The hallway was a sea of polyester flares, feathered hair, and the smell of floor wax. Fourteen-year-old DELANEY moved like a ghost through the crowd. Her denim skirt was mid-calf, her white blouse buttoned to the chin, her blonde hair braided so tightly by her mother that it pulled at her temples.
She was a girl out of time, anchored to her Walkmanâa bulky, silver brick that felt like a lead weight in her pocket.
The Prophet's voice droned from the tape in her ears, a familiar sermon about the corrupting influence of rhythm, of music, of anything that wasn't the approved Word.
Suddenly, the drone was cut short. An earbud was yanked out. Delaney gasped, her hand flying to her chest.
Jolene looked like the picture of 1970s suburban innocence. She wore a crisp school uniform, her own blonde hair in twin sweet braids that mirrored Delaney's, but without the tension. She looked "normal"âa word that, in Delaney's house, was synonymous with "doomed."
Jolene didn't scoff. She just reached into her bookbag, moving past her geometry pens, and pulled out a translucent grey cassette tape. It had no label, just the words "THE DOORS" scrawled in black Sharpie.
She slid the tape into Delaney's hand. It felt warm from being in the bag. To Delaney, it felt like holding a live coal.
The room was an altar to the Prophet. No mirrors. No posters. Just a wooden cross and the heavy, oppressive smell of floor cleaner. Delaney lay on her bed, the Walkman hidden under her pillow. The click of the plastic as she swapped the tapes sounded like a bone snapping. She pressed PLAY.
The psychedelic organ of "Break On Through" swirled into her ears. It didn't sound like the "heartbeat of the Beast." It sounded like a door opening in a room that hadn't had a window for fourteen years. Jim's voiceâdeep, gravelly, and impossibly freeâfilled her head. He wasn't barking orders. He was inviting her. "Break on through to the other side."
She stared at the ceiling, her eyes wide. She thought of Joleneâsweet, braided Jolene who wore glasses and liked mathâand realized that if Jolene could listen to this and still be "good," then everything her mother said about the "other side" was a lie. It wasn't a pit of fire. It was just... the world.
As the first track ended, Delaney didn't stop the tape. She couldn't. The "other side" wasn't a place she was visiting; it was a place she was claiming. She lay there, the plastic casing of the Walkman warming against her palm, the rhythmic hiss of the magnetic tape filling the gaps between the poetry.
She closed her eyes, and the darkness of her bedroom began to vibrate. The oppressive smell of her mother's floor cleaner started to warp, sharpening into the acrid, sweet scent of clove cigarettes. The silence of the house didn't just break; it dissolved. The tinny, private world in her earbuds suddenly expanded, the walls of her room pushing outward until they disappeared into a cavernous dark. The single "click" of the drums on the tape transformed into a physical thud that hit her in the chest, shaking the very bones she was told belonged to God.
The transition was a violent bloom of light. Delaney's eyes snapped open, but she wasn't on her bed anymore. She was standing in a sea of heat and static. The air was thick with clove cigarettes, cheap beer, and the electric hum of a stage about to ignite. The low, droning sermon of the Prophet had been replaced by the roar of a thousand "children of the darkness" screaming for a different kind of light.
Fourteen-year-old Delaney stood in the second row. She looked like a displaced angel. Her blonde hair was soft, catching the stray purple beams of the stage lights, and her face had that "sweet" quality that made the Elders at the compound overlook her. They didn't see the girl who had stolen twenty dollars from her mother's "Tithes" jar to buy a bus ticket into the city.
She was surrounded by a group of boysâher "public school" friends. Delaney was never lonely; she was a magnet. With her wide blue eyes and that deceptive innocence, she had her pick of boyfriends. But as she leaned against a boy named TOMMY, she wasn't really with him.
She was looking at the stage, waiting for the surrogate. The cover band singer walked out; leather pants, white shirt unbuttoned, hair a tangled nest of dark curls. He wasn't Jim, but in the strobe light, with the first chords of "Light My Fire" screaming through the speakers, he was close enough.
