“Fuck,” cried Aster under her breath as she nibbled at her index finger. Specks of blood flecked the blonde mahogany of the acoustic guitar she held in her lap in a light mist of red.

“You've been playing that all day, shouldn't you actually try working?” quipped Cecil, his eyes wandering up from a book as he sat at his place in front of the register.

“—You're the one who said I should dial my songs back,” she mumbled, clearing the blood away from her hand with a rag. “So I need to write some songs that fit this era better,” she said, her eyes going wide as she bit her lip.

“This... era?” he asked with a quizzical brow.

“Uh yeah, the era. You know, like the whole atmosphere of things that are going on right now?” she stuttered, her eyes wandering to his face in trepidation.

He glanced at the panicked girl, then back down as he returned to his book. “Yeah, I guess I get that. The times certainly seem to be changing.”

The chattering of passersby on the street drifted into the empty store.

“People in general have been a lot more open to speaking their minds lately. You even have some people actually going out there and taking action, like Sylvia with her protests,” he mentioned, closing his book. “It's pretty inspiring.”

“Sylvia has protests?” Aster murmured, setting down the bloodstained guitar.

“Yeah, hasn't she told you? She's a pol sci major— she attends and organizes a lot of student protests in her free time, mostly against the war,” he explained, Aster catching her tongue again just in time to not follow that response up with 'what war?'

“Actually, come to think of it, I think she has one going right now,” he continued, suddenly rising and fetching his coat.

“Wait, what about the shop?”

“We haven't had a single customer all day,” he murmured, signaling Aster to do the same. “It'll be fine, Floyd closes up all the time,” he continued, opening the door for Aster as he locked it behind himself.

—

The will o' wisps of Aster's fluttery, nervous breath cast off high into the chilly November morning as she pulled Sylvia's slightly over sized hand-me-down coat around her, as she and Cecil set off towards Peppermint Plains Community College.

“So, did you get anything written for tonight? Or are we just going to play that 'la la la' song again?” he asked her as they traversed a stone bridge that sat at the center of the town's park. Aster's gaze drifted down towards the ducks who crossed the frigid waters of the stream beneath them, effortlessly riding the winding creek towards a bed of browning foliage and muted coffee-colored sweaters and scarves.

“Uh, just fifteen songs,” she mumbled, the tip of her frosted nose glowing a faint red.

“Fifteen songs?!” murmured Cecil in surprise as he turned to look at the short, scarlet-nosed girl. “The concert was just yesterday, were you up writing all night?” he asked, looking down to meet that stark orange gaze, ever underlined by the dark circles that surrounded them. “Not like I'd really be able to tell though, would I?” he quietly smirked, Aster frowning.

“They're just simple pop songs— a verse, a chorus, and a middle-eight. All you gotta do is change the melody up, and give them some inane lyrics to dance along to,” she replied nonchalantly as they continued their stroll, glancing off to the ducks as they split the park in their hurried waddling.

“Yeah, but it apparently comes naturally to you. It takes me months to write songs,” he mumbled back, watching the same ducks take flight. “I can play other people's songs no problem, but when it comes to my own stuff I can barely even string together chords,” he sighed, his breath whispering high in pursuit of the fowl. “Feels like I'm to be forever discontent with whatever I try.”

“Your songs are going to suck for a long time, that's just how it goes. But, if you don't get the shit songs out of the way, then they're always gonna stay shit,” she replied matter-of-factly, turning back to meet his gaze but failing as her eyes darted to the ground. They crossed the bridge, Aster turning headlong into a large crowd right outside of the park.

“Fuck,” she stammered, backing out of the crowd.

“Oh, we're here,” mumbled Cecil, walking into the same crowd as Aster nervously darted back inwards in pursuit of him.

On the very tips of her toes she pushed herself up as she came to a stop behind him, her eyes catching fleeting glimpses of a bobbing yellow head and red bow, as a little, loud voice peeped and hawed.

