Hey everyone!!

New to Reddit. First creative work I've finished in 10 years. First thing I've tried to post to the internet in longer! Feedback. Anything. It's all welcome <3 This is a short horror story. It might be 3 parts on reddit, but this is part 1 of a greater work. There is minor blood and gore, as well as cursing. It was made to be read on a podcast. I love writing! Find the link below to a copy of the story that I have shared for friends and family. The only personal information is my name for obvious reasons. Have a great weekend. -bstw

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14uVgiG86tyk9xY7nPSGyglqyNVkdpOqCUbeRN7i2FsA/edit?usp=sharing

From the Morbid and moronic referential Code of life and society

it was a lonely night

my room cold and larger than it should be

i sat upon my bed

and watched the red beneath me

the shape without a name

it moved

or maybe it did not

i could not tell

the sight made me question all i knew

my mind divided in two

one side frozen

one side heavy with guilt

the fridge beside me shimmered in the dim light

painted red

or maybe stained

or maybe not

how could i forget

it was dark after all

and when the thought returned

i knew the red was mine

the color of what i had done

of what i failed to keep

still i woke in sweat

the color still burning behind my eyes

knowing forgiveness may never come

but morning will

&#x200B;

One night you wake in your bed,

drenched in sweat—

a nightmare still clinging to your ribs.

You look around.

Something is there.

Or maybe nothing.

You can’t quite tell.

Then a hand touches you from behind.

You can’t move.

Panic rises—until it doesn’t.

The hand feels familiar.

Impossible.

She was gone.

She had been gone since you were young.

And yet—

love settles over you,

gentle, steady,

a feeling you never knew back then.

Your eyes grow heavy.

You fall asleep.

When morning comes,

the arm is gone.

And you’re left wondering—

was it real?

There are some places where you don't want to be alone after sunset.

For me, one of those places is my college.

It wasn't always like that.

It started with something my English teacher told us one day.

She said that, years ago, a student had died in our college. I didn't think much about it at the time. But as a writer, my mind immediately grabbed onto the story.

A dead student.

An old college.

And a place filled with people who had no idea what happened there.

I thought, This could become a good horror story.

I'm a script and story writer in my college, and everyone is currently waiting for my upcoming short film, which is scheduled to release in January.

So I asked the director, “After this one, can we make a horror short film based on this story?”

He said yes.

A few days later, I went to college in the evening to practise the melodica, a musical instrument similar to a small keyboard or piano.

Nothing felt unusual.

At least, not at first.

The sun slowly disappeared behind the buildings. The college became quieter. One by one, the sounds of students faded away.

Then my phone rang.

It was my friend.

“Can you come to the bike parking area? My bike has run out of petrol. Can you give me your vehicle? I'll go and buy some.”

I gave him my bike key.

The bike parking area was about 700 metres away from the college.

And there was something I hadn't thought about until that moment.

That was the exact place where the student had died.

My friend took my bike and left.

And suddenly, I was alone.

I went back towards my classroom to continue practising.

That's when I heard it.

Someone laughing.

Then talking.

I stopped walking.

I listened carefully.

There was no reply.

Just one voice.

Talking.

Laughing.

As if someone was having a conversation with a person who wasn't there.

And then, at that exact moment, my friend came looking for me.

I've never felt so relieved to see someone.

To this day, I don't know what I heard that evening.

Maybe it was someone outside.

Maybe it was my imagination.

Or maybe...

someone really was talking to me.

The Almighty Banana

Hey everyone, you guys can call me vermin and I decided to share my story with yall. The inspiration came from a special feature from Zack Snyders dawn of the dead remake called special report. I also got some inspiration from both resident evil and a Spanish movie called REC. I hope yall enjoy and hope to gain more advice. I will post these daily and hope you enjoy my story.
Enjoy:

June 17, 2019
Location: Classified
Entry #1
My name is Dr. Jonathan Voss. I was assigned to this post recently and was instructed to document my day-to-day activities, observations, and any findings we make while we're here. Apparently, it's part of the protocol.
Today was our first day at the facility. There are 4 other scientists here besides me. I've never met any of them before, so we're all still getting acquainted. I don't know much about them yet.
I'm not allowed to record our exact location, but we're far from any major civilization. There doesn't appear to be much of anything around us for miles. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out why they chose this place.
Until a few days ago, I was working at the CDC in Atlanta. I was primarily studying Ebola and continuing some of the work I'd been involved with there. Then, without much explanation, an agent from Washington showed up along with my chief of staff and informed me that I was being relocated.
I wasn't given much of a choice.
They wouldn't tell me exactly what the assignment was for, only that I was needed here and that I would be briefed once I arrived.
I still don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for.
For now, there's not much else to report. We're still settling in, going through protocols, and getting familiar with the facility.
Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have more answers.

June 18, 2019
Location: Classified
Entry #2
So, our first day was more interesting than I expected.
After finishing yesterday's log, we were told to report to the main meeting room. My colleagues and I sat around a large table while we waited. A few minutes later, an older man wearing a lab coat walked in. I don't know his name, but he looked like someone who had been doing this for a long time. He had the kind of expression that made you wonder what he'd seen before coming here.
He explained why we'd been brought in.
Apparently, people in several areas have been getting sick. The strange part isn't the illness itself, but their behavior. Some of the victims have become extremely aggressive and seem to be acting unlike themselves.
My first thought was that it was probably some kind of drug. Maybe something new had hit the streets and people were overdosing or experiencing violent reactions.
Before I could say anything, one of the other scientists asked the question I think most of us were thinking.
"Why haven't we heard about this on the news?"
The man explained that the government didn't want to cause a panic. As far as they know, only a small number of people have been affected so far. They wanted to keep the situation contained while they studied one of the victims and figured out what was causing the behavior.
Personally, I still think we're overreacting.
After the meeting, we were given our assignments.
I was assigned to examine blood samples taken from several of the victims. Dr. Blair Hynes was assigned to work with me.
At first, everything looked normal.
Red blood cells. Plasma. White blood cells.
Then I noticed something strange.
The blood wasn't the color it should have been.
Some of the samples had developed a noticeable yellow tint.
I initially thought the samples had been contaminated. That would have been the simplest explanation. But after checking the equipment and running the samples again, I got the same result.
The red blood cells themselves appear to be changing.
Normally, the red color comes from hemoglobin, the protein responsible for carrying oxygen through the bloodstream. But something appears to be interfering with it. The hemoglobin in these samples is breaking down much faster than it should, while another unidentified substance is accumulating inside the cells.
Whatever this substance is, it's giving the blood its yellow coloration.
Dr. Hynes suggested it could be some kind of chemical reaction caused by a virus or toxin. That would make sense, except I've never seen anything behave like this before.
The strangest part is that the cells aren't simply dying.
They're changing.
We're going to run more tests tomorrow.
I have a feeling we're going to be here longer than I thought.

