Ep. 05 Time Cannot Erase

When the school year began, Mi Na had recruited two other girls for her band. Lisa Sinclair had just transferred to Carter Middle School, but she was already acquainted to Mi Na through her father. Her father was Randy's old band mate and friend, Mark Sinclair - "Uncle Mark", as far as Mi Na was concerned. When Lisa learned that Mi Na was forming a band, she immediately offered her services as the drummer. When she shared stories of how she'd jam with her father to Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse albums, and gave the other girls a sampling of her talents on the drums, she was hired immediately. The lineup was rounded out with the addition of Jessica Bernier on keyboards and rhythm guitar. After much discussion, and after a marathon of old samurai movies, the girls decided on "Snowblood" as the name for their band.

Randy chatted with his mother and grandparents for a while, and then went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He was putting the jars of condiments back into the refrigerator when he glanced at the calendar hanging on its door. Today was the seventh of September; it was exactly two years, to the day, since he'd received that gut-wrenching email from Rachel.

Rachel.

He hadn't been with any woman, not since the night he and his band-mates from Bloody Solstice went to Emergence, in Providence, and he'd wound up in a drunken one-night-stand with Daria Fulci. He had done a lot of soul searching, since then, and reached a number of conclusions.

He had been perfectly happy and content, before Rachel entered his life. He had given her something that he could never give anyone else - his heart, and his body for the first time - and she had ground it into the dirt beneath her feet. Well, if that was what you got for risking your heart in a relationship, he didn't need it. He didn't need a woman in his life to be happy, and he wasn't even sure that he wanted one.

Still, there were moments when he found himself thinking of her. He would be going for a stroll and he'd see someone walk by and, for a split second, he'd think it was her. Sometimes, he'd hear a woman's voice or a laugh and he'd remember Rachel. As always, he'd find himself missing her after such moments. It was at times like those that he understood the lyrics to an old Fleetwood Mac song; one he had heard many times from his mother's bedroom after his father abandoned them.

Time casts a spell on you, but you wont forget me

I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me

I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you

You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you

During the really bad nights, he'd set his feelings down in song, and some of those songs ended up on the last Bloody Solstice album. Ironically, a lot of women approached Randy and offered to help heal his broken heart after hearing those songs. In the end, he'd turn them all down. Mark, Jon, and Krista respected Randy's decision to stay single. In fact, Mark recommended it.

"You've got to get back in touch with yourself, bro," he advised. "Right now, you don't even seem to like yourself. If you don't like you, how can you ever expect anyone else to like you?"

Rick, of course, was all for exactly the opposite.

"You don't need to relate to women, dude," the vocalist had laughed, "in order to get yourself a good piece of ass! There's plenty of babes out there who'd love to wind up in the sack with you, no strings attached, and ball your brains out. Take your pick, man! Get out there, and have some fun! Bang as many babes as you can! 'Love' is highly overrated!"

That was the start of the rift between Randy and Rick. Though it was true that his father had left his mother for a younger woman, Randy knew that 'love' was not as overblown a concept as Rick believed. He had the loving relationship of his grandparents, Chang-Hong and Hye-Ju, to serve him as a daily example of what a lifetime love could be.

The rift had grown as Randy's music changed. The usual imagery of 'death-metal' music faded from his original compositions, to be replaced by intricate melancholy riffs and emotionally charged lyrics, as he poured his broken heart and his anger at Rachel into song after song -- to Rick's steady objections and ridicule.

"I told you that love was overrated," Rick reminded him one night, in a break between rehearsal sessions. "You want proof? Take a good, long look in a mirror, sometime. It's taken a really great musician and turned him into a spineless, yellow queer who - "

Randy was never too clear on what had happened next. He only remembered Mark and Jon each grabbing him by an arm, and the sight of Rick picking himself off the floor and grabbing a towel to staunch the flow of blood from his broken nose. Jon and Krista had taken Rick to get the nose looked at, and Randy had packed his gear and loaded it in the van.

"I'm outta here," he'd said to Mark. "I'm sorry for what it may do to the band, but I gotta get my head on straight, and it can't happen here."

"I'll keep in touch, bro," Mark smiled. "It's not like I didn't see this coming."

Rachel.