“It's an utter injustice!” she could hear Sylvia yell, loudspeaker in hand, “that we'd send the men of our nation to die in pursuit of wealth, all while taking innocent lives with them! Look inside yourself and ask, are we really that kind of a country?!” the pipsqueak asked to the uproarious response of the crowd before her.

“Are we not built for peace?!”

“Whoa,” Aster mumbled, the shivering leaf of a girl cautiously edging her way further up to the front with Cecil for a better view of their coworker.

“Yeah, she's good at being a loudmouth, I'll give her that,” he remarked as they watched Sylvia trudge up and down the steps of the college office as she continued her speech.

Aster stood in awe as she listened to Sylvia ramble on about the 'ambitions of war pigs' and 'the tarnishing of our democracy', her voice not once breaking or wavering, completely driven and held steady by the palpable interest Sylvia had for what she spoke about. Cecil was right, Aster figured— if there was one thing Sylvia was as good at as guitar, it had to be talking her head off.

Aster remained entranced, her attention given fully to Sylvia's high-pitched, frenetic speech, goosebumps standing on end as the little dynamo whipped the crowd into a mass of cheering. Aster watched astounded, suddenly intimate with the wish to only just have a little piece of that herself. To have the ability to captivate and totally enthrall the masses in such a way. Aster's heart throbbed with total, unfettered desire to bathe in the confirmation of self that washed Sylvia so, and so set its path and itself alight in its thirst to feel that, under any circumstances.

Slowly and awkwardly, Aster threw up her fists in an attempt at cheering Sylvia on, quickly retracting them with a flush of crimson in her face every time Cecil would look down at her. Hiding underneath the ripples of her slight jealousy as she watched her ramble on was the disbelief that she personally knew this electric soul. She liked to think that perhaps, just maybe by rubbing shoulders with her she could be granted that same magnetism for herself. Aster stood silent, eyes fixed on Sylvia's bow bouncing, as the warmest thought trounced into her mind on that frigid morning— That's my friend, isn't it? she thought, giving a lazy attempt at keeping her small smirk hidden from Cecil.

Aster was never the best with people. Many others her age found her fascination with antiquated music odd and avoided her because of it, and social situations in the twenty-sixties were hard to come by in the first place— with all schooling being done at home. Thus, aside from her incessant neighbor who had pestered her to hangout since childhood, Aster had never really had anyone she could call a 'friend'. Does it count if they're virtual...? she wondered, her eyes twinkling as Sylvia yapped on.

“Hey there little lady,” interrupted a voice in a low, gravely tone, Aster's spirit leaving her body as she turned to face the source of it, gone to some plane beyond actuality and virtual reality. She watched as a bald man, clad in a leather jacket and bespectacled by circular frames, came towards her, towering over her as he reached into his jacket. Cecil looked down at Aster as she suddenly crashed into him, glancing back up at the man as he handed him a pamphlet.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, Aster taking one as well into her shaking hands.

“Thanks for taking the time to be here!” the man exclaimed, as Aster looked down at the pamphlet.

'Not Now, Not Ever.' read the thick, blocky inked font atop the paper's header, a grainy photocopied image of aerial bombs beneath. Aster glanced through the paragraphs below the picture, catching tidbits that called for the 'end of hostilities against 'innocent nations' and the dismantlement of all of 'our' military bases within it'.

This simulation really doesn't stop at anything, does it? she pondered, hungrily scanning the page again for further details on places and countries that didn't technically exist. Well, I guess Peppermint Plains and Cherryaire aren't exactly real, are they? So it makes sense that there's an entire world to support everything... But huh, why didn't that ever occur to me? she continued to ponder, the number of leather jackets in front of her suddenly quadrupled.

“Hey,” muttered Cecil in nonchalant greeting to Marion, who was now before them holding a stack of the same pamphlets.

“Oh hey, I didn't realize you guys were gonna be here,” he replied, grinding a toothpick in his mouth. “The store closed?”