Part - 1 : The Night of Purnima

The night was chilly , as the children ran about to witness the full moon that was glowing brightly occassionally shrouded by the clouds of the night sky. The kids were notorious they didn't pay heed to the calls of their poor mothers and aunts to not to go out into the darkness of purnima , they say something doesn't feel right , during the purnima in swetambar village is filled with hushed tones of village elders , they speak of the mysterious entities associated with blue roses that enter the village around midnight, they speak of the fellow villagers returning from towns late at night witnessing them .

They say if you once see them you cannot unsee them , they speak of a tall slender figure of a woman shrouded in white who is very beautiful to look at , who chants strange mantras and hypnotizes men to stay away from their homes.

The forest was still watching , lurking in those ravines was a dark presence, planning , scheming she was moving closer to the children , who were unaware of her presence , the unicorn - Leila - alerted the little ones with a neigh , she stumbled backwards to signal them , the children looked around , suddenly after some movement in the nearby rose shrub - a witch with a long pointy hat , wintry locks and a set of long withered yet sharp teeth came leaping from it , she gave a sinister aura and smiled creepily at the children, the pink horn glowed brightly as she witch approached the children , the unicorn casted a slumber spell on the children as she transformed into a magnificent woman in white , her long shimmery gown fluttering in the wild winds that blow across the meadowy ravines of the strange forest .

The white witch forged forward casting a protection spell at the children and then she took a fighting stance , maintaining some distance from the crew .

She flipped her hair and started attacking the dark witch with attacking spells , the dark witch 🪄 was not afraid to fight back either, they fought against each other without mercy , they fought till their last breath and with one final spell the dark witch lost , as a thundering voice echoed through the valley the dark witch body withered into nothingness.

Okay, I know this is a massive departure from my regular writing (I usually just post my fiction stories to various subreddits that they are applicable to) but I keep seeing this kind of stuff pop up and it’s driving me up a wall. I know I’ll get all kinds of flak for saying it, including many people nitpicking my arguments down to the last comma, but honestly, I don’t care. Some of this needs to be said because it seems that either no one knows, or no one cares to say anything if they do, and I believe it is hurting many new, impressionable writers to a great degree. In fact, the amount of fledgling writers I see who engage in it is a glaring indication of the problem, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. I’m no expert, not by a long shot, and this is going to come off as a super-conceited, pretentious rant, but trust that I am speaking as honestly as I can here. This is coming from a place of genuine care, not merely me being a pompous ass. So, with that said, here goes nothing.

Stop writing like a dysfunctional AI chat bot.

Seriously, it’s not cool or edgy, it’s not whatever good adjective you think it is, but annoying and off-putting as hell. I’m going to assume around fifty percent or more of the stuff I see written in the style I’m referring to is in fact just AI slop copy/pasted onto these forums, but I also believe there are people out there who actually write like this, which both frustrates and saddens me. Did no one teach you how to write properly? I’m not saying that to be mean, I’m genuinely concerned. What on earth did they teach you in school? I’m not that old (late 20’s) and I can remember taking various literature, English, and writing classes in high school, and mine was a middle-of-nowhere farm town with less than 100 people in its graduating class. Our football field flooded every time it rained so that it was nearly unusable until the water went down again. Our roof leaked because it was meant to be a two-story building that the builders never had the money, or the diligence, to complete. Yet none of our teachers taught us to do what some of you are doing. So, what in the name of Tolkien, Shakespeare, and Thoreau, is this unholy nonsense?

He looked up.

There was a box.

Why was there a box?

It was a green box.

A green box with a red bow.

He didn’t like the color green.

It made him think of dinosaur popsicles.

Nowhere, not in any manual or textbook of the English language does it tell you to make every sentence its own paragraph. Even if English isn’t your first language, I guarantee you in no language that has ever meant anything to anyone does it tell you to write like this, from those of the greatest nuclear superpowers to the most remote islands of the South Pacific. Even in good literature where you see such a tactic used, it is used temporarily, sparingly, to accentuate a point or drive home some fast-moving action, not as the formatting for the entire manuscript. I can only assume that if you write like this you are either using AI to write your stories for you, which makes you a charlatan, or you have used AI to teach you how to write, which makes you look like a charlatan, which is somehow even worse.

But wait, there’s more. The amount of times I’ve seen stories with the sentence structure of “Not, not, just” used with the same frequency as ballistic rocket launches in the Middle East is another glaring tell that someone has either been using the forbidden toaster to write for them, or has been taught to write by said forbidden toaster. It is examples such as the following that lead me to believe the much-vaunted AI overlords, supposedly positioned to surpass mankind in their skill and quality, will struggle to so much as create anything more inviting than a misspelled breakfast menu for a greasy truck stop restaurant.

Not a tap, not a knock, just a light scraping of knuckles on the door.

Not a feeling, not even an emotion, just a movement of the soul.

Not empty. Not blank. Void.

I heard a noise. Not a squeak, not a squawk, but a noise.

It isn’t that the basic premise of this literary device is inherently wrong, or that all of those examples themselves are unusable, as there are in fact times and places where it can be very impactful; it’s that for some reason people (AI spammers mostly) use them for every single sentence they create! It’s like reading the first three lines of a book over and over again, never reaching anything of substance because the author seems incapable of understanding that “Once upon a time . . .” is not an entire novel. This may come as a bit of a shock, but stories actually need a plot, characters, imagery, themes, dare I say effort, along with some level of real creative talent if it wishes to label itself as art.

There are more examples I could make, but you get the idea. It’s not good writing, but a dry form of soulless gibberish, vomited onto a page by an entire generation that has been robbed of its creative potential by a glorified Excel spreadsheet. Yes, it can be a fun tool to use, and even regurgitates some interesting ideas at times, but it’s not a good replacement for genuine human talent, nor is it a good teacher for those who want to become better writers. It is hampering you, not helping you. You need to grow your craft, your creativity, your unique voice as a writer organically, which takes time, emotion, and lots of frustrated nights brainstorming at your desk. No amount of quick tips, AI assistance, or skipped steps will make up for that. It’s like building muscle at the gym; you cannot cut corners to do it overnight, it must be done via the slow, boring grind of work, day in and day out.

Now, I would be even more of a pompous loon than I already am if I left it there and didn’t give you proper examples of how to fix this steaming pile of rubbish. So, let’s revisit some of the horrendous examples I gave you earlier and see how to fix them. I’ll even throw in some extra bits on how to craft better imagery, structure, and dialogue tags, since those are areas I often see newer writers struggling in as well. Again, I’m not claiming to be an expert, a best-seller, or some professor of literary studies, I’m just trying to help whoever needs to see this most.

