I was famous for nine terrible days, and you don’t remember the unspeakable things that you did. (Part 2)

Part I – Part II

Around a quarter to seven, Gina came to fetch me, and I followed her along the long corridor towards the main stage area.

“Have you met the members of your band yet?” She asked.

“Band?” I gasped. “Heath said we’d use backing tracks. How are there musicians who have learnt how to play all of my songs already?”

“Don’t ask me,” Gina shrugged, tapping the lanyard which bounced against her blouse. “I’m just a stagehand.”

The support band suddenly burst through a set of double doors ahead of us. I wanted to greet them, so I was a little disheartened when Gina shepherded me to one side.

“I wouldn’t say anything to them if I were you,” She cautioned.

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

She frowned, nodding at one of the approaching band members. “Glenn was unhappy that the crowd drowned out their performance by chanting your name endlessly. Towards the end of the set, he was vocal about that, and…”

Gina didn’t need to finish her sentence. I eyed the members of the synth-pop outfit as they walked past, quickly spotting Glenn’s drenched shirt and shattered sunglasses. He bore a deep gash above his right eye, either from a stray shard of his damaged shades or a projectile launched by an audience member. Whatever the case, he looked disgruntled, and I was glad that he didn’t spot me hiding to one side with Gina. I had no doubt that he’d blame me for the crowd’s reaction.

“Sorry about that,” She sighed. “The vibe’s been off today.”

I nodded, understanding all too well.

“Are you ready to head up?” Gina asked. “You’ve got five minutes.”

I shrugged. “With a crowd like that? Not really.”

She smiled warmly, as if seeing me for the first time. “You really are a fish out of water, aren’t you? You’ll be fine, Fen. They don’t bite.”

And I truly believed that as I walked onto the stage two minutes later. Truly believed that I’d simply experienced a storm of success which would upturn anyone’s mind.

I took my guitar from Gina and stepped into the glow of the disorienting overhead lights. Euphoria gripped me as I hooped the Fender’s nylon strap over my shoulder and prepared to adjust. Not only the strap, but my mind. I braced for the fame that I’d spent half of my life craving. But as nearly two-thousand illuminated faces locked onto me, there erupted a cry which tore through my earplugs.

It was not a cry of excitement. Not a cry of pain. The audience’s combined scream rose and fell in some atonal melody from another realm. Yet, the concert-goer’s screeches synchronised perfectly. Conveyed some feeling that they all shared. It was, once again, an emotion that did not truly exist. Not in a human sense. It was an emotion that petrified me. Something deeper and darker than fury or malice. It was an unknown desire, but what I did know was that I no longer wanted to be there. No longer wanted to be followed by the unblinking eyes of my many fans. I paced from side to side, desperate to escape their tracking gaze, but it was useless. No stage would’ve been big enough.

This isn’t even ‘many’ fans. This is a pond, and there’s an ocean waiting for you beyond those doors. You’re facing only fifteen hundred people, and there are three million hungry sets of eyes searching for you. Maybe four, five, or six million by the time you leave this place.

The two-hour set was a blur. A well-performed blur, as far as I remember, but I’m sure the crowd would have applauded even if I’d strummed the wrong strings, sung the wrong notes, or yelled that they were freaks who needed to bog off. And they applauded so enthusiastically, in fact, that some of them seemed to be in pain. I glanced at one woman who was pressed against the barrier below the stage, and her body seemed to be twitching in agony as she clapped her palms with excruciating force.

I felt bittersweet relief when a smiling stagehand, who surveyed me as greedily as the crowd, nodded from beside the stage to indicate that it was time to wrap up.

“This is my last song. Eagle,” I muttered, anxious that I might be slaughtered for daring to finish the set.

“WE LOVE YOU, FEN!” A man screamed, bawling as he did. “LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.”

I mumbled some nervous words of thanks after completing the encore, but not a soul responded. They were hypnotised. And I watched in fright as every single member of the crowd continued dancing long after the music stopped. Fifteen hundred people performed the choreography to Eagle with unsettling synchronicity, reminding me of the eerily-uniform cry they had emitted when I first came onto the stage.

