Tay still remembered the first time she'd seen Escape the Fate live. What was it, 2007? Sometime around then. She'd somehow talked her parents into letting her carpool with a friend who had her license all the way to Vega City, to see Ronnie and pals in some hole in the wall venue that probably didn't exist anymore.
It was the first time she'd ever felt anything like love for a guy.
Obviously, she didn't want to have sex with him, exactly. She respected him too much for that. But he just looked so alive, so unabashedly himself, like he was having so much fun. He was just out there with his friends, singing his little songs and looking damned pretty while doing it, and Tay wanted that. The idea of living alongside them, on the tour bus, dedicating every moment of their lives to the scene, to each other, to just having a good time, that was intoxicating.
She kept following Ronnie ever after that. She saw the live news broadcasts, ported at terrible resolution to YouTube, of his refusing to get taken to prison peacefully (after having only ended up there in the first place because he refused to piss in a cup, but back in 08 no one believed Craig about that). She followed him on MySpace and was there every time he ended up ranting in all caps at his haters, Max, or whatever. (Wait, how was he getting access to the Internet in prison?) And then she was there when the Falling In Reverse MySpace page stopped being updated by him, and suddenly became much more professional and regularly updated.
She kept showing up every time FIR performed anywhere near her, although she didn't travel for it more than she could do as a day trip in her car anymore. She hadn't flown for a concert since college. No concert she'd ever attended since had quite felt the same, and every one got a little bit worse. The music was still great, of course, at least for a while. She still loved the feeling of connecting with her fellow fans. But Ronnie, over time, felt less and less like he was expressing himself and more and more like he was going through the motions to get his paycheck. He stopped descending from the stage to interact with fans, even in the form of expressing his love with 10-pound, sharpened pieces of metal. Meet and greets became scarcer, more expensive, and much briefer once you actually got in. He'd take a half assed picture with you, maybe autograph something if you were lucky, and then kind of snarl and run you off. Really, VIP was only worth it at this point for getting seats.
Tay hadn't really been involved in The Scene, as it were, in a while. She kept showing up for concerts, and still followed things going on in the Falling In Reverse-adjacent space, but the days of showing off concert outfits and swag with her girlfriends on Tumblr were gone. Half of the posts on fan spaces were the fans attacking someone, whether that was Ronnie, each other, or whoever Ronnie's latest punching bag was. Said punching bags were, of course, always women, and never had the platforms to defend themselves. And somehow, no one ever considered that anyone but Ronnie's target had been in the wrong.
Back in 2013, Tay didn't see anything wrong with half of her Tumblr feed being slash fic and feminism, and the other half being her scene friends gleefully self-identifying as part of the Bad Girls Club and ripping anyone who insinuated that maybe Sally's testimony was worth considering to shreds like a pack of misogynistic Maenads. In hindsight, though, seeing the current batch of fans, and the current state of concerts featuring videos of "haters", who didn't consent to be there, on the big screen, raised up a terrible thought. Part of her didn't want it to be true, since what would that say about her attachment to Ronnie going on 20 years running? But the rest of her went to college for journalism, originally, even though she somehow ended up writing technical documentation, and knew how to read sources.
Was Falling In Reverse always awful, and did I just not notice until now?
Tay flopped back onto the bed in her modest studio apartment, her overstuffed calico cat jumping up after her to investigate. She'd gotten out of work, which had ended up being a bunch of meetings, and support calls she got drafted into because the person who was handling them abruptly quit. She'd gone to college, and gotten into this job, because she wanted to write. She wanted to bring people the truth and uncover bad behavior from institutions of power. And she'd somehow ended up explaining how to operate a settings menu and that no, we don't support Windows 7 anymore, please stop asking.
Tay's cell phone started vibrating against her nightstand. It was sitting on the edge of the particle-board rectangular prism in the first place, so was dangerously close to falling off once she got over there to grab it, having to move the cat off of her legs to do so. Rather than the AI-generated spam call she was expecting, the caller was Krystal, one of the only friends from college she'd still been in contact with. They'd bonded over their mutual music interests and continued dedication to the scene even after the mainstream deemed it dead, despite having little else in common. While Tay had gravitated towards writing, with the original intent of journalism but somehow ending up as a technical writer for a manufacturer of video download software, Krystal had never given up on her scenemo fantasies. Her major was nominally in accounting, at the insistence of her parents, but Tay couldn't recall her ever actually describing anything about class, save all the music and theater electives she took. After graduating and having to persist without her generous merit scholarship, she bounced between various scene-adjacent jobs: A/V at local event venues, working at several record and musical equipment stores, security at bars (something she was surprisingly good at despite her lack of physical intimidation), and her current gig managing finances for a mid-tier record label. Tay had no idea how she'd managed to survive this long.
Tay picked up the phone, to be met with an exuberant, relatively high-pitched voice on the other end. Krystal had the accent of a stereotypical valley girl, but the interests and aesthetic presentation of an emo kid even into her 30s. It was a strange combination, but it worked on her.
"Hey, girlfriend!"
"Oh, hey, Krystal. What's going on? Just got out of work. Got shunted into support, even though that's not my department, because the guy who was doing it quit. On one hand, I'm glad they're not outsourcing to a sweatshop or a chatbot. On the other, ugh, I just want to fucking write; why I am in software success meetings."
"Oof, yeah, I've been surprised at just how much of what I'm doing is admin and how little of it actually relates to the music. At least my dad's glad I'm actually using my accounting degree."
"Oh? I wasn't aware you went to class."
"I did. Got pretty much straight As, too. Just didn't talk about it because it was boring as shit. Always been good at math, but I can't say I find it especially fun."
"So, what did you call about? Just to chat?"
"Oh, uh, I actually got a notification just now that Ronnie's livestreaming again. It's on this new platform that does auctions on stream -- Whatever, or something like that? Anyway, uh, he said he was gonna be selling some old Falling In Reverse stuff, so I thought of you. I was thinking maybe we could watch it together, and be on a call so we can make fun of how stupid it is? Dunno if I'll buy anything, but I wouldn't mind getting a copy of his book."
"Just get the PDF from Web Archive. It's what I did."
"Yeah, I know, but I want the glossy pictures in my hands. There's just something about having a book physically that you don't get with a PDF."
"I guess I'll join for emotional support. After all, have to save you from the barbarian legions that are modern Falling In Reverse fans."
Tay and Krystal stayed on their call as they both pulled up Ronnie's Whatnot stream. When Tay set up an account, she included payment information for the auctions, even though she wasn't really sure why. She'd been going to concerts whenever FIR was in the area, about every 2 years or so, but hadn't bought merch in something like 7 years. Really, ever since Coming Home, she felt like Falling In Reverse had lost their aesthetic cohesion, and ultimately, what she admired about Ronnie. He was so unabashedly silly, and himself, that his trying to be "serious" just ended up coming off shallow and generic.
Of course, at this point, so did his attempts at "humor". Only half paying attention in favor of talking to each other, Tay and Krystal half-regarded a 41-year-old man prancing around his house, insulting anything that moved and peddling T-shirts no one bought when they debuted in 2021 to digital feeding frenzies of desperate fans. Meanwhile, other members of Falling In Reverse, Dana Dentata, etcetera, sat in the back of the room looking bored.
It had been something like 3 hours, and Tay couldn't say she was still paying much of anything like attention. She'd been describing a completely insufferable tech support caller from the previous morning who'd tried to evangelize to her about Ubuntu for 10 minutes straight before finally getting to his actual problem when from the corner of her eye, she saw something actually interesting pop up on the screen, Ronnie holding it up to the camera with disdain and at low enough resolution its design was barely visible: a plausible facsimile, at least, of a leather jacket supposedly worn during tours in 2012. There was something of an inherent contradiction in something attempting to resemble a biker or punk jacket that nonetheless was likely specifically tailored to Ronnie's proportions and commissioned to look as intentionally edgy as possible.
Several thoughts ran through Tay's head, including that it was pretty unlikely this was really the case since it had been 13 years, and how, given all his freakish bulking up over the past few years, would it even still fit Ronnie anymore?
Somehow, and she didn't understand how, Tay ended up highest bidder on the damned thing, an amount of time later that felt simultaneously agonizingly long and disturbingly abrupt. The phone call with Krystal went silent for a full 30 seconds, Tay staring at the screen processing what had just happened.
"Holy shit."
"You won. Congrats!"
"I just spent 600 fucking dollars on a jacket, that he probably hasn't even actually worn, and definitely won't fit since it was made for someone 8 inches taller than me."
A little bit less than a month later, the parcel arrived. It was very carefully addressed from a post office a good hundred miles from Ronnie's residence, probably because he didn't trust her knowing his address. (Never mind that he'd shown enough pictures of his house that anyone with enough dedication and street view could figure it out.) Tay immediately called Krystal to come over once they were both done with works, because through some miracle of fate, they'd actually stayed in the same city (Krystal was her only college friend who had) and as the reason she'd made this regrettable financial decision in the first place, Tay wanted Krystal there to see the unboxing.
The cardboard box was thoroughly nondescript, and somewhat crushed on one side. Apparently even though Ronnie was willing to go far out of his way to make sure where he lived wasn't revealed by the mailing location (or to conscript some lackey to do it), he wasn't willing to actually package the damned thing properly or get a reasonable shipping service. At least the jacket was, in fact, inside.
Getting a closer examination of the garment, it was reminiscent of the Good Girls Bad Guys or Raised By Wolves sleeveless vests, except with sleeves. It bore the same generically edgy wolf motif on the back, coupled with some strategically placed (and probably very expensive) graffiti-esque text and patches on either sleeve and a pseudo-military-esque label of "Radke" on the right side front lapel. Frankly, it looked like it was designed to be the most generic Falling In Reverse article possible.
Tay stared at it, uncertain what she'd really spent that money on. She wasn't really in any situations where wearing this thing would be appropriate, not the least of which because her last name wasn't Radke. She had never been a leather jacket kind of person (she'd always been more of the hoodie or flannel kind of emo even when she was into scene fashion). Nor could she even verify that this was ever actually worn by Ronnie live, and did it even matter, because who the hell cared about random live performances in 2012? What she was trying to buy was a memory, that wasn't hers, and maybe hadn't ever been real in the first place. A time, that maybe didn't exist and that she only thought did because she was still basically a kid, that Falling In Reverse was harmless and fun and Ronnie was laughing with the scene and not at them. A time when Ronnie cared about his fans, his bandmates, improving as a person, getting clean, never going back to prison, giving back goodwill to the world, burying the hatchet.
(If you ignore the mic stands, I See Stars, and Bad Girls Club...)
"So, are you gonna put it on?"
Tay was shocked out of her reverie by Krystal, looking wide-eyed and impressed at the jacket. "Have to say, it's in better shape than I thought it would be. And it definitely is very Drug In Me Is You."
"Yeah, I'm not convinced it isn't in this good of shape because he never actually wore it...it does smell like a mosh pit, though, which maybe points to authenticity?"
Tay held up the garment and sniffed it, then immediately recoiled. She did think it had been washed, but sweat, horrible cologne, and beer stuck to it no matter what. She suspected that it was the patches that had absorbed it; back in her patch-wearing days she noticed that they tended to stink and get dirty faster than the rest of the garments they were on. Taking a deep breath (through her mouth, of course), she slid it on over her shirt. It wasn't too bad open, although she had to roll up the sleeves a bit so her hands were visible. It didn't feel all that different on the inside from the oversized flannel she slept in; at least it had a decently soft inner lining. Now, she suspected that had she zipped it, it would end up far too loose in some places and far too tight in others -- it definitely hadn't been designed for someone with boobs, as the positioning of that "Radke" nameplate showed.
Krystal clapped and whistled. "Damn! That looks a lot better than I thought it would."
"What, did you think I'd look like a kid wearing my dad's suit?"
"...pretty much, yeah. But honestly, you pull it off. You should start coming to more concerts with me; I get cheaper tickets since I work for the label now. Think there are folks I've met who'd love that."
"Yeah, if they didn't punch me in the face for being a misogyny enabler or whatever..."
Tay tried to end that sentence with a laugh, but it ended up trailing off quickly into some dry and utterly mirthless notes.
"What's with you? Like, I know you hated the new album last year, but you've been even more down about Ronnie, especially, the entire past month I've been talking to you! Like, sure, his current work sucks and he's an asshole, but that's not what matters! What matters is that it's something that you enjoy, and that brought us together as friends. He's brought a lot of people together and brought them joy like that. Sure, he's mean, but isn't that what really matters?"
"I don't really see how spending 600 dollars on a jacket on a livestream, that goes straight into his pockets, brings anyone joy, Krystal. I guess I've had the last month to...think about this, and why the fuck I did it. It's not that I can't afford it. I could get a house if I wanted; I just don't see a point since I just live by myself with Jingles." Tay gestured towards her thick-bodied cat, grooming himself in the corner and utterly oblivious to anything that was going on.