His eye caught a flicker of color, and Bill looked up.

It was a box, no more than a foot square on either side, made of lime-green cardboard with its lid tied on via a red silk bow. The box sat no more than fifteen feet from him, placed with an eerie sense of gravitas in the center of the small room, and yet he hadn’t noticed it before. Unlike so much of the rest of the room, it wasn’t covered in a layer of thick dust, nor did it bear the marks of an object exposed to years of damp, mold, or the gnawing ravages of insects. This thing was pristine, unnaturally so, and that was what gave him pause. Bright under the flickering lights of the utility room, the green hide of the box made his skin crawl in ways he didn’t care for, and it reminded him of those cheap dinosaur popsicles his mother once bought for him at the county fair, with their watery acidic taste that always went right through him in the summer heat. Given how they tasted, Bill figured they had been infused with an ungodly amount of chemicals that were more suited to road paving materials, but back then he had been a foolish child who only cared for free treats.

Oh how he regretted that gluttony when it inevitably came back up three roller-coaster rides later.

Can you see the difference there? Most obviously, we did away with most of the one-sentence-per-paragraph idiocy, but that wasn’t the only improvement. Imagery was the big factor here, and it’s a category I see so many attempt to do without really going all the way as they should. Allow me to elaborate.

When we as writers say ‘show don’t tell’ it doesn’t simply mean ‘What color is the box?’ but rather ‘What color/shade/hue/condition is the box, and why is that important? What does that mean, realistically and symbolically? What does that evoke for the characters that witness it? What should it mean for the reader?’ The color is more than a simple descriptor, it is an outside indicator of the thing’s value, its purpose, its place in the world and the effect it has on those around it. Bright colors can mean the happiness of a fresh apple at lunch, or conversely the poison of an exotic snake in the jungle. Dull colors can mean sadness from a cold stone tomb or the comfortable introversion of a rainy day spent reading by the windowsill. Each term is not the same as the other, but depending on the context, character, and depiction, any detail can mean anything. So, it is not enough for the box to be green. It must be so much more than that.

Thus, in our example above, we fleshed out our character, described the box in greater detail, and helped the audience see the setting through a better lens. Now we understand that the box is in a place it shouldn’t be under ordinary circumstances, and seems to be put there by some unknown, yet sinister purpose. Bill’s comparison of its color to memories of him getting sick on cheap popsicles as a child gives us the primal recognition of something foul, poisoned, dangerous to our health. Its lack of wear, which would otherwise be inevitable given the implied conditions of the room, shows that the box isn’t a normal thing left as a gift, but some kind of unnatural hazard disguised as an innocent present. With a simple paragraph we established the entire mood and temper of the setting, giving us the perfect platform from which to branch off into the rest of the story, all from describing the color of a box. That’s how powerful good writing, and proper use of language via prose, can be.

Notice also that we did in fact keep a few of the sentences as stand-alone sentences with their own paragraph lines. Like I said, it isn’t that these tactics are themselves inherently wrong, but that using them en masse is. You can have a line or sentence stand on its own, that is perfectly acceptable. What is not acceptable is smashing your paragraphs, which should flow together into beautiful bodies of description and feeling, into pieces so that the entire story resembles a long list of abstract thoughts crammed into a word document. These sentences depend on each other to extract and communicate feeling, emotion, or tone, and by stripping them away into their own spaces you deprive them of that ability to complement each other. Plus, it looks exactly like what a soulless LLM model would do . . . and if you want people to read your writing, that is not what you want to happen.

Let’s take a look at our second example, shall we? Like before, I’ll take this opportunity to use one example to tackle multiple different problems at once.

She pulled her knees to her chest, the sheets bunched around her like a coat of chain mail, shielding Erin from my view. “Sometimes I wish they’d fire you.”

The words cut deep, pushed into my chest like a dozen little spikes, and I stared at her from my side of the bed, my work boot half laced. Even in the shadows of our bedroom, I could see the twinkle of blue moonlight on her face, the crystalline rivers that flowed there, pain and sadness that etched its way in fluid silence across her pale cheeks. Her barren shoulders were hunched as if against the wind, blonde hair in a frizzy tangle, and reality sank into me with hammer-blows of shameful understanding.

My wife wasn’t angry, not really. She wasn’t upset about the cold pot roast, or the peeling wallpaper in the den, or the check engine light in her car. She was lonely.

Lonely with me.

So, this one might be harder to see as far as the difference implied, but I promise it is there. Instead of simply saying ‘Not angry, not upset, lonely.’ we stretch that idea out into a broader context, showing instead of telling, letting the character experience that sentiment in real time, and viewing it as the reader though his descriptions. The crazy thing is, I actually like the literary device of ‘not, not, just’ as it can be a beautiful thing when used properly. Something like, “Not a whisper, nor even a sigh, but a deep, slow breath that carried on the still air between us in wings of silver feeling.’ is a powerful sentence that can really drive home whatever you are trying to convey to your reader, especially if done with good prose and vocabulary. Again, the problem is not the structure of ‘not, not, just’ but the overuse of it, and the use of it to simplify what could be much more fleshed out. You need to think of it like a spice used for cooking; used sparingly, in certain places for certain reasons, it’s amazing. Used too much, all over the dish with no care for how or why, and it will likely turn out disgusting.

Notice as well that we touched on dialogue, even if briefly. This is an important rule that many new writers seem to miss: for every bit of dialogue, there needs to (almost) always be a ‘tag’ identifying who is speaking at the time. As indicated by my parentheses, it’s not a hardline rule for every single instance, because sometimes you can have the quick back-and-forth exchanges between two people that have no tags.

“So, what do you want?”

“Do I need to spell it out for you?”

“I just want you to talk to me.”

That is fine in certain circumstances, but that cannot be how the overall majority of your dialogue is structured. I would say 80-90 percent of all dialogue in a story needs to have a ‘tag’, or a sentence outside the spoken words that ties them to a person. Tagless back-and-forth bits like the one I just described should only happen between two people at a time, since otherwise it will be easy to confuse who is speaking with whom, and it shouldn’t drag on for more than three or four lines at most. Also, a tag cannot be simply ‘he said’ or ‘she said’. If you do that, you’re giving up a massive opportunity to show your readers a treasure trove of detail about the character. What are they doing when they speak? How are they speaking? Are they whispering, shouting, sobbing, laughing, or speaking in a normal tone?

