Hidden Tracks: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Here We Are Now
⚠️ CONTENT NOTE: Contains captivity, coercive abuse, physical violence, and disturbing situations involving vulnerable people.
Hidden Tracks takes its titles from songs I heard when I was the right age to let them all the way in. Then it drags them somewhere darker than the lyrics were ever willing to go. You don’t need to know the songs to get the stories. But if you do, they’re going to sit differently after this.
See all Hidden Tracks stories →
The first thing Lena noticed was the smell.
Not mildew. That came second.
First came powdery flowers and cheap fruit, the kind that tried too hard and still turned the back of her throat sour. It was in the blanket over her legs. In her hair. In her shirt. On her skin.
Then the mildew. Wet concrete. Pipe rust.
Then the dark.
She sat up too fast and slammed the back of her head against cinder block. White broke behind her eyes. She dragged her legs under her and something yanked tight around her ankle. Metal clipped bone. Chain scraped across the floor and caught.
A girl somewhere to her left said, “Don’t.”
Lena went still.
At first there was nothing. Then the room started giving itself up in pieces. Pipes overhead. A little red light on something plugged in across the room. Water heater, maybe. Enough to catch edges. Mattresses on the floor. A bucket. Three other girls across from her, sitting or lying still enough to pass for laundry.
“Where am I?” Lena asked.
Her mouth felt dry and furry.
“In his basement,” the girl to her left said.
The voice was raw. Scrubbed down to the grain.
Lena turned toward it. Big eyes. Split lip. Hair hacked off near the jaw. Eighteen maybe. Maybe older. Down here, the light made everybody look used up.
“How long?”
The girl shrugged. “A night maybe. Maybe less. You were crying before.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Lucky.”
From farther back, another girl said, “What’s your name?”
“Don’t tell him your real one,” the split-lip girl said.
Lena blinked. “Why?”
“He likes names.”
Lena grabbed the chain and gave it a short pull anyway.
The cuff bit her ankle. The chain scraped concrete and caught.
Every girl in the room went still so fast it felt rehearsed.
“Don’t do that,” the split-lip girl said.
“He doesn’t like that.”
Footsteps crossed what had to be the kitchen above. Metal chair legs dragging. The refrigerator door opening and closing slow.
Then a voice through the ceiling.
“Girls?”
Nobody answered.
The footsteps stopped.
“Girls,” he said again. “Helloooo.”
A bolt scraped. The door at the top of the stairs opened. Kitchen light spilled down the steps in a long yellow strip.
“Come on now,” he said. “That’s rude.”
He came down slowly, one hand on the rail, a grocery bag hanging from the other.
Jeans. Gray sweatshirt with a feed store logo on it. No mask. No black gloves. No movie nonsense.
Mid-forties maybe. Soft through the middle. Nice watch. Hair starting to lose interest on top.
His eyes found Lena and stayed there.
“Well now,” he said. “You’re awake.”
Nobody spoke.
He set the grocery bag on an upside-down milk crate and looked at all of them.
“That’s no way to greet a friend.”
The split-lip girl said, “Hello.”
He brightened. “There we go. See? Manners cost nothing.”
He reached into the bag and lined up four sticks of Teen Spirit on the crate. Bright pink plastic tubes that belonged in a locker, not a basement where the air already felt chewed.
Lena stared at them.
He saw her staring and smiled wider. Bad teeth. Yellow at the gums. One front tooth turned just enough to spoil the whole effect.
“House rule,” he said. “We stay fresh.”
Nobody moved.
His smile narrowed.
“Tasha.”
The split-lip girl stood.
So that was her name down here.
He tipped his head toward Lena. “Help the new girl.”
Tasha crossed to her, chain dragging soft behind her, and held out the pink stick after popping the cap. “Wrists,” she said quietly. “Neck. Under your shirt if he says.”
Lena didn’t take it.
He sighed.
“This is a shared space,” he said. “We respect each other in a shared space. Understand?”