"But it's that...I think I gave into the nostalgia industrial complex, to use a term from our Tumblr days. I was thinking that buying this jacket would take me back to 2012, where the biggest thing I had to worry about was when the reconciliation tour would happen, and it really did feel like Ronnie was improving at least if you ignored how he interacted with everyone but Max. It just felt so much more innocent. But somewhere along the way, Falling In Reverse fans became awful and it's all about Ronnie attacking people, and who he's siccing them on, and I don't know if they were always like that or I just didn't notice it until now. But it's...it's making it hard for me to stomach, and hard for me to reconcile, all the joy they've brought me, as a band. I guess I was hoping that buying this jacket would bring back all that joy and I'd forget about it, but...I haven't. I just want Ronnie to be fun again."
For a moment, Tay's entire torso tensed up, and she felt something like how it feels when blood rushes back into your foot after you've been sitting on it and it fell asleep without you noticing. Or less pleasantly, like the time she'd ended up in the hospital with severe dehydration during finals and got to feel what it's like to get an IV and feel liquid being pumped straight into your bloodstream. It felt a bit like under the jacket, it was stretching out some sort of tendrils or fangs or something and injecting something into her, or releasing something which sank into her skin. She quickly shook it off, taking a deep breath through her chest and dismissing the whole thing as a jab of nervousness.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to get real with you like that. And of course, don't feel like a bad person if you still like him. This is just me. And really, I want to like him, still, or I want to just be a hater, but whether I like it or not, I can't stop caring. Ronnie's really what got me into the scene, and that's what propelled...the entire course of my life, really; I only joined MySpace and Tumblr and all that for music, but that's how I really discovered how much I liked writing and journalism. Volunteered to do guest posts on some shitty metal blog and that's when I decided I wanted to go to school for news reporting, and how I met you... I know rationally that it's got nothing to do with him, and that if it wasn't Escape the Fate back in 2007, it would have been another band, but..."
Krystal approached Tay from behind and laid a hand on her shoulder, the one over the Radke name patch. Tay turned back to her and smiled.
"Thanks."
"Hey, we've all been there. Honestly, it almost sounds like Ronnie's your shitty ex or something."
That actually got a couple of notes of legitimate laughter.
"Yeah, you may have something. Anyway, I'm gonna take this thing off. Sure, it's fun, and maybe I'll take you up on going to a concert with you, but I need to shower and there's no reason to just hang around the house in this thing. Plus, it does kind of stink. Maybe if I just soak it fully in Febreze..."
Tay reached up to the collar of the jacket and casually pulled it down to either side, trying to carefully keep the sleeves from turning inside out.
It wouldn't budge.
Thinking that perhaps something had gotten caught on her shirt, she tried to reach underneath the sleeves and front and back surfaces of the jacket to dislodge wherever it had gotten snagged, but found herself unable to lift it up past her skin at all. She managed to just barely lift up the very end of one of the sleeves -- which prompted a yelp of pain, as it took all of the hair on that part of her arm with it. She abruptly put the sleeve back down and patted the spot of abrupt pain, where the seal re-established itself. Trying to reach back underneath the sleeve as an experiment, she found the same failure she had everywhere else.
"Well, this is unusual. I can't get it off. Krystal? Can you come look at it? Maybe I'm going from the wrong angle or something? Not used to this with jackets, though, especially since this one should be loose. After all, it's for someone a lot bigger than me."
Krystal dutifully approached and followed the same procedures Tay had, getting the same results. She couldn't get the jacket detached from Tay's skin, and what little success she had prompted winces and jerks back of pain as the breaking of the seal ripped off hair, and in one case, skin with it. Tay felt blood cascading down her arm, mingling with that sensation of being injected with venom, or something sinking into her skin, returning. Whatever oozed from this thing was now penetrating her bloodstream directly. Great. After several valiant attempts from several angles, Krystal ceased her efforts and returned to her previous position in front of Tay with an apologetic shrug.
"Huh. That's really weird. Maybe try rubbing alcohol or something? I don't think that would stay sticky during shipping, and don't know anything that would stick to skin that much, but maybe Ronnie thought it'd be funny to prank you by filling the thing with glue or something."
"...yeah, that would be the kind of thing he'd do."
Despite the quality of Krystal's idea, every bathroom and kitchen cleaner Tay could think of that wasn't explicitly labeled as poisonous had no effect on the strange adhesive. If anything, it felt even tighter. Or rather, at the ends of her arms, Tay had stopped feeling it at all, like it had fused with her skin itself. Also, the sleeves had stopped being rolled up, nor did they cover her hands anymore. The tightness continued to travel upwards through her torso. With desperation, she reached into the kitchen junk drawer and produced a craft knife, which she knew could cut leather and denim because she'd used it for modifying clothing before. Krystal looked shocked.
"Woah, are you sure? I mean, that's, like, super expensive!"
"I need to get the damned thing off so I can shower, and it's cheaper to get a cut stitched up at a leather mending place than to unfuse it from my skin or whatever."
"I guess I can't argue with that..."
Valiantly attacking the jacket from several angles, Tay found no results with the knife. Not only did it not cut into the material she was beginning to suspect wasn't actually leather, by the time she'd tried every logical seam, the knife was dull, tarnished, and looked almost like it had rusted or corroded. Whatever this was, it wasn't leather, and a wave of dread moved from the center of her body outwards. There was only one comparable situation Tay could think of.
"You remember those Goosebumps books, from when we were kids? Or Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark or whatever? And how it felt like every other chapter was about a mask that turned into your face when you put it on, or getting an organ transplant from somebody making you act like them, or something like that?"
"You're not suggesting that --"
"Well, do you have a logical explanation for a jacket that should be too big for me, but I can't get off, and seems to be getting tighter or fusing with my skin or something?"
Krystal looked contemplative for a moment. "I guess that is kind of part of Falling In Reverse lore...it wasn't in 2012, but maybe it'll turn you into a werewolf or give you laser eyes or something. That'd be cool."
"I guess. Just hoping I don't end up with the fucking forehead tattoo. Always thought that thing was kind of stupid, and the crown of thorns is even worse."
"How do you feel about horns? If I'm remembering right, he talks about getting them cut off in Fuck The Rest, and the new God Is A Weapon pic has them."
"Why are you so accepting of this. Like, I know we both know that shapeshifting isn't real, and clothes that make you act or look like the person they belong to are a cliche."
"Well, it's Ronnie. Really, the only thing he could do that would be surprising at this point is honestly apologizing. Plus, if you think about it, all the guys in his band do end up looking like him if they stay around long enough...maybe this is why? Honestly, you kinda look like him, save the tits, even now, and definitely when you were younger. You've got the same kind of face outlines, and you were always great at hitting his vocals."
"The perks of being an alto. Well, I guess we'll see if I have to shave tomorrow morning. But, uh, before you leave -- I never figured out how to take off my bra from under a shirt, but I know you can. I've seen you do it. Can you get mine off? If I'm gonna be sleeping in this thing for the foreseeable future, I'm gonna do it unrestrained."
While the awkward adjustments and her friend managing to reach under her shirt despite the unyielding jacket took place, Tay continued thinking about the possibility of a Goosebumps scenario. Surely that wasn't the case -- it didn't make any damned sense in any capacity. After all, Ronnie hated folks imitating him, so there's no way he'd try to turn people into him. But at the same time, everyone in his band did end up looking an awful lot like him -- hell, by the time Tyler left, all he needed was the face tattoo.
What would happen to her relationship with Krystal, and with everyone, really, if she ended up turning into a clone of Ronnie, though? She'd thought sometimes about the idea of if she woke up and found herself to have changed sex during the night (blame it on reading too much fanfic) and had decided for a while now that she'd just go on with her life as normal because it didn't really matter. But who was to say that anyone else in her life would see it that way? The whole thing made her glad that she didn't have a boyfriend, and hadn't since college -- she had better things to do, after all. That would have been hella awkward to explain. Tay didn't feel like a man in a woman's body or anything, but it did piss her off when she was praised for her bravery and ingenuity as a woman in her field or whatever. What mattered wasn't what was in her pants; it was being a damned good writer.
And at least she could be sure that even if she ended up with that stupid fucking face tattoo, nothing could take that away from her. She was less sure about if she could still type if she turned into a werewolf, though, so she was hoping it'd not be that specific version of Ronnie.
When Tay woke up the next morning, she half expected and fully hoped that the jacket would be gone, and that the whole thing had been a dream. Of course, that was almost more cliche than the notion that it had bonded to her and refused to let her take it off, and was going to transform her into the image of its true owner. However, upon waking up and looking down to see the leather-that-wasn't still covering her arms and the sides of her torso, having tightly connected itself to her skin enough that she barely even felt its presence before thinking about it, she sighed and slumped over to the mirror to investigate if anything had changed further.
She didn't really look all that different at first glance -- despite the joke she'd made the previous day, she didn't show any signs of needing to shave. Really, her general facial outlines and chin looked pretty much identical, although were her eyebrows bigger? The jacket sat in roughly the same position it had before she'd gone to bed, although glancing at the offset of the Radke nameplate, perhaps her chest was a bit smaller than it had been. This wasn't really a bad thing from her point of view, though, since she couldn't take the thing off to put on another bra or shower for the foreseeable future, and less breast area meant less boob sweat and hopefully not smelling quite as bad when stuck in a garment she couldn't remove.
Her vision traveling down her sleeves to her hands, she noticed congealed spots of some dried liquid clinging to them. This was something she was familiar with, albeit not in this region and not to the volume she was seeing there: the mixture of ink, plasma, blood, and who knows what else that drained from recently acquired tattoos and dried into uncomfortable sticky masses at the edge of one's bandages. Flexing her arms on both sides, Tay determined that this stuff was probably accumulating over the entire area under the jacket, but there wasn't much she could do about it, still finding herself unable to dislodge the garment from her skin. At least, she figured, with the sleeves as tight as they were, the fluids would be contained and may have a better time reabsorbing. Of course, she knew quite well that she hadn't gotten any tattoos on her arms at all recently, nor that it would really be possible for someone to acquire enough ink in a short period for their hands to be completely covered in the drainage; they'd lose enough blood to be physically overwhelmed, even under anaesthetic, there were physical limits to how long someone could be tattooed for. Hence even Ronnie himself having to split his blacking out, and the far more interesting sleeves it had covered, into multiple sessions. Magical transformations, though, didn't necessarily have to follow the laws of biology, nor would the blood loss necessarily be a concern were something seeping into your skin and getting permanently lodged in there directly without having to go through a needle.
At least she was wearing long sleeves, so no one would notice what was going on underneath them. And frankly, Tay was just as glad; she wasn't sure she wanted to see it. Staring at her face, she concluded that it was probably fine to carry on with work including video calls as normal -- her eyebrows were definitely thicker, but not in a way that couldn't be explained by makeup. Now, her hair was an absolute mess. It carried the kind of curls of someone who had just gotten out of bed, and honestly looked a bit more like something you'd see on a dog at an animal shelter than a human being. It straddled the line between the intentional disarray of scene fashion and just regular disarray. Reaching into the bathroom drawers for a hairbrush, Tay aggressively ran it through the entire region of her hair, only to find no noticeable change. It remained as fluffy, greasy, and strategically unkempt as Tay's first thought that came to mind: that fucking mugshot that ended up as an "album cover", in all its JPEG-artifacted, domestic-abuse-glorifying, probably-illegal-for-Ronnie-to-sell glory, and that no one was fully willing to admit was stupid as opposed to the most avant garde and edgy thing ever.
Tay sighed, the disheveled bangs she couldn't make any less disheveled despite her best efforts cascading over her face. It wasn't a hairstyle that looked bad on her, and wasn't that much longer than what she'd been wearing, but didn't quite seem becoming of a serious technical writer. Rummaging through the bathroom drawer again, putting the hairbrush back, she produced a hair tie and was able to with some difficulty get most of the extruding fluffy bits and bangs pulled together into a passable ponytail. It still wasn't how she would have preferred to look at work, but she worked remotely and joined via video call so dress code was more of a suggestion than anything, and at least it got it out of her face.
Thankfully, 5K Audiovisual Solutions had conscripted someone else for tech support calls that day, so other than the day's useless meetings, Tay could spend most of her work day actually writing. Of course, she was still doing support, mostly via the company's forums, but she still found it much more bearable to do so via text, and there weren't nearly as many forum posts, so she could spend the rest of the day updating documentation for the upcoming next version of the video re-encoder. (Plus unlike on a phone call, on forum posts, you could copy and paste.) She was just as glad she didn't have to talk too much, because she found when brainstorming what to write to herself and talking during the morning meeting that her throat felt decidedly tight and scratchy if she talked for too long. A glass of herbal tea ended up on her desk and getting refilled several times throughout the work day. Tay's first thought was that she was coming down with a cold, but looking down at her hands again and rushing back to the bathroom to wash off yet another layer of congealed tattoo-ink-slime, she knew what the more likely answer was. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror regarding herself (yeah, her eyebrows were definitely bigger, and almost looked like they'd gotten more so just over the course of the day; they looked frankly absurd compared to the rest of her face), she held a hand against her throat and did a couple of vocal exercises.
The vibration she felt was just enough lower in her throat than it had been to be noticeable. She had a couple of transmasc mutuals who talked about a similar feeling, including feeling constantly hoarse and scratchy in one's vocal cord regions, shortly after starting T. Evidently turning into a specific guy, rather than a closer to physiologically male version of yourself, had roughly comparable effects.
