4. Howl
Howl
Cam
The hallway might as well have been vacuum-sealed. Three feet apart, two immovable objects: me and Romi Dulce, neither flinching. The door behind her was marked up, scratched, and the harsh glow from an overhead light bled under the crack, drawing a line at her heels.
She wore a dress that hugged every curve and exposed inches of un-inked skin.
A curve of hip stuck out of both sides of the dress.
In an interview, she said, "You buy a Chanel bag because it's perfect as is.
Why would you tag it up? Same energy." Her arms were folded, not in defense but in that I could break you if I wanted way.
That was the Romi specialty: act like the room was only ever built to hold her, and you could either take up space or get crushed under her heel.
Flanking her was a woman who looked just enough like her to be blood, but taller and meaner, in a classic rock tee and plaid skirt and fishnets. Fox ombre color hair, cat-eye glasses. Piercings. The opposite of Romi. The resemblance was in the jaw, the cheekbones, the fuck is you? set of the mouth.
Handler stood at my left, useless as a wet tissue. I didn't know if she was waiting for me to say something, or for Romi to make the first move. Nobody breathed.
Seconds stretched out, one after the other, until it was obvious that no one else was coming down this hall. That meant Romi had planned it; she always did.
For a second, nobody moved. The air hummed with the kind of tension that makes your teeth ache.
Romi looked me over with the practiced eye of someone pricing livestock. Not hostile, just…assessing. She made the first cut.
"Long night for you," she said. Not a question.
"Getting started, actually." I kept my voice steady.
Her perfume was vanilla and spice, with a backbeat of something citrus. Designer, but subtle. She smelled like control. And the worst part? It worked. I was still standing there. Still listening.
"That's nice. Young artists need their rest. So much work to get ahead." The Bronx in her made it sound almost sweet, like she wasn't calling me green to my face. Offering me a fucking juice box and a pat on the head, or something. My jaw tightened before I could stop it.
The word young landed heavier than it should have.
"Right." I shifted my weight. "And older artists need their beauty sleep."
Her smile was polite. Empty. "Exactly."
Her double was checking her phone, but her attention was a laser. Handler fumbled with her keys, trying to look invisible.
Romi glanced around the hallway, taking in the concrete walls, the overhead pipes, the general shabbiness of our surroundings. "Interesting route they've got you taking," she said. "Very…authentic."
"Gets the job done."
"I'm sure." She adjusted her coat, a small movement that somehow took up more space. "Well, I should let you get to wherever you're going. I know how important timing is for newer acts."
Newer acts. The fuck. What, was I fresh off the bus from Ohio or something?
"Appreciate the concern," I said.
"Of course." Romi turned to go, then paused, like someone who expected to be followed. "Oh, and Cam? Good luck with everything. Really hope it all works out for you."
The way she said it. Pure talent-show energy, talking down to somebody's little sister. Bless your heart, except with three thousand dollars in jewelry casually dripping off her arm.
She walked away then, her double trailing behind. Her dress moved when she walked, designed specifically to make you watch the snap of her hips walking away from you. The coat didn't quite cover the curve of her lower back. I clocked it. Couldn't not. Fuck.
I stood there, pulse hammering in my neck, face blank as I could make it. Handler exhaled. Face red as a beet.
"Okay. Um. So, are you…you ready?" she whispered.
I flexed my jaw, felt the heat creeping up my throat. "Let's do this," I said.
But I couldn't move, not right away. I watched the spot where Romi had stood, like if I stared hard enough the outline of her would burn into the paint.
I wasn't thinking about the car, or the hotel, or tomorrow's schedule. I was thinking about how Romi Dulce had just patted me on the head as if I were a good little girl. All over, again.
The rage lodged in my chest like a stone. Young. Newer acts. Like everything I'd built meant nothing because she got here first. Like I should be grateful she acknowledged me. Fuck that. Fuck her.
Handler tapped my elbow, and I let her lead me back toward the door.
The noise out was back up to weaponized.