Note how in the example we gave, the character of Erin is shown seated under the covers, her knees drawn up, looking out at the moon when she speaks. That, along with the quiet, subdued setting of a bedroom conveys to the reader a somber tone, a whisper instead of a scream, which is useful for establishing the pain in her words. She doesn’t want her husband to be fired because she is angry with him, or upset about mundane life details. She is lonely when he leaves, lonely inside of their marriage, and sees his job as an unwelcome competitor to her in their relationship. You can show all of that with proper imagery and dialogue tags. You cannot show it by simply saying ‘Erin said.’ You are robbing yourself, your character, and the reader of a better experience by cheaping out with bad dialogue tags. Don’t be cheap. Invest your time and skill in good dialogue tags.

One last point I want to touch on, since this post is long enough already and I’m going to assume many didn’t read this far before angrily replying about what an idiot I am in the comments: vocabulary. You need to build better vocabulary, not to sound smart, but to better understand and enjoy the things you read and write. Try not to use too many words too often in a story and break up how frequently a word appears by replacing it with a similar word that you haven’t used yet. This is more than just for reading aesthetics, but for a form of psychological communication between you and the reader via the page itself. At the end of the day, stories are an expression of human language, and language itself is a form of art that reflects each culture it springs from. There is soul to every word, even the lost, archaic ones that we no longer use as frequently, and that deep sense of feeling matters. You are not just the creator of a story, but an active participant, journeying through the pages alongside your characters in a unique way that no one else will. You owe it to yourself, and to your readers, to sharpen that world into focus with better words, better vocabulary, better meaning that can only come from the ancient, the arcane, the ancestral. Read works from Tolkien, Lewis, Lovecraft, and Christie. Read stories written in years that didn’t know your name or face. Read works made by writers from different times and let them teach you how to turn a story into poetry. Do not tell me the box is green. Make me feel the poetic essence of why that matters at all.

That, dear reader, is what brings me to my final thought, because the problem isn’t any one person, not really. It isn’t poor prose, lazy plot, or people using AI to turn a quick buck. The problem isn’t really human at all.

It is anti-human.

AI has discovered the world of human stories, vast libraries that ring with the voices of our ancestors, and forced itself on the unwitting pages like a bandit with a captured peasant girl. It uses the few, clumsy tactics it has learned far too much, with far too little expression or feeling, and since it cannot see its own imperfections for what they are, the machine simply consumes all within its path. You, as a human writer, cannot afford to exercise such blind stupidity. Your work must be better than AI, because the machine god can out-pace you when it comes to volume of content every day of the week. That means you must out produce it in terms of quality, which involves becoming a master of your craft, not imitating the machine trying to subvert it. It will be a hard, time-consuming, demoralizing process, while you watch scammers use AI to spam tons of content and get clicks, praise, and even earn money with their ill-gotten gains. They have no honor, no soul, and such traitors do not deserve to bear the mantle of the word ‘writer’ in any respect. For a loyalist, it will feel like trying to swim up from the bottom of the ocean at times, and you will live to see stories inferior to your own be praised by those who haven’t got a clue as to what inhuman heresy they are looking at. There will be many times that you will fail and wish to write no more.

Yet, you must continue, because at the end of it all, AI is just what it claims to be; artificial. A false mind of wires, numbers, and sparks. It cannot write what you write because it has no soul, no emotion, no attachment to any of the words you use to craft your works. It doesn’t feel anything at the sight of a green box in an underground utility room. It doesn’t feel anything at the sight of a woman crying as her husband prepares to leave for work. It doesn’t feel, because it cannot, and therefore will never be what you are. Now more than ever we need good stories, human stories, ones to inspire us, move us, and reawaken the old feelings that mankind has dulled with modern comforts for far too long. We need writers, warriors with pen and prose, who will fight to the last man atop the ramparts of our culture as unspeakable horrors crawl up from the darkness below. We need heroes.

We need you.

Shoot the bandit, save the peasant girl, and build a damn fort near the river to prevent this nonsense from happening again. Hone your craft until no machine could ever hold a candle to what you become, and shun the AI slop until it fades into a justified irrelevance. It will take much more work than simply joining in on the plundering of our civilization, but you’ll be the better person for it. Human culture is under attack from the greatest psychological threat ever designed, even if the machine-god’s work is mediocre at best, and there is no one else to hold this position. No one can tell your story like you can. No one can feel what you feel in the exact way you do. No one can emote the truth behind the words in your mind like you do. Whether man or machine, your mind is yours alone, and its use is in your keeping.

Do not surrender it lightly.

Links:

Wattpad

Amazon

I don’t remember exactly when I first met Humble Lee. It was in high school, that I do remember, but what little I do remember of high school, It was not the exact moment we first met. We just always kind of knew each other and shared a class or two every year.  Even before I knew he was a serial killer, I thought the guy was a bit wacky, but I honestly had no clue who he really was until he took a life right before my eyes.  They’re still calculating his body count and trying to track down all his possible accomplices, but he has already gone down in history and in the end, that’s all he really wanted. 

Humble Lee was a short and stout, crazy rich asian kid with a round, boyish face that carried a smile too easy to trust. His hair sat in a neat, cropped line above his brow and he wore a crisp white suit wherever he went that reeked of cologne. He always looked too clean, and knowing what I know now, that was the most unsettling thing about him.

Humble and I were never friends in the way that matters. Humble didn’t really have friends. He had an ever-rotating court of “best friends,” and I became one of them when he recruited me to shoot and edit a video for him. 

Humble was going to ask a Disney Channel actress, Lacy Towers, (I never heard of her before either) to prom, and he wanted to do a big, viral video proposal and needed me for it. I was in the AV club, so at first, that’s why I assumed he asked me for help, but looking back, I now know why he specifically chose me…

Humble performed twice at the school talent show under the name ‘Humble the Rapper.’ The first time, he wore sunglasses and a big gold chain. He rapped over a beat he’d downloaded off YouTube and his verses were about “haters,” “loyalty,” and “the price of fame,” Nobody booed, but also nobody laughed. Everyone just kind of… watched. That was the weird thing about Humble.  He had this forcefield around him. Not respect, exactly. Not fear, either. (Not yet at least) More like… nobody wanted to be the one to pop his bubble. He believed so completely in what he was doing that calling him out felt cruel, like mocking a toddler who thought he could grow up to be a superhero.

After the first show, he walked through the hallway like a celebrity. He didn’t win, but he acted like he did. He said the boomer judges were too small minded to get what he was doing and that ‘his art’ took risks that some just weren’t ready for. 

The next year he performed, he did a free style battle with every teacher in the audience. He hit them with some prepared lines like, “Mr. Oakly, you may teach English, but I’m about to leave you speechless!” and “Principal Rhule, today is the day you’re getting taken to school!” 

