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raindropcascade · 4 days ago

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The Podcast Villain

Summary: You know better than anyone that words matter, especially considering every time you raise your voice something explodes. It’s time some people learned to watch what they say.

The day you decide to become a villain is sunny. Your parents are alive and so are all three of your siblings. You have a full belly and a full bank account, the roof over your head is paid for through the next three months, and you have plans to grab drinks with some neighbors on Friday.

You’re throwing your life away. Not really. Villains have secret identities for a reason. So long as you wear the mask you sewed from last year’s swimsuit, your day persona will be okay.

You’re planning to hurt people. Yes. But the way you’re doing it is more fair than what they’ve done, right? Because you’ll be coming at them on a day like today; sunny and bright. Not through paperwork and fancy words and the power of money.

You make it sound like justice. Isn’t villainy justice to someone? Would anyone become a villain if they regretted it? Do villains sit weeping over their crimes, or do they justify them? Justification and justice use a lot of the same letters.

You’re talking about murder. No. See, that’s the thing. Just like how they didn’t commit murder, you won’t be either. When you kill someone with superpowers, it’s not a homicide. It’s collateral damage. It’s villainy.

Just because the words are different doesn’t mean – Yes it does. Because if you were going to kill someone, you’d feel bad about that. Thankfully, you’re just becoming a villain.

Villains tend to be a little messy.

----.

You’ve always loved the ebb and flow of a good song. You grew up near the ocean and your earliest memory is of sitting alone on a beach, listening to the sound of the waves. Your parents were taking your siblings to the car first and you, being the least likely to run off without supervision, had to wait patiently for them to come back and fetch you. The sun was below the horizon and the light was fading fast from the sky. When you looked down the beach, a gloom had swallowed further than a quarter mile. The waves rolled in and in and in. You inhaled them and the encroaching chill into your lungs. When you breathed out, you tried to mimic the sound of the water.

Ssh, sh, sh, shhhhhh.

The air swirled like ripples in a pond and it carried the gentle hum of your voice with it.

You thought about going to college for music. Sorry, you dreamed about going to college for music. But your siblings were older and you watched their hands dip into that basket first. When it came time for you to apply, your parents smiled and encouraged but were quietly relieved when you asked about gap year(s).

Social media seemed like a good alternative after that. You wrote a few songs and made plans for when you posted them and they went viral. Would a label reach out to you? No, you needed to be a little practical about your expectations. Once you hit 50k followers you’d take your cobbled-together album and approach them. Then they’d sign you.

You set up your phone to record your first video. Your guitar like plastic under your hands ($30 at the thrift store and strung with gifted strings just as expensive) and the room slightly stuffy because of the blankets hanging over your walls and door. You still savor the memory. Feeling like you’d written something worthwhile, your heart beating quick and hard, the way your voice caught in your throat for a moment.

Then—

The first note shot through the air. The blankets whipped as if caught in a storm and your phone toppled from the stand. When you picked it up, the recording was pure white as if it’d been wiped by a solar flare.

You applied for a coffee shop job a week later.

------.

It’s an assassination if you target one person.

You don’t know the solution to that moral objection. Does your conscience want you to target a crowd instead?

You look up into the sky. There’s an optical illusion that happens when a building is too tall. The skyscraper crashes down over you like a tsunami, falling and falling and falling. It makes you unsteady on your feet. It makes your head spin.

You close your eyes and breathe deeply. A song is stuck at the back of your throat. Absolution. A grandiose title for a one minute and forty-five second melody about realizing your first ex-boyfriend being happy after your breakup didn’t make you want to die. If you’re honest, it still feels like a revelation.

“Are you okay?”

You turn your head towards the woman before you open your eyes. New York blooms into focus before she does, crosshatched streets filled with yellow cabs and fleets of cars in boring, muted colors. Your hometown was filled with eyesore cars – cars spotted with the sick burgundy of rust or painted bright orange with racing stripes. Nobody tells you that New York looks pretty in pictures but turns grey the longer you live there.

The woman is very New York. Her long grey coat is buttoned up past her collarbones and the collar is hidden by a thick plaid scarf. Her hair is hidden by one of those ill-fitting beanies that have become so popular. Her black eyes show genuine concern, though. That’s why you answer.

“I don’t get to see my family often,” you say. The revolving door you’re standing in front of is the largest you’ve ever seen. You watch as it spins slowly. Every time a compartment moves from the outside towards the inside, there’s a soft whuff of sound as the air resists being trapped. “Holidays are hard to get time off, but they always expect me. They don’t understand that I work in food – holidays are our busiest times. All my siblings have 9-5s and my parents are retired and it just—they’re all free, you know? So when I can, when I have the money, I make it work. I work a lot of overtime to earn holiday privileges.”

