[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

ROCK THE SUSHI SHOP!

Hello, All! Melanie here.

When last we heard from Writer X, she had successfully terrorized Mr. Morgan of Mr. Morgan’s Food Emporium & Things Nicely Priced into booking the band DemonKitty for the grand opening of the new sushi counter.

There’s an old joke in the music world. It goes like this…

Q: How do you get a musician to complain?

A: Give them a gig.

Regardless that the sushi show would fulfill one of Tryxy the demon’s musical dreams, when confronted with success, some of us panic like so many writers confronted with a blank page. Rather than practice, Tryxy spent most of his time finding literally anything else to do as the date of the show clipped toward him. Writer X and Tod Boadkins, two writers deeply familiar with avoiding writing, looked on in horror.

Without further ado…

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Subject: IT CLEARLY SAYS TO TASTE THE RAINBOW!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

All I can say is that things didn’t go as planned!!!! Last week, Tryxy and #bestkitten didn’t practice for their show at all. To be fair, that wasn’t #bestkitten’s fault. She always shows up for practice, but Tryxy is the one that’s a whole #MOOD.

Finally, the night before the gig, but BEFORE we learned that our internet had been intercepted by gophers, the writing appeared on the wall. That’s because Tryxy is a high level demon from the Void of Asheput and can make his calendar reminders appear on the living room wall. There it was, written in a demonic scrawl over my case of faberge eggs:

It was CLEAR that it was time to get down to business and defeat the Huns, but even then, Tryxy dragged his feet.

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not like there will be anyone there!”

That’s when I showed him the poster I hired some gophers to make to promote the gig!!!!!

THAT was the writing on the wall he needed!!! I should have showed him the poster a week before!!!!! Tryxy went into a cold panic. How was he supposed to get months of practice in on a single night?? I told him that, if anyone could do it, a demon could, but he wasn’t consoled.

That’s when he and #bestkitten concocted a WHOLE NEW PLAN to deal with the fact that they hadn’t practiced any of their songs in months. No, it wasn’t to borrow another time machine from the library, go back in time and practice. You know how long the waiting list is for those time machines!!! And no, it wasn’t to load up on vitamin B12 and espresso shots and practice all night. It wasn’t even to hire a bunch of gophers a session musicians!!!!

Ultimately Tryxy decided they could take one of two paths. Either they could do any of the things I’ve listed above ORRRRRR they could host a skittles mukbang on their YouTube channel.

The logic went like this: “We COULD practice and still be not so good because we haven’t practiced in several months. OR we could make our fans love us so much that, no matter how bad we play, they’ll think we’re cool.”

Everyone knows that fans love nothing more than a good band mukbang. So Tryxy and #bestkitten hot-footed down to the store to buy several pounds of skittles.

It was about that time that the gopher incident happened. I WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT GO INTO THE GOPHER INCIDENT. THERE’S NO TIME, GLADYS!!!!!

Okay, I will. It went like this: I owed the gophers money. NOT from the poster, but for the faberge egg I bought off one of their facebook marketplace ads. I didn’t pay them. They ate my internet.

Tryxy and #bestkitten set up their camera and each ate two bags of skittles and talked about how amazing the show was going to be and how they were counting on everyone’s support because it’s been a lifelong dream to play at a sushi counter. Then they discovered that they hadn’t been recording.

So they did it again. But felt too scripted to repeat the stuff about counting on everyone’s support, so they ate two more bags of skittles and talked about how they had come to be best friends. Then, they discovered that #bestkitten had a piece of toilet paper sticking to her left whiskers the whole time and had to scrap and record again.

Four or five attempts later, when they were both slightly green, I gave them the great news that the internet had been restored!!!!!

The next morning, my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I had to carry the two of them to the sushi counter on a stretcher. Which was fine. They only had to play for fifteen minutes but they also only have three songs which they finished in eight minutes. That’s when they decided to do a “jam session,” and in a twist no one saw coming, both of them got sick. Fortunately, Tryxy is a demon so when the upchuck started chucking, he magically turned the sick into streams of rainbows pouring from their mouths AND THE CROWD WENT WILD!!!

They have a gimmick!!!!!!! Now we just have to make sure they eat at least ten pounds of skittles before each show.

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going but right now I am up to my ears booking shows for DemonKitty!!!!! I’ve got all the best venues lined up!!!! I booked them playing Senior Night at the Bingo Emporium, the bus stop outside the tractor haul the next night, and the launch of the new bathrooms they installed at the Gas and Guzzler in Bleakwood!!!! We’re going places!!!!

Pages next week, Galdsy!!!

xox,

X

GLAD THAT

EVERYONE

LIKE OUR

VOMIT

RAINBOW,

BUT I

HOPE THEY

INTERFACE

WITH THE

MEANING

OF THE

SONGS.