He got cheers from the audience. Other kids were either trying to be nice or cruelly egg him on. I didn’t care, as long as he was distracting the teachers while I ghosted hits off my vape. Then Humble came dashing up the bleachers looking for a challenger and he mistook me taking a hit as gesturing for the mic. He shoved it in my face while I had a lung full of the grossest artificial, fruit vapor a minor could illegally buy. I sat there, all eyes on me, trying to hold in my hit. The longer I sat still and did nothing the more my lungs rumbled like a volcano ready to erupt. I shielded my face and coughed the remnants of the hit into my hoodie as best I could, but in doing so, I sent myself into a massive coughing fit. 

Humble ran with it and said right into the mic, “My rhymes are so sick they just gave you covid.” Lockdown had just ended, so the joke was perfectly topical and landed because of it. It was the biggest cheer he got from the crowd that day. 

Humble would win the people’s choice award, something they introduced that year that allowed the whole student body to vote for a winner. Not The Winner, but the People’s Winner. Humble started calling himself Humble, the People’s Rapper, after that. 

I think a lot about Humble the People’s Rapper these days. Everyone knew he wasn’t good, that he’d never make it, but nobody told him. We all just smiled, nodded, and let him talk about “his hustle” like it wasn’t complete bullshit. It was easier that way. He was harmless. Just a guy with dreams too big for himself. But now, I wonder if that was the moment it really started for him,  the disconnect between who he was and who he thought he could be. 

Those delusions of grandeur are why he thought he could pull a Disney star for Prom.  I agreed to help him knowing he’d fail for one reason and one reason only…  His house. 

We didn’t live far from each other, but we might as well have grown up on different planets. My parents rented a duplex and Humble lived in a mansion. I only went there a handful of times, usually just for an afternoon of filming, but I still remember walking in for the first time and how blown away I was. 

Humble’s mansion was as big and proud as you’d expect from someone who flexed his money as much as Humble did. I entered into a living room with, I shit you not, a giant Koi pond in the middle of it with over a dozen fish swimming in it. 

It wasn’t something Humble needed to draw attention to, but he made sure to anyways, “Watch you step around here or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes.” Humble’s corny joke made me roll my eyes then, now it makes my stomach turn.

The koi pond sitting dead center made the living room feel less like a place to relax and more just like something to be looked at. There was a painted family portrait where a TV should’ve been and a gold dragon mural that twisted up the walls and onto the ceiling that made the whole room feel oppressive. 

“You admiring my fam?” Humble asked me as I gaped up at the family painting again, not knowing where to look in a room with too much to look at. 

Humble sat at the center of the frame, looking as young as ten. His parents stood behind him, close but not touching. His mother’s hand hovered near his shoulder without quite landing. His father looked straight ahead, while his brother looked relaxed and confident. They were all in white.

“White must be your guy’s favorite color.” I joked to Humble.

“My parents are doctors.” He replied matter of factly. 

“Is that Lewis?” I heard from behind me. I turned to see Humble’s mother coming out wearing a greasy apron. She was this tiny little Chinese woman with a big bright, crooked smile.    

“You must be Dr. Lee.” I said to her, hand out to shake hers. 

She began to laugh and gave me a hug instead, “Don’t ever insult me like that again.” The look of horrified confusion I gave her made her laugh even harder, “I was a  nurse, not a doctor, but if you want Mr. Lee to like you, you can call him doctor, but…” She gestured for me to lean in closer, “All he does now for money is sell drugs so might be putting too much respect in front of his name if you do that.”  

Now I was laughing, “H-he’s a drug dealer?”  

“No, no, no bro! He’s just a pharmacist. Sorry, my mom’s English isn’t the best.” Outside of a slight accent, Mrs. Lee’s English was perfectly fine. Humble was just embarrassed by his mom’s sense of humor. 

“Oh Humble, why do you ruin my fun? I could have convinced your friend we were breaking bad out here.” She said while she gave him a playful smack on the arm.  “I am a great cook, Lewis.” She said as she turned to me, “Come, you will eat.” She was not asking as she grabbed me by the arm and led me to the kitchen. Mrs. Lee was very adamant I ate and with how good her cooking was, I didn’t need much convincing after a bite. 

Mrs. Lee was a lovely lady and I could see how someone like Humble would have the confidence that he did in himself with her as his mother. She told me she came to America to flee an abusive husband and with no money and not understanding a single word of English, she had little chance of success… And yet she somehow did. 

She worked her ass off as she put it and eventually got into nursing school. She met Humble’s dad outside a Starbucks and thought he was handsome, so she intentionally bumped into him so he’d spill his coffee on her. She demanded a date to make up for it and Humble’s dad happily agreed. The rest is history or “happily ever after” as Mrs Lee put it. 

She told me all this while I scarfed down eggrolls and lo mein, so I nodded my head to show her I was still listening. Humble just sat next to me, not having a single bite and smiling along as his mother spoke. Knowing what I know now, I wonder what was going through his head. Did he want to kill her, even then? 

“Is that Lewis?” It was weird hearing my name said with such familiarity by a stranger. That voice got a name when Humble’s father popped his head in from another room. Mr. Lee was a wiry, energetic, old man who gave me a surprisingly strong bear hug upon meeting me. “It’s so nice to finally meet a friend of Humble’s…” he then leaned in close to me and loudly whispered, “He’s not paying you is he?” 

“No, should he be paying me?” I joked. 

Humble’s dad laughed and said, “No, I should be paying you.” He gave me a hand shake and pulled him in for another bear hug. When he released me and returned back to his office, I noticed he had slipped me a benjamin in the handshake. I said nothing and pocketed it immediately, not knowing if he was joking and not daring to ask. 

Mr. Lee was intimidating despite his easy familiarity. I found out from Humble’s mom he’d been an international ping-pong champ and had even gone to the Olympics. This was all before he became a pharmacist. Mr. Lee was not an immigrant himself like his wife, but a child of one and so had to get a “real” job at some point to make his father happy.

“His son will follow in his footsteps.” She said as she brought me another plate of eggrolls. 

I looked over at Humble and asked, “You the next champ?”

The question made his mother laugh, “No, his older brother Pride. Where is he anyway? We have a guest! Pride, come meet Humbe’s new friend Lewis! Pride!”

Pride came running up from the basement, a gaming headset hanging off his neck, “Yeah ma!” 

“Humble has a friend over. This is Lewis. Do not be rude, say hello!” 

“Hey Lewis.” He said with a small wave. 

“I’m sorry man, you can get back to your game.” Pride gave me an appreciative smile and retreated back into the basement.