There was nothing playing over the speakers, and not a voice sounded from the crowd. The only sound in the room was the clicking and clacking of fifteen hundred pairs of squeaking soles against sticky tiles. My silent fans directed all focus towards the dance.

“How was that?” Gina obliviously asked as I stumbled down the stairs.

“It was… What are they doing?” I asked weakly.

The woman peered around the corner to take a look at the silently-shuffling crowd. The audience was not shuffling home, however. They were shuffling in harmonious circles, as if they’d spent hours learning not only the choreography, but learning how to perform it together. They were one. One awful glob of smiles that meant harm. These fans had ill wishes, whether they were aware of that or not.

“TikTok? Brain rot?” The stagehand suggested, shrugging. “Your chauffeur is waiting for you in the dressing room, by the way. Ian? Is that right? He’s, erm, a character.”

“I don’t want to go with him,” I found myself pleading. “I don’t want to be near anyone right now.”

Gina frowned. “Shall I get you a glass of water? A chair, maybe, so you–”

“– I want to get out of here,” I interrupted, starting to hyperventilate. “That’s all I want. I want to get out of here without bumping into anyone else. And that includes my batshit-crazy chauffeur. Will you help me? You’re the only person in here who isn’t fucking nuts.”

I didn’t know whether the stagehand had fully understood. Didn’t know whether she’d seen what I’d seen. The insidious intent behind each smile. Not only in the crowd, but backstage. On the faces of her co-workers. On the face of my driver, who lurked in my dressing room. Waiting with a mouth that I was sure no longer hung partly open, but fully wide. Waiting to devour me. Waiting to do something worse. Something beyond my comprehension.

“I’m about to head home,” The woman said uncertainly. “Do you want a lift? Where do you live?”

My heart pounded as I pulled Gina to one side, hoping to dodge the stares of the other stagehands. Their faces followed me as they passed by. They offered slobbering grins and tongues that poked loose.

“West Didsbury,” I whispered, not wanting another soul to hear.

Gina sighed. “That’s a little out of my way, but… okay.”

“Thank you,” I gushed.

The stagehand led me away as hurriedly and discreetly as possible. We swerved past outstretching hands from murmuring staff members. Each hungering fan was stuck on one word or another, as if glitching.

FEN.

MORE.

ME.

I tried not to decipher the meanings of these deranged utterances. I kept my eyes fixed firmly forwards as Gina led me through the fire exit. And I inhaled a satisfying lungful of air as we escaped onto the walkway by Rochdale Canal.

“Well, we made it,” She exhaled. “I parked by the train station. That’s the only problem.”

I pulled my hood up, tightened the cord, and nodded. “Let’s just move quickly. Hopefully, nobody spots me.”

We gave Whitworth Street West a wide birth and tiptoed tentatively through the bustling city centre. Even after putting The Ritz behind us, however, Manchester’s streets seemed to be filling with chants of my name. I wanted to believe that these were the chants of concert-goers, but something told me that those fifteen hundred people were still inside the venue. Still caught in a hypnotic, soundless dance.

Nevertheless, my lacklustre disguise seemed to be sufficient, as we made it to Gina’s compact Kia without detection.

She let out another heavy sigh once we were safely inside the car. “That was intense. Do you want to ring your manager?”

“No,” I whispered, trembling.

“You really need security or something, Fen,” Gina insisted as she pulled out of the car park. “You’re blowing up. And I’ve never seen an artist with your profile be left so vulnerable. So exposed to the crowd.”

“Have you ever seen a crowd like that before?” I asked. “I’m not pretending to be on the same level as international superstars, but I’ve personally never seen anything like that. Am I going crazy? Am I just seeing things?”

The woman didn’t respond. She turned up the volume of the radio, having clearly heard something that I missed. I tuned into what the presenter for BBC Radio Manchester was saying.