Once they were both done with their workdays, Tay got a call from Krystal, which she answered while waiting for her bowl of rice to be done in the microwave.
"So, how's it going?"
"The jacket's still stuck to me, if that's what you're wondering."
"So, is it..."
"Yeah, I think we've got a Goosebumps scenario. It's pretty subtle, though -- was in some video calls at work and I don't really think anybody noticed? So it looks like it's more of a slow transformation, which is probably good news. If it's gradual enough, maybe at least people at work and who see me around locally won't notice anything's amiss."
"I guess that makes sense. After all, it's not like people go through puberty overnight. Obviously I'm not a biologist, and even if I were, it's not like anybody's scientifically described cursed clothing-induced shapeshifting, but I assume that it's something like that your body's growth mechanisms have been hijacked to produce, well, Ronnie."
"I didn't have to shave this morning, at least. Kind of hoping that won't happen, since I never bothered to shave my legs, so I have no idea how and it'd be pretty embarrassing for your first time trying that to be at age 31. Plus, if I show up for a video call with razor cuts on my face, folks are probably going to ask questions. Even if they haven't noticed my hair having exploded into fluffy scene bangs or my eyebrows being too big for my face, they'll probably notice that."
"I've known a couple of girls with mustaches. That kind of thing happens."
"Yeah, but I'm not one of them! -- oof, shouldn't have raised my voice, my throat's gotten scratchy again. I don't think my voice has really changed all that much; I still think I sound like me, but my throat feels really tight and I get hoarse really easily. I've been nursing a mug of herbal tea all day. Glad I got off of phone call duty, because even the daily bullshit meetings and talking to myself to brainstorm is doing a number."
"For what it's worth, you just sound like you've maybe got a mild cold; it's not really noticeable. I suspect someone who didn't know you wouldn't know anything was different at all, especially since your voice has always been pretty deep for a woman. And Ronnie's pretty high pitched for a guy."
"Especially since it looks like the jacket's trying to turn me into the version who wore it back in 2012, seeing as my hair and eyebrows are the spitting image of that fucking mugshot from the album cover, save higher resolution and I don't look like I'm about to cry. And we all know how squeaky he sounds."
"So, uh, are you turning into a guy anywhere...else, yet?"
"I think my boobs are a bit smaller. Not complaining about that, though, since I can't put on a bra or shower until this thing will let me take it off, and less boob means less boob-sweat. Honestly, I wouldn't mind just not having them at all. Can't say I'm too attached to them, and it'd be nice to be able to go shirtless in public when it gets hot, and have folks actually look at my face when I talk to them. But, uh, based on checking myself out in the bathroom this morning, I'm not anatomically correct. Might be a little hairier down there, but everything seems to still be female."
"...do you think that if you do actually, uh, turn into him all the way, including down there, that you'll have the same...measurements?"
"I'd assume so, since it's clearly trying to turn me specifically into Ronnie and not a male version of me. If it's managing to grow tattoo sleeves, based on all the ink and stuff bleeding onto my hands and through the jacket, I can't imagine it wouldn't replicate that area."
"Damn. If you can figure out how to replicate that effect, you'd be a millionaire. I know tons of people, myself included, who would kill to get quality sleeves without having to pay for all the sessions and deal with needles."
"I'll keep that in mind, I guess. So what are you getting at, with the measurements? Think I should take a dick pic with a ruler and post it to the Falling In Reverse socials because the people deserve the truth?"
"Yes. It's not like anyone who hears Ronnie bragging about how good in bed he is hasn't wondered. And if you think about it, he's got to be compensating for SOMETHING, given his whole...him, and it's not his height. Ooh, do you think you'll get taller? That'd be great. I'd be okay with being a guy if I could reach things on the top shelf at Target without asking for help."
"I don't know. If I remember high school bio correctly, humans can't grow any taller after being adults because your bones stop responding to hormones, but if we're dealing with magic here, who knows?"
"Just so you know, if you do turn into a 6'0'' guy, then I'm calling you to do my home repairs and open pickle jars."
"You realize that just being a guy physically isn't going to make me know how to do those things, right? Also, you know Ronnie totally made Saraya open jars for him back when they were dating."
"I don't have any especially tall or muscular friends, regardless of gender, so a facsimile of Ronnie would be the best I could get."
"In all seriousness, would you...really still be my friend, if I turned into Ronnie?"
"Yes. Why wouldn't I be? You know I wouldn't care if you got tattoo sleeves or changed your hairstyle or started having to shave your face in the morning, or hell, even if you transitioned to male the normal way. Why would it happening with magic be any different? Sure, you might be turning into someone else's body, but you're still you. You're still Tay, and you're still my best friend, no matter what. Just, uh, don't get the stupid face tattoo or I'd be embarrassed to be seen with you in public, unless you wore a hat."
"I'd be embarrassed to be seen with me in public if I ended up with that, so you don't need to worry. And, thanks. I know this is weird, like, biologically impossible weird. There's some existential terror in knowing that it's even possible to end up with your body turning into someone else's just because you put on the wrong jacket. I mean, not that I don't want to look and sound like Ronnie, exactly? That's what I tried to do for most of my teens and 20s, and if someone offered me a potion that would turn me into him when I was 18, I probably would have taken it. But the whole thing was a fantasy, and with just how much of yourself is attached to your body... I'm scared that I won't be me anymore, and I won't notice. Like, sure, it's just the voice and the hair now, but what if I end up with his brain, and with getting the chemistry or whatever for memories that aren't mine?! What does that even do to the entire concept of self-hood?"
"You should have majored in philosophy or psych or something."
"Yeah, I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid. I don't regret going into journalism, though, and I guess it's really the same motivation. I want to know how and why things happen, and get to the core cause. If you're doing it right, good journalism is a lot like the scientific method. So's troubleshooting tech, so maybe that's why I keep ending up answering support queries."
"I can't help you with your existential crisis, but I can say right now that you don't sound like Ronnie. You sound like you. You're still the same person I hit it off with at freshman rush, and I don't think that's ever going to change, no matter what you look like. Do let me know what it feels like to pee standing up, though. I've always been curious about it. Seems like it'd be a lot more efficient; I'd love to be able to use urinals just to skip the line at concerts!"
"I'll let you know. Of course, I'd need to get up the nerve to go to the men's room, because I'm not doing that in my own bathroom. Have to clean the place, after all, if I miss."
"See, that's the inquisitiveness I love about you. Don't think Ronnie would think of that."
"He does live a rather unexamined life, doesn't he?"
Tay and Krystal continued to chat and banter and laugh at the follies of life with each other for a while after that, as the conversation drifted away from Tay's situation and onto Ronnie in general, and then away from him into the broader human condition. For the duration of the phone call, Tay forgot about the leather-jacket-that-wasn't that had fully adhered itself to her as a second skin, the congealed drainage of tattoo ink, blood, plasma, and various other fluids both known and unknown to science flowing down her arms, the tightness in her throat, and a somewhat similar tightness, for quite biologically similar reasons, in her crotch. Maybe Krystal was right, and this was all going to be okay. After all, Ronnie wasn't all that much of a guy, or maybe Tay hadn't been much of a woman. No one would notice, she'd still be herself, and she could go on with her life as normal, just with some cool tattoo sleeves and a better singing voice. Hell, when she thought of it that way, it was nothing but a benefit.
Tay woke up in the middle of the night, desperately needing to pee. She literally ran to the bathroom and after getting the call of nature answered, realized the sensation of the whole area was different than usual, and fumbling for the light switch, investigated.
She wasn't quite "anatomically correct" for a man yet, but evidently wasn't entirely female anymore either. There was still the rough structure of a hole and the surrounding skin folds, but where her clitoris had been, a reasonably convincing facsimile of a penis emerged. She was vaguely familiar with the concept from those same mutuals on testosterone, although they obviously hadn't shared visual aids, and this one seemed a bit mechanically different, since the surrounding folds looked to be shrinking and folding in on themselves rather than the growth all around you'd expect from T. And based on the sensation of where liquid had come from and gone, some plumbing hardware had rearranged itself along with that. Pulling her underwear back on, Tay concluded that after work today, she was going to be going to a store to get some of a different cut, because it was squeezing far too tightly in some rather important areas, while being too loose in others; the sides of her hips didn't extend as far as they had, although they were still wider than you'd expect from a guy. Come to think of it, looking at her full body outline in the mirror, the top of her head was higher up in the view than it had been yesterday, and both her arms and legs seemed longer. Evidently human bones no longer responding to hormones after adulthood wasn't a concern for whatever the cursed jacket was doing to her, so she could probably use a larger size of pants just so they went all the way down and had sufficient support in areas that had changed. At least she knew Ronnie wore girls' jeans, so she didn't have to figure out men's sizing.
Looking further up, Tay's hair had reached maximum fluffiness, extruding out in all directions and covering much of her forehead. The eyebrows, too, had expanded to something like the original Ronnie's, looking completely absurd with the rest of her face. Her jawline hadn't changed all that much, but the face looking back in the mirror still looked a lot more like the Popular Monster (2024) album cover than what hers had a couple of days ago. Thinking about it, Ronnie's jawline was pretty girly in the first place. She couldn't see what was going on underneath the jacket, but the drainage and congealing on her hands of excess tattoo-slime was still proceeding, plus some ink had formed on the hands themselves. She groaned at the "BANG BANG" knuckle tattoos that were forming themselves and releasing ooze of their own. They were in the same stupid prison-tattoo font. So much for hoping she wouldn't end up as an exact duplicate of 2012's Ronnie... The inked area was also beginning to encroach on the sides of her neck, visible faintly underneath the jacket's collar. This wasn't good; it might actually be visible on a video call and questionable for her job's dress code, and she wasn't sure when Ronnie had gotten his initials under his eye. That would be even harder to explain, especially since those weren't her initials, or those of anyone she knew in real life.
Tay knew that the transformation was nowhere near complete, both given her genital situation and that she was still mostly hairless everywhere you wouldn't expect substantial hair on a woman. Her breasts weren't entirely gone yet, either, although they'd substantially shrunk and were now in a range that wouldn't be too implausible on a guy, and were barely noticeable with the open leather jacket over a black shirt. Even so, she was stricken by just how much like Ronnie she looked at this point. Really, just the hairstyle had nearly done it, and the subtle changes to her build and height just fully cemented it. Honestly, Tay could have anticipated this, thinking about it and how every time she'd shown a picture of Ronnie / Falling In Reverse to a new acquaintance who didn't know them, their response was some version of "he looks like a girl". Testing out her voice, the hoarseness still persisted, although she did notice that the iconic Drug In Me Is You squeaks after vowel sounds had appeared. Existential terror and concern for how to explain this at work aside, Tay couldn't help but smile at hearing that iconic, adorable squeak she'd gotten so attached to from Situations coming out of her mouth. Really, wasn't this what she wanted, sort of? She wanted Falling In Reverse to be fun again. She wanted the cute version of Ronnie she'd fallen in love with back. What better way to return that to the scene than to do it yourself?
The day at work progressed much like the previous one, and even with the squeaks she failed to suppress, no one seemed to notice the changes in Tay's voice. She'd awkwardly adjusted the collar of her jacket to try to cover the neck tattoos as much as possible, too, but even when some segments of leaves or spiderweb crept in on the sides, no one was paying much attention. Thank God for shitty webcams and shittier Internet resolution. Now, Tay did make sure that her hands were never visible on a video call. Note to self: when you go to the store to get some bigger pants and more penis-friendly underwear, get a pair of gloves long enough to cover your knuckles. If anybody asks, say they're for reducing strain while typing. Honestly, that probably wouldn't be a bad idea anyway.
Before leaving for the mall, Tay measured herself, with some difficulty. She knew Ronnie was somewhere around 6'0'', so if she knew how far away from that she was, she could plan accordingly with pants that would continue to fit for however long the transformation's completion took. Surprisingly, at least to her, she'd only grown an inch and a half or so since donning the jacket, even though it felt like much more in the mirror. Perhaps the changes in proportions on her arms and legs, and the extra body in her hair, made her look and feel taller than she was? Staring down at the sweatpants she'd donned, with no underwear beneath them, because they were the only pair of pants she had that didn't squeeze too tightly, she realized it would probably be worth it to measure her crotch, too. After all, that was also important for clothing sizing, stores didn't let you try on underwear, and that wasn't a factoid about Ronnie that was publicly known. At least not from any source Tay's journalistic integrity would let her cite.
Tay returned from a mildly awkward trip to the mall with several pairs of women's jeans of a slightly larger size than her own, and "boy shorts" cut underwear. It was suprisingly hard to find in adult sizes, but nothing in the men's section was sized for her hips and butt. The next stop was the sporting goods store at the other end of the shopping center, or maybe Hot Topic or Best Buy, because she needed some knuckle-covering but tip of finger-exposing gloves, and fingerless gloves were hard to find from non-specialty stores in July. Hopefully Best Buy or a sporting goods store would have the kind built to help provide extra support and prevent carpal tunnel from lifting weights, typing, etcetera, because she hadn't been in a Hot Topic for something like 10 years and had no idea what they still had. Did alternative kids still wear arm warmers? And also, the odds of someone at the sporting goods store recognizing her current form as resembling Ronnie would be much lower. They hadn't taken orders for Popular Monster (2024), after all.