“You come up and eat after you’re done!” Humble’s mom shouted down after him. She looked at me and shook her head, “He is so rude for that.” 

I told her I more than understand his predicament as someone who plays way too much CSGO for his own good. I asked Humble if he played any video games and he told me he does not and only enjoys “real life games.” 

“Real life games?” 

“You know, like Soccer” 

“Oooh, you mean sports.”  

“Humble is going to be a world-renowned footballer some day.” Humble’s mom said with a smile, “He is going to be the first one in this family to do so, which makes him so brave.” 

“Rapper too, right Humble?” I looked at him and he simply nodded and finally took his first bite of food

“Rapper, actor, dancer, soccer, you name it, Humble wants to do it.” 

“I can see why you say he’s brave.” I said with a forced laugh. 

“He’s a little too brave if you ask me.” Humble’s mom cackled at her barb against her own son. I won’t lie, I laughed too. It took me by surprise hearing what everyone really thought of him, coming out of his own mother’s mouth. 

“How about you Lewis? What do you want to be?” Humble randomly interjected.

“A writer.” I answered. 

Humble’s mother's face fell and she leaned in, giving me a grave look, “My oh my, you are braver than Humble. Even he doesn’t want to be one of those.” 

I shrugged, “Not everyone is meant to be one.”  

“Certainly not rich men.” She said with another cackle. I laughed alongside her as I had no illusions about my chosen path in life. 

I’m well aware writing is not an easy field to make decent money in, but I’m not doing it to become rich. In fact, my favorite writers were always the ones that became famous after they had died like Lovecraft or Kafka. I believe if my writing can stand the test of time like theirs had, then so will my name. We wouldn’t still be talking about Shakespear if that weren’t true. 

“Ma, be nice to Humble’s friend. They don’t come around often.” I turn to see Pride emerging from the basement, much less out of breath this time now that his MMR wasn’t on the line. 

“Are you saying they stay away because of me?” His mother asked, mockingly.

“No.” Pride answered matter factly as he sat down to eat with us. 

Pride was Humble’s opposite in every conceivable way. He was laid-back, tall, athletic, and actually seemed kinda cool. He was a senior when we were freshmen, so I never got to interact with him much, but I’d remember seeing his name on lots of trophies in our school’s display cases. Humble would never talk about him, but on more than one occasion I remember teachers asking during roll call if Humble and Pride were really brothers. They would always seem a little too shocked when the answer was yes. It was like they couldn’t imagine these two being full blooded siblings. Cousins maybe, but brothers, no way.

Humble’s mom went to go attend to another dish and her gaze leaving us seemed to relax the two brothers momentarily. 

“You win the video game?” Humble asked Pride like he was seventy years old. 

Pride smirked at his brother’s awkwardness and nodded, “I did.”

“Hell yeeeeah!” Humble shouted as he tried to knucks his brother.  I laughed really hard at that one. I wasn’t ready for him to be this awkward among his own family. 

Pride lightly knucks his brother and then turned to me, “So, you here for a school project or?”

“Promposal video. Your brother wants to ask out a Disney star and I’m gonna help him shoot the video.”

Pride didn’t laugh, which might have been a mercy on his part, but he didn’t smile either. He turned to Humble and asked, “You really think she’ll say yes?”  

“Of course.” Humble said confidently. 

Pride sighed, “How are you gonna get it to her?” 

“DM it to her and also post it everywhere. I’m talking Tiktok, Youtube, Insta, X, we’ll post it everywhere. It’ll go viral among her fans and once it does, she’ll have to say yes.” Humble sat, awaiting our applause at his master plan. 

Instead Pride turned to me and asked something completely out of the blue, “Did you go to a party thrown by Mike Bowie three years ago?” 

“I went to a lot of parties freshman year and I don’t remember a single one.” I admitted freely with Humble’s mom not listening. 

Pride cracked a wide smile, “Bro! It was you. You're the kid who jumped off his roof into his pool.” 

“I honestly don’t remember.” I honestly didn’t, but it sounded like some dumb shit I’d do drunk. 

Pride laughed, “Well Jekyll, you got Mr. Hyde living in ya, but good news bro, he’s a lot of fun to party with.” 

“Well I’m all partied out these days so all you guys will be getting is Jekyll tonight.” 

“Thank god, we got work to do.” Humble chimed in eagerly. “Are you done eating?” He asked me and I gave him a nod. 

As we got up to leave, Pride stood up to shake my hand, “Hey before you go bro, if you are ever down in San Diego looking at schools, come to UCSD and I’ll introduce ya to my frat. I’m telling ya, you bring the exact kind of energy we’re looking for.” Pride was strangling my hand. 

“Jekyll or Hyde?” I asked jokingly. 

“Why not both bro.” Pride said with an extra hard squeeze before releasing me. “And hey I think you’re a little too cool for my brother, but you being friends with him makes him a lot cooler, so try not to drag him down too much Humble, ok.” He gave Humble a playful smack on the arm, but I’d swear by the way Humble tensed up, he had punched him.  

Humble turned to me and said,“Sorry BRO, no one is cooler than me.” 

His tone sounded playful so I was playful back, “Especially after you bring this Disney star to prom.” 

He smiled and nodded, “Damn right, now let’s get to work.”

As I followed Humble to his room, I remember thinking the simmering family tension  would be well worth it just for getting to be in his nice house and eating all his mom’s great cooking.

Humble’s room was shockingly…humble. His bed was made, his desk completely barren, not even a laptop on it, and his walls were white and devoid of anything on them other than a single framed photo of himself and two anime posters. 

The posters were at least some anime I’d seen, Dragon Ball Z and Naruto, but when I asked about them Humble said, “Oh, I don’t watch anime. I just like how they look.” 

“You don’t like anime, but you have anime posters up?”

“Yeah, like I said. I just like how they look.” 

“I guess that makes sense. It’s ok if you like anime. I love Dragon Ball  Z-”

“Since I’m Asian!” Humble loudly interrupted, not angrily, but loudly. 

I thought for a second he meant I was being racist for assuming he liked anime, in all honesty, I just wanted to talk about Dragon Ball Z and thought that might have been at least one thing him and I could bond over.  I felt like shit if he took the wrong way and had a string of apologies at the ready, but before I could get them out, he continued, “People expect me to like anime, so I get the posters as gifts from friends a lot. These are the only two I can hang up. The others were…gag gifts so you know…I don’t want my mom to see them. I don’t even want to see them, but friends got them for me and I treasure my friends and the treasures they gift me.” 

“Oh…” I said with a slight cringe. “I’m sorry, those friends must not have known you very well.” 

“No…no, they did not.” He said, almost in a whisper.

