Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Bye, Teagan,” Hazel says.
“Bye.”
Holding my breath, I turn the knob and walk out the door, closing it softly behind me. The girl I hoped I could be againthe one who never criedloses as I walk around the side of the house and retrieve my phone from the gravel under the window. She loses when I get into the car, leaving that bungalow and the people inside it behind me. She loses when I pull out onto the interstate and my chest cavity aches with the knowledge that I’ll never see them again, either, but they’ll be better off without someone like me.
Someone who’s brought them nothing but grief.
And after stopping in Blythe to fill my tank, she loses again. My phone buzzes with a news notification as I pull back onto the highway, and I catch the headline, reading New Song Allegedly from Infamous Rock Band, Gods of Tomorrow, Leaked from Russian VPN Today.
Tunnel vision sets in when I turn back to the road. I white-knuckle the steering wheel with sweaty palms for a minute, willing it to pass, before giving in and pulling onto the shoulder.
It’s not them, I think, clicking the link. There’s no way it’s them.
I push play on the video.
“Is it a hoax?” the news anchor asks. “The internet is divided over whether this single, leaked onto the internet from a secure Russian VPN earlier today, is really the work of infamous rockstar, Declan De Rossi, the front man for Gods of Tomorrow, who is wanted on several federal criminal charges in the US, including murder, or if it’s nothing but a ruse.”
“I’m going to go with ruse, Pete,” his co-anchor says.
“Really? Why are you so sure, Sasha?”
“Because we’ve had so many of these,” she says. “Sightings all over the world, hundreds of false reports all for the same reasonto keep the absolute chaos going. I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. And the song itself is so different from the rest of their work. Why this song? Why now? If De Rossi wanted to send a message to the fans, I don’t think this would be it.”
“I don’t know,” Pete says. “Let’s take a listen. The track is titled ‘Pretty Poisoned.’ Let us know what you think in the commentsreal or hoax?”
Bile rises in my throat as the screen goes dark, and Luca strums the intro to the song he wrote for me. The familiar lyrics in white letters scroll across the screen as Declan sings the first lines of the song.
And I can’t breathe. All I can do is hurt. It hurts like a kick to the ribs from a steel-toed boot after the man who said he’d always take care of you tells you to close your eyes and leaves you alone, sobbing in the dirt on an abandoned airfield.
But one was an addict
The other black licorice-laced cocaine
I knew this batch was poison
but shot straight into the vein
I drop my head onto the steering wheel and sob through the entire song. Declan didn’t even change itLuca said he always changes his lyrics, but it’s exactly the way I remember.
Up until the very last verse.
But dont worry, angel
Everything dies
It’s better to be poisoned
Than trapped living half-lives
And you should see the sequel, baby
Because in that one, I survive
I put your heart back in your chest, and we get away with our crimes
We only fight when we’re fucking, and we’re fucking alive
The road to ruined is paved with good intentions
And you were always mine
The video cuts back to the anchors’ voices, but I can’t make out what they’re saying because I’m climbing into the passenger seat, throwing open the door, and crawling out head-first into the ditch, retching and dry-heaving while my body attempts to expel the contents of my empty stomach. When it finally stops, I wipe my chin with the top of my hand, roll over onto my back in the dirt, and stare up at the stars. My own voice echoes in my head as my mind takes me back to the tour bus that last night, sitting at the edge of the bed after Luca, with a guitar, a sling, and a bad side with a bullet hole, promised me the world and sang me a sad song.
Maybe in the sequel, it doesn’t kill them. They get away with murder and take a nice, long vacation. Spend every day on the beach, swimming and sleeping and fucking and bleeding and screaming but never fighting except for when they’re fucking and they never get caughtnot even by Deathfor a very, very long time.
No, that wasn’t a hoax. That was real. It had to be real.
And even if Luca had written the lyrics down somewhere where Declan or some internet troll got ahold of them, no one heard me say those things to him. We were alone.
Luca is alive.
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It took me an hour to climb out of that ditch and get back behind the wheel, my entire body shaking from adrenaline for most of the drive. I barely make it back before my curfew, parking on that side street and walking back to my family’s home. My mother sits on the sofa with her laptop open in front of her and papers spread out across the cushion beside her.
“Hey, Teagan,” she says. “Where were you? You’ve been gone all day. I called a couple of times. We were starting to worry you weren’t coming back.”
“Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to be out,” I lie. “I went to Spectrum, looked for some new clothes, and tried to get my old job back at Yard House. Then I went to the beachthe quiet one with that old lighthouse in Lagunaand sat there until the sun went down.”
“Hmm ” she says. “So, did you get either one?”
“Either one what?”
“New clothes or your job back?”
“Oh no. I didn’t get either.”
“Well, that’s too bad. Keep trying.”
“Right. I’ll just grab something to eat and go to bed.”
I force a smile before making my way to the kitchen. I grab one of the croissants from the counter, make a sandwich, then stuff a bottle of wine under my shirt before heading upstairs.
I close and lock my bedroom door, and then sit in front of my laptop with my headphones, alternating between scarfing down food and sipping wine as I do the one thing I promised not to do
I go right down the rabbit hole.
I open Reddit and scroll through fan theory after fan theory. I read and listen to AI lyrics analysis and compare someone’s AI-generated Declan voice to the one on the track. Most agree they sound the same, but there’s one hole in that theory.
That song was written for me. And no one else in the world knows it.
I laugh. I don’t need to worry anymore. Not about getting a job or blending in. Not about whether I’m human or a thing or a monster. Because Luca is alive, and he won’t leave me. To him, I’m an angel. He wrote that song for me; he’s coming back for me.
And I think maybe he’s coming back tomorrow nighton his birthday, at a warehouse on Evelyn, just like that fucking bloodslut nurse said.
“You can go away now, Bone Saw,” I say aloud when I crawl under the covers. “I don’t need you anymore, either.”
It’s been a while since I’ve had to sneak out of the house, but I still remember how. I feel like I’m in high school again, making sure my door is locked and ambient noise on like it would be if I were in here sleeping before leaving through the back door, climbing over the back wall, and dropping down into the yard below.
I don’t stick the landing, falling back onto my ass, but I’ve had worse. I get up, brush off my clothes, and head down the block to my car.
The warehouse is in an industrial area of the city. It isn’t nice, but it’s also desolate. When I drive past a group of people who look like they’re headed to a secret concert, I pull over, park, and follow them, zipping my jacket and pulling the hood over my head.
And it looks like a Gods of Tomorrow concert when I step inside the building. There’s a stage set up, dim lighting, and a makeshift bar. Hundreds of people, mostly women, crowd into the space. And it feels familiar in a world that’s now so foreign. It’s like coming home.
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