“Uh…huh…” the woman says slowly. If she walked away, you’d stop talking, but she doesn’t. She’s still watching you with those black eyes. “It’s good you make time for your family.”

You nod. “It is good. I manage it as often as I can, but Thanksgiving is about the only day I get to see them all together. I just got back actually.”

The woman politely asks, “Was it a good visit?”

“No.” You smile as a man wearing the same grey coat as the woman sprints towards the revolving door. He tries to push on the glass wall to make it spin faster, but it’s not that sort of revolving door. It’s too heavy. A machine is what keeps it spinning. He hops from foot to foot impatiently, as the behemoth spins slowly, trapping him in glass for at least thirty seconds. A steady stream of people enter the building through the door to the left of the revolving one. “My brother started listening to this podcast. Never heard of it before Thanksgiving. He’d told the rest of the family about it though. They were all up to date and excited to talk about the latest episode.”

The woman nods slowly. “It’s hard to be left out like that.”

You think of sitting alone on the beach, watching the water and waiting for your parents to come back. “I don’t mind it, actually. I like catching up and hearing stories. I thought that was why my brother didn’t send it to me, because he knew I’d rather hear him retell it to me. Imagine my surprise it was because he knew I’d disagree with the content. Can you believe that?”

The woman’s weight sinks to her heels as she considers leaving. “…sure?”

“I work two jobs,” you say. “I have to to live here. I don’t even like here very much—”

“Who does?”

“—but my parents were so proud when I moved out to pursue songwriting and eventually, I got too comfortable. Moving would cost more than two months’ worth of rent even before the cost of finding a new place—” Your hand clenches as if it’s what’s physically cutting off your words. Quieter, you continue. “It was supposed to be good to see them. But instead they talked about some guy named Joe Smith or whatever the entire time and about how he thinks people like me are lazy and entitled and stupid.”

“Jonathan Smithsonian?” The woman’s voice sours. “Ugh, he’s the worst.” She blinks and her head tilts to the building. “Isn’t he supposed to record here?”

“Everything they said was straight out of his mouth,” you say. You shove your hands in the pockets of your own grey coat. Your fingers brush the neoprene of your thrifted mask. “I tried to tell them they were wrong. I told them all about my two jobs and never getting enough sleep and they – they told me to just invest my money. Be smart. I tried to explain why a lot of people can’t do that and it was like they went rabid. It felt like they were smiling as they told me I was brainwashed and self-victimizing and— I tried, right? To deny it and explain my experience, maybe show them the numbers that prove them wrong. But they kept speaking over me louder and louder. Just waves of their insults and jeering one after another. So I? I started to get loud too, but I can’t, I can’t get loud like that because I love them--”

The woman presses a hand over her ear. Her eyes shutter. “Ow. Do you hear—”

You speak softer. “Long story short, it was like I was talking to Joe Smith and not them. Four hundred dollars wasted on a plane flight, another two hundred to help food costs, a missed week’s of wages…all of that to talk to my family. And now we’ll probably never speak again.”

“Jonathan Smithsonian,” the woman corrects. When you look at her, she holds up her hands. “Just saying. And not to make things worse, but he says a lot worse things than the class warfare stuff. He completely denies that the prison industrial complex exists to oppress minorities and that doesn't even touch the stuff about women—”

You listened to a few of his episodes on the plane ride back. The woman’s right – the rhetoric he regularly airs is like pure poison. But killing him because of what he symbolizes seems like something a hero would do. Creating-villainy-in-proximity-to-him-until-he-dies-because-he-ruined-Thanksgiving is a better villainous motive.

“Thank you,” you tell the woman. You’ve interrupted her, but you don’t care. You smile. “I was wondering how that little moral conundrum would resolve. Villains are selfish.”

Assassination or not, you’re not doing this for an altruistic reason. You’re doing this because you can’t see your family ever again, afraid of what might come out of your mouth if you do.

“Uh,” the woman says and looks down at her bare wrist. “Look at the time! I definitely didn’t hear the word villain come out of your mouth. You’re going into his building?”

You nod.

The woman spins on her heel and walks back the way she came. “Have a good day!” As you watch, she pulls out her phone and sends a voice note, calling out of work.

The other grey thing about New York. The woman won’t even remember your face by the time she gets back home.

You breeze into the building with the next whuff of air, tying your mask between the glass panels where the security cameras can’t see you.

-----.

“Recline, relax, and revolutionize, my friends,” Jonathan Smithsonian announces, spreading his arms so wide that his fingertips brush either side of his makeshift sound booth. The sound foam is stiff and unpleasant when his nails catch on it. The air is stale and sour, slowly heating as his body heat fills the small room. The office isn’t much bigger. He smiles broadly. “I have a treat for you today.”