Her name kept repeating and repeating in his head. Like an old fashioned vinyl LP with a bad spot in its grooves. Like one of his early attempts at computer programs, caught in an endless loop. He swore, at times, that he could still feel her deep brown eyes burning into his skull.

'Not again, god dammit,' he thought to himself.

He looked around for something to distract himself and found the clock. It read "8:45 P.M."; it was almost time to start getting ready for work. He finished his sandwich, grabbed a change of clothes, and took a shower. He had gotten a job as a night stocker at the new Hannaford that opened in Arkham. The pay was alright; it was enough to supplement the income he got as an instructor at his grandfather's dojo. An hour later, he was in his van, driving to work.

Rachel.

He needed to do something, if he was going to get completely over her. The hurt hadn't gone away, not even after two years. When was he ever going to get some closure - and how? He needed to see Rachel again, to confront her and let her know jut what she'd done to his heart and his soul, but he had absolutely no idea what he'd say to her if he found himself face-to-face with her again. Still, the catharsis of a confrontation was probably the only way he was going to be able to move on and find any sort of peace.

Rachel.

* * * * * *

Rachel stood in the aisle at Bullmoose Music in Portland, browsing through the CD racks. She was really stalling for time, putting off the inevitable. Her stuff was all packed in the car, out in the parking lot, and all that was left was for her to get in, turn the key, and start the drive back to Arkham. Over the summer, she made the decision to move back to Massachusetts. Arkham winters were cold and snowy, but Portland's version was far worse. Plus, she had to admit to herself that she had been homesick ever since she left Arkham to attend school in Maine. The fact that she had spent her Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring breaks in New Orleans with La'Tonya and her family was just her avoidance of her mother's attempts to push her back into the arms of Scott Lister.

Having La'Tonya as a roommate and lover had gone a long way to eliminating most of the ache of missing home, but La'Tonya had entered USM on an accelerated program, and had been a couple years ahead of her, as far as college went. At the end of the coming fall semester, she'd be graduating and moving on with her life, and Rachel would be looking at a new roommate.

Her faculty advisor, Professor Emmett Callahan, had informed her that there was a student-teaching position open at Carter Middle School - the school that she, herself, had attended. Callahan had already taken the liberty of contacting the school and pitching Rachel for the slot, and she'd been preliminarily accepted. The interview had turned out to be more a matter of the formalities being observed.

She had the University transfer her credits to Miskatonic, so she could finish her degree there, and found herself an apartment in Dunwich. During vacation, she moved all her belongings down to her new home. She was on her last trip, so she decided to take a souvenir in the form of some local music. She would've met up with her friend La'Tonya for a little 'send-off', but the charming Creole was apparently still home in New Orleans.

She flipped through the CDs and found something wholly unexpected: a new release from Bloody Solstice. Rachel still had the CD that Randy had given her two years ago; she didn't have the heart to get rid of it, even after what he had done to her. She picked up the album, entitled Drown, and checked out the back cover. Several of the song-titles sounded intriguing, so she walked over to the cashier to purchase it.

"You like those guys?" the dreadlocked cashier, whose nametag identified him as 'Matt', asked her.

"Sort of," Rachel gave him a somewhat embarrassed grin. "I used to date the lead guitarist."

"Oh?" Matt raised an eyebrow. "Cool! It's a shame, though; this album is even more brutal than Remember the Dead! They were this close - " he held a thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart, to illustrate, "to getting a contract with Nuclear Blast, when they broke up!"

"What?" Rachel asked, incredulously. "When did this happen?"

"Last year," Matt told her. "I guess your ex quit, and the rest of the band soon followed. It's too bad too, 'cause that dude was downright sick on the guitar. I guess they just couldn't find a guy to replace him."

Randy quit. The two words bounced like a pinball in her brain. She tried to appear nonplussed, but figured it probably wasn't working too well.

"How come he quit?" she asked.

"I dunno," Matt said, "the rumor is that he just lost heart. That, and he and the lead singer weren't getting along."

"Huh," Rachel said, "well, okay. Thank you."

Matt bagged the CD and wished Rachel well, but she didn't hear him. She walked to her car in a daze. The thing that Matt had told her seemed unreal, impossible.

Randy quit. Randy quit!