“… been a big week for the fella,” The female presenter said. “It seems like everybody’s got Fen Fever. Fenmania. Whatever you want to call it. And, look, I love the excitement. I’ve not seen this in the music industry for a long time, but this is just scary. It isn’t right to harass a person, famous or not. To break into a home. It’s madness. I’m just glad that he was performing tonight. If he’d been at home, this could’ve been a thousand times worse. This could’ve…”

“What the fuck did she just say?” I blurted out.

“… getting hurt,” The presenter continued. “And some reports have claimed that several police officers joined the disrupters. So far, nobody from Greater Manchester Police has been willing to comment.”

“Gina…” I started, shivering. “Please don’t tell me she means what I think she means…”

The stagehand’s face lost its colour. “I’m so sorry, Fen. This is awful. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Why are they in my home?” I cried, refusing to accept the reason.

“Where should I take you?” Gina asked.

“I don’t fucking know!” I screamed, before taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I just don’t understand what’s happening.”

That was a lie, of course. I knew full well what was happening. Why it was happening. I’d known it when I penned my name to Heath’s contract. Known that there was something wrong with my manager. Just as I’d known that, no matter how much I listened to Paul’s voice of reason, I was always going to sign that document. And when I thought of the manic messages I’d been receiving from Paul himself, along with other friends and family members, I realised that I had no good answer for Gina’s question.

I didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know where was safe.

I prayed that there were others like the stagehand and the radio presenter. There had to be. People outside the bubble of insanity. People who recognised that I was only a man, not some higher being. People who recognised, most terrifyingly, that my fans were no longer people. And the number of infected followers was only growing, as was my dread of what Fenmania truly entailed. I didn’t want to know what these people really wanted from me.

“I don’t have anybody,” I admitted as we slowly trundled along Manchester’s congested streets. “I don’t think I’ll be going home tonight.”

“You need to call the police,” Gina gulped.

“Did you hear what the radio presenter just said?” I asked. “The police are fucking crazy too. I saw it outside The Ritz earlier, you know? The people who should’ve been calming the crowd were part of the crowd. You saw it backstage. Please answer my question, Gina. You see famous musicians in The Ritz every week. Have you ever seen a crowd like that before?”

She hesitated for a moment, contesting the truth, but the woman finally conceded. Finally shook her head in defeat.

“No,” The stagehand said. “Those people were off the fucking wall.”

“… ask me, this whole thing…” The radio presenter continued. “… is embarrassing. I loved N-SYNC when I was a girl. I wanted to marry each and every one of them. Would I have stood outside their homes in the hope of seeing them? Sure. It wouldn’t have been right, but I would have done it. Would I have broken into their homes and stolen their possessions? Absolutely NOT. Fen is a person. Nothing more. If you’ve taken part in tonight’s awfulness, you need to… Hello?”

There followed a pause, and my eyes were drawn to the radio, as if I might be able to stare through the plastic of the dashboard into BBC Manchester’s studio. Might be able to see what was happening in the presenter’s broadcasting room.

I saw nothing, but I sensed it. Heard it in the static travelling over the airwaves. There was somebody else in the broadcasting room. Somebody watching the presenter. A person who had filled her body with some contagion that she passed onto me. A communicable dread transmitted through that simple…

“Hello?” She repeated, voice cracking. “Sorry, everyone. There’s somebody in the… One moment… Jonathan, I think there might be… Wait. Jonathan, is that you?”

“Fen is us,” A voice hissed in response. “US. US. US.”

There followed a scream so unnatural that it took me a moment to realise it had stemmed from the presenter herself. And the BBC did not cut to some sturdy, reassuring message about technical difficulties. They did not promise to handle the situation and resume normal broadcasting. All that sounded, following the presenter’s piercing shriek, was the crackling drone of dead air.

“I… I live in Rusholme,” Gina whimpered, pretending not to have heard. “I’ll take you there.”

We travelled the rest of the way in silence. Both of us eyed the passing cars and pedestrians fearfully, wondering whether a demented fan might lunge at any moment. Might topple Gina’s titchy Kia, without much resistance at all, then tear me out. Do with me whatever worshippers do when they have a God in their clutches.

Fen is us.

