Sweet, Kind, and Pleasant III
A short story by Silver Meadow
(Explicit language warning)
Melanie can’t break old habits: Grace looks through her mail. Yes, paper services are old reliable, but it’s still old. Most of her bills are set to auto-pay, so whoever mails her is A, inspiring her to open a new credit card, or B, sending coupons that require you to spend much more than what you save.
Grace sorts through the mail that her bestie allowed to pile up for two weeks. Melanie is too busy fluctuating her dopamine levels with every scroll—just like old times.
Of course, Grace’s business continues to thrive and her apartment is still high above the ground. She must remind her dear friend, Melanie, that they ain’t poor anymore!
She scolded her last week for filling an empty soap bottle up with water to ‘get the remnants.’ Now, she’s almost at the bottom of Dear Melanie’s mail.
“Do you owe Panoptic Compliance & Research Co. money?” Grace plops the envelope right over Melanie’s phone screen.
“Who?” Melanie examines the front cover. A cryptic address is printed atop: The Compliance Threshold, Entry 12. Their logo consists of two platypuses imprinted in the bottom left corner. One floats above the other, shining a light from its eye as though a mechanical imposter.
“The ancestors telling me not to open it,” Grace says.
But it’s too late. Melanie rips the seal.
Dear Melanie;
We are reaching out to you regarding court hearings from 2024. Although the case is long closed and the victims rectified, we monitored a specific moment where a witness testified against you (the gentleman whose feet were fractured by your Corvette).
We have an excerpt from his account that caught our attention: “Your honor, there were two women in that car when it happened; they were twins! The one driving was direct, which made her very attractive; then there was a sweet, gentle one with whom I had been talking about cars before the other one showed up. I know what I saw. Two beautiful women.”
The judge and his attorney, since he had recently experienced a concussion, brushed that detail of his account off. However, we find his observations fascinating and on par with research we’ve conducted within our labs. His explanation: ‘direct one’ and ‘sweet and gentle one’ evoked thoughts of an ancient dichotomy included in our areas of interest.
Melanie, we know the truth.
You were experiencing the dichotomy.
You split into two people: Pleasant vs. Unpleasant.
We invite you, Melanie Hope, to participate in our behavioral trials to understand how and why this happens to certain individuals. You will receive compensation of five million by the end of the study and a newfound comprehension of your ordeal.
Contact us if you’re interested because we are.
Best,
PCRC
“Trash,” Grace says.
“Totally,” Melanie replies. “How the hell did they get my address though?”
“Girl, it’s L.A., they probably know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who works for a research company with some dumb ass Platypus being stalked by…a submarine disguised as a Platypus?”
Melanie laughs so hard she almost regurgitates the pizza she ate fifteen minutes ago. “Five milly though? That’s a lot of money, Gracie…”
“That’s how I know you’re rich,” Grace says, sitting on her couch with her locs all in her face like back in the roommate days.
“What do you mean?”
“Greedy.”
The Spa has been holding up pretty nicely; in fact, there are talks of expansion to rent out salon suites, a joint venture. And social media is…tricky. Yes, Melanie (with the help of Mal) has too many followers who are too invested in her life, which consists of oversleeping and eye strain from reading emails.
Also, the algorithm isn’t in her favor.
It’s often something to be chased and sprinted after for the payoff to be a million-viewer-count in a sea of other million-viewer-count videos.
Slop?
Her income has flourished, nonetheless. But a little stable cash wouldn’t hurt. Emphasis on stable.
“How do you think PCRC would even study this?”
Gracie points at her forehead. “Wires to the brain, you in a cryo chamber, and Michelle Parker.”
Melanie tilts her head. Everything else sounded akin to the conventions of sinister research companies—but Michelle Parker? That’s vile.
“She’s literally the reason why you split in two. The people-pleaser’s last straw.”
And speaking of the devil, Melanie’s TikTok FYP auto-scrolls to Michelle Parker sitting on a cloud. Two plastic bottles filled with multicolored gummies rest in hands. Definitely something Melanie would’ve eaten like candy when she was a child.
“Y’all have got to try this,” she says. “I’ve struggled with sleep my whole life. Where my chronic sleepwalker girlies at?” Grace gags. “Well, I got good news for y’all! There’s hope with my bestie’s, Melissa, organic Melatonin gummies. Now I ain’t got to worry about eye bags—
Melanie shuts the entire app down. it’s too cringey.
“Thank you,” Grace says. “Her voice is so annoying. She’s forcing a blaccent, and she’s literally Black.”
“Yeah, she always did that,” Melanie says, staring long and hard at her coffee table. “She’s been acting kind of strange. Like, who is that Melissa girl? She’s always lurking around in her tags and captions….spawned out of nowhere.”
“Don’t tell me you’re concerned about Michelle Parker. The one who sued the crap out of you…her?”
Maybe it’s Melanie’s frontal lobe concluding its development. Maybe it’s the fact she watches the sunrise like back in those dungeon-hellscape-opening-shift retail days. Life has softened. A tinge of empathy floats through her subconscious now.
Michelle Parker will forever be a bad person.
But Melanie kind of wants to know why?
“I guess I feel kind of bad for her…no one is just born evil.”
But Grace rests her hand on her friend’s knee. “Please make an exception for that broad. She made you rewrite the same script until memorized for podcast episodes she was finna scrap anyway.” She pauses, sniffing the air now fraganced with a hint of smoke. “Shit, my ramen.”
Melanie is still left with her sentiment. Those thoughts. Conflicting and coinciding with such an odd request from a cryptic research company.
The thoughts roll over into the graveyard shift at Pink Diamond’s. Water pressure is just right, towels are stocked, employees are with smiles, see? What’s so hard about that Fleece Levine’s? When you don’t overwork your employees with insane metrics and skeleton crews, you achieve serenity.
Even in the middle of the night, morale seems high. Guests stream in because L.A. never sleeps. never, ever, ever.
Melanie hides in her office. Time to check and respond to a bunch of emails. She never understood why some people get upset when they receive emails from people “after hours.” They really should be disappointed in the fact that they have their email wired to their phones or whatever alert system, when they should set a boundary and keep the damn emails on their work desktop like Melanie.
She’s not a jerk; she’s just a phone call away if someone really needs her, but you’d better really need her.
While deep in a bunch of business verbiage, she should stop pretending she understands, a knock manifests on her door. Gerald, one of the nightly security guards, has that look in his eye like one of the creeps from the banned lists tried to sneak in.
“She’s back,” he says. “And she wants to talk with you…”
For some reason, thoughts of Mal emerge. Nowadays, Melanie no longer represses her emotions. Instead, she journals.
A head floats over his shoulder. That face.
“I told you to wait outside,” Gerald scolds her.
The she in question, being Michelle Parker, once again found her way to Melanie’s spa. This time, Grace ain’t here to press her. And Melanie didn’t trespass her forever because she out of all people need to hang out at a spa.
That night she slithered her way into Melanie’s office was a sight to see. No makeup, silk pjs, dark eye bags akin to being punched, and insistent on the notion that Mal was behind her additional psychological torment. Heresay (what she does best).
“Michelle,” Melanie says. “What is it today?”
