Shantae came back to reality after spacing out a bit and recalling that memory. She had taken her father's advice over the years. A few weeks ago she even spoke with him about this new scheme of taking Tyler’s music to use as her own in order to get his stamp of approval. He gave it to her but warned her to be careful. It would be something that would have to be executed well. For this was going to be bigger than anything she had done before. A con she hoped would be the last one she had to do.
The pictures had come out great, she took a photography class a couple of years prior for fun and to develop a new skill. The music Tyler had composed was easy to read, which would make it easy for her to utilize. She started with the last one they had played and sang together. Maybe she could even incorporate a guitar part. All in all, she greedily took about twenty songs. The music he had been working on for years. The worst part was that she did this without hesitation.
Happy lights was a good and solid song. It spoke to her and since she had already sung it, it was the first one she decided she would practice. Walking over to the kitchen she dug her steel teapot out from the bottom cabinet, she hadn’t used it in a while. Then she took a few steps to the double sink that she needed to tell her landlord was leaking and filled it up. The stove only had two burners on it but it worked for her. Waiting for the water to boil she picked up the pictures that showed Happy Lights. She had admired how Tyler wrote the titles of his songs so eloquently. Still, this personal touch didn’t deter her, not when she first laid her eyes on his music and not right then and there.
After looking over the picture for a little bit to get a feel for how she really wanted to go about singing it. She wasn’t sure if she liked how she sang it the first time. The teapot boiled, letting out that whistling sound. This made her jump a little but she went over quickly to take it off the burner. When she picked it up and put it onto the other unheated burner. She scraped her palm over the one she had been using and that she had not yet turned off. It startled her and hurt so much she nearly dropped the pot. She quickly ran to put her hand under the cold water from the faucet but it wasn’t that bad, she had pulled away fast enough. After getting some aloe on it she went about singing, she didn’t want to drink the tea after that though. Her first stab at it was okay, not great by her standards. She knew this whole thing would be hard work to which she was up to.
Throughout the week she spent all of her free time singing and practicing, even adding some mediocre guitar parts to a few of the songs. At work, she kept finding herself humming which got on her boss’ nerves. Chance would tell her to stop and do her work and pay better attention to it. Perhaps someday soon she could put this job behind her and move onto something she really wanted to do.
Despite her practicing, strange things kept happening when she would practice. The first night she brought the pictures home was when it began. After the teapot incident and after she wrapped up her practicing for the night the photographs of the music on the table just flew up into the air for no apparent reason. She screamed but they fell back to the table.
Frozen while sitting on the couch she didn’t know what to do. Until she gathered herself and walked gingerly over to the small two-seater round table and started to pick them up. When she looked down at them with apprehension, she noticed that they had all been placed back in the same exact place and order. Flabbergasted, she just rushed to pick them all up and find a drawer to put them in. When she placed them in the little side table of drawers, she just sat down in front of it and closed her eyes. Was she crazy or did weird things just popping up out of nowhere?
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