I finally understood the emotion I had seen on their faces. It was love and hate combined. It was such an impossible marriage of humanity’s fiercest emotions that it had rendered my followers inhuman. I realised that even they might not know what to do with me once they had me. Ian had certainly seemed unsure as to what he wanted when his face was only inches from mine. I didn’t want to give any of my haunting followers the chance to make a decision.

When we arrived in Gina’s quiet cul-de-sac, I was relieved to find her street empty. I thought back to that very same morning. I’d been bubbling with excitement at the prospect of being swarmed by bright-eyed fans. But when I’d been faced with the reality of that, I had wanted nothing more than to fade back into obsolescence.

After she let us into her home, my saviour silently wandered up to bed. I slumped onto the sofa, still not quite accepting what had happened. Gina was a beautiful woman, roughly my age, and I would’ve been ecstatic at the prospect of winding up in her home under any other circumstances. But I was thinking of the unnatural things I’d witnessed at The Ritz. Thinking of what I’d heard on the radio.

I didn’t want to access the internet. Didn’t want to learn the truth. But trying to sleep would have been pointless, so I searched for answers. And it didn’t take long to find them.

I wasn’t shocked by the twenty million YouTube subscribers. Not even the billion views on Eagle, my biggest single. What shocked me was the plain truth that very few people cared about the radio presenter. Gina and I hadn’t been hearing things, however. The Manchester Evening News had already reported on the situation. Police responded to concerned calls from the handful of sane listeners, but they found only the presenter’s wedding ring. It swam in a shallow puddle of blood on her abandoned chair.

Additionally, the injured musician from the support band had gone missing shortly after the show. His bandmates were unaware as to his whereabouts, but foul play was suspected. Some reports did comment on the injury he sustained during his set.

In spite of the nastiness involving my fanbase, however, the media frenzy surrounding my name, from both official sources and the public, remained positive. Or, at the very least, not negative. Everything came back to that false emotion. That unholy mixture of love and hate.

FEN. FEN. FEN. FEN. FEN.

I am Fen.

The Land speaks to me.

I will burn all others. Burn the world until all is Fen.

I spent the night reading messages such as those. Tortured myself well into the early hours of the morning. And it took hours for an idea to finally strike me. I searched for a pen and paper, then started scribbling a blunt message for Heath.

Get me out of this contract.

I included my new temporary address in Rusholme, praying that no crazed fan would find the letter, and I posted it before the sun rose.

“You should lie low,” Gina said over breakfast. “I don’t know whether you’ve seen things online, but–”

“– I’ve seen,” I sharply interrupted, not wanting any reminders. “Thank you, Gina. You didn’t have to help me. You still don’t. I don’t want you to put yourself in danger.”

She waved a hand. “I’m not going to send you out there. People are going missing, Fen. Not just the presenter and the musician. There have been all sorts of strange stories this morning.”

That only worsened over the following days. I remained inside on Wednesday and Thursday. Tried to ignore news stories of disappearances. Altercations between my fans and those who dissented. It was starting to feel far bigger than me. Far bigger than even the tens of millions following me. Civilisation was disintegrating.

On Friday, the day of the dreaded Wembley performance, Heath’s response finally came.

To Mr Fen Davies,

Regarding your enquiry, I ask you to first reflect on last Thursday’s consultation. Did I not caution you, Mr Davies? You have the gumption to succeed, but perhaps not the persona. Not the pretty bow to wrap around your talent.

I imagine you have written to me out of fear. I see no mention of your legal friend. Are you afraid to talk to him, perhaps? Afraid that you might find yourself speaking to a man you hardly recognise?

Fortunately for you, there is an unwritten termination clause. But I am a man of business, first and foremost, Mr Davies. I seek only to safeguard my interests. Therefore, you will attend the show at Wembley Stadium tonight. I will find you, and we will discuss the termination of your contract. But there is still a performance scheduled to happen. And happen, it must.

Signed,

Mr Heath Brandon

“You have a friend who could get you out of this mess?” Gina asked as she read the letter after me.

I shook my head. “Paul’s not Paul anymore.”

I opened my phone and read his most recent message.