Lena looked up at him.
He crouched.
Up close he smelled like coffee and dryer sheets. Under that, sweat and something like fruit left in a hot car.
“Understand?”
She nodded once.
“Good girl.”
He stood.
Tasha pressed the deodorant into Lena’s hand. The plastic was warm from her grip.
“We keep standards,” he said. “That’s what separates people from animals.”
He pulled a yellow legal pad from the grocery bag and clicked a pen. Lena saw columns. Dates. Checkboxes. Names.
One column said fresh.
Another said attitude.
He looked at her over the pad. “What are we calling you?”
Her swallow clicked.
“Courtney.”
He wrote it down. “Courtney,” he said. “See? That wasn’t hard.”
From one of the mattresses, the youngest girl started coughing.
Not a little cough. A hard wet one that folded her over and sounded like it tore something loose on the way up.
He turned his head.
The room tightened around it.
He waited for her to stop. He didn’t yell. He just watched her chest heave, his mouth pinching at the corners like he’d found a stain on a clean shirt.
The girl wiped her mouth on the heel of her hand. “Sorry.”
“Contagion is no joke,” he said.
He flipped a page on the legal pad. In the quiet, the paper cracked like a gunshot. Lena watched his eyes move down the lines.
He kept records.
That hit her harder than the gun on his belt.
The gun was a moment. The ink was a schedule.
He tucked the pad under one arm and pointed at the old television in the corner. It sat on a metal AV cart with one bent wheel. A VCR and DVD player were stacked under it, both lit by the same little green glow that stayed on all night.
He hit the power button.
The television gave off a high, thin whine. A bright dot burned at the center of the screen, then gray, then snow. Static hiss filled the basement. Cold light throbbed across the floor. It caught the cart legs and the mattress edges. It turned the cinder block walls slick.
He tapped the volume down.
“Here we are now,” he said. “Entertain us.”
So there were rules.
Answer when he says “Girls?”
Never laugh too fast. Never too late.
If he says do-over, do it again.
If he tells a joke and waits, you smile.
If he asks what was funny on the TV, you give him something.
Tasha knew all of it. So did the quiet girl on the far mattress who called herself Beth. The coughing one said she was Daisy.
He put on a sitcom DVD and made them sit facing him instead of the screen. Every so often he paused it and asked one of them to explain the joke. If the answer wasn’t right, he rewound it. If it pleased him, he looked faintly satisfied, like a man watching something fall into line.
By the third pause Daisy started coughing again.
He muted the TV.
“Daisy,” he said. “We talked about this.”
Daisy’s face shone with fever. “I... I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Wrong answer.”
He picked up the stick of Teen Spirit and held it out to her. “Again.”
Her hand shook as she took it.
He watched her rub it under her jaw, over her neck, across the insides of her wrists. Waxy streaks. Green smell. Skin already rubbed raw from too much of the same cheap sweetness.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
Lena stared at him.
He noticed and gave her that patient little smile again.
“You’d be amazed what goes bad when people let themselves go.”
The room smelled like fake fruit and damp cement and the hot sour edge of sickness. The deodorant did nothing. It just sat over all of it, stubborn and cheerful.
After the television came inspection.
He checked wrists for scratching. Breath for what he called cooperation. Hair for tangles. Lifted chins with two fingers. Looked at throats, collarbones, the fronts of shirts.
When he got to Lena, he touched the side of her neck where the deodorant still sat tacky.
“See?” he said. “You’re adjusting.”
He glanced at the legal pad and made a neat check under fresh next to Courtney.
After he went upstairs and threw the bolt, nobody talked for a while.
Then Daisy coughed into her blanket and Tasha whispered, “He’ll move her if she keeps that up.”
“Move her where?” Lena asked.
No one answered.
Beth rolled over, faced the wall, and said, “Stop asking.”
The house kept making its little noises above them. Pipes ticking. Toilet running. A floorboard settling. The world stayed a house while the basement stayed what it was.