It’s a basket full of gummies, a rolled-up t-shirt, and a water bottle with the logo ‘Mel’s Melatonin’ on it. After sitting that monstrosity on her desk, Michelle Parker smiles so wide and bright, you’d think someone is pulling her strings. “You know the adage, keep your friends close but enemies closer,” Michelle Parker says. “Well, here’s our chance!”
She slides an envelope across the desk. What is up with everyone and envelopes right now?
In it lies an invitation:
Mel’s Melatonin Mixer
Black women entrepreneurs, join us for a fun night of networking, celebration, and discussion, hosted by Melissa Young, founder of Mel’s Melatonin!
Meet us at The B Rooftop Lounge, Friday, 02/06/26 at 6:30.
RSVP with this phone number:
310-Melantonin
“How the hell is that a phone number?”
“We’ll be sending evites shortly,” Michelle Parker says. “But, we wanted to personally invite high value guest like you!”
Melanie holds Michelle’s gaze for a second. Should she dare to ask her to blink twice if she needs help? It’s like someone did a factory reset.
“I’ll definitely think about—”
“Don’t think, just sleep.” Michelle Parker slides the container of multicolored forbidden candy over to Melanie.
“Thanks,” Melanie says. “Too bad I need to work and operate a motor vehicle afterwards.”
“Read it,” Michelle says.
Made with natural fruit juice, kale, no sugar, natural coloring, and a note, ‘she has me wired,’ scribbled over the nutritional facts.
“Can you believe it? Zero sugar?” Michelle Parker winks her eye in quite the twitchy manner. She rolls the plastic water bottle over next, ‘meet you in The Abstract,’ is written at the base of the cup in silver Sharpie.
“BPA free,” Michelle Parker grins, somehow harder than she did before. She looks like a Michelle Parker. Moves like a Michelle Parker. Drowned in Dior perfume like a Michelle Parker. But something is way off with her personality. The high horse galloped away.
Melanie clenches her jaw like old times, dissecting what manifests before her. The last time she heard the term ‘The Abstract’ was when she was minutes away from being t-boned by an SUV.
“I’ll see her in The Abstract,” Mal said as a response to learning that she, Michelle Parker, has split in two before.
Never did Melanie interpret it as a real place to be invited to.
The melatonin releases a fragrance of berry fruit snacks. “We can try one together; they’re fast-acting. One of the many benefits.”
Michelle Parker places an additional item, a pillow, on the desk.
Melanie mouths, “WTF is the abstract?”
“Eat this, and you’ll see what I’m talking about,” Michelle Parker replies.
Is it smart to take candy from a woman who sued her silly and has broken the restraining order she requested? Melanie takes two.
One eyelid shuts. The other flutters.
Lights out.
And good thing this pillow is here because they drop like dead weight.
Desert winds howl around. They’ve been transported to Nevada. Not the fun part, but the part you’d pray your car doesn’t break down in (literally everywhere outside of Vegas).
Michelle Parker taps Melanie’s shoulder, sending a pulse of fear through her nervous system.
“Welcome to The Abstract,” she says. “We can talk freely here…”
Dust, hoodoos, and a ridge spanning the horizon. It’s like a space desert. It’s the Eagle Nebula…okay, not really, but perhaps a distant cousin.
Melanie pauses at the night sky in a perfect balance of light and darkness. Illuminated purple as though the sun didn’t want the day to end, and with it, a shadowy figure stands under the darkening horizon as her feet scrape the ground.
A zoochosis-level repetition. Eyes red like a bull only held back by its pen.
“What’s that?”
“Remember that story she told us about being chased into a sunset? Well that’s who was after her,” a voice echoes from the top of a hoodoo. Mal. “My favorite loser turned ultimate baddie. Hey.” Mal waves at the other half of herself.
“Yeah, what that evil thing said,” Michelle Parker adds. “She doesn’t chase me when she’s around. The only good thing about her presence.”
“Love you too, Michelle Farter.”
“It’s Parker, don’t talk.”
Melanie slaps the crap out of her face. Perhaps she’s dreaming? Maybe Michelle Parker didn’t show up to her job and offer Melatonin gummies that actually were interdimensional multi-vitamins.
“I thought Mal was with me, in my conscience, fused together as one…how are we separated?”
But Michelle Parker goes on to explain: The Abstract is an extraction, a place where two versions of oneself could co-exist. And she needs Melanie’s help, bad.
Melissa, an old high school friend who fell into a coma, rose from the dead and has come back for blood. How she fell into said coma? Michelle Parker doesn’t elaborate, but Melissa got dirt on her. Dirtier than her eating two dozen donuts every week. In one day.
“Her code name is Melatonin Queen. For the love of everything good on this planet, do not say her name here or else that,” she points at the silhouette. “Will lose her shit.”
If Melissa is ‘coming back for blood,’ that means Michelle Parker, as always, wronged her.
“I know you’re a homicidal individual,” Melanie says. “Just be honest, did you try to kill her?”
Mal laughs so loud she loses balance and falls from the hoodoo. In the real world, that would’ve been fatal, but in The Abstract? Not a single bone broken.
Michelle Parker curls her lips inward. “No, I just didn’t have the means to save her…”
Melanie worked in Michelle Parker’s dungeon long enough to know she sucks at lying. Not only that, but she’s also an S-tier level manipulator, somehow. Every word contorts into a benign melody.
However, Melanie refuses to dig any further. The sooner Michelle Parker tells her what she wants, the quicker she can leave this creepy realm. Even if the chick lies.
“I need your help,” Michelle Parker says. “I need you to destroy Mel’s Melatonin like how you destroyed everything for me. Split in two and ruin her life! Can you?”
Mal wraps her arm around Melanie’s shoulder, kind of trippy. Gives the phrase ‘give yourself a hug’ a new meaning. Mal points at both versions of herself. “You want us to split up again?”
Michelle Parker nods.
She has no clue what it took for Melanie to achieve that level of people-pleasing. Years, and years, and years of repression that cannot be recreated. The chance of Melanie ignoring her feelings like that again is lower than the Mariana Trench.
Even so, say they did split up, why in the world would they help Michelle Parker?
“I can’t see why any of this is my problem,” Melanie says. “I’m working my ass off trying to pay the debt I owe you. I’m even considering being a test subject for some extra cash.”
And five million dollars framed as ‘extra cash’ like some seasonal role is questionable.
“Considered it paid off,” Michelle Parker says. “Only if you help me.”
“Bitch how you gon’ help us pay off the money we owe you?” Mal took the words right out of Melanie’s mouth.
“Look, if you think I’m bad, you’ll definitely want to stop Melatonin Queen from capitilzing any further off these sedation gummies.”
Melanie and Mal exchange looks; Mal sticks her tongue out.
“Aight Michelle,” Mal says. “We’re a packaged deal now, so we can’t split in two, but I promise I’ll be there one way or another.”
“What the evil one said.” Melanie puts her otherhalf in a headlock. “Anything to get me out of this damn place.”
Something buzzes in the expanse. A ringtone.
Berry-flavored drool falls from Melanie’s mouth. Dang, these really are sedative.
“Hi, baby. I haven’t heard from you in a while….are you ok?” Michelle Parker has some man on speaker phone.
“Eli, what did I tell you about calling me while I’m out on business? I hate you.” She hangs up. “Don’t drive for the next hour unless you wanna be in another neck brace. Be there or be square, Melanie.”
Must’ve been a mic drop moment for Michelle Parker.
And here it begins.