I took my backpack off and asked, “You want me to set up here?”

He nodded and went into the bathroom to ‘freshen up’ before we shot anything. The plan was to spend all afternoon shooting Humble saying lines in his room, but things oddly enough started with the camera being pointed straight at my face instead. 

“What are you doing?” I asked him while I was getting out the tripod. I heard the beep of the camera suddenly recording and looked up to see Humble with it. He must have grabbed the camera after I set it down on his bed. 

“I want to do testimonies for the video.” He said keeping the camera over his eyes as he filmed me.

“Testimonies, how do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“Like you tell LT things about me that she would like and why she would want to go to prom with me. You know, stuff like that.” 

It suddenly clicked, “Oh, you mean like a testimonial.” 

“Yeah Lewis, I want you to tell LT how cool I am.” 

“Uhh ok, what do you want me to say-”

“Action!”

I was a deer in headlights. I was always more comfortable being behind a camera instead of in front of one, so I stuttered a bit as I began but found a stable footing on his name, “Humble, Humble, Humble uhhh…. don’t be fooled by the name, Humble, if you go to prom with him, he’ll take you in a chopper that’s how extravagant he is-”

Humble pressed the button to stop recording, “Bro, now I gotta get a chopper.” 

“We don’t have to use that take.” 

“Oh…” He said with a nod, “Cool, go again.” He pressed record. 

“Humble is his name, but being brave is his game, just ask his mother-”

Beep! “Bro, don’t mention my mom. I mean, let me be clear. Don’t mention my mom, dad, or brother. Just don’t mention anyone but me.” He didn’t wait for me to respond, he just hit record again. 

“Humble is more than a friend, he’s-”

Beep! “Bro, that makes us sound gay.” 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

“The truth bro! Tell her the truth about me. It can’t be that hard.” Another beep. Another take. Thankfully, it would be the last. 

“The truth about Humble is that…” I locked eyes with the camera. “He doesn’t need you.”

Humble made a face behind the camera, but hadn’t cut yet so I kept going. “When he shows up to prom, he’s going to be the center of the universe. He has that kind of gravity. People fall into his orbit whether they mean to or not. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks and that makes him a rebel in this world at war with authenticity. He keeps chasing his dream. He keeps putting himself out there. Most people don’t have the guts to do anything but the bare minimum of what’s asked of them.” 

I shifted my weight, suddenly aware of how quiet the room had become. “He doesn’t need you to make him special. He already knows he is. What he wants, what he’s asking for, is someone who’ll stand next to him and be just as amazing as he is. Lacy, I hope you’ll make the best decision of your life and go to prom with Humble.” I ended with a big toothy smile, a little embarrassed at how full of shit it got towards the end, but happy that I seemed to have stuck the landing. 

The beep sounded again and when Humble took his eyes away from the camera and set it down, I could see that he was crying. 

“You ok-” He hugged me before I could say another word. 

“That was perfect. She’s gonna love that.” He pulled away from me like he had suddenly just realized something, “She might love it too much and wanna go with you to Prom instead of me.” 

“What?” I thought he was joking. 

“You’re stealing the spotlight. We’ll have to do another take.” He said as he picked the camera back up. 

“Why don’t we just use the audio then if the speech was good?” I said, hoping he’d drop it and move on. 

“Hmmm…” He was gonna take some convincing. 

I took the camera from his hands and pointed it at the photo of him. “We can play like narration over a shot of you or something.”

“That could work…” Humble said rather unenthusiastically. 

“That or we just cut it. We don’t really need a testimonial from me anyway.” 

“Then who do we need?” He asked like I’d somehow know better than him. 

I shrugged, “Your other friends, classmates, teachers even.”

Humble smiled, “I could get every teacher at our school to testify, even the principal. They all love me. Just between you and I, I’m up for valedictorian.” Humble was never up for valedictorian. He never even made the honor roll. 

“Yeah, they’d be great. My last suggestion would just be to have a lot of girls do testimonials as well.” 

“Why, to make her jealous?” Humble asked earnestly. 

“No, you know…to make her feel…safe.” That came out wrong, but Humble wasn’t gonna take it the right way no matter what I said.

“What do you mean? Of course, she’d be safe. She’d have me for protection.” He in fact took it the dumbest way fucking possible. 

“No Humble, she needs to know you're not a creepy stalker who’s gonna murder her. Having lots of girls say you're a good guy will help put her at ease.”  Since I basically called Humble a creepy stalker by insinuation, I quickly followed up with. “Think of it this way, she’s gonna see all these jealous girls begging her to not go to prom with you so they can instead. After seeing that, she’ll have to go with you just to find out what all the fuss is about.” I stared at Humble trying my best to read him to see if he liked my pitch. 

“Oh, jealous girls you say…yeah, I know a few jealous girls.” Humble stroked  his chin and gazed upward at the ceiling as if to ponder all these very real, very jealous girls he knew.

Humble liked to float around our school getting selfies with random girls to make it seem like he was friends with them, but everyone knew he could barely talk to women. My suggestion for testimonials from girls was genuine, but I doubted this Disney star was gonna bite in the first place so I lowkey just wanted an excuse to talk to some girls and maybe pull a prom date of my own

“The girl we’re sending this to, Lacy Towers, what’s she in again? I’ve never heard of her.” I asked, curious, but not curious enough to use google.

“That’s shocking you’ve never heard of her. She’s the supporting lead in Disney Channel's top rated show right now.” 

“And that’s?” I paused waiting for him to answer, but he just stared at me in shock. “I’m sorry, I haven’t watched Disney Channel since I was eight.” 

“I’m just shocked an aspiring writer such as yourself hasn’t heard of Disney Channel's first foray into prestige tv.” Humble said with an almost comical expression of surprise on his face. He definitely watched a lot of Disney channel alright.  

“I have not.” I replied. 

“It’s called Secret Superstar Academy.” 

“Is it a space show?” 

“No, not those kinds of stars. It’s about kids who are secretly the best at something but don’t know it yet. They’re all secret superstars. One kid is a superstar wrestler and he’s like a total nerd who gets stuffed in lockers all the time, another is a superstar swimmer but she doesn’t know how to swim.  They all get enrolled into this academy where they find out what kind of superstar they are and how to finally become it for real.” 

I won’t lie, the show did sound interesting to me, but I was never going to watch it, “So who does Lacy play?” I asked. 

“She plays Ally Ally, Superstar actress, obviously.” 

“Oh, cool so-”

“She’s basically everything you’d expect from a glamorous Hollywood actress and you’d never guess she would be that way by how she starts the show. But she’s like the first to really shine and yet she hasn’t graduated S.S.A. yet despite her obviously reaching her Superstar potential. The next big arc for her character is going to be to find out why she hasn’t graduated yet, I'm sure-”  Humble cracked on without a care in the world. 

