the central nervous system.

She serenely meditated on the track in that way, her eyes fixated on the liminal space formed of the abandoned part of the store where nobody was wandering and the lights were too dim because the storefront window was at the wrong angle.

That silence was kept as Max started his listen through her track. A past Ashlyn, a little blonde gremlin who simped for every girl who so much as looked in her general direction, would have been anticipating the thrill of his approval of her music taste, or anticipating the bitter putrid taste of being rejected over it as well. Because the old her had been a little bitch, et cetera. She was stronger than a craven need for approval. If he cosigned on her track or not she would let him have his opinion, and she would keep her own to the grave.

"Sounds very seventies." He said finally. "But the voice here is almost drowned out by the music, and I'm pretty sure from the snatches I am getting and what you said about the band that there's meant to be a message here." The song was over surprisingly quickly, but it left him nodding along even after the song had finished. "It's good though. Solid punk band. I'll listen to some more of their stuff if you're offering." He let his earbuds slip off his ears and down to his lap, behind his guitar. Idly, he tried to imitate what he had heard of the song, hitting the first note effortlessly, and then having to play around to find the rest of the riff.

"Not the same on an acoustic." He admitted after he'd managed to get it right in his head. "I'll have to see what it sounds like on my amp at home." Then, he looked up at her. "Here, tell me if you've heard this one before." He would pluck at a few strings, and then quite dramatically managed to get a series of clean and distinctive twangs off. "The actual people in the band are mostly dickheads nowadays, but..." 'The music's good,' hung in the air as he continued to play, cutting himself off before he got into the chorus' buildup.

By the time he was finished, he could feel his batteries starting to run low. It had only been maybe seven or eight minutes of social interaction, several minutes of which had been silently listening to music on their phones, but it was about six more minutes of social interaction than he was really used to. Luckily, she had mentioned being elsewhere, and he was gunning on this being the last part of the conversation. They would discuss the Dead Kennedys (or not), she would leave, and he would scurry away and go get a burger next door.

"Yeah it lacks polish but I like stuff like that. I kinda like everything though, even the super overproduced stuff. If it's fun to dance to."

No further elaboration forthcoming. Ashlyn continued to back off on the overt eye contact, keeping her thoughts to herself. Whatever she'd really felt about his thoughts on her music, she probably didn't care. Much the same way anyone who was too old knew how not to care in just the right amount.

"Try their album Reject All American then." She was offering. Also, she was listening. She let her face fall into the depths of concentration, the life in her eyes slightly ebbing away into the socket of her awkwardly sized skeleton until it came rushing back in a burst of electric blue as she figured out the riff.

"We're sorry, but you're no longer needed, or wanted, or even cared about here."

She casually syncopated the lyrics to dead air, smiling all the while. The affect was a dead ringer like Dolly the Sheep, though her voice was a good deal more in her chest than Biafra's.

"Nice taste. Anyways, see you around." Casual one-note tone, no particular intent to make it a statement in the declarative. Could be, no would be. "I gotta get out of here before I'm late for being early." She did look his way as she promptly left the store, returning phone to her pocket with significant difficulty of fit. A nod of affirmation. Same for the cashier, much as she wasn't paying attention. Probably hadn't ever noticed that the store had ever had anybody else besides herself in it, the way everything behind her drooping, fetchingly onyx eyelids was slowly phasing out of reality.

Ashlyn definitely dug the aesthetic. One-point-some for two with the random encounters for the day, not a bad ratio.

|| Ashlyn Graves, Thread 1 Ends ||

“Overproduced stuff can be fun sometimes. Not all music has to be deep and meaningful.” Max’s fingers came away from the guitar. He did, however, allow the tiniest glimpse of a smirk to cross his face at the name of the suggested album. “Reject All American,” he said, without it sounding like a question. “I’ll look into it.” A curt nod to follow.

She guessed the song, then she swept out. Nice taste, she had said. Something about it gave him pause- the way she had said it, perhaps? But she was gone before he could process it, and that left him there, sitting on a stool, in a mostly deserted instrument shop.

He had managed a whole conversation with a relative stranger sincerely. No sarcasm. No comment rising forth from a barbed tongue. Just… A discussion about music. He looked down at the instrument in his hand, slowly stood up, and moved towards the wall of other guitars. Then he placed the instrument back with its kin and slipped his hoodie up.

He had had quite enough interaction for one afternoon. Fiddling with Spotify to put on the album she had suggested, he shuffled his way out of the door, oblivious to the bell’s ding signifying his passing, and entered the fast food joint, leaving Forbidden Riffs to its own devices.

((Maxwell McCormick continued in Skipping Leg Day))