An alliance no one would ever calculate being forged.
Melanie’s visit to The Abstract rings thoughts of Panoptic Compliance & Research Co.’s offer to put wires up to her brain or whatever Grace said. So she agrees to participate in the research, so PCRC sends more information via mail (ew).
A story.
Grace narrates just hours before this “Mel’s Melatonin Mixer” entrepreneurial event. “Centuries ago,” Grace says. “There lived a maiden with skin as white as snow, that bitch need to go to the hospital, who tended to every wound the village suffered…”
A little regret trickles in at the choice of narrator and her insertions; nonetheless, the story is told.
The Fair Maiden completed every favor asked of her villagers. Gave away the little ingredients she had, tended to crops that were not hers, serenaded weeping village children—whatever she could help, she would.
But one day, another maiden, one full of greed and wealth, settled down on the outskirts of the village, seeking someone to make her personal servant. Every finger pointed at The Fair Maiden, who, according to Grace, was in desperate need of an ICU.
They believed the role would be perfect for her, and she merrily believed so as well. Whatever made the villagers happy. The Rich Maiden asked not too much of her. Nothing more than what the villagers had her laboring over.
“Then she would dress her up and invite her to pilates? Just kidding, to fancy events in mansions and palaces,” Grace reads.
The parallels are evident. One way or another, this story sounds just like what Melanie went through. The whole thing: being stretched thin by retail, chronic people pleasing, and The Rich Maiden (Michelle Parker).
The work and leisure balanced harmoniously, so the Fair Maiden thought. The rich maiden began to hold a magnifying glass up to any tasks completed. Too many specs of dust were left on the fireplace’s mantle, whatever meal was prepared was too salty or bland, no good, and her dog, Sai, often rested on her lap since the rich Maiden was too busy powdering her face.
The weight pressed down on her patience and inspired self-reflection, an epiphany of sorts that changed every favor done in retrospect. True that every villager saw her kindness, but perhaps as only a means to fulfill whatever they could do themselves but simply choose not to.
Perhaps, this made the fair maiden upset. Silently disgruntled. This occurrence, too: this quiet anger rumbled in her soul for years. Her joyful heart was only so because she made others happy, while the others made her their community servant.
“So, one fateful day, The Fair maiden fell into a deep sleep, brought to you by Michelle’s dumb friend’s melatonin gummies,” Grace reads and remixes.
Unbeknownst to her, the anger separated from her soul. Now alive, now with breath, now without The Fair Maiden’s confines. She took to the town’s square and screeched at the top of her lungs, waking her neighbors from their slumber.
Some believed she was struck with madness, and perhaps she was. The Fair Maiden spat curses at the concerned townspeople, ignited a fire, and then painted every structure with flames.
“She burnt everyone and thing to crispy bacon,” Grace reads. “Then she went to the rich lady’s house, then burned her shit up too.”
The smoke and ash awakened The Fair maiden, her former benign self. She and the rich maiden exited the house in bewilderment, but the townspeople pointed their fingers to incriminate The Fair Maiden, who was slumbering.
She begged for their understanding. For it was not she who burned the village. Someone who merely looked like her did then vanished. However, this did not sit well with the villagers who threw her into a river, washing her downstream and into the wilderness.
Never to be found again.
The End.
“This sound like something we would’ve read in the third grade,” Grace says. “Wait, there’s more.”
Handwritten is a statement at the end of the story:
This account is based on a true story and is just one of many like it. We believed this story resonated with your dichotomy most, Melanie. If you don’t believe the validity of our accounts, you may use a search engine of your choice to try to divulge more information. Many have worked overtime to scrub these accounts from the internet and library sources.
Take our word for it 🙂
“Grace,” Melanie says. “What did I just get myself into?”
This is only the informational stage of the six-month-long research study. Melanie must study ancient and, in this case, medieval accounts of ‘The Dichotomy’. Then they’ll collect information about her afterwards.
But now? Grace and Melanie stand around a table, swamped in the bog of entrepreneurs. In some rooftop lounge with Beyoncé, SZA, and Jhene Aiko buzzing underneath the crowd. However, the biggest stars of this event have yet to show up.
“Everybody here looks so dang snooty,” Grace says, eating her third round of hors d’oeuvres for the night. She told Melanie it’s something called bulking, where you eat more calories than you typically burn to build muscle while weight training.
As if Grace needs more muscle.
What can Melanie say? She should take up after her and stop exercising her eyelid muscles by closing them for afternoon naps. “It’s not really giving snooty,” Melanie says. “Five women just fangirled over your company.”
“That’s because they want to monopolize…”
“Or, they just like candy covered fruit.”
Their conversation is snipped by a rich maiden, Michelle Parker, standing under the Dj booth with a mic in her hands. Finally, they can get this shit started.
“Thank you all my beautiful Black queens for showing up tonight,” she says. “Isn’t it amazing to have so many businesswomen in the room?”
Her sentiments ring applause as another woman emerges beside her. “I want to introduce the coordinator, the innovator, the originator, the founder of Mel’s Melatonin, and my bestie, Melissa Young!”
“Why the hell she rhyming like that?” Grace’s question layers atop the additional applause; this time, it’s much louder. Melanie just knows that pisses Michelle Parker all the way off.
Now Melissa, she’s radiant. Her silky black hair shines and flows like lava. Her smile creates a cloud of warmth. Her voice, “I want to take the chance to meet every single one of you,” smooth as fog over a creek…if the fog was a valley girl. “After my terrible accident that left me in a coma for five years, it’s truly a blessing to be able to flip the pain to success.”
Is this really the villain Michelle Parker warned them about?
This woman, fiddling with her necklace and glancing at the floor? Those soft eyes? She’s cuter than Melanie!
“Wow,” Grace says. “An angel and a demon.”
No need to elaborate on which is which.
As the night drags on, they make way to Grace and Melanie’s table; by the time they do, Grace is a little tipsy (they better be glad). Of course, they shake hands, exchange pleasantries, and Michelle Parker gives them an unwarranted embrace.
“Michelle told me so much about you all,” Melissa says. “You sure know how to work out differences…there’s a message in that: an enemy doesn’t have to be an enemy forever, and friendships can blossom in the end.”
Michelle does that twitchy wink again. It’s one thing to assist her, but another to cosplay as her friend.
Grace scoffs, “I’d rather be a sewer water connoisseur during the height of Covid.”
Obviously, Grace is left out of the loop because what happens in The Abstract stays in The Abstract. She can’t play along. But even if she did know, Grace would still refuse.
“Gracie,” Melanie says. “Too soon…”
“Yeah, Gracie,” Michelle Parker adds. “Stop barking.”
As stated before, Michelle Parker better be glad Grace is under the influence.
Melissa let’s out a delicate chuckle, “It’s okay, no offense taken. I somehow caught Covid, but I was too unconscious to remember any of it. Anyway, I wanted to connect with you all on a possible plan that can elevate all our businesses…”
So Melissa shares the details. Imagine a 24/7 spa that not only promotes relaxation through traditional services but also sells products essential to serenity. For example, a partnership with Mel’s Melatonin. They could open up a stand in her spa to sell exclusive merchandise.
This would drive membership subscriptions and help Mel’s Melatonin gain traction outside of the internet world. Besides, influencers need to stick together! That’s why Grace’s candy company could elevate the plan even more.