Somewhere in the distance, a band was sound checking, and the bass lines were making the walls shudder like a cheap massage chair.
My handler had a death grip on her earpiece, muttering code words into her lapel as we wove past sponsor tables and a table of interns assembling swag bags for a demographic that would never open them.
I was replaying the hallway scene. Micro-analyzing every eyebrow twitch and syllable, things I could have said when the reporter appeared.
They always did, popping up out of nowhere like those ads that somehow bypass your ad blocker.
She was tall, white, maybe thirty but styled to pass for younger, wearing one of those shirts that had words on it (Women Supporting Women) but managed to look like she'd gotten it from an HR conference.
She blocked my path with the confidence of someone who'd been told her questions were "fresh, but tough." The recorder was out and rolling before I could blink.
"Cam! Mind if I grab you for a sec?" Her voice had the upward inflection of a barista offering an extra shot for free. The earpiece she wore was straight from the Apple store, probably never even paired.
"Not unless you need my blood type too," I said. I didn't stop walking, but she matched my pace in heels that had to be borrowed.
She jumped right in, bless her. "Lot of chatter about 'the verse' last month. Some people say it's a shot at you. Do you want to respond?"
God, she didn't try to dress it up. I almost admired the blunt-force trauma of it.
I shot my handler a look. She'd suddenly discovered something urgent on her phone. Classic.
"Which people?" I kept my face blank.
The reporter beamed wider. "Oh, you know. Pixogram. Fans. Even a couple insiders say there's real tension. Is it safe to say you and Romi Dulce have beef, or is this just promo?"
I thought about laughing it off. But then I pictured Romi's face and the way she'd dropped the word young like a death sentence.
She wanted to dismiss me? Fine. But I wasn't going to make it easy.
Wasn't going to smile and nod and play the grateful newcomer while she acted like I should thank her for existing.
If she wanted a rival, she had one. And if she was gonna keep it icy, we'd both be sitting here with blue lips and teeth chattering.
She had the tiny microphone close to my mouth, almost like she was hoping to catch the sound of my teeth grinding.
"You covered Quill and Dev, right?" I didn't stop walking. She had to speed up to keep the mic near me. "That whole thing. You were all over it."
She blinked at the subject change, but followed. "I mean, yeah, everyone was—"
"Did anybody ask Quill if he was setting the movement back?
Did anybody ask if the diss track was a bad look?
" I stacked the questions one after another.
"He went off. Hid Dev in his own comments section for six months.
Everybody called it a masterpiece. Because that's the whole point of this shit, right?
Two people in a ring. I'm her and you're not, come see me.
Y'all used to love that." I glanced at the mic.
"When did wanting to be the best become something I gotta apologize for? "
She opened her mouth.
"But y'all out here with the little recorder asking me if me and Romi is healthy." I let that sit for a moment. "Ask Romi that question. See what she says."
Handler materialized out of nowhere, hand light on my elbow. "Soundcheck."
The last thing I saw was her standing there, recorder still running, trying to decide whether she could spin my words into something viral or if she'd wasted the interview slot.
Handler scrambled to keep up, relief written all over her face.
"Nice," she whispered. Her cringe was palpable. "Very diplomatic."
I didn't answer. I was running the numbers in my head. How many people would watch the story, how many would see the clip tomorrow, and how many times I'd have to do this all over again before anybody started listening to the music instead.
Probably never. But that was the job.
I kept moving, not looking back.
The back seat of the car felt like purgatory, a thousand-dollar capsule for moving the dead weight of my body from one room to another.
The driver had the heat on too high and the divider up, so it was just me, my phone, and a five-mile blur of city outside the window.
Every stoplight glowed like a prelude to disaster.
I thought about the day's script—event, confrontation, performance—and how none of it had actually touched me, not really. The whole thing was a wind tunnel: sound and fury, zero air. I was a prop in my own timeline.
I scrolled my notifications, flicked through the same DM chain I'd ignored since morning, then closed the app. My name was probably trending. I couldn't bring myself to care. It was all the same after a while.