Tay did successfully find some carpal tunnel gloves that looked like they had enough material on the fingers to cover the prison-font knuckle tattoos. She wasn't sure if they'd entirely cover everything, but they would at least have enough that they wouldn't be readable. If she was going to present in public as having knuckle tattoos, they at least weren't going to be a legible set of words, and they definitely weren't going to be That. Of course, before checking out, she felt the call of nature again, leaving her shopping basket on the shelf and making a beeline to the restroom sign...
...then standing there for a full 30 seconds, unsure which bathroom to use. She wasn't very good at identifying where the threshold for gender identification in public was, given her fashion style, while having evolved into a more professional and somewhat more clearly female direction, having originated from the space of men who looked and sounded like women and equally or more androgynous fans. If someone in Tripp pants, an intentionally oversized hoodie, and hair covering their entire face was heading to the bathroom at a concert, who'd be able to tell what the "correct" choice was? (Possibly including the kid themself, depending on how thick their bangs were.) She didn't want to draw attention to herself if she read as the wrong gender for whatever restroom she was in, nor was she confident that she would be anatomically capable yet of using a urinal and quickly leaving, taking advantage of how guys would look anywhere except towards the person next to them. Eventually, she ended up, with a building tension and pain in her nether regions, running back to the aisle, checking out the carpal tunnel gloves at self-checkout, and making some illegal traffic maneuvers to go back to the mall which she knew had a family restroom. Honestly, she probably should have gone there before driving across the shopping center to get the gloves.
Things proceeded normally after that, or at least as normally as a 31-year-old woman transforming bodily into a perfect copy of 25-year-old Ronnie Radke could have. The scratchiness in Tay's throat when she talked gradually subsided as her larynx settled into its new position, although the pitch of her voice hadn't changed all that much, nor did she really have a protruding Adam's apple. Whatever pseudo-tattoo ink had inserted itself through the jacket under the skin of her arms and torso stopped draining liquid and advanced to the "crusting over and severely itching" stage of recovery, irritating Tay to no end because she couldn't effectively do anything about it through the still-unremovable jacket. She ended up taking a de facto sick day from work on account of that, although she didn't announce it because what could she even say? At least the sped-up timeline of transformed tattoo recovery meant that the itchy phase didn't last as long as it would have had she gotten inked the normal way.
By the end of the first week, she seemed to be fully anatomically male in every way she could think to check, although the height still had a ways to go. Also by the end of the first week, there were a single-digit number of hairs sticking out of her chin, and a very thin mustache. As in, thin enough to not really be visible to the naked eye unless Tay fully pressed her face against the mirror, although as she discovered, present enough for food drippings to get stuck in it. The shaving had been a part she'd been worried about, but much like the rest of her transformation, no one had really noticed. Evidently, the tiny goatee Ronnie was occasionally seen with during this era was the product of months of effort, given the general lack of notable hair growth on Tay's chin, or much of anywhere, really, save the still disproportionate for her face eyebrows and her scalp hair. She'd given up on trying to put it up into a ponytail, because it fell out, even scene-fluffier than before, every time she tried, and accepted that she was going to look something like a lost puppy for the foreseeable future. No one on video calls at work objected, and a few of her younger coworkers actually complimented her on the change. Underneath the disproportionate eyebrows, it seemed that Tay's eyes were now adorned by self-generated eyeliner, resulting in something quite similar to the Drug In Me Is You music video or liner notes. Which didn't make any biological sense, but if the tattoo sleeves were considered a natural part of Ronnie's body and an essential element of the transformation, why wouldn't that also be? This was noticed, and Tay ended up pairing it with some more subtle lipstick and eyeshadow so it looked more like a standard makeup ensemble. She'd never been the type to wear makeup save for special occasions, but if she was going to be wearing makeup to work, better for it to be "office lady trying a little too hard" than "lead singer of a post-hardcore band". Plus, if she added makeup to the rest of her face, that was what people focused on in person rather than the facial hair, if they got close enough to notice.
This was part of the most curious development Tay had noticed with her interactions in person -- no one who knew her identified her as anything but female, or anything but herself. Even when she was fully anatomically male and a good 6 inches taller, when she ran into acquaintances at the store, and when she got forced into a video call with her parents, most of the time they didn't notice a change in her appearance at all. When they did, the response was usually a compliment -- the tailored leather jacket and wilder hairstyle looked good on her, she was pulling off the makeup look pretty well, and there was a certain confidence she gave off. She didn't look quite as much like a total nerd who spent all her time on Tumblr, to quote a guy she ran into at Taco Bell who had been in one of her general education classes. Even when she forgot the carpal tunnel gloves on a late night coffee run, the response to even the stupid knuckle tattoos was resoundingly positive, although the late night clerk at the gas station calling her a "sexy biker chick" wasn't the kind of compliment she would have appreciated under normal circumstances.
Among those who didn't know her, including the gas station clerk, the rate of how she was gendered was split roughly 70 / 30 between female and male, if they weren't encountering her in a restroom. At this point, Tay just used whatever bathroom had the shortest line if there wasn't a single stall or gender neutral restroom available, and no one cared either way. It turns out that despite conservative pundits' complaints, no one at a public restroom cared about anything but getting their business done. As a rule, she was pretty much always addressed as "ma'am" from behind, and even from the front, it wasn't too uncommon for those she spoke to starting out with "sir" before switching back to "ma'am", or vice versa. Or in one case, a waiter taking her taco order alternated between both before eventually settling on solely calling her "boss". Honestly, it struck Tay just how frequently she still got read as female -- maybe how she walked, or her accent, plus the long hair and relatively androgynous clothing style and build tipped the scales in that direction? She couldn't say she objected to being addressed with male terminology, though, either. It wasn't correct, but it didn't feel wrong in the same way that using both sets of pronouns for drag queens didn't feel wrong.
And honestly, doing drag, or cosplaying, or a stage persona, was about what Tay felt like. Rather than the existential horror she initially feared, she didn't really feel any less like herself, or any more like Ronnie, than she had when she dressed like him as a teenager. Even though she couldn't take it off, it felt like a costume, and what pronouns folks addressed her as were fine either way, since either they recognized her character or were addressing her correctly for what she was underneath. Even with all the tattoo ink, absurd hairstyle, and being anatomically male, she was still ultimately leading the same life. She got up, she did her work day from home, and then she hung out by herself with her cat, chatting with Krystal, browsing Internet forums or socials about her interests, or playing multiplayer video games.
Of course, maybe the latter was part of how the adoption of a male persona didn't bother her all that much in public -- she'd based the World of Warcraft character she'd had for going on 20 years at that point on one of her first OCs, who was essentially a combination of some bands she liked and a couple of edgy anime protagonists, with a little bit of Danny Phantom in there: an extremely edgy white-haired orphan from a destroyed village whose inner rage turned him into a ghostly wolf. So when she'd gotten referred to WoW by a friend in middle school, that's who she based her character on, and folks just tended to assume she was a dude given that. Which she was just as glad about, since she'd seen how they treated female characters. She'd picked up several games beyond Warcraft, but generally stuck with the same basic character, and tended not to bring up her gender in real life, because why did it matter?
After 2 weeks, which Tay had spent living as pretty much normal save taking daily progression pictures once she recognized that this wasn't going to end up all being a dream, the jacket's hold loosened. Tay got up, 14 days after the jacket had arrived, finally actually feeling it on her skin again, as a garment separate from her. She got up and stretched, and the sleeve slid around a bit as the front panel of the jacket stretched out from her skin on either side as she lifted up each arm.
Tay really hoped the neighbors didn't hear the resulting squeal, followed by a shout of "THANK FUCK, I CAN FINALLY SHOWER!"
Tay didn't look at herself again until she was out of the tub and changed into a blessedly clean set of clothes. She had been changing her pants and underwear, at least, every day, but couldn't get anything on the top half of her off and had been unable to bathe for the past two weeks, so it was the best fucking bath she'd ever taken. And her skin felt distinctly raw like she'd burned off several layers of it, probably because she had. She'd gotten to a point where she was so gross she literally could no longer feel how gross she was, because her skin had been completely caked in dead cells, extra tattoo slime, and God knows what else. Her hair benefited the most, since it had substantially expanded in volume and its new composition soaked up grease like a fucking dish sponge. Of course, it still looked distinctly shiny even right after showering, which was accurate to Ronnie. He just looked like that, Tay supposed, or perhaps he was such a slimeball it showed itself visually.
Speaking of accuracy, Tay scanned her body up and down in the mirror, taking off the shirt she had just put on to see how far the tattoos went. Good shirtless views of TDIMIY era Ronnie were hard to find; he wasn't quite as decorated as he was in the subsequent two albums, but it looked about right with what she'd seen. The tattoo sleeves were at full quality and looked indistinguishable from ones that had been acquired the traditional way. Running her finger over the lines, they didn't show any residue or protrusion above the skin, so it seemed that even if whatever ooze emanated from the jacket and had sunk into her skin wasn't tattoo ink, it had indistinguishable properties once set. Tay tossed her head back and forth, watching as the fluffy curls fell down around her face, framing it in just the right way to emphasize how even with the pathetically sporadic facial hair, her jawline really hadn't changed. She couldn't help but express her opinion out loud.
"Wow, I apologize on behalf of anyone who's ever gotten told off for saying Ronnie looks like a girl. They're right."
She still didn't sound like Ronnie, though. Maybe the pitch of her voice was a little bit lower, but she still ultimately sounded like herself. She had to dig through her phone's camera roll for a while to find footage of her talking that was from before the transformation progression videos (she'd never been much to take selfies), but eventually found a draft video where she narrated how to go through menus on the Android version of 5K's YouTube downloader, for the benefit of a support forumite who simply did not get it in textual + visual form. She spoke over it, still having what she'd originally said memorized, and didn't really hear any difference vs. her pre-transformation voice. She wasn't even squeaking anymore, at least not in this case; that was more if she was changing pitch or making elongated vowel sounds.
A thought occurred to her. She started up her phone's camera, putting her shirt back on, and sang a couple of bars of some miscellaneous songs to herself. Situations, The Drug In Me Is You, and for compare and contrast with something more rapping / screaming based, a few isolated segments of Popular Monster (2019). She then stopped the video, and stared at herself in the mirror in awe, holding her hand against her throat as if trying to physically locate if those sounds had really come out of her mouth. She sounded...perfect. Frankly better than Ronnie did now, because the steroids weren't doing him any favors.
"Okay, but everyone knows that your singing voice sounds different to you than it does on recordings, because it's going through bone instead of air. So surely..."
Tay pulled up her music library in one window on her phone, and the recording of herself on another, and cross-referenced them with each other.
There were differences in recording quality, obviously, and Tay wasn't amplified and had been singing to herself rather than projecting, but the results were clear. What had come out of her was recognizably the same voice as the official Ronnie recordings, complete with the little squeaks, and when she tested his screaming delivery, she had that too.
She couldn't stop herself from squealing, and then running through an impromptu karaoke session of several of her favorite Falling In Reverse songs, then covering a couple of songs she'd always wanted to hear him do. (Including the mildly blasphemous This War Is Ours.) It all sounded perfect, and she got downright euphoric listening back to the recordings.
"...I don't need to wait for new songs anymore. Ronnie might have lost his fucking mind, and be losing his hair and vocal range, but if I just get some karaoke tracks and the audio mixing software I get for free from work, I can make him cover whatever I want. I've got the screaming, rapping, everything."
Tay paused for several seconds, taking a deep breath to brace herself for the conclusion she was about to make. It felt giddy, audacious, borderline blasphemous to say out loud, but it was...true?
"I AM Falling In Reverse."
Tay burst out laughing after that, staring at the truly surprised face in the mirror, clearly belonging to a version of Ronnie from around 2012, but nonetheless hers, wearing one of her nerdy T-shirts, speaking that like it was a revelation and not the entire point of the band's existence. Holy shit, it worked. There wasn't any question about it, she had fully transformed, with all of Ronnie's physicality and musical prowess but her sensibilities. The best of both worlds, just like that Disney Channel show she'd never admit she watched.
Come to think of it, this was a lot like Hannah Montana, wasn't it? Save the genderbending part. I think I saw a fanfic about that on my Tumblr feed once...
The gender-bending matter having come to mind, Tay abruptly closed the door and stuck her phone in a drawer, just in case it was watching, and examined the unclothed lower half of her body. There were a couple of tattoos there, but they were enough simpler and smaller that she honestly hadn't noticed in comparison to the veritable cornucopia on her arms and torso. The hair situation was definitely heavier than it had been when she was female, but not as much as she would have expected. The genital situation was...well, it was anatomically correct, but that was about the nicest thing she could say about it.
So he is compensating for something...