Melatonin sour strips. Don’t worry about your enamel, just chew them before bed then you’ll be unconscious.
“It’s a hell no from me, respectfully. I need another drink,” Grace says, vanishing to the bar.
So the snag presents itself: Melissa’s business plans suck. In fact, her business kind of sucks, too. Sure, the gummies work perhaps illegally too well, but a Melatonin stand in a spa? Melatonin flavored candy?
Michelle Parker does more of her creepy face twitching.
Some nods as well.
Melanie catches her drift. “Would it be berry flavored like the gummies? If yes, then we can discuss further,” Melanie says.
Further discussion will be held at a private group pilates class that Michelle Parker invites everyone involved (yes, even Grace) to.
But before that, Melanie is a test subject.
She sits in her apartment, with Kai lying at her feet. No matter what, she can’t keep that dog out of any room she’s in; how could Melanie be upset? Kai suffered years of being ignored by Michelle Parker.
Kai is the only good thing to come from her experience working in her evil lair.
The moderator, a default white silhouette profile picture against a gray background, speaks. “Melanie,” he says, he being AI from the lack of natural inflection. “We will present a series of questions in which you will answer to the best of your ability and recollection.”
They start off with number one. “Would you describe your upbringing as difficult? If so, why?”
“Indiana.”
Short and simple.
“Melanie, the answer you provided is inadequate.”
Of course, she knows what they meant. The single-parent household, the bullies at school, and the spaghetti for dinner every night being the reason she needs antacids now. And that she shares, although Indiana should’ve been efficient.
The moderator continues to probe her with questions of upbringing, emotional responses, and the lack thereof. Even discussions of Grace pop up.
“What is your relationship with your former roommate, Grace, like?”
Where does Melanie start? Grace has been by her side since grade school days. Sleeping over each other’s houses, eating mom’s cooking, and allowing Melanie to go ultimate nerd mode without a drop of judgment.
“Grace? That’s my sister.”
Period, point, blank. Fax no printer, Michelle no Parker, Ab no stract, A no I—
But a new question in particular triggers a primitive muscle.
“How would you describe your time working in customer service?”
Where should Melanie start, again?
Fleece Levine’s supermarket: a hellscape. From the nagging old farts to the team members with the cumulative maturity of a prepubescent child who was never told no—the opportunities are endless.
Melanie sinks into her chair. Way to kill her mood. “Some say retail made them hate people, but I already did,” she says. “It’s just that retail contorted the limbs of my hatred then created a whole new monster…”
Yes.
If anyone ever wondered why society cannot move forward as a collective, try cashiering for half an hour. Try to arrange shelves just for a foamed-mouth consumer to rummage through it all. Try coaxing the insecure individuals who enter the arena of the customer-service paradigm to create a power imbalance with the minimum-wage worker, to not, in fact, hate themselves, when it’s completely understandable why they do.
When staffing was short, and self-checkout was the only way, some high-brow individuals would wave Melanie over and demand she scan all their items because “this is your job,” when in actuality her job was to contain herself so none of these half-wits would be the reason she would be incarcerated.
Her job was to also make the customers smile, make the ones who don’t deserve to feel better about themselves, feel the deep embrace of self-love, even when that requires some extent of self-reflection, where their extent is non-existential.
Management would sit in the office, bend a knee for the demanding customers, and get six figures for rinsing and repeating that cycle.
The high-brow individuals, if anything, should’ve demanded the woman getting paid to sit on a plush office chair to ring up their groceries. They believed their bouts were with the minimum-wage worker and not with those in corporate offices using the aforementioned as collateral for outrageous pricing and policies.
Melanie likes to believe the “high-brow” individuals are going to Hell.
Of course, there are angels. Some who didn’t yell at her over prices she had no say in setting. Some greeted her back and told her to have a nice day upon exiting. A glimmer of hope in such a wretched world…
Just to walk into the breakroom and realize her team members found a way to leave dried up food on the microwave knobs. Incompetent.
“I feel like I interacted with a lot of people who couldn’t deal with themselves, so they went to a place where someone had no choice but to,” Melanie says. “Customer service gave me premature white hair for reasons as such.”
“Would you say that was your breaking point?”
Melanie chews at her lip. “No,” she says. “Michelle Parker was my breaking point.”
And said breaking point wants everyone at the studio by three.
Now, Melanie is about to be on the reformer next to hers. Grace, Melanie, and Michelle Parker sit before the instructor.
Grace has told Melanie pilates ain’t for her, calling it ‘gimmicky.’ All she needs is a playlist, weights, and for the men stalking her sets to die (her words, not Melanie’s).
Anyway, after much stretching on useless contraptions that promoted a faint outline of what Melanie would like to believe are abs once upon a time, so maybe Pilates isn’t useless at all, Grace, the group sits in a circle on the waxy floor.
It’s been two weeks since the networking event, and Melissa probably wants answers: yes or no to her horrible business proposal? But Melissa is a sweetheart who won’t press Melanie unlike her assistant, Michelle Parker.
“Okay Grace,” Melissa says. “Drop the workout routine. You’re built like X-Men Storm!”
Grace gnaws on her dry ass protein bar. “You would need to eat a lot more for anything to take effect,” Grace says. “You’re light as a feather…but it’s cute on you. You’re like a Malibu Barbie.”
“Really? Michelle and I grew up there. Michelle doesn’t like to talk about it, though,” Melissa says, knudging Michelle.
Explains her vocal fry and not Michelle Parker’s lack thereof. Her whole brand screams ‘I-come-from-a-working-class-family.’ To speak honestly, knowing how false the persona is, Melanie would five-star her face if she tried to offer her financial advice while she was enslaved by Fleece Levine’s.
She’d be like, “Just quit your job and invest in stocks! If you fail, that’s okay because your dad is a neurosurgeon!”
Michelle Parker doesn’t just want to talk about Malibu, but she’s not talking at all. She’s too busy blinking Morse code at Melanie, darting her eyes at Melissa. “Oh my goodness,” she finally says. “I’m so sore I could use a spa day! Specifically, one that sells melatonin gummies,” she sighs. “Wished that existed…”
An awkward silence erupts.
Melissa has her wired, so her annoyance is a given, and Grace just can’t stand Michelle Parker no matter what. Now it’s up to Melanie to boost morale. “You’re so right, queen,” she says. “Melissa, I wanted to tell you in person that I’m 100% interested in your business proposal!”
She must take Michelle’s word for it, because if everything is true, Melissa is a bad person.
The alleged bad person rests her hand on Michelle’s. “I want to earn revenue so I can donate funds to the fire recovery. So much of our home was destroyed…”
She’s a bad person, right?
Somebody knocks on the door. A man. Both Melissa’s and Michelle’s eyes roll. Nonetheless, he’s allowed entry.
“This I cannot bear,” Melissa says, walking right past the guy with zero acknowledgement.
The first thing he does is bring Michelle Parker in for an embrace that only he appears to enjoy. “I haven’t seen you all week,” he says. “I can’t live without you.”
Grace narrows her eyes. Melanie telepathically reads her ‘are we interrupting something?’ brain waves.
He gasps, hiding Michelle behind him, “Baby, don’t worry. They won’t hurt you if I’m here…”
Because if they had to jump M.P., what better place than a pilates studio?
“I don’t know you, but Imma assume you’re full of shit like her,” Grace says.