“Yeah, we were dead. So I figured I'd take Aster to see one of Sylvia's protests before we have to get ready for the show,” he explained. “What are you guys doing here?” Cecil inquired, his eyes casting across Marion and the several other leather clad, pamphlet-holding greasers he had with him.

“Uh well, Sylvia said it was 'only fair' we helped out after all that happened last week, so,” he replied as he rubbed the back of his head, his eyes darting over as the aforementioned tornado skipped her way over.

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“Oh hey but you know we gotta get back to work!” he quickly added, shuffling off back into the crowd which was now starting to slowly disperse.

“Hey wait,”

“Aster! What are you doing here?!” Sylvia beamed, aiming for a sudden high-five which Aster barely managed to catch. “Did ya guys close up early?”

“Yeah,” answered Cecil as he watched the greasers dart into the crowd and split up. “Shop was dead, and I figured we had to get to soundcheck soon enough anyways, so I decided to take Aster along and show her what one of your protests are like,” he explained, looking down at the girl playing with the hem of her dress.

“It was really good,” Aster added, to which Sylvia flashed her usual toothy grin.

“Thanks, Aster! There's never a moment to spare in making people aware of the stuff going on, ya know? The world should be a happy place!” she chirped, hands on her hips.

“What about Marion and them then?” Cecil inquired, his eyes pointing over to the greaser gang hurriedly handing fliers out to the dispersing crowd.

“They're happy to help! They caused so much trouble I think it was only fair to ask for a little favor in return!” she stated matter-of-factly, crossing her arms.

Aster watched on as Sylvia and Cecil discussed, or rather argued the irony of anti-war protests and forced servitude as the crowd dispersed, a light frost of snow speckling the steps of the collegiate administrative building in a sparkling wetness.

Huh, I don't remember the last time I felt... not sad like this, the thought suddenly occurred to her, the image of Sylvia screaming in Cecil's face settling into her heart as she pulled the hand-me-down tightly around her.

I have to do it, she told herself, clenching her teeth.

“So,” she squeaked out. “S-should we head to the venue?” she asked, the sun noticeably waning behind Sylvia and Cecil as they turned to her.

“Sure, where are we playing?” Sylvia asked gleefully.

“Were... you not supposed to figure that out with Floyd, Sylvia?” Cecil replied in confusion.

“Yeah, but Mr. Floyd said 'Sylvia, worry not! For several hours is more than enough to arrange a concert!',” she explained in her best air of faux elegance, her invisible cane stamping out the frost. “He was really worked up and sweaty about it, so I'm sure he ended up finding someplace great!”

—

“The buses don't run out here this late,” remarked Cecil as Sylvia's Volkswagen pulled up to a dilapidated building on the outskirts of town. Nestled within the brutish rust of factories and smog-stained warehouses, workers fresh off their shifts filtered down the pothole-scarred roadways and cigarette littered sidewalks, huffing past buildings of similar disrepair, some with the occasional window boarded up and spray-painted.

“Are you sure this is where Floyd told you to go, Cecil?” Marion inquired with a tint of worry from the backseat, as Aster stared out the window in horror at the roughshod men passing by.

“Yes, Aspartame Ward. He said look for the place with the 'flickering sign',” Cecil replied, looking out to the chorus of dying lights that lined the street.

“What about that one?” asked Sylvia, pointing down the street to a brick building which commanded the flow of a few workers into the doors, the words 'Rick's Watering Hole' sparking into the evening in fluttering, insect spattered lights.

“Well, should we check it out?” asked Cecil.

“We're going to get fucking mugged man, this place is no joke. Some of my best guys don't even come out here!” interjected Marion as Aster began to shake.

So are you actually going to do it? Are you actually going to do something other than always shake and stutter? she asked herself, her nervous gaze falling out the window onto a worn man bumming a cigarette.

“Like forreal man, how am I even going to get out of the place with my drums? Do you know how much those things are worth?”

“Well Floyd got them in somehow,” Cecil argued back.

“Let's just walk in there, you big babies,” interjected Sylvia.