Lena counted the stairs in her head.
Twelve.
Twelve to the kitchen.
Keys in his right pocket.
Bad right knee.
Legal pad on the crate.
Yellow light when the door opened.
Inventory was something to do besides feel.
By morning, Daisy was worse.
He came down wearing yellow dish gloves.
That scared Lena more than the gun ever had.
The gun belonged to the part he played. The gloves meant Daisy had become a task.
He stood over her mattress with the legal pad under his arm and said, “Any improvement?”
Daisy stared at him. Said nothing. Her lips had gone pale at the edges.
He made a note.
Lena heard herself say, “She needs a doctor.”
The room went dead.
He looked at her. Not angry at first. More like confusion.
Then even that was gone.
He crossed the room and crouched in front of her.
“That kind of comment,” he said quietly, “lowers morale.”
“She’s sick.”
He smiled. Small this time. Meaner.
“So am I. Of attitudes.”
He stood, turned, and hit Beth across the mouth hard enough to throw her sideways on the mattress.
Lena flinched.
Beth put a hand to her lip and sat up again. Didn’t make a sound.
He looked back at Lena.
“See? Everybody pays.”
He left the gloves on during inspection.
That night Daisy was gone.
Her mattress was stripped. Blanket folded. Bucket gone.
He said nothing about her.
Nobody else did either.
He came down carrying a cardboard tray full of Teen Spirit sticks, still dusty from the shelf.
“New system,” he said. “Better compliance.”
He put the tray in Lena’s hands.
She didn’t move.
“Courtney.”
Just that little edge in his voice was enough.
She handed one to Tasha. One to Beth. Took one for herself.
He watched the whole thing and smiled.
“There,” he said. “See how easy that is?”
After that, he started looking at Lena when he needed something done. Hold the trash bag open. Fold a blanket. Count the sticks after inspection. Sometimes repeat him back to the others.
The first few times Lena said nothing.
Then he skipped Beth’s dinner.
The next time he told Lena to repeat an instruction, she repeated it.
One afternoon he brought down clippers and sat Tasha on the milk crate.
“Your ends are a mess,” he said.
Tasha went still.
He held up a hand mirror from the grocery bag. “Look at that. You think that’s acceptable?”
Then he cut her hair off while a game show blared from the television. Dark clumps dropped around her bare feet. Once, and only once, Tasha looked at Lena.
No plea in it.
Just hate. Clean and bright.
After he went upstairs, Tasha said, “Don’t hand me anything again.”
Lena glanced at the tray of deodorant on the crate. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Tasha gave a little laugh through her nose. Empty thing.
“That’s how he talks too.”
Beth turned to the wall. End of discussion.
The next night he asked for a joke.
Nobody answered fast enough.
He looked at Tasha. “You used to be good at this.”
The room shrank around it.
Finally Tasha said, “I’m not up for it tonight.”
He set the legal pad down very gently.
Then the smile.
“Come on,” he said. “Upstairs.”
Tasha didn’t move.
His hand settled on the gun at his belt.
“Don’t make this theatrical.”
Tasha stood.
Her chain dragged behind her as she crossed the room. He unlocked it with the key from his right pocket, clipped a short lead to her wrist, and took her up the stairs.
At the top he looked back at Lena.
Then the door shut.
The bolt scraped home.
Tasha didn’t come back that night.
Or the next.
Or the one after.
He never said her name again. Just crossed something out on the legal pad and kept moving.
After that there were two girls in the room, and one of them was fading most days.
He called Lena reliable one afternoon, like he was filling out annual reviews. Had her stand closer during inspection. Had her square Beth’s blanket corners. Had her tell him whether Beth talked in her sleep.
Lena stopped asking questions that went nowhere.
Stopped waiting for footsteps that would bring Tasha back.
Stopped testing the chain against her ankle every time she woke.
Time went flat. Morning and night changed by the weight in his hands. Grocery bags meant supplies. The laundry basket meant trouble. The legal pad stayed tucked under his arm for inspection. Then there were the gloves. The gloves meant someone had become a task.