Tay put her pants back on, and contemplated what to do next. Somehow, she ended up on Reddit. She hadn't posted anything Falling In Reverse-related on social media except to her immediate friends since...2016? She hadn't posted a selfie on social media since graduating college, and that was only because her grandparents wanted to see it. Yet somehow, she ended up dragging and dropping the entire progression timeline, and her audio samples, into her post (actually having to put them on Imgur and link it due to file size limits), and describing the whole Whatnot kerfuffle in the text.
In hindsight, she should have expected the response she got.
Roughly 60% of the comments could charitably be called discussion on the ethicality of AI replicas. Generally speaking, the denizens of the Subreddit were against it, and many pointed out that Ronnie could, and perhaps should, sue her for wearing his face and voice without his permission. Tay couldn't help but snark out loud to her laptop.
"I'm literally a journalist who works for a video software company. I'd totally agree with you, if that's what I was doing."
Thankfully, after campaigns by users and employees alike, 5K had rejected the plans initially posed to jump onto the generative AI bandwagon. It was pointed out by a large portion of the software's contributors and users, Tay included, that 5K had established itself as an excellent, ethically developed open-source solution for professionals and creatives. Generative AI based on stolen work and inseparable from its use to impersonate and harm others would ruin the standard of trust their software had in the industry, and ran the risk of making 5K video and audio synonymous with deepfakes, even retroactively ruining their trust. Following the example of Clip Studio Paint, the plans to include generative features in future 5K projects were permanently shuttered. What did get added was background removal, improved greenscreens, and the ability to isolate dialogue or instrumentals, which Tay had no problems with.
The next most common category of comments, at about 30%, were assuming that she was writing fanfic. A few complimented her attention to detail in her "cosplay" and realistic writing style, but most of them called it something along the lines of "horny wish fulfillment anime gender bender bullshit", with that being one of the more family-friendly ways it was described.
The other 10% were similar to any post on that Subreddit containing a picture of a woman: flirting and/or misogynistic slurs, although this one also had some homophobic and/or transphobic slurs for spice.
Do they realize that they're also kind of calling Ronnie that?
Tay sighed, and reached up to close her laptop. This was why she'd stopped posting about Falling In Reverse online except to her immediate friends. However, just as she touched the laptop's lid, a wave of all-consuming rage flowed over her. How fucking dare they. She'd been in the scene, on Team Ronnie, for longer than some of them had been alive. She sat on that fucking Whatnot stream for three fucking hours and spent 600 dollars on a jacket, then spent 2 weeks unable to shower. She had literally been completely reformed in mind, body, and maybe even soul by her love for Falling In Reverse, and these...heathens had the gall to accuse her of deepfakes, or horny fanfiction? (Both of which Falling In Reverse fans considered cardinal sins.) She embodied and understood Ronnie at a deeper level than any of them ever could. Thinking about The Drug In Me Is You, she may as well have been there with how intimately she understood every fucking word and note on that album, and she could sing them perfectly. She was Falling In Reverse, and she was Falling In Reverse when they were actually good, before they were synonymous with hatred. And maybe that era didn't exist, but she felt like it did, and being the King, nay, God of the Music Scene herself, reincarnated, she could make it real.
But Ronnie's so-called fans had rejected her, and turned on her just like they had on Brittany, and Sally, and every other woman to ever raise her voice. There was something fundamentally wrong with Falling In Reverse, with how the entire system operated, which had only gotten exponentially worse since the rot began with Fashionably Late, and she had the power to fix that. Which she was going to do, with or without them. They could have made an incredibly powerful ally -- the body and voice of Ronnie, but with the love and experience of a fan, a version of Ronnie who was young and cute and spry and knew exactly what Falling In Reverse fans thought and wanted. But instead, they let their misogyny and what Ronnie told them to be mad at (even though he regularly used AI-generated imagery himself; it was only a cardinal sin if it was used to imitate him) win out.
Tay was going to give them exactly what they deserved. They needed to know just what they'd done, and how everything that was going to happen after that point was their fault. And really, how the very decline of Falling In Reverse, of Ronnie, that they'd started whining about was their fault.
She'd literally grown balls. Why couldn't they?
Tay readied her phone's front camera, greenscreen applied with the very software she wrote the documentation and support for, and took a deep breath. She'd never done anything like this before, had never thought to do anything like this, she'd always been the "let it go, be the bigger person" voice in an argument, or if something was actually wrong, she'd be right there whistleblowing and trying to expose it all the way up to the top. Even in relation to the alt-right degeneration that had started from Losing My Life, she almost felt more pity for Ronnie than rage, in that he was clearly miserable and had been duped by those who wanted to take advantage of it. But the fans had no such excuse. The sources were right there in front of their fucking faces, and now so was an entire second Ronnie they could have embraced, and they refused to read them.
As a journalist, Tay couldn't abide that.
And as Falling In Reverse, Tay couldn't abide haters.
4 minutes later, a continuation of Tay's Reddit post was sent out, featuring both the video and a transcription. After all, the disgusting heathens and living slime calling themselves human beings and parasitizing off of Ronald's decaying carcass deserved to know how badly they'd fucked over themselves and the band they claimed to love even if they were on poor connections, without headphones, or visually / auditorally impaired.
That was just basic decency.
Midway through an otherwise uneventful work day, Tay's phone started ringing. Well, her computer started making a phone ringing-like noise, because her work number was VoIP.
"Oh, great, someone's gotten so lost that they've been forwarded to me for tech support."
Tay didn't normally work in tech support, but as one of the more knowledgeable staff members, and one of the members of the team who were moderately better at social skills, customers occasionally got forwarded to her if the support staff people they were assigned to (you know, the ones for whom that was their actual job description, but that's what you get when you work for a small, relatively ethical open source software company) failed to help with their problem. At least this was a rare occurrence under normal circumstances, and had thankfully become rare once again now that the regular support person she'd filled in for what felt like an eternity ago had been replaced. She "picked up the phone", in that she clicked to answer the VoIP call and put on her headset.
"5k Audiovisual Solutions. This is Taylor, how can I help you?"
"Oh, my God. Holy shit. You don't use an AI filter at work, do you?"
Tay's stomach felt like it had decided to bounce around her torso. The voice on the other end of the phone was uncannily familiar, and none of the reasons she could be hearing it were good. She suspected that if this caller was who she suspected, they weren't there for technical support... but, despite her unease, she was still a professional and carried on as normally as she could.
"No, sir. 5K is a strictly anti-generative AI company; we prioritize our respected reputation among professionals and the authenticity of work our software produces."
"Okay, so I guess you actually do sound like me. But holy shit, drop the girly customer service voice. I know it's you. Hearing your -- MY voice badly trying to sound like a girl literally makes me want to throw up."
The other end of the line sat there in expectant silence as Tay sharply gulped. This was, in fact, who she thought it was. Despite herself, she couldn't come up with any other words.
"Ronald."
"Yep."
"How did you --"
"You gave me your name and address for shipping. So after I saw your little video, decided to look back through my emails to see who bought that jacket. Googled your name and found where you worked."
"That's -- look, do you even use our software?"
"I have no idea. Well, I know I don't, because I haven't mixed my own audio in years, but I don't know or care what software the losers in production use. I only care about the results and recording the damned vocals; everything else is grunt work."
"In that case, I'm going to have to ask you to hang up. We have callers waiting and staff members are strictly forbidden from using this line for personal calls."
"You do want to talk to me, though, right?"
Tay paused for several seconds. Whatever Ronnie wanted with her, it almost certainly wasn't good. She was quite aware of how he acted around women, trans people, and anyone whom he perceived as imitating or trying to replace him. For all intents and purposes, she was currently all three of those. But at the same time, she did kind of feel like he had a right to know that there was someone walking around with his face and voice, and to the most accurate information she could give him about what she understood of what had happened to her.
Damned journalistic integrity.
More pragmatically, as the person who'd sold the cursed jacket to her, Ronnie was Tay's only lead about what had actually happened, and if there were likely to be any further side effects. She couldn't say she felt much need to undo it, but it would be nice to know if that were possible, or if the process had any complications.
"Hello? You still there?"
"Yes. I was just writing down the number you're calling from for quality control purposes."
"So, about our --"
"I can't talk until I'm done with work. I get off at 6 or so. I'm not supposed to do this for support callers, but, well, you're not a support caller. I'll give you my email. If you let me know how you want me to contact you, I'll call you as soon as possible when I'm done with work."
Tay's job performance for the rest of that work day probably wasn't quite up to par, given that she was logically preoccupied. The good news was that her usual work day mostly consisted of revising documentation based on feedback and answering forum posts. Much of the latter could be copy and pasted from her document of standard responses, and neither required all that much cognitive effort. Once 6:00 rolled around, and after she made herself some microwave noodles, she stared at the email where Ronnie had given her a private link to a video call meeting. Taking a deep breath, she opened it, trying to stop her brain from coming up with disturbingly plausible ways this could go wrong.
"Hmm." Ronnie's eyes darted around the screen, and Tay's display on it, their possessor not showing much emotion Tay could discern. "You know, believe it or not, this isn't the first time I've been on a video call with someone who looked and sounded exactly like me."
Both participants in the call stared at each other for several seconds, neither saying anything. Ronnie seemed disturbingly focused on watching Tay's still-tense breathing.
"Roll up your sleeves and flex a bit for me, if you would. Deepfakes never get my tattoos right. I don't think this program supports that, and I'd know if you were screen sharing, but I want to make sure I'm talking to your real face."
"Um...okay."
Tay did as instructed, really hoping Ronnie didn't request that she take off her shirt. While she knew, rationally, that it was now perfectly socially acceptable for her to do so, that it would be for strictly pragmatic reasons (she hoped), and that it didn't contain anything he hadn't seen before, the idea of doing a webcam striptease for him still made her skin crawl. Ronnie continued to examine the display on the screen, before eventually nodding and gesturing that Tay could put her arms down and return her shirt to its prior position.
"Well. So, I saw a screenshot of your Reddit post. Mods deleted it for degenerating into slap fights pretty fast, but I assume that's the basic gist of it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Don't call me 'sir'."
"Sorry. Just... wasn't really ever expecting to talk with you one on one, let alone in such an... odd scenario. But yes, that's how I understand it. I put on the jacket, which didn't really look abnormal at all, then found that I couldn't take it off. It fused to my skin or something, and over the next 2 weeks, I turned into what seems to be a perfect copy of you from around 2012 or so. I've got the voice, the hair, the tattoos, everything."
"When you say 'everything', does that mean --"
"Yes, I'm anatomically correct. And I would really appreciate it if that wasn't the first place everybody went."
"So, what bathroom do you use?"
"Whatever has the shortest line."
"You're still okay with using the women's?!"
"When you've gotta go, you've gotta go, and sometimes one of them is out of order, or somewhere doesn't have a gender neutral bathroom. If it's in a locked stall, it's not like anyone can see it, and nobody cares even if they could. Surely you have more important things to ask about."
"Hmm. Well, I suppose it would be the politically correct thing for me to ask about pronouns. After all, unlike some people, you actually have a valid reason. So, uh, what are you?"
"She / her is fine, although I don't really care if people call me a guy because given my current circumstances, they're not really wrong."
Ronnie didn't say anything for a few seconds, tapping his chin contemplatively.
"Congratulations, you're the world's first real they / them."
"That isn't --"
"The idea of there being a girl in my body is horrible. The idea of you actually being me is even worse. And I can't see you as a guy who isn't me, since you stole my face. So, they / them it is. Or maybe I'll just call you 'hey you'. Or if you really still think you're a girl..."
"What the hell do you mean, I stole your face?! I didn't ask for this! It was your fucking cursed artifact that did this to me! A better question is, why did you do this to me?"
"I didn't."
"What?"
"Dude, do you know how many people want to be me? If I'd known the jacket did that, I would have started the bidding way higher!"
"I... I guess i can't really argue with that. So, you didn't curse this, or get it from a deal with the devil or anything? It's just a normal jacket that inexplicably turned me into you?"
"I mean, maybe I could have gotten it from a deal with the devil. I have no idea where it came from. I thought that I'd sold all of the stage outfits -- I know I did, because the same guy bought them all -- but then I was in my closet, and I found that thing, and no idea where I got it. Never seen it before. But I looked at the design, and that it didn't fit my shoulders anymore, so figured it was probably from around 2012 and that I'd just forgotten I had it, and that I might as well sell it because it didn't fit and even if it did, I don't do that anymore. That's why the starting bid was so low. I couldn't remember if I'd actually worn it, so wasn't sure if anyone would recognize it."
"God damn it, this is literally a Goosebumps book. You found something in your house that you don't remember ever having gotten, and then whatever poor soul finds it ends up in some supernatural bullshit."
"This is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you."
"Do you have any idea what growing a dick and balls from scratch within a week feels like?! I think I have a lot more reason to be surprised than you."
"I would apologize, but clearly, you seem to be taking it pretty well. And it's an improvement. So, about your little video. That's what I really wanted to talk about."
Any hints of mirth or apology on Ronnie's face had completely disappeared. He was glaring straight at Tay, utterly mirthlessly. His mouth opened and showed some teeth, but the expression was much more predatory than anything you could call a "smile". Tay sitting there stunned, he continued his rant.
