⭐️ Before the Story, the Song
THE FICTION INSIDE THE TAPE
I grew up in the 80s. Which means at some point, probably in somebody’s basement or a bedroom with the door shut, I put on a cassette and heard something that cracked me open a little.
Not because the songs were pretty. Because they were honest in a way nothing else around me was being honest. Skid Row. Metallica. Priest. Maiden. These weren’t party songs, even when they sounded like party songs. They were songs about kids with no exits. About soldiers who were never coming home. About the permanent cost of one wrong second.
What I heard in those songs, when I was the right age to let them all the way in, was simple, other kids were struggling too.
That was enough. That was everything.
This series, that I’m calling Hidden Tracks, is my attempt to pay that forward. Each story takes its title from a song that meant something to me then, and tries to find the fiction living inside it. The moment the song was always circling but never quite landing on. You don’t need to know the songs to get the stories. But if you do know them, I hope you feel what I felt in that basement. Someone else understood.
These stories don't run on a schedule. They show up when a song won't leave me alone. Could be next week. Could be three months from now. When it's ready, you'll hear it.
The stories so far:
18 and Life
The gun dipped once, like his wrist got tired of lying. Then it steadied. A story about the thing one boy couldn't say and the other couldn't hear.
Disposable Heroes
He remembers the heat on his neck. The Sergeant says it was a fever. He was dying in a trench. A cold, spare story about the men built to be left behind.
It's Not Love
Every note is in her handwriting. Blue pen, block letters. Lisa knows she wrote them. She doesn't know what that means yet. Neither will you, at first.
Chery Pie
On a Cincinnati fire escape at 3 a.m., an EMT decides what saving someone actually means. Literary horror fiction about addiction, protocol, and Cherry Pie.
Dr. Feelgood
Jimmy didn't sell drugs on Orchard Street. He sold tomorrow. Michael's parents had already settled the bill before he got home. Some debts keep compounding.
Pour Some Sugar on Me
A cable tech answers a midnight call, finds a woman inside the TV, and learns some service errors never close.
I love this idea
I am so here for this. All my favorite songs, now stories. Love this.