As much as she knew -- or thought she knew -- about Randy, she knew that musicians as talented as he was didn't just quit, especially when they're at the top of their game. Bands could - and often did - break up, when members couldn't resolve 'creative differences' regarding the type of music the band would focus on, but the members would always move on to form other bands. They didn't just put their instruments on a shelf and walk away forever. Paul McCartney didn't quit when the Beatles broke up, and he didn't even quit - years later - when his wife, Linda, had died from cancer! Something had to have set Randy off, to make him just walk away from his music like that. Rachel opened the door and sat in her car for a moment, eyes closed, lost in her musings. Then, she ripped the plastic wrapping from the disc and pulled the booklet out, searching for a clue.

The first thing she noticed was that Randy didn't look too happy in the photo of him that accompanied the disc. On Remember the Dead, his photo had captured him looking serious, but serene and thoughtful. Here, he looked angry and hateful. She pored through the lyrics and noticed that Randy only had credits on four songs: "Inner Putrefaction", "Ripped to Shreds", "Soulsucked", and "Festering Decayed". She noted the common themes of heartbreak, despair, betrayal, and numbness that ran through all four pieces like a river. One particular verse, in Ripped to Shreds, caught her eye:

"My heart impaled on your poisoned blade.

My innards strewn, ripped to shreds,

Helplessly watching you feast on the tender flesh.

Are you satisfied now, bitch?"*

The asterisk, she found, referenced a footnote at the end of the song's lyrics: ". . . you know who you are! -- R. C."

Upon reading that footnote, Rachel knew deep down that those songs were meant for her. The thing that puzzled her was why.

"What did I do?" Rachel asked aloud. "He's the one who betrayed me!"

It didn't make any sense to her at that moment, and she completed the drive south on the Maine Turnpike without making sense of the riddle. She listened to the CD over and over, on her trip back to Massachusetts, trying to find a clue in the music itself. The cashier was right; this album was far more brutal than Remember the Dead, but not as intricate. It was the musical equivalent of a fist, repeatedly beating the listener into submission - especially the four songs that Randy had authored. Rachel asked herself, over and over, why Randy would write such songs about her, but only could come up with more questions. When she arrived in Massachusetts, she was left with more questions than when she started.

* * * * * *

She took a few days to paint the apartment, hang some things on the walls, and get the rest of her things moved in and squared away. Another couple days were spent in shopping for a couple pieces of additional furniture that she needed, and getting phone service and cable set up. At length, she met with Katherine Romero at Carter Middle School. Mrs. Romero looked a bit older than Rachel remembered, but the school itself hadn't changed a bit in the six years that she had been away. Katherine led her on an orientation tour of the school, but it was really unnecessary; she still remembered how to get around. Most of the orientation consisted of a run-down on what had changed since she'd actually been in classes there, who the new teachers were, and the inner workings of the school -- who reported to whom, and how, and so-on. By the time the dismissal bell was releasing the students for the afternoon, they were strolling around the school, just 'catching up'. That conversation was more gossip than anything else: which of her former teachers had been caught after hours in the copier room, with her skirt around her waist and her fingers 'stuck' in her panties. How one of her old science teachers was caught, in the girls' locker room during a Saturday night school dance, with one of his prettier students on her knees in front of him. How Don Coddinger, the man who led the school chorus classes, had finally come out of the closet. The two women were just passing the gymnasium, discussing that last item, when Rachel heard the sounds of loud rock music coming from inside. She looked at Mrs. Romero quizzically.

"The school's talent show is in two months," Katherine said. "That would be Cassandra Lombardo's band, Snowblood."

Rachel paused outside the closed doors of the gym, recognizing the song as a note-perfect rendition of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" - she'd heard it countless times while cruising with Randy - except with a young girl's voice belting out the lyrics.

"Can we pop in for a few minutes? Rachel asked. "Music's kind of a 'hobby', with me, and these kids sound pretty good. I'd like to hear a bit more."

"All right," Mrs. Romero replied. "I'll admit that the band is quite good, even though it's not my type of music, per se."

"So what style of music do you prefer?" Rachel asked, smiling. "Classic rock or soft ballads? Or, did you go the other way, and get into 'country'?"

Katherine looked up and down the hallway, and then leaned closer to her.

