Chapter 24 Theo
Theo
Fear and Form: The Art of Audio Horror should’ve been an easy panel.
Five guys on a stage, modest crowd, fluorescent lights humming overhead. Theo had already mapped out the rest of his afternoon in his head: visit some booths, check out the cosplay competition, maybe slip into the panel on indie directors before finding something decent to eat.
He was halfway through a pretty clean answer about sonic layering when the moderator passed the mic to the audience.
And then it happened.
A man in a faded Nightmare on Elm Street tee stepped up, grinning like he’d been waiting all day for this.
“So, Theo—big fan. But I gotta ask… what kind of content are you doing now?” He smirked. “Shirtless guys on romance covers? ‘Headphones only’?”
Some scattered laughter.
Theo’s brain stuttered.
Shirtless guys?
He tried to mask his confusion with a steady blink. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
The guy leaned into the mic, milking it. “Come on, man. It’s on Instagram. They said you’re working with a romance author. I don’t know what you guys were doing in the booth, but it didn’t sound like work.”
More laughter, sharper this time.
Theo’s gut dropped.
He had no idea what they’d heard, but judging by the tone, it probably wasn’t the chaste Chapter One.
His pulse thudded in his ears.
Theo desperately wanted to pull his phone from his back pocket and find this post. Instead, he had to sit there, fully aware of every second of silence stretching out while the man waited for him to either blush or answer.
Theo forced his mouth into something like a smirk. “Well… if you’re listening to my work with your phone speakers, you’re missing half the experience. Good audio deserves good equipment.”
A couple chuckles, but the room’s attention had shifted like they smelled blood.
Which gave the next man permission to step up. Different voice. Same energy. This one tried to mask it better, like he was being helpful.
“I mean, no disrespect,” the guy began, always the worst kind of preface, “but don’t you think there’s a risk in pivoting too far into... romance? I get experimenting, but people followed you for dread, not sex. Don’t you worry it’ll dilute your brand?”
Theo didn’t answer right away.
He heard the subtext loud and clear:
Romance makes you soft.
Desire makes you weak.
If women start liking it, it’s no longer serious art.
Theo gripped his mic, the heat in his neck climbing. Every instinct told him to demand specifics—What exactly did you hear??—but that would be handing them the steering wheel. If he let them define it, he’d never get the room back.
His jaw flexed. Whoever posted it, whatever they’d clipped, he’d deal with it later. Right now, he had a stage and an audience that was doubting him.
He leaned in, lowering his voice. “I didn’t pivot. I’m still telling scary stories.”
The man at the mic cocked his head, smile turning mean. “So you’re not narrating a chick-lit book?”
The words hit like a slap, but his expression didn’t change.
“If you’re afraid of romance, just say that,” Theo said flatly. “To me, fear and desire aren’t opposites. They live in the same part of the brain. If you’ve ever been in love, you know how terrifying it can be. And if you’ve ever been truly afraid, you know the kind of closeness it can create.”
The audience had gone quiet after Theo’s response. Uncomfortably so.
But not everyone was content to let the moment settle.
Gary, a longtime horror podcaster in his fifties with a loud, loyal fanbase, chuckled into the mic.
“Now, now,” he said, with that easy laugh guys use to smooth over discomfort.
“Let’s not get too philosophical. I haven’t heard the scandalous clip in question, but I think what our friend here meant,” he gestured toward the audience member, “was just that horror’s a pretty different lane from…
steamy audiobooks. People come to us for scares, not. .. pillow talk.”
Some of the audience laughed again, grateful for the release. For someone willing to restore order.
Theo didn’t move.
Gary went on, “I mean, no shame in having side projects, right? But I think it’s fair to say there’s a line between emotional storytelling and, well... indulging the girlfriend demo.”
Ahh, and there it was.
Theo sat back in his chair, studying the fellow panelist like he was cataloging a specimen. “The girlfriend demo?”
Gary gave a small shrug.
Theo leaned forward again, mic steady. “You mean the women who share my show, buy my merch, and show up at my live events?”
Gary’s smile faltered.
Theo’s gaze swept the crowd. “Fear, desire, grief, obsession, they’re all part of the same emotional spectrum. You strip any one of them out, you’re not deepening the genre. You’re flattening it.”
He let the pause stretch, then added, “And if you think women don’t get scared, or that romance fans can’t handle horror, you’ve been telling yourself a very safe, boring story.”
When he finished, Theo was met with fervent applause…
From exactly two young women in the back.
Everyone else remained thoroughly unimpressed.
The moderator laughed nervously, shifting in his chair. “Alright, alright,” he said quickly, “that feels like a good place to wrap things up for now. We’re just about out of time anyway, folks. Thanks for coming to Fear and Form.”
The applause was polite, scattered, not quite sure how to land.
Theo stood, feeling the weight in his shoulders. No one looked at him. Not Gary. Not the moderator. The rest of the panel dissolved into small talk and avoided eye contact.
He walked off stage slowly, jaw tight, his body buzzing with the kind of energy that wasn’t from adrenaline, but from exposure. Being peeled open in front of people who wouldn’t catch you if you fell.