Aster sat, her chin perched against the cold plastic of the van's windowsill, assuaging her panic in thought. Sylvia went up there and completely commanded the crowd,

“Like, why not just leave and play some other time, a day is not enough to set up a show—”

The creak of the van's door sliding open turned the attention of the other three to Aster who was suddenly making her way out.

“Hey, Aster, wait,” Marion called out, stepping out of the van.

“W-we're playing the show,” she ordered, nervously darting around cars that slowly passed down the street.

“Let's go, Aster!” Sylvia cheered, fetching her guitar from the van and bolting down the street after her.

The weather-worn wooden door opened with a loud oil-parched squeal to a blanket of white, acrid smoke that hung in the air, the oft-bearded and tattooed residents of the bar's crowd turning to look at the four who just entered.

As the wisps of spent cigarettes that hung in the air, so did the silence of the men whose gaze fell upon them, the faint sound of old country standards crackling in the background. One man took a swig of beer, his gaze unfettered as the unanswered air lingered on.

Suddenly, the little red bow bounced, the cloudy air swirling clear around it in response.

“What is up?! We are the 'Love You Forevers'!” screamed Sylvia, brandishing her brand new cherry red SG. Cecil stood with his face in his hands.

“Hey, that's a pretty wild guitar you got there, little girl,” one of the men spoke up, walking over to them.

“Isn't it?!” she replied with a confident grin, showing him the action on the guitar as she played some licks on the fretboard.

“Holy shit, this girl can play! Come get a look at this!” he hollered over to his cohorts at the bar, a number of men following as Sylvia gladly played for them.

Following suit, the room's atmosphere lit up, men returning to their conversations and drinks as a white wig appeared from between the curtains at the far end of the room. “You finally made it!” Floyd whispered as the group sans Sylvia came to the stage. “I thought I was positively done for!” he warbled, wiping the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief. “Miss Aster, please, a little forewarning next time you schedule us a show!” he whined to which Aster responded with a curt “sorry”.

“I am lucky I even managed to find a place that accepted my bootlegs— I mean had vacancy,” he continued, as Aster looked over to the stage, Marion's sleek pearlescent drums glittering beneath the hot shower of the stage light, the rest of their equipment established around it. Her eye caught on a particular hint of rosy red and pink, a leather strap hanging from the vague instrument shape. Floyd chuckled as Aster made her way over to it for a better look.

“I see you have noticed,” he said, Aster taking the shining, paisley-patterned bass into her hand. Her hands trembled slightly, the sensation of her dream instrument within her excruciatingly recreated reach almost too much to bear. She glanced down at the perfect weathering and varnish of the fretboard, the bold V-shaped cut of the body that ended in its signature sharp points. She held it in her hands, at once a natural extension of herself, a phantom appendage.

Aster wished to capture that visceral serendipity that coursed through her being in that moment of time, the way the heat of the lights above mimed the hot vitality of the blood excitedly coursing through her. The perfect expression of herself was in her grasp, and her heart fluttered with the realization she wielded the vehicle of all her innate desires.

She looked out across the stage to Sylvia, idly engrossed in chatter with the men, as she turned to wave to Aster.

I can be like that, she told herself, gripping the fresh strings tightly into her palm and into the fretboard. I can do it too.

However, as her eyes focused, they dropped onto the scene of a half-dozen or so grizzly men turned around to see the elegant, petite girl on stage with her wild guitar, beers clattering as one chimed out “So? Fuckin' play somethin'!”

Her mind went blank as her anxiety fully appreciated the scope of gazes staring her down, even as she stood above them on the small platform. A scurry of footsteps squeaked behind her as the rest of the band followed suit and adorned their instruments, tuning up as Aster nervously fidgeted with the cord into her bass guitar.

Those lights that underscored the fire of her mind so well earlier now taunted as they reduced her into a trembling mess of sweat and frayed nerves teetering on the edge of a breakdown as she tried to trace any recollection of her music.