Come to find out, he is full of crap because he chose to date a creature like Michelle Parker, her boyfriend if you will. Eli, someone who refuses the title influencer. The term ‘YouTuber’ lands softer on his ears.
“Wait, I’ve seen his videos before,” Melanie says. “You almost went to jail for Arson because of that one prank.”
“Potential criminal record? No wonder you’re attracted to that,” Grace says.
“Anyways, Eli, I want you to meet my new friends, since my other friends ditched me because I stood them up at the Streamys to check on my other dear friend, Melissa.” Michelle’s tone is too sweet. Pure cane sugar.
“Y’all friends now?”
Michelle Parker wraps her arms around Melanie and Grace like buddies do. “We’ve settled our differences.”
Now Melanie blinks Morse code at Grace, telling her not to strike their adversary. With much restraint, she yields.
Eli gives Melanie a fist bump; Grace looks him up and down when offered.
Opposites attract (so they say).
It’s not long before Melissa’s sedative stand is constructed and placed in Pink Diamond’s 24/7 Spa. Members either marvel or scratch their heads at this anomaly. Regardless of how perceived, Melanie plays along for her (and Michelle’s) sake.
A mascara-stained tear escapes Melissa’s eye. “Thank you so much for taking a chance on me,” she says.
A chance or a risk? Either way, Melanie hugs her back.
“You know,” Melissa continues. “Michelle was right, you are a good person.”
Melanie isn’t dumb enough to believe Michelle Parker regards her as ‘a good person.’ The girl stole her life once upon a time, but who is Michelle Farter to judge someone else’s moral character?
Melanie sits on the bench next to Melissa, watching members wrapped in towels and robes meander. It’s known that Michelle Parker is wired, perhaps being controlled by Melissa. She’s done lowdown things and created all kinds of lies; however, behaving as an innocent angel to fool Melanie would be too repulsive for even a soul like hers.
But the question is, what leverage does Melissa have over Michelle Parker?
“I try to do good,” Melanie says. “Now that we got all that business stuff out of the way, I’d like to get to know you.”
“Well,” Melissa says. “I’m Melissa Young, twenty-two, born in Malibu. My dad is an Architect and my mom a retired Singer. I used to surf, but I saw a Great White shark, which reminded me I really was just like playing around in their house and like—”
“How’d you meet Michelle Parker?”
Melissa wedges her tongue between her top and bottom molars, taking a beat. She narrows her eyes at the ground. “Sierra Shores Academy…back in 10th grade.”
You see, Michelle Parker and Melissa grew up in the same world; this they both knew, but didn’t want to do what was expected: meet.
Everyone predicted that the only two Black students would become friends, at least that’s how Melissa saw it. So instead she hung out with the girls who always asked dumb ass questions about her hair but never asked before running their grubby fingers through it. It was torture.
And Michelle Parker did the same.
Of course, Melissa had friends outside of Malibu, but they were outside of Malibu. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if they wanted to be friends or if they wanted her mom to sign their mom’s album.
But in fourth period American History, they had no choice but to interact. The way they would glance at each other after all them white kids did that doe-eyed stare while the teacher covered the shortest chapter in the textbook: slavery.
A glance turned into partnering for presentations, to hanging out on the beach, to going over each other’s houses, to eventually creating a YouTube channel.
“We named it ‘Magnificent M’s,’ kind of silly,” Melissa says. “Everything was okay until the accident. I fell off a cliff, a ridge broke my fall, then I was unconscious for the next five years…”
“Five years?” Melanie asks.
“Yeah, but I’m back now…It’s good to see Michelle’s success. Only one of us could make it.” Melissa lifts off the bench and gets back to adjusting the stand. Every product must be in perfect alignment and catch the light.
Her final remark, “only one of us could make it,” sticks to Melanie.
But Michelle Parker wails her arms. “Don’t believe everything she says! She likes pity. Trust me.”
Here they stand in The Abstract again (yes, involuntary for Melanie). She likes to trust the concept of sleep in which you don’t get transported to some realm of existence to have secret meetings with your enemy.
“Michelle,” Melanie says. “I’m still waiting on the evil part. She seems more normal than you.”
“No. No, no, no, no, no. That girl has me wired, phone tapped, tracked, and every video I want to post goes through her first. Do you get that?”
“Yes, I get that. But what I don’t get is why. Why would she do this?”
Sandy rocks pelt the back of Michelle Parker’s head: Mal atop the hoodoo like always. “Do it, or else we’ll show her ‘FranklinCanyonPark_Vlog.’”
The silhouette, now buried up to its waist from scraping its feet in the same spot, screeches.
“I ain’t afraid of this place anymore…kind of,” Melanie says. “Tell me the truth or we’re out, and she’ll chase you forever.”
“Okay, okay, fine,” Michelle Parker takes a drawn-out breath. “That day Melatonin Queen fell from the cliff…I could’ve saved her, but I chose not to. And that is what led to her coma.”
“In other words, her ass need to be in jail,” Mal interjects.
“Wow, Michelle,” Melanie says. “This sounds like jealousy.”
“I might’ve been jealous, but I’m telling you she deserved it. How do you want me to prove it to you?”
“Wire her back. Goodnight, some of us have things to do tomorrow.”
Yes, and the thing to do in question is crash on the couch with her bestfriend.
PCRC demanded a pint of blood from Melanie and sent some guy with circular glasses and the gift of small talk to do it. No lab coat, he could pass as a random civilian poking a needle into her vein.
Grace, her signed witness, makes her eat pancakes swamped in syrup. “They better not be sending no creepy ass phlebotmist in a trench coat again. Just what kind of information are they tryna gather?”
Melanie shrugs. Her indifference could be inspired by lethargy from giving her blood away to some mysterious research company or from her sleep getting hijacked by The Abstract Michelle Parker reels her into.
“You know I looked them up,” Grace adds. “Nothing.”
“Maybe that’s because they prefer secrecy…”
“Right, and that isn’t alarming at all, sis.”
“They asked me about you. Who knows, they might want you to join in on the research.”
Grace funnels her orange juice down her throat like some maniac, then slams it on the coffee table. “I ain’t helping them hoes.”
Now Grace? She’s not the type to get all her news from social media. Back in their roommate days, she’d watch the morning, afternoon, and nightly news like Melanie’s mom did back in the day. And since Grace helped her with this strange bloodwork, she gets leverage over the T.V.
Channel 22 news, the station that covered the accursed Fleece Levine’s supermarket transformation to a 24/7 spa because of some vengeful ex-team member who now sits on a couch with stars floating around her head.
That’s why Michelle Parker and Melissa Young sitting across from the news anchor must be a figment.
“Today we have Melissa Young, owner of Mel’s Melatonin, and Michelle Parker, a highly accredited influencer, here with us to share their magnificent story.” The news anchor faces the two with a pleasant smile. “We covered your story five years ago, Melissa. But now you turned your unfortunate accident into a message about triumph.”
Melissa nods. “Being in a coma for five years changed the way I view life and, in some ways, sleep. Believe it or not, the coma was the best sleep I’ve ever gotten…”
“I wish I could rewind that because ain’t no way in hell she just said that,” Grace interjects. But Melanie turns the volume up.
“I wanted to help other people access that kind of comfort without having to suffer head trauma,” Melissa continues. “I also wish everyone could experience the comfort of like, having a friend like Michelle.”