"On one hand, good job. You've told my [rhymes with 'guarded'] fans what I've wanted to since, oh, Fashionably Late. Hell, I did. Several times. And they still didn't get it. Frankly, I'm rather fond of the phrase 'parasitic slime molds feeding off of the decaying carcass of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion'. Might be hard to illustrate, but I think that would make a good shirt."
"What do you want."
"Well, I've got a challenge for you. Clearly, you seem to think you know more about Falling In Reverse than I do, and that now that you have my face and voice, you'd be a better Ronnie than me. How's about we see if you're right? I have your audio samples. I'll call my people to throw you in the fire and see how you burn. I'm even going to be incredibly generous and nice and cover all the fees and logistic arrangements for you, so you just have to worry about working that cute little butt. Can even get you a backup band from the recording guys."
"...I have a job. I can't really start a band career now..."
"We can schedule gigs around when you're not at work. And they'll all start out locally, of course."
"What happens if I say no?"
"Oh, nothing much. After all, as you've said, no one in your life really seems to care all that much. It doesn't seem like your job or friends are all that concerned with the complete change of every part of your physical body and also about 8 years of reverse aging... but I'm sure there are plenty of medical, government, and scientific organizations who would be. And as a journalist, wouldn't you agree that sometimes it's worth it to break the law to get information that could save lives?"
"You wouldn't."
"I've levied legal action against haters before, and that was without all of the medical potential. You should know this, as a dedicated fan since day 1, Taylor Elliott Vernon, date of birth August 18, 1991, currently living in Pike City, Kascada."
"You've made your point."
"Good girl. So, I'll see you this weekend! Get yourself some good stage outfits; that nerd shit isn't gonna cut it."
With that, Ronnie abruptly ended the video call, leaving Tay staring into the black mirror of an empty screen, at the eyeliner-bearing face of Ronnie in 2012, looking absolutely terrified. She'd never been a performer. Hell, when she tried to do karaoke at a now former friend's bachelorette party, she choked, and that was after 2 margaritas! But clearly Ronnie had plans for her and he wasn't going to accept objections, and he was right that turning her in to some secret research facility was totally within the purview of things he'd do.
I really shouldn't have put in my payment information for that stream...
After a few minutes of mildly cathartic freaking out, Tay immediately started up a different call, on her actual phone.
"Hello, Krystal? How would you like to be my agent?"
"Uh..."
"Ronnie called me at work earlier today. I told him that we're not allowed to accept personal calls on the tech support line, and that he'd need to email me if he wanted to talk. I didn't expect him to actually do it, but, well, I just got off a video chat and..."
Tay described the situation, prompting a stunned pause at the other end of the phone, Krystal's alarmed breaths and the static hum of a lackluster data connection acting as the only indicators that the line hadn't gone dead. A full minute later, some words escaped.
"Oh, my God."
"Yeah. I guess I don't know for sure that he wasn't bluffing about turning me in, but well, like he said, he's sued and threatened people before, and I did give him my name and address for the shipping, which evidently he was able to use."
"Honestly, it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I know plenty of bands, even from before working for the label, that would love to have a big name backing them and covering the funding and logistics for them."
"He's clearly got ulterior motives. That's why I want you on my side -- I don't trust him not to try to screw me over, since he's had Epitaph wrapped around his finger since 06 and I don't trust anyone he hires. You've always been good with money, and you know something about label bullshit now too. I want you by my side through all of...this, however long it takes. Hopefully it'll be like his usual beefs where he gets bored pretty quickly?"
"The thing I don't get is, if he feels threatened by you, or personally offended by you suggesting that you'd be better at leading Falling In Reverse than him, and thinks you're going to try to replace him, why is he giving you all of the tools to do exactly that?"
"I have no idea. If I had to guess, it's that he thinks I'm going to fail, and that it'd be hilarious to watch me crash and burn. And maybe that he thinks that if I do fail, it'll be a good lesson to his traitorous fans about accepting no substitutes. And thinking about it, it could benefit him -- from his point of view, anyone who's a current Falling In Reverse fan who'd jump ship for me doing Drug In Me Is You isn't really a fan, and they probably aren't going to shows and stuff. And if anybody gets newly introduced to Falling In Reverse via me, and goes to check out the 'original' --"
"Wow, I could hear you making air quotes with that."
"-- then, well, I'm just doing the marketing of bringing him to a younger audience for him. Plus, this whole setup means that he can keep an eye on me and keep me from being too much of a threat."
"Oof, he is...not a very nice man. I'm not sure why I ever thought he was cute. So, then, what are you going to do about it? It sounds like you don't really have a choice, unless you can get him to delete your name and address. I'm happy to help in any way I can, because this is just super unfair for you, and also exactly what I've wanted to do since I was 14."
"I'm going to scare the shit out of him, and be the best young, modern Ronnie I can be. And not be a total asshole to boot."
"At your service, my liege."
"Don't. We are... we are not doing the whole King of the Music Scene thing."
"Oh, God. Oh, fuck. What was I thinking."
Tay paced back and forth in circles around the backstage area of a local dive bar slash alternative venue that could hold about 200 people on a good day, but usually averaged less than half that. She'd been at shows there before, mostly for small local bands, whose attendance numbers rarely topped two digits. Evidently, even though Ronnie could have set her up with a much larger venue, he decided to be "nice" and start with something plausible for a new artist, so she wouldn't get overwhelmed. Or perhaps so there wouldn't be as much suspicion as to his intentions for her and the legitimacy of her career and acquired skills.
Which she'd only gotten from a magical transformation, inflicted by a cursed artifact, because she hadn't had any kind of musical training since taking piano lessons in elementary school, and definitely wasn't a performer of any sort. Holding a setlist she could probably have recited from memory even without it being provided, because all Falling In Reverse shows were the same (although at least this one was period-accurate to TDIMIY) in a sweaty grip, the paper flapped about as Tay walked in circles ranting.
"What was I thinking. I should have said no! I mean, he was.... probably bluffing about turning me in to the government; he'd be in just as much trouble for selling the thing. Well, I know that isn't true because he's a man and rich and all, but..."
Tay's "agent" came up behind her, eventually getting her to stop pacing and turn around, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, calm down. Just don't overthink it and you'll do great."
"Krystal, I love you, but I work in tech. Overthinking things is kind of what we do."
"Well, if you have to think about something, think about what you liked about Ronnie in the first place. You know, how unabashedly silly he was, and how fully unafraid he felt of being himself? That's the vibe you want to channel, and really, that's all that matters. As long as you're having a good time and confident in what you're doing, the audience will be too. And you've got all the necessary ingredients, and let's be real, the appeal of Falling In Reverse is about 90% tattoo sleeves and hair anyway. After all, if it were about the music, folks would have stopped showing up when Ronnie stopped being physically capable of singing last year! And when he lost his hair. Or blacked out his tattoo sleeves. So you're way ahead of him in terms of appealing qualities!"
"That's... actually weirdly helpful. Thanks."
"And it's not like you don't have all of these songs as memorized as it's physically possible for something to be. Hell, I think tracks from The Drug In Me Is You, and Situations for spice, you could literally do in your sleep. You know you have the skills because you have his voice, so just relax and try to have fun. That's all everyone in the audience wants from you, is to have a good time and connect with people about music we all like."
"Except that Ronnie's going to be in the audience, and he wants to watch me fail as some sort of twisted moral lesson to his fans, and to stroke his own ego and pretend that he's still the same guy who wrote Dying Is Your Latest Fashion."
"And it would totally piss him off to see you having fun up there, so if you can't have confidence in yourself, have faith in raw fucking spite."
Despite herself, Tay found herself mirroring Krystal's audacious smile. It really didn't matter if she made a fool out of herself, did it, as long as it was entertaining. That was most of what Ronnie did, after all, and was honestly the only thing he had left other than his chronically awful personality, and he managed to make it work. Taking one last deep breath and enclosing Krystal in an impulsive hug, Tay approached the microphone. A group of edgy-looking men she didn't recognize, presumably Ronnie's hired goons, stood at their respective instruments around her, looking at her suspiciously.
The show was over shockingly quickly. After all, The Drug In Me Is You's entire album was only 52 minutes long if you included the gold vinyl bonus tracks, and those had never been played live. So really, the actual concert set was only about 25 to 30 minutes long, but Tay could barely tell because she'd basically checked to make sure her microphone was working, opened her mouth, then blacked out and came back to awareness to the sound of a surprising amount of applause. And what she immediately recognized as Ronnie, standing in the corner, wearing his disgusting baseball cap and sunglasses indoors, not visibly making any approving motions but looking far too pleased.
Tay stood in the center of the stage gaping while the backup band packed up their instruments and the audience milled around a bit before exiting through one of the bar's doors. After all, without drinks being served, other bands performing, or a merchandise table, there wasn't any reason to stick around. If you wanted to socialize with your friends after the show, another nearby bar or diner would be a better place to have done it. Honestly, Tay was just as glad. Seeing as she could barely remember that anything like a concert had happened, let alone process that she had done it or give any insight on how it went, she didn't especially want to talk to fans. The idea that she even had "fans" was utterly horrifying, really. Once the rest of the audience had left and the Falling In Reverse goons had returned to from wherever they had come, Tay descended from the stage, Krystal quickly joining her at her side. Based on Krystal's awestruck grin and the tightness with which she was holding Tay's hand, evidently she'd enjoyed the show? Ronnie approached from his dark corner, slow-clapping in a terribly cliche manner. He lifted up his sunglasses, but not the hat, as he regarded Tay.
"Not bad. How do you feel?"
"Weird. I think I kind of blacked out. I barely remember much of anything, and from what memories I do have of whatever just happened up there, I can't really process the idea of myself doing that."
"Well, that's to be expected. Even if you're sober. Are you, by the way? I have a reputation to uphold, so..."
"Yes. My real life has been hallucinatory enough as it is. I'd rather not add to that. Also don't have a good idea of how my body chemistry's changed for medication or drug responses."
"Hmm, that's actually pretty smart. Wouldn't have thought of it. So, who's your girlfriend?"
"She's not my --"
"Yeah, I know. That'd make you a lesbian, right?"
"So then why did you --"
"Shut up."
"I -- I --" Tay sputtered in place, completely taken off balance from what she'd expected Ronnie to ask about. Judging by his facial expression, this was exactly what he wanted.
"Well, she seems very supportive, and you did a half-decent job. Of course, I didn't start out as a cover band... hardly a fair comparison, really, since I didn't have me to piggyback off of."
"...no, you had Blink-182, and you weren't especially good at it." Tay muttered under her breath, not quite getting up the nerve to make her counterpoint fully audible.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. So, can you get to the point?"
"Oh, I just thought I'd help you out. I found this sheet of old rejected lyrics in my closet and thought of you. Your whole thing is...nostalgic, I suppose, after all, I've got plenty of unreleased songs, but these are never going to be fully produced. Don't really have that style anymore, nor could the current recording team do justice to them. Plus they're all kind of stupid. I'm not going to be using them for anything, so I figured you could have them. That way you get the advantage of new material without having to write it yourself. Makes it a better test of how you'd really do at being me."
Ronnie handed over a file folder of crumpled, somewhat yellowed computer printouts bearing the odd bit of marginalia scrawling or highlighting with the manner of someone disposing of a used tampon. Tay hesitantly took and opened it, Krystal looking over her shoulder and gasping.
"Holy shit, the sacred texts!"
"He did say in the book, somewhere, that there was supposed to be a second album for The Drug In Me Is You but that never happened...do wish they were less grimy, though. What is this, Cheeto dust? God, still just as orange after, like, 15 years."
Ronnie whistled some unidentifiable tune under his breath as he paced around, waiting for Tay to finish reading. A couple of pages in, he came up behind her without her noticing, prompting a reflexive flinch. Not helped by his literally breathing down her neck, which even through the scene hair and leather jacket, she could still feel. At least after he made his statement, he went back to standing to the side, never letting Tay look directly at him.
"Let me know if you need sheet music, or audio drafts. I think I've still got those around somewhere!"
"Oh, God..."
After the reflexive flinching, though, Tay went right back to the manuscript, running her finger across its disgusting surface over lyrics, envisioning a bouncing ball, or maybe one of those questionable quality Windows XP Movie Maker lyric videos, in her head. Honestly, some of these were better than the album tracks that got released. Good Girls Bad Guys, for example, she wouldn't have missed despite its popularity with fans. Particularly of the desperate and/or internally misogynistic variety. Unfortunately, it was on the setlist she'd just performed so was fresh in her mind. Of course, it wasn't the lyrical quality that tied knots in her stomach and furrowed her brow as she went down the pages.
"Hey, I warned you that they were stupid. They were rejected for the album for a reason. Don't judge me by my past work, of course. I'm sure you have some [rhymes with 'guarded'] shit from 15 years ago too, Taylor. After all, I found your DeviantArt. Cute wolves. Can tell you watched a lot of anime. I hate anime."
"No, it's not that. And wait, that wasn't under my real name. I know you cyberstalked me for my address, but how did -- never mind. No, the 'Oh, God' is that...I know these songs."
"Oh? Tell me more. Did I accidentally rip off a line or fifteen again?"
