Chapter 1: 1:

We lived closest to the Asylum, so we were the ones that had to wait.

“What do you think about my playing the violin and singing?” Lee asked. She was checking for dirt under her coffin-shaped nails. She’d painted them bright green to match her hair.

“I think you’ll need to cut those,” I told her.

She looked at me, annoyed. “I know that,” she said. “I wanted to look good for my photo, you know.”

“I don’t even know if the conditions are going to be good yet.” I looked down at the old camera in my hands. “I don’t have a tripod so if it's dark we’re going to be very limited on what we can do.”

Lee frowned and finally looked up at me. “Lexi, I know you have a soft spot for making your photos very clear and beautiful… but we’re a punk-rock band. An artistically crappy album cover would only fit us better.”

“But we can add crappiness after we take the best photos,” I protested. “That’s not how photography works.”

But she ignored me and turned to her phone. “Where are they?” she grumbled. “I said two PM, right?”

“They have to walk, give ‘em a break.”

In this heat, I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up already having heatstroke. The heat wave was bad this year. There always was at least one in early September but this time, it didn’t seem to be stopping.

Lee perked up as she saw something on her phone screen and then turned to look down the shaded part of the street.

The first one to join us was Christian, who looked uncomfortably sweaty.

“Sorry guys,” he said once he was close enough. His tall form slumped against the tree we were taking shelter under. “Mr Slithers was enjoying his free roam time and I had to get him outfrom under the couch.”

“It’s okay,” Lee sighed. “Everyone else is late too.”

“Ellias isn’t here yet?” Christian asked. He glanced around briefly as if he thought Ellias had maybe slipped into the shadows.

“No,” Lee said. “It looks like he’s down just a couple blocks though.

Christian sighed in relief and finally slid down the trunk of the tree to sit with us. “It’s too hot for this,” he complained.

“We only have so many weekends before the entry deadline,” Lee told him.

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We stayed in the shade while the sun beat everything into oblivion around us. The heat wavered the road as we watched and finally another person started up the street toward us.

“Ellias,” Lee said, drawing our attention to the silhouette.

Christian shifted, pressing into the shade at the base of the tree.

When Ellias was close enough he yelled, “hey there dickheads,” and grinned. 

Christian shook his head. “Why does he do this?” he complained.

Ellias immediately went for Christian and ruffled his hair. Christian didn’t complain this time and silently took it.

“What’s up shorty?” he asked, which was ironic because Ellias was the shortest member of the band and Christian the tallest.

“Okay,” Lee said. “Do you have the pipe?”

Ellias nodded and opened a mostly empty backpack and pulled out a short rusted metal pipe. “I considered it wouldn’t be a good idea to just walk around with this in my hand,” he explained. “You could kill someone with this.” He hefted the weight experimentally and then made a few baseball-like swings with it that wobbled. He frowned as he practiced the swing a few more times before changing to a Samurai style. “That’s better,” he grinned as he sliced the air with it.

Christian leaned away from the heavy metal object. “Don’t accidentally kill me,” he said.

The last to join our group was Sierra who arrived silently and surprised everybody when she said, “whats up” from the shade. Her monotonous tone implied no annoyance at the heat or the sun. Or the heavy backpack she had over her shoulder containing a number of miscellaneous supplies we might end up needing.

Lee stared at her before looking down at her phone. “Okay,” she said. “Everybody’s here, let’s get going.” She stood and dusted her shorts off.

“Where exactly are we going?” Christian asked, also standing.

“The Asylum, of course.”

“The Asylum?” Christian said. “But that’s trespassing. That’s illegal.”

“Oh, man up,” Ellias told him. “It’s the middle of the day, nobody’ll mind if we take a few photos and move on.” He tossed the rusty pipe back into his bag and hefted the weight onto his shoulder. “Do it for the art.”

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