She closed her eyes and felt Tommy's hand on her waist. She imagined it was a different hand. A larger, more dangerous hand. She spent every relationship this wayâcasting the boy next to her in the role of the Lizard King. She wanted a poet who would burn the world down for her. She wanted the "Second Coming," but not the one her mother prayed to. She wanted a God who lived in the gutter and spoke in riddles.
The high of the concert was shattered the moment Delaney crept through the back window of her home. The lights weren't off. Her mother, MARTHA, was sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the kitchen. On the table sat Delaney's secret cassettes, her notebooks filled with lyrics, and the "The Doors" shirt she'd hidden under her mattress.
Martha picked up the "The Doors" tapeâthe one Jolene gave herâand dropped it onto the floor. She didn't just step on it. She ground her heel into the plastic until it cracked, the brown magnetic tape spilling out like disemboweled guts across the linoleum.
Delaney (54) turned away from the Jim Morrison poster, the ghost of that concert music still ringing in her ears. She sat in the dark, her modern noise-canceling headphones over her ears. The digital file was crisper than the old cassette, but the effect was the same.
She looked at the poster. At 54, she could see the tragedy in his eyes that she missed at 14. She thought he was her savior, her "Anti-Prophet." But as she watched VIKTORâthe quiet kid she had effectively "pulled out of the world" to serve her investigationâshe realized the horrifying truth.
She looked at the old, yellowed Walkman on her desk. She remembered the way her mother didn't just scream, but wept, as if Delaney had contracted a terminal disease.
But she knew that wasn't true. For a girl in a cage, a song wasn't just music. It was a map. She thought of the men who came after Tommy. She was always the "cute blonde" who seemed like she needed saving, but she was really the one doing the hunting, molding every "tortured soul" into the icon. Each time, they failed. Because real men have flaws that aren't poetic. Real men get tired, or boring, or cruel in ways that don't rhyme.
Delaney gripped the edge of her desk. The "purging" had lasted years. They turned a girl's love for music into a woman's obsession with power. She looked at the "Fighter" file on her screen. She was doing to Viktor exactly what the Prophet did to her: she was giving him a map that only led to her version of the truth. She was grooming him to be a witness in her own private war against idols.
She thought of Jolene. She hadn't spoken to her since 1979. She wondered if Jolene still wore braids. Her hand shook as she reached for the mouse. She looked at the "Delete" key.
She walked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, trying to wash away the "cute" girl she used to be. That girl died the night the tapes were crushed. As she looked in the mirror, she wondered: if she stopped the investigation now, if she stopped being the "journalist," who was left? Just the girl in the long denim skirt, waiting for a dead man to save her?
The apartment held its silence like a held breath. On the computer screen, the cursor blinked over the file named "FIGHTER_EXPOSE_FINAL.doc." Twenty years of journalism, of chasing truth, of building a persona as the woman who broke idolsâall contained in that blinking line.
She remembered the feel of the broken cassette under her mother's heel. The crunch of plastic. The way the tape had spilled out like something living and now dead. She had cried that nightânot for the music, but for the map that had been taken from her. For the door that had been slammed shut.
Viktor's face flashed in her mind. The quiet intensity. The way he looked at her like she had all the answers. She had seen that look beforeâin the mirror, when she was fourteen, staring at a poster she'd taped to the back of her closet door.
Delaney's finger hovered over the mouse. The delete key seemed to pulse with its own light.
Outside, the city hummed with its own rhythm. Cars passed. A siren wailed in the distance. Life went on, with or without her version of the truth.
She took a deep breath. The scent of lemon bleach was gone from her skin, but it would always be in her memory. Just like the scent of clove cigarettes and cheap beer. Just like the sound of a breaking cassette.
Patient zero of her own private pandemic of devotion, now faced with a choice: continue the infection, or find the cure.
Her finger trembled. Then moved.