Theo didn’t even know what the hell they’d heard. Just that it was out there, circulating, shaping a narrative he couldn’t control.
His fingers itched to check his phone, but that would look like surrender. He wasn’t giving Gary, or anyone else in that room, the satisfaction of seeing him scramble. Not here. Not yet.
The post was “unavailable” by the time Theo found a quiet corner to check his phone. That didn’t mean he was in the clear though.
Theo had a backlog of tagged comments and DMs, each one proof the post had existed, each one a reminder that the internet moved faster than deletion ever could.
But it was the message from his best friend that hit him hardest:
Nate:
This you??
Below it, the screenshot was a shadowy image of a shirtless man taping his fists. The warning read exactly as the panel attendee said: Headphones ONLY!
Maya hadn’t tagged him, but a mutual fan had.
He didn’t have to play it to know what it sounded like. She could have uploaded any clip from her book, and it would reveal the same low, aching hunger he felt for her.
And Nate had heard it.
His thumb hovered over the message, debating whether he should reply. What would he even say?
Theo’s face felt hot, and not from embarrassment alone. There was a thread of anger there, the kind that came from being blindsided. From being put into a situation he couldn’t control.
He switched to his text thread with Maya and quickly typed:
We need to talk about that post.
The blinking cursor dared him to add more like, What the hell was that? or Why would you post that? But he didn’t trust himself not to unload too much.
She called within minutes.
“Hey,” Maya said, breathless and cautious, like she wasn’t sure which version of him was about to answer.
Theo leaned back against the wall, letting the noise of the convention blur around him. “Tell me that post wasn’t you.”
“Yes and no,” she said carefully. “Simone—”
“Simone?” His voice cut sharper than he meant. “Your assistant thought it was a good idea to put that online without discussing it with you?”
“She’s also my publicist, and no, it wasn’t the best idea,” she admitted. “But I was the one who signed off on a week’s worth of scheduled posts. So if you’re mad, you can be mad at me.”
“I’m not—” Theo stopped himself to exhale through his nose. “I’m not mad, I’m just… frustrated. It’s been screenshotted, Maya. Shared.”
“I know.” She hesitated, then added, “But to be fair, the audiobook is eventually going to come out. Your voice was going to be recognized sooner or later. Sure, we should have talked about how you wanted to be credited, but—”
“No, we didn’t talk about it,” he interrupted. “We were too busy doing everything but.”
Silence stretched for a beat. “Did something happen at your panel?”
Theo’s gaze swept over the crowded convention floor. Pyramid Head posing for photos, the Midsommar May Queen’s flower skirt swaying under a halo of camera flashes. None of it felt like fun at the moment.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Someone brought it up in front of the whole room. They were being assholes about it, and I didn’t know how to react.”
Maya groaned, “You didn’t hear the audio, did you? Like, they didn’t play it in front of everyone?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I haven’t heard it, but your brother has…”
There was a pause on the line. “Nate saw the post?”
Theo closed his eyes, jaw tightening. “He’s the one who sent me the screenshot.”
“Oh, God…” she breathed.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “So now he’s got questions I’m not answering in the middle of HorrorCon.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice cracked, small in his ear. “I should’ve locked that audio down. I should’ve—”
She stopped herself, but he could hear the rest in the silence: planned better, thought ahead, spared you this.
Hearing the anxiety in her voice made his heart tumble over itself.
He wanted to tell her it was fine, that none of this mattered, that the internet would move on in a day. But it did matter. To him. To his audience. To the career he’d spent years shaping so carefully, staying behind the mic where no one could touch him.
And yet…
Her apology undid him. Maya sounded guilty, vulnerable in a way she rarely let him hear.
“It’s not just your fault. I should’ve thought of a pen name, or something,” he admitted. “And you’re right… we couldn’t hide an entire audiobook.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, but he knew she was thinking about the same things he was: Nate, the media lab, and possibly her parents.
“This is going to take some work to clean up,” he said finally.
“Yeah, I know,” she agreed softly. “I wish I was there with you.”
Her voice broke his heart. For a second, the packed ballroom fell away, replaced by the image of her standing beside him, sharing the weight of it instead of both of them holding it alone.
He suddenly missed her.
“Me too,” he sighed. “But we’ll figure it out when we’re in the same room.”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like relief. “Okay.”
Theo glanced at the time, the blinking notifications still stacked on his screen. “I’ve got a signing in ten… I think I’m going to head back to the hotel to take a breather.”
“Right.” A small pause. “Good luck.”
He didn’t want to hang up. “Maya, I—” The words caught, too many emotions crowding the space at once: frustration, embarrassment, relief she’d called, the stupid ache of wanting her there. He shut his mouth before any of it came out wrong.
“…I’ll see you later,” he said instead, softer.
“Yeah.”
Theo ended the call but didn’t move, the phone still resting in his palm. For a few seconds, he just stared at the darkened screen, his thumb brushing over the edge like he might call her back.
The noise of the convention returned. Laughter, the clatter of prop weapons, the buzz of a crowd that didn’t care what was happening in his world.
Finally, he slid the phone into his pocket and pushed off the wall, every step feeling heavier than the last.