Sometimes he brought fast food and ate it one step up from them while the smell filled the room.
Sometimes he forgot the fries and got irritated at himself like that was the worst thing that had happened all day.
Later that night Beth whispered, “Do you remember your mother’s kitchen?”
The question came out of nowhere. It hung there.
Lena looked at the pipes overhead. “Yes.”
“What color was it?”
Lena tried.
For a second she saw the table from when she was ten. The sink on the island. Sun through the curtains.
Then it slipped away.
“Yellow,” she said.
Beth didn’t answer.
After a minute Lena understood Beth hadn’t really been asking her.
By morning, he came down in gloves again.
Beth had started coughing.
Not as bad as Daisy. Not yet. But enough.
He stood over her mattress with the legal pad and said, “We are not repeating last month.”
Beth said, “Please.”
He looked at Lena.
“Fresh stick.”
Lena didn’t move.
“Now.”
She took one from the tray and handed it over.
Beth kept her arms down.
He said, “Lena. Help her.”
It was the first time he’d said her real name. Or the name that used to belong to her.
Something in the room clicked when he said it.
Lena knelt.
Beth’s skin was hot. Too hot. Hair stuck to her forehead.
“Please,” Beth whispered again.
Lena uncapped the stick. Powder. Wax.
She rubbed it under Beth’s jaw because that was where he always checked.
He watched with that small satisfied smile.
“There,” he said. “Much better.”
Beth was gone two days later.
This time he left the mattress there. Blanket folded. Pillow still dented.
For most of the day Lena kept glancing at it, like Beth might roll over and ask again about a yellow kitchen.
She never did.
After that it was just Lena. The tray of deodorant. The legal pad. The television. The chain.
He seemed almost relieved with one.
No games for a while. No jokes. No sitcom quizzes.
Just inspection. Laundry and food. Then the legal pad.
The room got smaller without the other voices in it.
Lena stopped speaking unless he asked her something. Even then she kept it brief.
When a car pulled into the drive above, her body no longer went hard with hope or fear. It just waited.
One evening he said, “Girls?” out of habit, then laughed at himself. Lena didn’t laugh.
Outside, the weather turned.
She knew because the dirty snow vanished from the high window, and one morning there was rainwater there instead.
He brought down a new tray of Teen Spirit sticks.
He lined them up on the milk crate and said, “Stock rotation.”
Then he made a note on the pad.
Lena caught the handwriting upside down.
One remaining. Capacity available.
He saw her looking and closed the pad.
“No reason a house can’t run properly,” he said.
That night she lay on her mattress and listened to the refrigerator upstairs open and shut. A cabinet door. The television murmuring in the next room. The whole house pressing down over her.
She thought of Tasha.
Not her face. That was already starting to blur.
Just her voice.
Raw. Used up.
Don’t tell him your real one.
Lena mouthed the words once in the dark. No sound.
Then she slept.
The next time the bolt scraped, it was late. Real late. House-thin quiet.
He came down halfway, enough to spill kitchen light across the steps, and dragged something heavy the rest of the way by one arm.
A girl.
Young. Denim skirt. One shoe missing. Mascara smeared under one eye. Breathing, but badly.
He clipped a new chain to the ankle cuff by the mattress nearest the stairs.
Then he looked at Lena.
“Be useful,” he said.
And went back upstairs.
The bolt scraped.
The house settled again.
For a while nothing happened.
Then the girl made a small sound in the dark.
Chain dragged once across the concrete.
That was enough to pull Lena awake before the girl fully came to.
She stayed where she was.
Then came the rustle of blanket. A sharp breath. Metal snapping tight.
“Where am I?” the girl whispered.
For a second Lena said nothing.
The sweetness of the deodorant sat in the back of her throat. Powder.
Then she said, “Don’t.”
The girl went still.
Lena kept looking at the stairs.
“Don’t tell him your real name.”