"No, I definitely haven't seen or heard them before. There's no possible way I could, after all, and there are... well, there are some lyrics in here I wouldn't have anticipated from anyone but you. They are definitely Falling In Reverse songs. But, it goes beyond them just being familiar or nostalgic in style -- I know these songs. I know that I can't, but I know how they go. I could sing any of them. I think... I think I might remember recording them? Which makes no sense whatsoever."
Ronnie started chuckling, which made the hairs on the back of Tay's neck stand up. The little evil laugh was so cute in Tragic Magic, and yet...
"Interesting. Guess there's more of me in you than you thought, eh?"
"I...I guess, but this doesn't make any sense. After all, I don't have all of your memories. I can't tell you anything about your childhood that's not in I Can Explain, and I've still got all of mine, so it's not just that everything about you got transferred into me with your brain. I don't even know if my brain's changed, at all, physically. Or my other internal organs, really. I don't understand how the whole transformation thing works, because this isn't supposed to be real, and medical questions are among the least of my concerns."
"You said in your video that you thought of yourself as Falling In Reverse incarnate, correct? And that that's what you turned into from the curse or whatever?"
"Something like that. It's that, I'm not you. I have your body, but everything in here that matters is still me, but that's my only explanation for why I have the musical skill despite not being trained. I haven't taken music lessons since elementary school, and I'm definitely not a vocalist."
"It's a fascinating question, certainly. I suppose you could argue that if it's a Goosebumps scenario -- that's right, I read those books too -- where the cursed artifact turns you into its owner, that it would belong more to Falling In Reverse than to me. It's not like I wear that kind of thing in my everyday life, after all."
"...I would say that bit of lore surprised me, but it really doesn't."
"Good job tonight. I'll have my people get you a follow-up ASAP. By the way, I've officially cleared it with the suits at Epitaph; you've got full rights to those songs. You can do whatever you want with them. Don't even need to credit me; frankly I'd rather not be associated with that anymore. As far as I'm concerned, you're the original author."
"Uh, no. If I use them, I'm going to credit you. That's just basic journalistic ethics, and I might on some level be Falling In Reverse, but I'm not you."
"Not yet, anyway. That shows in how you still think there's a difference. Take care."
Ronnie spun on one foot and calmly exited, leaving Tay, Krystal, and the night janitor the only bodies in the building. Having suppressed it over the entire conversation, Tay visibly and intensely shuddered, and felt vomit rising up in the back of her mouth.
"Gyah. He's even worse when he's being polite. I think I preferred when he was yelling slurs at the screen...""Damn it, I forgot to ask him for an autograph."
"How can you still --"
"Hey, you got access to, like, the #1 thing everyone in the fanbase has been wondering about since the book came out! That's pretty cool, right?"
"Krystal, I shouldn't know these songs. After all, there's only one person who would know how those went like that, and he just left. If there's actually any of Ronnie's consciousness in me that came with the jacket, and he's forcing me into doing Falling In Reverse-type things that awaken it... what if eventually, there isn't any of me left? What if that's what he wants, is to turn me into him all the way?"
"He'd be stupid if he tried, because you're way hotter than him so if you weren't so ethical, you could totally steal his fanbase. And his girlfriend."
"...no. Even if I were into girls, no. Now, Saraya, maybe, but not the current one."
Evidently, Ronnie had a very generous definition of "day trip". He'd promised Tay that he wouldn't schedule any shows for her that were outside of a day trip range, and would generally stick to weekends and nights such that she wouldn't be at work. However, somehow, 3 weeks into her doing at least 3 to 5 shows per week, she'd ended up at one of the side halls (not the primary 20,000 seat venue, but one of the smaller, low 4 digit offshoots) of Sanctum City's Unnecessary Large Arena, a 13-hour drive away from her house. So, even though Ronnie apparently thought that was possible in one day, Tay and Krystal had gotten a hotel room overnight. Tay examined herself in the mirror, shirtless, before getting dressed for bed after her much-needed post-show shower.
"Okay, the lines are definitely getting darker and my arms are getting more densely packed and... wait, was this here last time?"
Tay flexed her left side towards the mirror, examining an extension of the tattoo sleeves onto her torso. The non-inked area was getting smaller over time, and of course, she had never actually gotten a tattoo organically, save a small segment of lyrics on her left ankle. Said seemed to have vanished with the transformation, which mildly annoyed her.
"I'm starting to think that the torso gets some new ink, somewhere, every time I do a show. Of course, I'm not recognizing them as the Fashionably Late designs and there aren't any good shirtless pics of TDIMIY Ronnie that I can find, so I can't tell if it's still turning me into him and propelling me through time, or if it's doing its own thing..."
"Tay, you've been staring at yourself for an hour. Go to bed." Krystal would have done the same rather than absently scrolling through an e-book, but couldn't with Tay keeping the light on and fretting to herself in the mirror.
"I need to figure out what's going on here, Krystal. You already know that apparently, some parts of Ronnie's feelings and memories, at least that relate to Falling In Reverse, are somehow transferring to me. Every show ends up being every other show; I'm basically dissociating whenever I'm on stage and not playing one of the new songs, because I get this flood of memories that aren't mine, mind you, of every other time he's played that song, or production, or him drafting up lyrics in prison, and to make matters worse, not only is it all first person but sometimes it's conflated with my own memories. Like, I had a dream a while back that was some horrible fusion of him in prison and me in college, and I'm starting to think that part of whatever's possessing me doesn't know the difference between you, Max, and his girlfriend. By the way, I've never actually seen any of his girlfriends' faces and couldn't tell you their names. Guess that shows you how relevant they are to Falling In Reverse."
"And what does this have to do with your torso?"
"He's trying to take over, Krystal. Or something like that. And I need to know where it stops. I wish there were good shirtless pics of him from the era -- maybe I can ask him next time he forces himself into conversation -- so I know where I am. If I'm just approaching the full tattoo coverage from some specific point and then it stops, then that's fine. That means the memories probably stop there, too, and TDIMIY is pretty stylized. But if the tattoos keep going and start getting into Fashionably Late, that means that the mental part probably will too. And there's some stuff in mid-late 2012 and into Fashionably Late that I definitely don't want in my headspace."
Tay had turned away from the mirror and was facing directly towards Krystal standing at the foot of her bed, still shirtless, her tone getting increasingly pressured and frantic as the rant progressed, and eyes darting wildly with dark circles underneath them, from more than just the permanent eyeliner from the transformation. Krystal almost wanted to hug her, since she looked like she was about to cry and was visibly shaking, but at the same time, couldn't quite bring herself to approach. Unsure what else to do and uncomfortable with the form this situation took (in more senses than one -- while she knew Tay was still her friend on the inside, the image of Ronnie, a guy who was a good foot taller than her, on the verge of a breakdown alone in a hotel room with her was a little more disturbing), Krystal attempted to crack a joke. Maybe some kind of lore reference would help?
"Hey, at least microphones are wireless and a lot lighter these days..."
"IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING MIC STANDS!"
Half-consciously, Tay lunged forward, essentially leaping onto the bed and forcing Krystal back. Despite her best efforts, Krystal flinched, unable to avert her gaze from her friend's...Ronnie's...whoever she was talking to's clenched fists and how she couldn't tell anymore if the visibly unstable expression on her face was closer to fear or rage.
"God, you think this is a fucking joke, don't you?!"
"Tay, I... I'm sorry. I thought it would make you --"
"You thought it would make me feel better?! It just shows me what I really am to you. You don't really see me as your friend. Not anymore. I'm just a vehicle for your fucking fantasies and your [rhymes with 'guarded'] crush on some version of Ronnie who never fucking existed, and you're still clinging to the idea that Tay is still in here so you can get close to me!"
Tay lunged forward yet again, pushing Krystal up against the headboard of the hotel room's bed. Both of them were breathing heavily, practically panting, at this point, and Krystal started eyeing if she could squeeze out and make it to the door.
"Are -- are you okay? You... never use that word."
"Face it. Your friend is dead. So let's cut the bullshit and stop pretending this is okay! Maybe if you didn't act like a fucking syncophantic fan for once in your life and grew some goddamned balls and critical thinking skills, you'd realize that Falling In Reverse is irredeemable! I was damned the moment I even considered buying that fucking jacket. I'm getting what I deserve."
Despite having started that spiel with yelling, Tay couldn't maintain it, staring at her own face -- no, it wasn't hers, that was Ronnie, that was Mr. Bad Girls Club himself, that was the misogynistic excesses of the scene personified that she'd been enabling for the past 20 years -- in the full-wall-length mirror behind the hotel room's bed. Eyes wild, hair practically feral and fanning out around her, what looked to be a faint inkling of the "RR" initials and teardrop underneath one of her eyes, and her mouth in a scowl of pure disgust and contempt. And then she looked down at Krystal, her best friend, the most important person in her life, pushed up against the headboard and caged in by Tay's arms and chest.
She looked absolutely terrified, and was only able to let out a half-whispered whimper.
"Tay, please. This isn't you. We'll find a way through this..."
A rapid-fire slideshow of memories at a framerate too fast to discern, indistinguishable whether they were hers or not, ran through Tay's mind's eye. Her first meeting with Krystal during freshman rush, standing up for her when the preppier girls made fun of them, exchanging IDs with him after the battle of the bands, that message she received on MySpace that they were threatening her so he needed to step in to defend her, like she always had; she'd always been the one to do his friends' dirty work, to be the bad guy so they didn't have to. The intervention she'd scheduled when he was about to go to jail, and how all of their faces didn't look to Tay like the judgment he had perceived, but like honest concern. That interview with the other guys in Escape the Fate where Krystal sounded utterly heartbroken -- "I just want the old Ronnie back... I don't understand what changed." His phone broken on the table and Tay rounding on her, demanding to know where she'd been. His face bruised, furniture broken around the room, all of it her doing. She'd lost control, she'd done something utterly stupid, and his response was to write a stupid fucking song about it. And to accuse him of giving him an STI just to twist the knife further -- "bitch, you gave me the fucking clap!" And moving forward to the present, how Krystal had texted him to let her know about the Whatnot stream, how I was selling some old Falling In Reverse merch and Krystal thought of Tay, and thought that he might want to join her to make fun of it, and all of the fucking memories of every Escape the Fate and/or Falling In Reverse show he'd ever been to and how the last time she'd seen light in my eyes was during Bury The Hatchet. She needed her light, her favorite person, the only human being he'd ever connected with, to be human; otherwise he pushed away everyone she met, usually physically and with violence, and they looked at her with heartbreak and terror, just like she -- he -- was doing now.
Tay looked back at himself in the mirror, and how the tension in his eyes and face had welled up and was on the verge of breaking. It welled up in her stomach, a fire spreading up his esophagus, as Krystal's terror at the edge of his vision shifted from terror to concern. Covering his mouth with a hand, Tay ran to the bathroom and started uncontrollably vomiting, just like he had done the first time she and Max had gotten high together...
What felt like an eternity later, the acidic burn in the back of Tay's throat persisted, but all matter that could have come up with it was eliminated. Her stomach was tied in knots, and she felt sick in every possible capacity. She stared at herself in the mirror, worn and ragged, looking a lot like that fucking mugshot from that fucking album cover, and hating every inch of it. She rummaged in Krystal's travel bag which sat on the bathroom counter for a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut off the vast majority of her hair. Get rid of those stupid fucking bangs and most of the length, make it easier to brush and manage in the morning, and most importantly, get a haircut that Ronnie had never had. After about 5 minutes, the floor was covered in black curled locks and Tay felt reasonably satisfied with the shoulder-length, tousled, roughly symmetrical results, although they looked much worse in the back where she couldn't see. A few stray tendrils stuck out on either side, but she conspicuously lacked Ronnie's emo bangs, and to her relief, could see that underneath them, there were no signs of the face tattoo. This was part of what she wanted to check. She nodded in response to the face in the mirror, and hoped that this wasn't the kind of transformation where the hairstyle was a required part of the appearance and would magically grow back if cut. Then she dry-heaved again, and returned to Krystal's travel bag to rummage around for some carbonate supplements, before running to the room's mini-bar for an overpriced sports drink to try to recover her blood sugar. On her way out of the bathroom, she intercepted Krystal, who'd been watching the whole display. Upon returning to her bed, and putting on a hoodie because she didn't want to look at the tattoos on her torso or arms, Krystal hesitantly approached her, although carefully stood out of the range that she could reach.
"Hey. Uh, are you... okay? Like, do you need medical attention? You sounded pretty sick in there."
"Oh, it's just the existential nightmare and violation of all of my values I feared the most from this entire transformation sequence. I'm more concerned about you -- I couldn't... I couldn't forgive myself if I ever hurt you. Are you okay? Are you going to be able to even trust me again? I understand if you're not... that was..."
"That wasn't you."
"Then who the hell was it? It's not like I'm possessed."
"Did you think any of those thoughts willingly?"
"No."
"Did you act on them in any way?"
"Uh...yes. I did kind of attack you."