Another lie. I cared so much my jaw hurt from clenching.
That hallway scene kept looping—Romi's smile, empty as a threat.
The way young landed like a slap. She made me feel small without breaking a sweat, and I hated her for it.
Wanted my name trending higher. Wanted them talking about me instead.
The hunger twisted in my gut, ugly and honest.
The driver pulled up to my hotel—one of those glass-fronted slabs with gold letters and zero personality. I almost got out, but my hand hesitated on the door.
"Hey," I called up to the front, my voice dry from not talking. "Take me to West Sixth instead."
He blinked in the mirror, but nodded. "Studio?"
"Yeah," I said. "Keep it running."
He merged back into traffic, and I leaned my head against the seat. The inside of my skull felt like a glass left out overnight: sticky residue of what used to be ambition.
We rolled up to the studio past ten. The block was dead except for a dive bar leaking nineties rock into the street and a single vape shop with its lights buzzing.
The studio door had a keypad, and I punched in the code with my thumb, catching the familiar chill of the entryway.
It was dark inside, but the dark here was different—clean, intentional, the kind that let you become invisible if you needed.
I skipped the overheads, turned on the desk lamp. The amber halo was enough. I shed my jacket, kicked off the boots, and sat at the battered IKEA table, notebook ready and pen balanced on the wire binding.
The first line came easy:
nobody's got a leash on the wolf/so they built a fence made of rumors
I liked how it landed: hard at the front, soft at the back. I wrote it again, underneath, and let the next bar chase it down:
better keep your lips zipped up/or my teeth get the taste of your future
Pause. Not subtle, but that wasn't the point.
you sip spite like it's vintage/I sip hunger with no chaser/I ain't starvin', I'm stalkin'/big difference in the nature
I let the pen run. For ten minutes, I didn't think about the hallway, or Romi, or the reporter.
Let the ugly stuff out—the things I would never say out loud, the hunger, the need to hit back twice as hard as they hit me.
When my hand cramped, I flexed it and kept going.
Three pages filled, no edits. And I don't do no edits.
I aim every bar before it clears my teeth, pick the room it's gonna go off in, the line they'll clip and loop back at me. Tonight I hadn't aimed at anything.
Then I looked down at what I'd written.
you booked war for an evening/I pulled up with no luggage
Romi. Every single bar. Her condescension, her smile, that word—young—turned into ammunition. I hadn't meant to. Thought I was just venting, purging the day. But there she was, all over the page. The wolf wasn't some abstract enemy. It was her. The fence was her dismissal. The teeth were mine.
Should've been writing about anything else. The industry. The grind. My come-up. Instead, every line circled back to making her feel what she made me feel. Small. Angry. Hungry to prove something to someone who wasn't even in the room.
The goal: make her say my name. Make her regret treating me like background noise.
I scribbled it in the margins: Subliminals in sixteenths, babe/say my name, don't be coy
Somewhere in the building, a furnace kicked on, and the pipes rattled. It sounded like applause.
I got up, stretched. My phone buzzed under my hoodie; two missed calls from the Handler, a text from Skye with a meme of me photoshopped into a wolf costume. I didn't respond. Not yet.
I booted the laptop, plugged in the mic, and set up the session.
The blinking green dot appeared next to the cloud icon in the menu bar.
Always syncing, always backing up, one of those things I'd stopped noticing months ago.
I didn't bother with levels or beats, just the words. This wasn't for anyone but me.
First take, I spit the bars whispering. Low and slow, like telling a secret to someone asleep. The sibilants hissed out, and I liked the way they filled the empty room.
Second take, I pushed the tempo, let the anger bleed. By the third, my throat hurt and my tongue felt swollen from all the consonants.
I played it back and listened with my eyes closed. It wasn't clean. It wasn't even close to done. But it was there.
The name came easy: draft-nocturne. Hit save. Done. The green dot went solid, already gone somewhere I couldn't follow.
My chest felt scraped out. Not bad. Just empty, the way a room sounds different after you've moved the furniture.
I shut the laptop.