Michelle grins, not saying a peep.
“From the moment I woke up to now, Michelle Parker has been there for me and gave me the proper exposure for Mel’s Melatonin. I wouldn’t be here if it like weren’t for Michelle. Trust me.”
The news anchor pouts at the bestfriends. “Michelle,” she says. “This miraculous recovery turned entrepreneurial venture must be a dream come true.”
Michelle’s eyes tack onto the nearest camera, breaking the fourth wall real bad.”Some of us are just wired for success. Wired.”
“We feel that connection here at Channel 22, we’re wired to your stories, and we wish you young ladies the best!”
The same channel that covered the girl who knocked herself unconscious, screwing around on some cliff, reports the story of a miracle as that same girl sits before them with her puppet.
A millisecond before they cut to commercials. The camera zooms out to the production crew and full set: lights, cameras, the meteorologist standing there like an NPC, and Melissa, staring daggers at Michelle.
Grace blocks a Mel’s Melatonin ad when she stands in front of the T.V., “You want me to keep it real with you? That Melissa chick is like really weird…she’s like those women who are overly nice to like get what they want.”
Grace sounds more like a cheerleader than a valley girl. Her bestfriend is shaken into half-alertness because of that.
“Promise you’ll never talk like that again,” Melanie says. “Between you and me, Michelle told me she’s evil.”
“And evil recognizes evil,” Grace says. “You ate when you let her set up shop in your spa.”
If Michelle’s claims are accurate, Melanie better run. Sure, they’re undermining Melissa, but what if Melissa has plans of her own? If she’s evil enough to have Michelle Parker under her control, then she’s capable of much more heinous efforts.
That’s why membership sign-ups and traffic stretch exponentially for the month. Melissa’s story and news segments really spoke to them because so many recalled the tragic event and assumed the girl would never wake again.
But oh, she’s alive. She’s growing her melatonin empire. Dodging lawsuits. And keeping Michelle Parker muzzled.
The time to strike back is now.
Battle of the supplements.
Their business agreement had terms, a bunch of verbiage, but a few clear-cut rules: No vendor could sell similar products. What’s the opposite of sleep, though? Alertness, focus, and sharpness. Concentration gummies (placebo overload).
Some may wonder why anyone would want to be so concentrated that they could make out every spec of dust in the air at a spa, but wonder no more—it has been proven through Melanie’s questionable and probably not reliable sources that deeper relaxation is achieved through adequate focus.
Members flock from the Melatonin stand to the placebo stand. Added sugar, unhealthy dye, and it might just be considered candy, but hey, anything to divert the sales away from Mel’s.
That’s not all.
Michelle Parker grits sand in her palm, in The Abstract again. “I wired her back like you said; she can’t trace it to me.”
“Why not?” Melanie asks.
“She was talking to my boyfriend, Eli.”
“About what?”
“I hope she doesn’t get buried alive,” Mal says, slicing right through this conversation.
The Michelle Parker before Michelle Parker pushed her from her terrace. Her eyes peer above the pit she dug herself into.
“I can’t play the audio in here.”
“Well then, text it to me. I can make an anonymous account and—”
“Eli is going to upload it…”
The guy she allegedly hates is going to take a digital bullet for her.
“That way,” Michelle Parker continues. “Melissa won’t pin the blame on me—”
Michelle Parker smothers her mouth like she unleashed an ancient curse.
“Uh oh,” Mal says. “Someone said the no-no name.”
The good Michelle Parker, the silhouette, halts scraping her feet. One hand slams onto the dirt above, and the other follows soon after. Each palm cracks the desert foundation beneath them.
“Melissa…” The silhouette holds that word longer than a technically trained singer.
An earthquake reminds Melanie that this is really L.A. all over again. Hoodos crumble, the ground sinks beneath, and Melanie does what she always does during nightmares: wait to die.
She awakes on her desk. Another graveyard shift at the spa. Another day the metrics show who’s winning. The placebo candy.
“Melanie, Melanie, Melanie,” Grace drums on the desk. The door flung wide open is probably why she woke up and not the nightmare death. “Look!”
Grace’s phone bulbs too damn bright for someone who just woke up.
“Jovanna left, Rhia left, her parents don’t care. If she were in my situation, they would’ve pulled the plug,” Melissa says. “But you? You’re like pesky….”
Melanie rubs her eyes, hoping there’s a visual but it’s just a black screen.
“Michelle is a terrible person who’s done some like terrible shit. I suggest that if you don’t want to be a part of her downfall, you get the hell out of my way. Also, anyone who just even saw her passing would know you’re not her type.”
It’s done: the smear campaign.
Right?
But they call Melissa a diva.
Eli a clown in his comments because why hasn’t he dumped Michelle Parker’s sorry ass already?
Guess Michelle Parker forgot the internet world kind of hates her, and she squashed her only chance of redemption. Even if she must be held up by her strings, Melissa Young has freed the tarnished influencer from the onslaught of boo’s and tomatoes.
Everyone but her self-loathing boyfriend left her. The story of the girl who’s at her bestfriend’s side through her recovery. The one who platformed Mel’s Melatonin. Who shared a piece of her empire, lands softer on the eyes of the public, versus the one who only held her dog in photos to increase engagement.
No visits to The Abstract after this audio goes viral. Just the regular routine. The thoughts. The dreams. The nightmares (explaining company policy to a person who follows the logic of tantrum = get what I want). Silence from Michelle Parker.
Another message from PCRC: An abstract.
Grace narrates to her friend on the couch once again. Melanie comprehends texts when read aloud to her (ask any English teacher burdened with her presence).
“The Agitator,” Grace says.
Through their recent studies, Panoptic Compliance & Research Co. found that individuals experiencing the dichotomy do not do so on a timed basis; rather, “The Agitator,” a person, place, or event surrounding the aforementioned, evokes the dichotomy.
“For example,” Grace says. “We’ve found that Michelle Parker’s stupid ass was ‘The Agitator.’ Your details provided during the interview have only confirmed our pre-existing beliefs.”
And unlike The Fair Maiden, who stood no chance of unifying with her “unpleasant” half, being washed down a river and all, Melanie experienced a rare phenomenon where the two halves band together to take down one evil: The Agitator.
“Although Michelle Parker won the trial because the judge was dumb as hell,” Grace says. “You won the existential battle because you successfully destroyed her empire and remerged, piecing back seamlessly.”
Every dichotomy is sparked by “The Agitator,” and once the adversary is defeated, the dichotomy will cease to exist.
“Melanie,” Grace says. “What you telling them?”
Did she tell PCRC every little detail? No. For all Melanie knows they might try to lock her in a cryochamber and thaw her body in the year 4025, where society has somehow continued to exist and is capable of studying minds as such.
“Half-truths,” Melanie says. “I didn’t tell them about the car accident, which pretty much brought us back together because Mal technically died. I just said I had an epiphany, in which I did, I apologized to Mal, then we merged…”
Can Melanie express her queries regarding The Abstract? Could she really trust PCRC with this information? They could be evil and use this information to power a deadly mass weapon. Not that she’d want that to happen, but as long as her check clears.
But Grace, her candy-obsessed bestie, lets the papers fall from her hands. “Slay.”
The validity of “The Agitator” theory is enough to float around Melanie’s head: this idea of a certain person, event, or both, inspiring The Dichotomy. So when she sleeps tonight, the doors of The Abstract finally crack open.