He doesn’t have a treat for them today, actually. Another guest has backed out of his show, intimidated by his no-nonsense interviews and hard reality checks. That’s why he’s in the shithole he rents in the Wendell Building rather than the studio he runs out in the warehouse district. But it looks good to be seen coming out of the Wendell Building with his suit pressed and a briefcase in his hand.

“But first…Another weak-willed liberal worm has capitulated to the climate hoax,” he says. His audience doesn’t like long openings. And, even if they don’t understand them, they like long words. He pulls up the news article he’s ripping off on his phone. “I’ve investigated personally, my friends. Senator Archer has—”

There’s a knock on his door. The camera outside shows a young woman, about five foot three with a mask over her face. She’s wearing an ill-fitting long, grey coat and if she had a burlap sack with a money sign on it, it wouldn’t be out of place. The costume is so cartoonishly bad that he knows immediately who she is.

Chuck pulled through.

“Sorry, folks,” Jonathan says. “Actually, truth is that I had to cancel the treat today. The studio’s been receiving threats from one of them, you know who I’m talking about.” He barely knows who he’s talking about, but his audience loves feeling like they’re in on the secret conspiracy. Jonathan grins and makes sure his hair looks right in case the security footage of this leaks. “My producers actually have me in a borrowed studio right now to avoid her, but…I’m afraid it didn’t work. Who wants to hear from my latest stalker?”

A flood of comments come in, chiming across his phone.

Don’t open the door!

She can’t resist you, man.

Yeah! Show her how a REAL American handles a threat!

LOL does she even watch your show? She should know better

She’s unwell, Jonathan, you can’t put yourself in harm’s way!

Kill her!

Smirking, Jonathan puts his phone back in his pocket. He grabs his mic, shaking out the wire so it doesn’t pull as he slips out of the sound booth and towards the door. He would’ve preferred Chuck find a beefier actor to get escorted out by security, but he can’t be picky. Chuck’s just saved him from having to adlib for an hour and a half.

“Ma’am, this is a closed studio,” Jonathan calls.

“Mr. Smithsonian,” the woman says from the other side of the door. “Please let me in.”

An actress? Jonathan might recognize her voice. It’s stronger than the average person’s, smooth and round. She knows how to project too – he’s sure his audience heard her through the door judging by the amount of notifications buzzing on his phone.

“If you agree to sit down with me for fifteen minutes and tell me your side of the story, I will,” Jonathan says in his brave reporter voice. The brave reporter voice once got him an anchor spot on KT78 before they stole the spot away from him.

There’s a pause. “You want to hear what I have to say?”

Jonathan frowns. That’s not the usual script Chuck gives. “I want us to have a conversation.”

“I see.”

Does she sound disappointed? Or was that agreement?

Jonathan opens the door

The woman looks up at him with static-laced eyes. She says, “I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to hear what you have to say.”

Jonathan stutters. “W-what?” He scrambles for his composure. Chuck always finds the weird ones. “You do. You’re the one who came here.”

The woman steps into his space. Unnerved, he steps back. He’ll need to cut that part of the footage out later. She closes the door behind her.

He holds the microphone in her direction for her response.

The woman cocks her head. “That’s not necessary.”

“Both my audience and I are curious about why you’ve hunted me down, ma’am,” Jonathan challenges. “What’s got you triggered today?”

Rather than rile, the woman seems amused. “I meant it’s not necessary because it won’t work in a moment.”

Was this a hacker bit? “We have great security here. Nothing will compromise my broadcast.” Jonathan squares his shoulders and thrusts the mic into her face. “Now who are you? Why are you here?”

“I’ve written a song for you,” the woman says. “Would you like to hear it?”

“I’d rather talk—”

The first note out of the woman’s mouth is followed by darkness as the studio lights explode. Jonathan sways on his feet, hands flying out as he loses all sense of direction. He feels as though he’s falling.

“What—a black out—”

He blinks and there’s daylight. Which is odd because his window is blacked out for privacy. Sluggishly, he considers the sound of breaking glass, the grind of concrete and the screaming of rebar. Is the floor shaking?

No, it can’t be shaking. He’s not even on the floor. He’s falling.

He’s falling a long, long way.

-----.

You rush out of the Wendell Building with everyone else as the fire alarm shrieks. People want to know if there was a fire. No, it must have been an earthquake and some metal beam was giving way. There are gasps when they pour onto the street and turn to see a blackened hole in the side of the thirty-fourth floor.

An explosion, they realize. Then, with rising panic, the word attack begins to go around.

You slip away into the subway system and your grey coat matches everyone else’s.

----

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Next week's story is based off this prompt (X) from writing-prompt-s:

The Princess can only be awoken from her slumber by her true love, but countless Princes have failed to do so. When a poor townsman is successful, the royals try to dispose of the man and convince the Princess that one of the Princes is her true love.

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