She stood, her dry lips brushing against the mic as she stuttered for any reply to give. “W-we're... we, we... w-we're,”

“Yeah, you're what?!” a scowled man with a scraggly, uneven haircut shouted from the bar.

Aster's throat closed up, her eyes glazed over as she bore the full weight of a whole room's waiting on her. I can't do it, the thought walked somberly into her mind, her heart falling into her stomach and her stomach falling into the pit of true lack of will in going on.

“We're— we're the—”

“We're 'The Love You Forevers'!” Sylvia interjected, smiling as she rang out the intro chord to the song they had played yesterday.

“Hell yeah, you fuckin' kill it!” the man from earlier screamed from the back.

Cecil and Marion soon joined in, the rhythm section eagerly awaiting the awkward plods of Aster's bass to hold the song's foundation down.

The room began to light up as she nervously plucked at the strings, her heart racing as they neared the beginning of the first verse. Adrenaline rose up, wholly consuming and giving in light-headedness, her veins practically vibrating as she braced to sing.

She stepped forward, the blistering bright of the lamps over head obscuring the faces of her audience as her first notes anxiously teetered out into the venue with loose, unsure steps. Sylvia and Cecil joined in to back her on the “la la la” refrain as they held their metaphorical breath in wait for the same reaction they had gotten at the birthday party, though it did not come. Aster's heart thumped, the obfuscated crowd unmoving and unchanging as she stumbled through the song, whimpering through the lyrics in a hope that perhaps she'd just die right there.

A final note rang out on her bass to mark the end of the song, the tonic returned, and she quickly removed the instrument from herself, the floral strap flailing wildly as she rushed to set it against the amp. She had given up.

Sylvia looked on in worry as Aster began to turn, the venue quickly enveloped in a shaking as a low, organ-churning drone swept through the bar; the glasses of the men vibrating as the bass violently shuddered and fell over, the roar leaving their ears numb in the vacuum of sound that followed it.

The bass toppled over, it's dull thud a cacophony in the hideously contrasting silence, crashing to the floor as everyone's eyes rested on it dumbfounded. The silence found fond company in the breathless room, creeping into each and every space as everyone waited for anyone to speak.

“—That was fucking wild!” one man at last screamed, the rest of the audience soon following in an uproarious wave of applause that blurred the line between Aster and dopamine manifest.

“Fuck I thought my ears were going to explode!” another yelled out as he grabbed the man nearest to him in jubilation.

“That teenybopper shit is catchy man!” called yet another, older and whiskered man from the front of the stage, his whiskey sloshing within its glass.

Aster looked back at the rest of the band, who in turn looked to her. That was a fucking disaster, she thought, her eyes glancing down at her trembling, sweat covered palms. So why? She wondered, the rest of the band returning the same confused glances as she turned around to face the audience.

“Come on, you only gonna play one song?”

“Yeah, do that drink shaking trick again! My rum is a little loose!”

Aster looked down at the bass, the paisley-pattern already wearing it's first signs of damage, as she hesitantly reached for it and picked it up, the bass feedbacking once more as the pickups kissed the front of the amp.

“Fuck yes!” screamed various voices in the crowd, as Aster looked down to the weeping Floyd in the front row, spent glasses of drink around him.

She turned to the band, her body in overdrive with the seizing wave of adrenaline, as she gripped the fretboard and signaled to them— “This one is in D major,” the crowd rambunctious as the tunes began to come forth once again.

Aster drove through the collection of songs she had written over the night, the men clapping along to what she considered banal, throwaway melodies fit for the kids she had played for the day before. And yet, she realized, as weary and looking of disrepute as they were, they were still enjoying her songs.

Completely removed from all notions of self-hatred or anxiety, of any pretense of art or the slow, mortal millstone that was living, was a moment of conviviality. A singular moment in time to never be replicated ever again. And she was at the helm of it. In her hands and in her mind she drove the ship that brought joy to the room, and so, in what she realized was only a fleeting fit of confidence, she played her absolute heart out, in a fugue of true self-determination.

I will own this world.