AUTHOR'S NOTE: back from Chicago with two new chapters! Also a new Velvet Goldmine website, -+Velvet+SHEBANG+- which replaced the Maxwell Demon picture as my homepage link off my profile. I'd love for you to come look at it, and if you've got a site, I'd love even more to be affiliates with you! -
SHOUTOUTS:
wiseupjanetweiss - oo yes. I was looking into the publishing on before I left for Chicago… I think they books would end up being around $7.25... Depending on what page size I used. But trying to get ahold of people to do copyright releases is so insanely hard.
Katatonia - well.. No. he didn't. but he's not entirely soulless either! It's sort of like the throwing up in the toilet thing. Semi. A bit.
Miss Loaf - hehe. Nope. Not wrong at all! Although I'm sure some people would disagree with me. Hmm… maybe I'll add Maxwell as a choice on one of my Velvet Shebang polls…
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - we saw ten trillion dead stuffed parrots at the Field Museum in Chicago. I was very very tempted to smirk and laugh. But since Emob was with me and she hasn't read this far into the story yet… I only smirked and hinted around.
Roxy Eno - I've missed you the past couple chapters! Glad you've come back! And glad to have support for the book… although god knows who or where I'm supposed to contact about it!
Valo - lol. Glad I didn't disappoint you. It was an odd chapter to write… then again, this whole thing is, pretty much. -
Chapter Fourteen
Some time after that, I made a startling discovery: Maxwell had been writing Brian's songs.
I had been going through all his lyrics and everything in our little home studio, trying to find some sort of inspiration. Because I was really just stuck. Again. Hadn't come up with anything in months. Looking through all the pages and little notes and scraps of napkin or whatever (Brian had saved everything), I felt there was something odd about them. But I didn't really realize what it was until I was looking at a few of the songs side by side.
The handwriting was different. I could see some of them marked with my hasty block print here and there, other with an elegant looping scrawl that matched the note Brian had left in his Picture of Dorian Gray book. Then there was a third set.
This writing was cursive as well, but scratchier, infinitely messier than the other that I knew was Brian's. I had noticed this once before, I think, but dismissed it was Brian's being in a hurry and promptly forgotten all about what I'd seen. But now I knew better. It had been Maxwell's writing all along.
That in itself wasn't what really surprised me; I had suspected it ever since I found out he wasn't just some character in Brian's imagination. It was the extent to which it had happened which alarmed me. Looking through the notes, I saw Maxwell had authored nearly half of the "Ballad of Maxwell Demon" album. Nearly all of "Lipstick Traces." Although hit songs were fairly evenly split between the two, album space definitely wasn't.
For a while, I was wounded by this. It was fraud; Brian had been lying to everyone. He had been lying to me.
But then, he had always been, hadn't he? He said he was going to be my main man. In the end, it was always me helping him out, trying to keep him happy, trying to keep him on his feet. He had lied about being Maxwell Demon. He hadn't told me about his suicide. I don't think he could help it. Lies and charm had always gotten him everything he wanted before; I guess he figured people didn't care.
But I did.
When I confronted Maxwell about it, he was insolent as usual.
-So? I wrote the songs. Someone had to.-
"Brian was supposed to."
He shrugged. -He was always busy.-
I had to admit that was true, but not out loud.
-I don't know why you're so upset about it anyway. It's not your problem. It's Bijou's.-
"He lied to me."
Maxwell gave me this grim, almost sympathetic little smile.
-And you're just starting to realise this, aren't you?-
And I was.
"Why? Why wouldn't he just say something?"
-I'm a demon, not a mind-reader. And this isn't one of those girly movies where everyone talks about their feelings. I can't tell you.-
I glared at him.
-Go record something, Curt,- he ordered me.
And I did. A scornful song about how love is deceitful and unsympathetic. It felt horrible to regard Brian in that way, to let that be my memory of him put into words… but it was true.