Mixtape

Mix-tape

by Gabriel Ramirez Acevedo

First Place Writer’s Block Magazine Flash Fiction Competition 2021.

As published in Writer's Block Issue 46, Summer 2021

 

Michael sits cross-legged on the guest room’s wooden floor, facing a white ar­chive box marked with a big neon MTV sticker. He had briefly seen it twice before: once, in 2008, when Caril moved into his small studio in downtown Albany, and then years later when they scaled up to this townhouse just outside the city. He had asked what was in it and on both occasions she said they were old memories from “before his time”, with a sweet smile. He never saw the box again until he found it at the back of the closet today. It had been four sleepless nights, searching for a clue that would explain something, anything, of why she was simply gone.

He opens the box and finds an old Walkman with a black cassette and some cheap headphones wrapped around it. He hasn’t seen one in decades. He unwinds the cable and turns the player around to find the battery cover, where two rusty batteries emerge. He reaches for the TV remote and replaces the batteries with those of the remote. He pushes play and places the headphones over his head, letting a deep voice singing a slow ballad flow through the earpiece.

He digs further into the box and from under some CosmoGirl and Seventeen magazines he discovers five cassette cases bundled with an elastic band. Some are empty, but the first one has the same brand as the tape playing. Through the clear case, he sees the insert with a list of songs written with meticulous handwriting.

A1. Leonard Cohen - Waiting for the Miracle, the list starts. He goes through it and recognizes a few artists. A4. Patti Smith - Rock-N-Roll N*gger; not a title that you would get away with nowadays. A6. Bob Dylan - You Belong to Me, with belong to me marked in yellow highlighter.

He lets the music play while he pulls forgotten treasures out of the box. Friends’ letters with glitter stickers, dried flowers, two Backstreet Boys posters. He finds a thick blue spiral notebook and opens it to find newspaper clips and Sunday comic strips: Calvin and Hobbes, Olaf the Viking, Mother Teresa dies aged 87, DIY decals us­ing glue, Diana killed in car accident in Paris, Transfer a drawing onto a t-shirt. Two Scrabble score tables in pencil. He counts at least three brownie recipes.

An angry punk rock song is already playing: A2. L7 - Shitlist. He doesn’t re­member her liking this kind of music, but we are not always who we were in our teen­age years. He presses on the double-arrowed fast-forward button until half of the tape transfers from one reel to the other. He pushes play again and a nasal Bob Dylan arises mid-song.

He continues flipping through the scrapbook and sees a set of glued letters that start with My baby, My C-bunny. Hearts and flowers drawn around them. The ex-boy­friends’ zone. He reads one of them, folded in a way so that the paper would serve as its own envelope, and cringes at recognizing having written similar cliché letters once. Sticky, hormone-filled teenage love; runaway plans.

On the next page, he finds an overexposed photograph of her as a teenager with a guy. Caril’s blond hair flows loosely in curls over her shoulder, with a fringe shooting up covering half of her forehead. A denim jacket with two oversized pin-buttons over a white t-shirt. She is holding a cigarette. He never knew she was a smoker. The guy is wearing a pair of small round sunglasses and a rope necklace with two golden bullets resting over an oversized grey Oakley shirt. His haircut is buzzed on the sides, but longer on the top and back. He is pulling her towards him with his right arm around her, a tribal tattoo peeking from under the t-shirt sleeve, while he holds a cigarette between his index and his thumb. Michael turns the page and finds a large newspaper cutout, with the edges folded to fit the page.

Two songs have ended, so he checks the cassette box and reads A8. Nine Inch Nails - Burn. The only other highlighted song on the list. The singer goes about misfit and rage screaming behind electric scratches. Soon after, the music stops but the reel keeps rolling. A male voice, with what sounds like a fake southern accent, whispers into his ear through the headphones:

“Hey baby… I’ve missed you. Things haven’t been easy here. Being locked up with these maniacs ain’t no good for me.” He pauses and Michael can hear the crackle of a cig­arette drag. “Them fuckers gave me 24 years, and the stupid lawyer called it a good deal. I guess it’s better than death row.”

The newspaper article on Michael’s legs has a headline that reads in capital letters: Gruesome murder at border video rental. The subheader continues: 5 people killed near the Canadian border when a young couple charged at them with shotguns. Subjects fled on a convertible car.

“They don’t know who you are, my C-bunny”, the man on the tape continued, “and I’ll play crazy for as long as it keeps you safe. You are a smart kid. Lay low. Go live your life. Find a dumb-head and move to a suburb. Disappear into it.” The man pauses again. “But let me give you some advice, killer to killer: when I come out, whether it’s on a flyin’ car or a fuckin’ Dodge Charger, you better be out there waiting for me. We are in this together ‘till the end, you and me, like Mickey and Mallory… Gotta go now, baby. I love you. I’ll be thinkin’ of you.” A long silence ensues the man’s words. A drop of cold sweat runs down the back of Michael’s neck. The music comes back. Mid-song a woman sings to an upbeat country rhythm:

“I’m back on baby’s arms.

How I missed those lovin’ arms.

I’m back where I belong,

Back in baby’s arms.”