"I don't see that you touched me anywhere. Sure, you scared the shit out of me, but everyone does things that they regret when they're stressed, and you've got a hell of a lot of reasons to be. Even without what are essentially intrusive thoughts with an entire conscious backstory from someone who let's be real, is pretty horrible attached to them, you've been threatened into a job you didn't want, your future is unclear medically, and just the act of performing and putting yourself out there so often would be stressful even if you were doing it willingly! Feeling the urge to lash out and find someone to attack and blame, since you can't get to the real cause safely, isn't a statement on your character. Automatic thoughts aren't you. How you respond to them afterwards, and how you stop yourself from acting on them: that's you."
"Yes, but... I'm not me. If I didn't have HIS awful memories and awful fucking songs -- god, how did I ever like -- whatever. I'm not the important part here. I wouldn't have done any of that if not for him, and it's my fault for letting him into me in the first place!"
"Did you have any reason to suspect that the jacket you bought would do that?"
"No. But I'm still enabling everything he is and does and furthering harm by --"
"Do you really think that what Ronnie does has any relation whatsoever to whether you listen to Falling In Reverse? You have enough of him in you to know that he was kind of like that long before he was famous. Sure, it has made him worse and perhaps expanded his range, but you can't and shouldn't take responsibility for his actions because you like a fucking band! And for the most part, it's not like his songs are really hurting anybody. They're kind of too stupid to."
"Heh, I never thought I'd hear you call TDIMIY that..."
"Is it working?"
"I guess... but God, I really don't want to go out there again. That was the worst episode I've ever had, and all of those fans in the crowd who don't know just how awful he -- I -- on the inside, and most of them are girls, barely out of their teens if they are at all, and I could so easily... every time I've looked at a woman, Krystal, since he gave me that fucking disgusting sheet of paper. Every goddamned time, I'm either seeing them as his mom or as one of his girlfriends for a split second, and what he wants to do to them is... awful. It's never actual sex. That I would understand. It's... well, you've listened to Pick Up The Phone, right? The bruising, the broken bones, all of that just to demonstrate that they belong to him and aren't allowed anything outside of him -- It's not about sex. I don't think he actually likes women at all. Uh, actually, the only people I've had any kind of... thoughts, like that, about, have been guys. Mostly young, androgynous ones who kinda look like Max, or Andy from Black Veil Brides. And it's not even really sex; he just wants to be cuddled? I would say I was surprised, but ... that's who he wants to be intimate with. Who he actually sees as human. Women, he sees as some sort of ... it's all about power. I don't... I don't know what he thinks he gets out of it, or maybe that isn't actually what he thinks but it's what's baked into Falling In Reverse. I don't know where the lines are anymore -- I don't know if that's Ronnie, or if that's the scene, or if that's what he was thinking about in a more fictional sense for the songs, but ... well, with Bad Girls Club and all that, I can't really ignore ... if I'm Falling In Reverse personified, and a fundamental part of Falling In Reverse is misogyny and violence, then --"
"Who says?"
"Who says what?"
"That you're Falling In Reverse. Or that Falling In Reverse is synonymous with misogyny and violence. That's Ronnie. But it doesn't have to be you, and it didn't have to be Falling In Reverse. He could have just... not written that, and you know, not beaten his girlfriends. It's not that difficult."
"You've seen the comments on anything having to do with a woman accusing him of wrongdoing, right? It's been baked in for as long as the band's fucking existed. Those teenagers, literal fucking children, defending him with cuts and bruises from the mic stands... I feel nauseous for ever having liked him. It's a fundamentally misogynistic and toxic scene, which was the perfect environment for a fundamentally toxic person. Maybe I should use this stronger body full of his experiences, and my getting close to him, to kill him. That would be a good use of my powers."
"Uh, no. You are my friend, and if you end up in prison, who's going to tell me how great I look when I get new gear, and tell me jokes when I had a bad day at work? That's you. And that's why you got into this in the first place -- the feeling of community and inclusion, and an environment based on love and freedom of expression. What if, instead of just following Ronnie's instructions and being a facsimile of him in 2012, you try to embody the scene as you perceived it? Don't be Ronnie, be who Tay wanted Ronnie to be. Ronnie can never undo the abuse he's committed -- but you don't have to do shit, because you didn't do it. And what you can do, with the power to influence the Falling In Reverse fanbase you have, is to actually be the force of positivity he claims he is."
"Krystal, I love you, but do you really think any current Falling In Reverse fan would buy that? Let's face it; they're too far gone to save. It's not that they're bad people because they like a band. They like the band because they're bad people. It's a required prerequisite."
"Then fuck them! Why do you care about their opinion? If you don't want to be Falling In Reverse, you don't have to be! You might have Ronnie's body and voice, but you've got Tay's morals and experiences. Here's some homework for you, speaking as your music agent -- write me a song. Not a Falling In Reverse song. Write a song that you want to hear, and you want to perform. Next setlist, no matter what Ronnie says about it, we're taking Good Girls Bad Guys off the setlist and playing that instead. Give you a break from all the Ronnie bullshit to ground yourself, you know? Maybe that'll help with the intrusive thoughts. I know it isn't exactly what they are, but I think it's probably closer to the truth and maybe healthier for you to think of them like that instead of as an actual willful conscious entity trying to possess you. After all, it's just Falling In Reverse -- you aren't dealing with Ronald, the nuanced human being. You're dealing with an abstract concept, a shadow of him based on what comes through in the songs. And shadows are pretty damned easy to break up."
Tay's expression of distress had dissipated, replaced with something more akin to contemplation. Scratching the tiny, still practically invisible hairs on her chin, she mumbled like she was running something through her brain. Krystal sat and waited for her to finish, before eventually a no-context outburst emerged.
"Aaron."
"Huh?"
"I've been... well, I'm supposed to start doing fan Q&As next week, and I've realized that I don't have a name. I'm not Ronnie. We've established that, and I want to get away from him -- I like your original song idea, although I've never been a poet, so we'll see if it's any good. And I don't want to go by my real name when I'm on stage, because I don't want Falling In Reverse fans thinking I'm either trans or crossdressing, and don't know which would be worse. Or if they know the difference. And I don't want anyone at work or in my 'real' life who I haven't already told making the connection, although I guess it really wouldn't matter if someone did. It's not like people don't have day jobs and then do music gigs on the side. But if I'm going to be doing Q&As with people, they're going to need something to call me, so I need a name for my stage persona. And maybe if I give him a name that isn't mine, and isn't Ronnie's, it'll make the free-floating Falling In Reverse memory bullshit less powerful, if I'm establishing a persona who's just covering those songs, not their original author, who's got no connection to him."
"Seems like a smart name. So, uh, why Aaron?"
"Well, or Erin. If you don't write it out, it's gender neutral, so folks will just read me as whatever gender they expect me to. Gives me an extra layer of cover for the whole gender bender thing. Plus, it's kind of something like an inversion or rearrangement of the syllables in 'Ronnie'. It feels right, in this case, and it's got nothing to do with me, which is the real point."
"So, to go with your new name and haircut, before we head home tomorrow once it's not as late, want to get a makeover? And maybe even out your DIY job on the back, because your bangs are super cute, but it's pretty clear you couldn't see?"
Tay smiled, the first time Krystal had seen it that day since before she got on stage.
"All right, I think I can work with that. I need to brush my teeth, and uh, maybe shower again, because I feel gross again, and go to bed first, though."
"For what it's worth, just the haircut makes you read way less like Ronnie. Ultimately, pre-face tattoo, he's a pretty generic emo guy, so you've got plenty of options if you want to separate yourself from him while still being edgy and super cute on stage. And honestly, I think this is your cutest haircut yet, even in comparison to ones from, y'know, before."
Tay tossed her new, much shorter hairstyle back and took a relieved exhale at feeling far less of it than the previous form hitting her neck before turning and returning to the bathroom. Once she exited to go to bed, it was in the fuzzy bathrobe that had come with the hotel room, rather than anything from her suitcase. It wasn't the kind of thing she would have worn before, but it felt appropriate in this case. After all, it seemed like something Ronnie would never wear. The strain of the day and the physical strain of performing having finally caught up to her, she went to sleep remarkably quickly and more soundly than she expected, half-dreamt segments of lyrics for theoretical original songs floating across her headspace like a 480P Windows Movie Maker lyric video.
Tay had grown rather accustomed at this point to Ronnie approaching her after each concert, smugly slow-clapping. Of course, this time, it was actually at a meet and greet / signing table; she'd gotten a couple of posters printed and figured she might as well attempt to sell them at Krystal's suggestion. At least he had the decency to wait until the end and not hold up the line.
"Nice haircut. You look like a middle-aged lesbian."
"Takes one to know one." Tay didn't bother turning to look at him as she continued to pack up the remaining gear from around the table.
"If you're going to insult me, try to make it make some sense?"
"Oh, that's right. Lesbians like women. You don't."
Ronnie paused for several seconds, like he was debating whether to laugh or attack her, but ultimately decided neither was worth it and went back to that insufferable "professional" tone of voice he used when talking about manipulative bullshit. God, his face just looked so punchable, and with Tay's current dimensions, she could totally do it...
"So, I heard your new song. It's cute. Think the fans liked it too. Do you intend to actually record it? You should. After all, you have enough tracks for an album release, and that'll really measure how well you're doing. Sure, people think you're amusing for a night out, but will they actually buy or stream it, is the question."
"What happened to 'nobody likes albums anymore, everyone is ADHD now, singles and tours are where it's at'?"
"What happened to you not being insufferable?"
"Oh, I just realized that I'm physically identical to you, but younger and faster, so could totally take you out if you tried anything funny."
"Believe it or not, you wouldn't be the first one to try."
"I believe it. So, you were saying about album recording? You're confident that I have the rights to the TDIMIY2 tracks you gave me and you're not going to sue me or try any funny business?"
"About that, actually. I was just talking with the legal guys at Epitaph. They said that you have the rights to the songs, but nothing else -- you have the rights to the lyrics and melody, which belonged to me, but not to anything else. So you can release them, but you can't use any Falling In Reverse names or graphics. So, like, you're gonna need a different name; right now you've just been getting billed as an FIR cover band, and don't think of calling it anything having to do with my album. Uh, I'm not sure if you can use your face or not. Since it's also my face. You should be able to, since, y'know, it is what you look like in real life, but to be on the safe side, maybe try not to dress like me."
"You -- I have the rights to my fucking face! It's your fault and your stupid cursed jacket that's why I'm wearing this face in the first place, and you're the one who blackmailed me into a scene career I don't want! So if I'm going to have your face, and you're playing some sick roleplaying game to try to make me act like you, I'd better be able to fucking put it in my liner notes!"
Ronnie made a slightly whistled exhale. "Woo, you're getting mad at me. It's adorable. Just keep in mind how nice I'm being. There's no reason I couldn't have just sold your name and address the moment I heard about you, or claimed you'd gotten plastic surgery to look like me and completely taken you down, including your precious day job. So you can call me a blackmailer and shit all you like, but just know I could be a lot worse."
"I'm confident that every other woman in your life would agree."
"Like I said. You're adorable. Cut it out."
"And were the Epitaph legal guys so concerned about the rights of everyone else you've plagiarized for merch designs? And the legal department who took your mugshot? Oh, and Linkin Park, because you totally stole their riff for Zombified?"
"If you want to record an album, let me know. I can book you a recording studio and team. And note that I could just as easily eliminate your entire team, so don't get cocky. Everything you are, have, and do is because of me. Without me, you'd just be another washed up 30-something slut who lives by herself with her cat because no one will ever fuck her again, writing whiny feminist screeds on Tumblr and smoking weed."
"Do you have anything relevant to say?"
"Do you? Not that it matters. Remember, these are still my fans. They won't buy into your woke bullshit, and that's if they even bother to read the lyrics. Hell knows they don't read mine."
"Mr. Radke, I am currently at work. If you don't have anything to say that has to do with our business deal, I would like to request with the utmost due respect that you fuck off."
The last two words were separately enunciated and at a substantially higher volume and spacing than the rest of the sentence. Tay glared daggers straight at Ronnie, without her gaze or any other part of her body flinching. In her previous body, she'd probably be apologizing for wasting his time and otherwise spewing out niceties to try to prevent him from resorting to violence. After all, that's how you interact with older men, and he was richer than her, therefore a more valid and relevant human being and the one whose side any court would take. However, this version of Tay was both physically capable of and morally willing to call him on his bullshit and perhaps break his stupid face.
And in regards to the "everything you are, have, and do stems from me", that was just categorically false. Sure, the specific path Tay's life had taken may have stemmed from her getting into "journalistic" blogging via the scene, but her desire for knowledge and to speak truth to power had always been with her; if it hadn't been Falling In Reverse that got her into writing, it would have been something else. And in regards to her unwilling and unwanted scene career, she'd gotten quite the long list of emails, resumes, TikTok handles, etcetera from local musicians interested in working with her, and already had a label lined up.
When the album that would be called something with nothing to do with The Drug In Me Is You released, featuring at least one more fully original song along with the stale bullshit Ronnie had forced into her mind (despite how it should have never left his own), it wouldn't be with Ronnie's recording goons, and it wouldn't be under Epitaph.
And Krystal would be getting an official promotion, if Tay could swing it well enough.
Ronnie smiled, slightly, raising one eyebrow before slinking back off to do.... whatever it was that he did.
"Good job. That's exactly what I would say. See you in the studio..."