Melanie does her confession about what kind of research she got herself tied up with, what kind of information PCRC is after.
“They’re saying I’m ‘The Agitator?” Michelle Parker keeps one eye on Melanie and the other on the silhouette like some lizard. Or Melanie just dislikes her enough to see it that way.
Melanie nods. “Don’t get offended, I thought about it this way: You’re my agitator, but who’s your agitator? Melis-“
Michelle Parker smoothers Melanie’s mouth. Should she bite her hand?
“Melatonin Queen,” Mal says, lying atop her hoodoo as always. “You know Michelle ain’t slept for three days straight after her other half almost wrecked this shit? I’m talking full blown sandstorm.”
So that’s why Melanie couldn’t reach The Abstract: this silhouette, above ground, scraping her feet all over again. Guess the sand filled the pit she dug herself in.
Michelle Parker clenches her eyes and chews her bottom lip. “Energy drinks could only take you so far, and that so far being an ICU, I crashed tonight. But you and that demon are here, so she won’t chase me!” Michelle Parker claps.
“I think you might need her, though,” Melanie says. “What inspired your dichotomy?”
Michelle Parker looks at her enraged silhouette, on zoo-chosis high alert, then looks at Melanie. “My parents. You forgot what I told you?”
“Girl, we’ve lived many lives between now and that time, you even found someone who likes you…that reminds me that there truly is somebody for everybody.”
“No low-hanging fruit, Melanie,” Mal says.
“Melatonin Queen might be evil,” Melanie adds. “I ain’t trying to take that away from you. It’s just that she’s your evil.”
And if Michelle Parker and The Silhouette make like Melanie and Mal, Melissa will malfunction, and her melatonin company and whatever else she situated atop Michelle’s already crumbling empire will falter.
The Michelle Parker in question points at who she used to be in full. “That thing needs to remain in the shadows. I can’t let her catch me. I don’t know what’ll happen…what I might remember.” Tears bulge on her waterline. “Melanie, I can’t.”
The first time she’s ever called Melanie by her name. Melanie finds it pretty damn disrespectful when someone never addresses her by her name, ever. Don’t get her wrong, she’s not like one of those self-important individuals who believe every person is financially compensated for wronging them, but rather somebody who identifies every ounce of a slight, no matter how microscopic.
That’s how she knows Michelle Parker, the manipulator, has her hands tied. “I’m not saying I won’t help you. I’m just saying she might be the answer to what you need to free yourself from she who must not be named’s strings.”
But, before Michelle Parker could answer, The silouhette plants her feet (they’re probably as hot as a solar flare). She extends her arms, just like you do before an embrace.
Melanie tried. It’s just that this chapter of her life is closed. Michelle Parker would’ve been in her rear-view if she didn’t re-enter her life after suing the living daylights out of her.
“Give her a chance, Michelle,” Mal says. “She can’t be worse than me, and I made the world hate you.”
So Michelle Parker faces The Silhouette far out in the desert. Tilts her head. Takes one step. Then another. Another. Another. Another. And, “I’m not doing that shit,” Michelle Parker says, “Melissa Young.”
All it takes is one scream from The Silhouette to awaken Melanie, asleep at her desk again.
She’s a great business owner, no, really. None of her employees leave bad reviews and find the breakroom incentives worthwhile. But when you juggle running a business, and spending time with your bestie, pretty much being some kind of lab-rat, paying off debt, and teaming up with your “agitator” to take down their agitator when they should just stop being a coward and handle it herself—
“You do that a lot,” Melissa says. “Don’t tell me you like sneak my gummies while you’re like working.”
Last time Melanie checked, she left the door to her office locked.
A silence clogs the space.
Melissa cackles at this, sitting in the chair across. “I’m just joking. I literally would like sleep at my desk if I were you. Running a business is no joke.”
Melanie giggles along (out of courtesy because how the hell did she get in here?). “You caught me, energy drinks could only get you so far! Guess I dozed while checking all these emails, but what’s up, everything okay?”
Melissa nods. Funny enough, she’s Michelle Parker’s adversary. It seems more applicable if she did full face glam, wouldn’t place anything without a luxury name brand on her body, and store an unlimited supply of disrespect for Melanie.
That’s how she knows Melissa’s hatred for Michelle is truthful. If she really were her best friend, she’d hate Melanie possibly more than Michelle did once upon a time. And if Michelle truly hated Melanie, she wouldn’t have asked for her help.
“Everything is great actually,” Melissa says. “Our metrics show exponential growth from our recent partnership. I think that focus-oriented supplement stand you added drove more traffic to Mel’s because our stuff like actually works.”
Now, Melanie isn’t the Midwest defender at all. It’s bleak, complacent, bland, and was once called home. But nobody could be more passive-aggressive than a midwesterner.
“I’ve heard some call it a sedative. Nonetheless, our numbers grow,” Melanie says.
Melissa grins, not the insincere Michelle Parker grin, but the warm, polite, and generous kind. “Can I, like, tell you something about Michelle?”
New Michelle Parker lore loading…
“When she falls,” Melissa says. “She tries to take everyone down with her. You know, ‘misery loves company,’ except I don’t think it’s company for her, but like minions…”
Melanie envisions the yellow ones that speak gibberish from “Despicable Me,” her mom took her and Grace to the movies to watch many years ago. And she tries to contain her laughter while she imagines Michelle Parker seeing everyone as yellow bean-shaped creatures in overalls and lab goggles.
“Minions?”
“That’s not even the worst thing about her. The worst thing is she like, thinks I’m stupid…she even told me I sound stupid when I talk, but she used to like talk like this, too.”
Michelle Parker slipped up.
Somewhere along the way, Melissa caught on. Perhaps she knew all along, but still desired to leverage her company through Melanie, who was supposed to tank everything. Ultimately, Melissa still got what she wanted. And no one took a legal sledgehammer to her melatonin that might be involved in a class-action lawsuit ten years from now.
“I respect you, Melanie. I’ve seen what she’s done to you, and she probably bribed you. But what I have on her would ruin her life forever. She might like even go to prison…”
Melanie raises her eyebrows in a gentle intrigue. No big reactions.
“Hasn’t she used you enough? Hasn’t she like, put you through enough?” Her vocal fries hard as hell when she says ‘enough.’”Michelle is a user, she’s like…like have you ever watched Inuyasha?”
Melanie clears her throat, “That really old anime with the guy with the white hair and sword? I’ve heard. Why?”
Knowing damn well she watched the series with Grace five times.
“Michelle Parker is Naraku.”
Melanie blinks her eyes, trying to process what exactly is going on. Melissa appears as a woman who never watched anime, let alone know of Naraku: a once severely wounded bandit turned host of demons. The amalgamation of whichever demons that either latched onto him or he killed, then absorbed in grotesque ways.
“You think she’s a demon smoothie?”
“No,” Melissa says. “I think she’s a coward who would rather exploit whoever is convenient to her to take down her opponents while she sits in the shadows watching it all unfold…you’re her exploitative shield.”
“She always does have a trick up her sleeve like Naraku,” Melanie says. “I think she has the moral high ground, though…what’s your favorite anime?”
“Dr. Stone.”
“Why?”
“Because coming back from a coma feels like stone falling away after thousands of years. Besides, Senku is like OP.”
