Heterodox (BOOK 2)

Chapter 20

~Vesper~

He looks over to it and smiles faintly. "Something I've been working on for a while."

"What's it supposed to be?" Circe inquires for us both.

MB rises from the bed with a creak and walks over to where his contraption lay. "I call it The TMM 360; the Timeless Music Mashup 360. The name's temporary so don't be too hard on me."

"We won't, right V?" Circe reassures to which I nod. "Tell us more!"

"As long as you don't utter this to any other soul." Suddenly, he looks just as serious as when he was passing laws earlier about us walking through his neighbourhood. "If I hear even a slip of this in convo outside this room from anyone else I know who to come for. I know where you both live."

"Damn," I murmur, "No one's safe these days."

"Promise?" He raises a suspicious eyebrow, near our faces as if to see all truths.

Circe reassures strongly. "Promise."

"Cross your heart and swear to die."

"Okay okay okay! What is this? Middle school?" I sigh heavily, both of us making an 'x' over our hearts and feeling silly.

It seems to appease him so he moves away from our faces satisfied.

His smile grows wider and he plops down on the piled chair facing us, his veined arms propped on the chair back and his hands fiddling with a small screwdriver. "There's nothing much to tell," he lies, looking down. "My dad brought me up into a world of music majorly made by people of our kind. And he particularly loves his jazz, blues and funk. We used to fully marinate ourselves in music till mom went nuts; fed up off hearing Satchmo. Don't get me wrong, she loves music as much as both of us."

"But the world has evolved very quickly when coming to music. Vinyl records were replaced by compact cassettes which were replaced by CD's and DVD's which is almost replaced by Youtube. My dad hasn't warmed up entirely to the new concept of the internet. I mean, the internet has kinda made his priceless collection that he developed over the years obsolete. It saddens him and it saddens me."

He raises his head and I catch the gleam in his eye. "And that how the TMM 360 was born."

"I'm combining all three artefacts in the past; the boombox, the record player and the CD player like the holy trinity and reviving the deceased that I refuse to rest in peace."

"For your dad?" Circe smiles softly.

He matches her smile. "For my dad and maybe my mom."

"That's sweet of you."

"I know."

They are completely absorbed by the presence of each other; their eyes stuck on each other like glue. Somehow, I find myself awkwardly watching between the two who seem to have forgotten I exist. But since I'm kinda selfish and I wanna save them both from embarrassing themselves any further I loudly hack the dryest cough you ever did hear.

This disrupts the awkward lovey-dovey forcefield thingy causing MB to quickly leap out of his chair, scratching the back of his neck and Circe to almost break her neck to look to the floor and ceiling simultaneously.

"Sorry," I apologize as best as I could without looking too amused, "The flu has been attacking me, lately."

Circe cuts eyes at me from behind his turned back. Love ya too, bestie.

"Um... I remember you were kinda interested in my clear cassette player, Circe," he stutters through, still looking nervous. "Still wanna see it?"

Circe sits frozen and I have to nudge her for her to reboot. "Yeah... sure!"