"Personally, I prefer disco," she admitted with a deep blush. "But if you ever mention that fact to anyone, I'll deny it to the heavens and put you in the unemployment line!"

"Your secret is safe, with me, Katherine," Rachel giggled.

"'Kathy,' please. 'Katherine' is too formal for a working relationship. Let's go inside, shall we?"

The two women entered the gymnasium as the quintet finished the current song.

"Girls," Mrs. Romero called out, "would you please play your set for our new student teacher?"

"You got it," one of the girls - apparently the lead vocalist, because she was holding only a microphone - answered, with a 'thumbs-up' gesture.

The vocalist was tall and somewhat swarthy, with long, black curly hair, and Rachel noted that the bass player looked a lot like the vocalist; very likely an older sibling. The keyboardist had shoulder-length brown hair, and was somewhat pale. She quickly ran through several scales on her keyboard, and then made sure her guitar was in tune. The drummer was barely visible behind her kit, but she was obviously not intimidated by its size; it was apparent that she had already gained mastery of the percussion array.

It was when Rachel took a good look at the lead guitarist that her jaw dropped. She recognized the guitar, even before she recognized the girl; a custom black seven-stringed Jackson guitar shaped like an offset 'V', with a yin-yang symbol below one of the twin pick-ups. The only difference was a 'Hello Kitty' painted on the shorter, lower wing of the 'V'. Rachel remembered someone else playing that guitar, someone else of half-Korean, half-Swedish descent.

Snowblood's lead guitarist was Mi Na Cho! Her breath caught in her throat and her heart sank into the pit of her stomach as she gazed at the girl who - once upon a time - she had hoped would one day become her sister-in-law.

Mi Na had changed a lot in two years. Her long, straight black hair was streaked with fluorescent blue, and she was dressed in skin-tight black jeans and a black tee shirt with the sleeves cut off. She had gained some weight, and a couple inches in height, and it appeared as though she was in the midst of that painfully awkward stage of growth that Rachel remembered all too well.

Mi Na said something to Cassie, in a voice that was too quiet for Rachel to hear, and Cassie nodded.

"Yo, Jess: take it from the top," she yelled. "One. Two. One - two - three - four!"

Behind her massive kit, the diminutive drummer clicked the suggested tempo off with her sticks, and then Jess -- the keyboardist -- started playing a piano introduction. Rachel recognized the piece immediately as a rendition of Queen's "Death on Two Legs". She remembered listening to her father's vinyl copy of A Night at the Opera, when she was a little girl. Though, back then, her favorite cuts had been "Bohemian Rhapsody" (didn't everybody love that one?), "39" and "Sweet Lady".

With an ear trained by a lifetime of listening to music and the private study she'd done to further her own compositions, and an eye to performance styles sharpened by her time spent watching Randy's band, she appraised the performance. To say these girls were doing the song justice was a gross understatement. Cassie sang the lyrics with the appropriate venom, and the band was as tight as one composed of musicians more than twice their ages. She watched and she listened, giving the girls some positive feedback through her approving smile.

Then Mi Na began her guitar solo; Rachel's prediction of the girl's musical growth was ahead of schedule by two years. At age…twelve, she'd be, by now…she was already playing as well as her older brother had, at seventeen and eighteen. The instrument was nearly as big as she was, and yet her blurring fingers seemed to barely caress the fret board as she made it scream and wail like a pro -- like Eddie Van Halen, someone her father had always praised. She remembered another guitarist she'd heard Randy rave about; his last name was barely pronounceable, but his first name was 'Trey', and he played for a band called Morbid Angel.

As quickly as the song began, it ended, immediately followed by a slower, but much heavier song. Rachel remembered hearing Bloody Solstice playing it, during one of the gigs she had attended. Her head nodded to the beat through the entire song, and her eyes never left Mi Na. She could've sworn that, occasionally, Mi Na would glare back at her balefully, mouthing a few words to the song, which sounded like 'you snap your neck', then she'd resume her assault on the guitar. Snowblood's three-song set ended with "The Trooper", and their rendition of the Iron Maiden classic literally blew Rachel away. She knew, at that moment, that the only reason Snowblood wouldn't have the whole contest in the bag was if they were competing against an act composed of a student or students more 'popular' than they were; Rachel knew too well what middle-school 'popularity politics' was like.