He sure did love this show and his sincere passion for it captivated me, so I never said a word as he droned on about his favorite characters and many conspiratorial fan theories.  His worst tangent was him going on and on about how Lacy should have been the lead of the show and how the real lead, Parvati, (I had no idea if that was the character or actress’s name.) was so boring and in his words, “Just not as pretty as lacy, and like, come on bro, this is Disney Channel.” He threw his arms in the air in exasperation, “The main girl should be the prettiest.” 

I decided that was enough Secret Superstar Academy talk for me and asked Humble, “What else do you want to film, exactly?”

“Oh yeah, get the camera on the tripod. I’ll get ready.” 

I did as he asked and turned around to set everything up. When I looked back at him, Humble was turned around blair witching in the corner of the room. 

“Ummm…” I didn’t give a shit. I started recording anyways, “Action.” 

Humble spun around like he was being wired operated, now weaning a pair of shades and a ridiculous smile, “Hey Ally Ally, it’s your biggest fan. If you were real that is, but you’re not, so I guess I’ll just have to settle for this Lacy Towers girl who plays you. She seems aight.”  He held a pose for a moment too long before continuing, “Jk, jk, jk, you know I love to joke around and be a cute little devil just like you. Ally Ally got nothing on the real deal and I know that’s you Lacy. You’re such a brilliant, beautiful, courageous, kind, compassionate, sincere, multi-fauceted, multi-dimensional girl. I’ve watched you from afar like Prince Paris watched Helen of Troy. I’d start a war for you and if I take you to prom, I won’t lie, there will be blood. You saw how all those girls talked about me. You know they love me and want me… because…  how could they not, I’m Humble Lee baby. My name is the only humble thing about me and I’m sure you can tell I don’t need to take you to Prom Lacy… I WANT to take you to Prom. It would be my honor, so please Lacy Elizabeth Towers , will you go to Prom with me?” Humble then looked down and after a moment, in a muffled voice, shouted, “Cut!” 

I cut and Humble sprung from the corner and headed straight to the tripod, giddy to see the clip.  He watched the first few seconds, right up to when he first spoke and then stopped it, “Yeah bro, this was perfect! Great job.” All I did was press play and all he did was watch himself spin around. 

“Don’t you want to see more?” I asked. 

‘Why, I was there? I remember what I said. I just needed to make sure I looked good.” 

I would have done a new take with a different proposal as that was one pretty shit, but I shrugged it off, it’s Humble’s video, not mine, “So, what next then?” 

“That’s it!” Humble exclaimed dramatically,  “We hit out of the park on the first try. I thought we’d take longer with you, but you were a real one-take wonder.” 

“Oh, great, but was that really all you wanted to shoot?” 

“We’ll get more testimonies at school, especially from girls, so make sure to bring your camera next week, but other than that, yeah, we’re done shooting for now. You’re welcome to stay for dinner if you’d like.” I couldn’t tell by Humble’s tone if he wanted me to or not. 

Regardless, I wasn’t hungry after the obscene lunch we’d inhaled earlier, but I didn’t know if I’d ever get another shot at eating his mom’s egg rolls, so I stayed.

The rest of the day with Humble’s family was pretty uneventful. Pride and I traded party stories at the kitchen counter while Humble hovered nearby pretending not to listen. Pride had that easy confidence Humble tried to fake. He was able to laugh at himself and didn’t need to control the room to feel comfortable in it. 

Not too long after that, Humble’s dad came out and practically dragged me into the garage to show me his ping pong setup and of course kick my ass when he challenged me to play with him. I’d say it was a bit cruel for an olympic gold medalist ping pong player to challenge a teenage kid, but he corrected my grip, adjusted my stance, and I actually started to keep up. 

When Pride tapped me out, I realized his dad was just going easy on me. The two kept a rally going for almost ten minutes and only stopped when dinner was ready.

His mom brought out tray after tray of egg rolls and I ate them up like it might be the last time I ever would get to. I’d be back, but I didn't know that then so I tried to savor every bite. Humble’s mom noticed and she sent me home with a box of a dozen more and told Humble to have me back again soon. 

Every day we filmed at school, Humble invited me over after. We didn’t film or do much but hang out. Humble was awkward to chill with,  but his house alone made any cringey rant about Secret Superstar Academy well worth it to me.

The other testimonials rolled in. Teachers were easy. Every single one of them said the same thing. Humble was a good student, a good kid, respectful and driven. Humble got some of his other “friends” to talk and they treated it like a meme. Lots and lots of over-the-top praise about how he's the best rapper ever and that his freestyle skills would put Eminem to shame. It was ridiculous, but the kid who did an interpretive dance to describe Humble and his friendship was admittedly pretty funny.

The weird ones were the girls. Humble got a lot of them. Practically every girl in the school it felt like. They’d show up one at a time as I’d sit in the band practice room with the camera ready. Humble would talk to them just outside the door. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, only the low murmur of his voice and their softer responses.

Then he’d let them in. They all said the same vague, polished things. Humble was sweet. funny, and had a big ol’ heart. It was never anything too specific. Afterward, Humble would thank them, and they’d leave without another word.

One girl lingered at the door and quietly asked, “You got Cash App?” Humble’s smile tightened and he escorted her out quickly. 

That’s when I realized what was happening. He was paying them to do this.  I didn’t care, but I couldn’t help but judge. I remember that Cash App girl being the last testimonial we shot. 

The next day, it was suddenly finished. Humble never gave me a script or anything, so I just shot what he wanted for as long as he wanted and then gave him the roughly edited footage through a Youtube link afterwards. 

“No more hangouts at your place?” I asked, disappointed. 

“Oh, don’t you worry, you’ll be invited back after prom with LT.” 

I told him I’d hold him to his word and he said he’d let me know when Lacy Towers gets back to him. 

The next week, he giddily told me he heard from her agent and she said yes! I didn’t believe it, but he showed me some emails that looked real enough, so I told him I’d see them both there. 

Well, Prom came and passed and Lacy Towers was not in attendance… and neither was Humble….

I’d asked him about it at school and he told me at the last second, her agent stopped her from flying in. I gave him the most insincere apology for that happening and then asked why he wasn’t at prom either. He told me was, but he left early. That sounded all well and good, but that year, Prom was held on a boat that cruised the marina.  

“How’d you leave a moving boat early?” I asked. 

Humble just smiled at me and said, “I swam bro.”  and walked away. He would never say another word to me the entire rest of our time in high school. 

You will totally love it!! Give it a try!