Melanie isn’t really supposed to like Melissa, right? It’s like if they all went to high school together (back in Melanie’s hometown, because she’s more likely to be struck by lightning than live in Malibu), she would be the really nice, popular kid, and Michelle Parker would’ve gladly added herself to Melanie’s extensive list of grade school bullies.
Honestly, she’s kind of here for the revenge of the covert nerd. But the image of the tears in Michelle Parker’s eyes recalls different feelings. It brings her back to her initial thoughts: Michelle Parker is a bad person, but why? What made her this way? What really made her split in two? What made her hurt the only other Black girl within arm’s reach?
“Why do you want to get her back? What did she do to you?”
Melissa drums her fingers on Melanie’s desk. “Let’s just say she’s going to hell for doing wrong when she knew right. In other words, that bitch let me fall from the cliff I told you about the other day.”
The vague depiction Michelle Parker granted Melanie was beyond simplistic. Allegedly, she did try to kill her but chalked it up to ‘not having the means to save Melissa.’
Pushing your former self now turned silhouette off your bedroom terrace is one thing, preying on a woman with a marketing degree but stocking a snobby family’s grocery store another, but watching your best friend’s fingers slip off the edge of a cliff is some Naraku level evil.
And if Michelle Parker was upfront about it at first, Melanie wouldn’t experience this emotional whiplash. “She let you fall from a cliff?”
Of course, a cliff. Melissa dangled from one during a hike at Franklin County Park, she says. She and Michelle Parker ventured off trail and got into some dangerous territory, and were too young and still young but smart enough to not do that now, to care.
“I was so stupid and climbed this rock with like nothing but tree tops on the otherside,” she says. “I almost like went to the otherside if it weren’t for this ridge…the last thing I remembered was Michelle standing over me, watching me with this crazy look in her eye.”
“The one where her eyes have appeared to gone black?”
“Yes!” Melissa slams her fist on the desk. “You’ve seen it too! And then…she took my place. My ideas, my persona, and even the reason why I wanted to be an influencer: to be someone Black women could look up to without the haphazard financial advice.”
At least Melissa is self-aware.
“The only one who deserves to be hurt is Michelle and her insufferable boyfriend, who just sucks, and is like a loser, and incompetent, and like harassing people at the Santa Monica pier, and like stuck in 2017 with those stupid pranks!” A much-needed gasp for her lungs. “But you? You don’t deserve to fall with her, Melanie. I can’t tell you what to do, I can only tell you that people will fall…”
And with that quasi-threatening warning, Melissa leaves the room, not without a parting gift. A new water bottle, ‘vandalism free’ written on the sticky note attached to it.
Melanie gifted Grace the water bottle that Michelle Parker scribbled ‘meet me in The Abstract’ on. Inconspicuous enough to take to the gym, as maybe it’s one of those water bottles that go insanely viral and have people go feral in stores just to be forgotten about as the capitalist cycle continues to eat its tail.
Speaking of Grace, the next morning. She slams a new envelope from PCRC on Melanie’s kitchen counter. It’s hard to believe this research company is benign with that damn playtupus being stalked by that triangle panopticon light.
“Want me to read it? Their narrative style lowkey growing on me,” Grace says.
But Melanie insists.
Dear Melanie Hope,
We would like to congratulate you on completing the informational Phase One of our research studies. Your participation will spearhead groundbreaking and ceiling-shattering discoveries that will change the course of humanity.
We here at PCRC invite you to our facilities to further continue our research. We believe in integrity and accountability, and so we encourage you to bring your trusted advocate, Grace Miller, with you as we conduct our studies.
We are informed about your commitment to Pink Diamond’s Spa and will work accordingly with your schedule, but we do ask that you give us at least seven hours a week.
Sincerely,
PCRC
“Uh uh,” Grace says. “Why they put my whole ass name on there?”
“Because you’re my advocate, Gracie. And you’ll be coming to this creepy research company’s lair, too?”
“You think they got metal detectors?”
Melanie nods.
“Then I ain’t going,” Grace reaffirms.
But Melanie knows all too well that Grace isn’t going for that shit. She is the reason Melanie stopped getting bullied in middle school when she won a 1v10, yes, a 1v10, and guarded Melanie like a helpless kitten. A helpless kitten who almost bit someone’s ear off when they called her poor in tenth period algrebra.
But one thing Grace doesn’t want too many to know is that she cried her eyes out and didn’t drive for a week straight after hitting a squirrel. That she wants to have five kids and drive them to all their extra-curriculars in some monstrous van one day (hopefully without striking wildlife).
That no matter how stupid, how questionable, or how ambiguous the task, as long as Melanie is involved, Grace is in.
“If they try anything crazy, everyone’s necks getting snapped.”
But more importantly, Melanie hopes she gets the answers she’s looking for about this alleged dichotomy.
With everything said and unsaid, this is between Melissa and Michelle Parker. Will she ever realize that only she could truly free herself from Melissa if, according to PCRC, she teams up with The Silhouette to subdue “the Agitator”? Probably. Michelle Parker probably knows.
It’s just something so terrifying to recollect with her former half self. The one who played by everyone’s rules, the one who shrank herself, the one who needed to make mom and dad proud. The one Michelle Parker needs now.
So, after receiving a yes from Grace, Melanie breaks the precepts of the restraining order set by Michelle Parker to meet Michelle Parker in person. Thankfully, Eli isn’t anywhere to be found; he’s ‘out trolling the NPCs.’
“So she told you she knows about our plan? Everything?”
Melanie nods.
“I’m glad you know! I got more tricks up my sleeve, Melanie was just the beginning,” Michelle screams as though Melissa is tuned into the panopticon.
Like she wired every inch of her home—new and improved, shiny, expensive interior, and better than how it was before Melanie/Mal ceased it.
“Michelle,” Melanie says. “You can’t be letting people fall from cliffs that induce comas for five years and not tell me.”
Michelle Parker presses really hard on her blender that spins at the speed of a jet engine to make this booger-green-kale monstrosity, garnished with a pineapple wedge, sparkling on her kitchen island. “Try it.”
“No thanks, I’m not a smoothie kind of girl.”
Michelle Parker shrugs, “I am. What kind of girl are you?”
“One that doesn’t bring my supposed best friend to near-death experiences.”
“Oh yeah, I did do that, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Melissa!”
Melanie yanks Michelle Parker by the collar of her way-too-expensive silk pjs. “There are things, and places, and people, even if they’re in halves, that you know could even the score,” Melanie says. “This fight is between you, Melissa, and that damn silhouette. I’ve done what I can. I won’t forfeit my help, but my help is only a piece of the puzzle.”
She’ll help Michelle Parker, but that could only be done if Melanie helps herself first. When PCRC gives Melanie answers, she’ll funnel the information to Michelle Parker. Maybe then that’ll give her the epiphany required to remerge.
Michelle Parker wiggles out of her grasp. “Assault,” she says. Less riled up than before, still chugging that smoothie with the speckles of kale leaves and strange aroma.
Melanie examines her. The biggest crashout of 2025 is looking to claim the same title in 2026.
“Michelle,” says Melissa. Live from the panopticon’s speakers. A voice wired into her home. “Pack your shit, we’re going back to Malibu.”
The End…when Melissa Young says so.
Silver Meadow's Stories 
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