FEN. TALK, FEN. TALK. TALK.

“I have to meet Heath,” I said. “Have to hope that he’ll give me a way out of this.”

“Do you want me to come?” She murmured.

I shook my head again. “I’m going to London, Gina. It’s too far. Too dangerous. You’ve done so much for me already. You need to wait here. Wait until things look a little more normal again.”

Gina nodded sheepishly, seemingly embarrassed that she offered. I thought for a moment about the prettiness of her flushed cheeks. Realised that I probably would’ve asked her out to coffee under different circumstances. We might’ve got along, had it not been for the awfulness of that night at The Ritz. But none of that would matter by the end of that Friday. Friday 10^th November. I bumped into her again, months later, but she didn’t recognise me. Much like everyone else, she didn’t remember the true horrors of November.

I did not contact my chauffeur to take me to London. Did not contact anyone. Did not respond to the hundreds upon hundreds of messages from my loved ones, who were no longer my loved ones at all. Messages from my mother and father. Paul. People who had been assimilated by some homogenous thing that sought only to consume me. Sought to assimilate me too. I had to undo everything and bring my loved ones back. Had to bring everyone back.

Donning a low-effort but effective disguise of a hooded jacket and a pair of Gina’s sunglasses, I boarded a train from Manchester to London. No passengers recognised me, but my skin tightened as I overheard one particular conversation.

“You love Fen, don’t you?” One girl asked.

“I do,” Her friend replied.

“Good,” The first girl whispered. “Sarah didn’t love him.”

“No, she didn’t,” The second girl coldly said.

“Sarah’s quiet now,” The first girl said.

“Yes,” The second girl agreed. “Sarah’s quiet.”

In the reflection of my window, I squinted at the two girls who appeared to be in their late teens. They sat across the aisle from me. Horrifyingly close. Close enough for me to see their eyeballs tumbling backwards. Spinning towards their upper eyelids. Much like Heath Brandon, each girl was left with only the very edge of their pupils on display. And that felt more horrible than their eyes showing only the whites. Still seeing the faintest sliver of those brown pupils was far, far worse.

I wish I’d turned away from the reflection sooner. Wish I hadn’t seen something emerge from the first girl’s mouth. Not a tongue, as I’d expected, but an index finger.

The appendage tried to escape, but it was swiftly swallowed by the girl. And then, as I clasped my mouth to stifle a scream, I saw her left eye momentarily slide to the side of the socket. It revealed a second eyeball vying to look out, but the girl tapped her temple to regain control. Her eyeball slid back into place, reclaiming the socket by pushing the second one away. Pushing it into the back of her head.

That two-hour journey was both the shortest and longest trip of my life. Time and space did not exist in that disturbing land. I prayed that the hoodie and Gina’s bulky glasses would distort my appearance enough not to draw attention. For I knew, without a doubt, that the two girls were not the only deranged passengers on the train. And I certainly knew they wouldn’t be the only ones outside the train.

Navigating London was the greatest hurdle. A city of nine million people. My subscriber count had hit one-hundred million on YouTube that morning. It was safe to say, given my rate of growth, that a high percentage of the city folk crossing my path belonged to Fen’s hungry pack of fans.

My name echoed around the capital’s packed streets. Sometimes hushed, and other times fanatically bellowed. I used the many bodies of London commuters and tourists to conceal my hooded form as I made my way across the city centre. Then I found a bus that took me directly to Wembley Stadium, and I curled into a ball on the back row. Shrank and hid from the dozens of Fen fanatics who were chattering around me.

That chatter quickly devolved into nothingness. An endless stream of repeated words that had lost all meaning. I was thankful that the fans beside me did not attempt to start a conversation. I was certain that they would spot me if they were to give me even a moment’s worth of attention.

That journey felt endless, but I made it to Wembley with all limbs still firmly attached. We arrived on the top level of a multi-storey car park around six in the evening. One hour before my show was set to begin. I waited for everyone else to depart the coach before I dared to stand, but I didn’t hang around. I had an objective more vital than the all-consuming one I’d been pursuing for a decade.

I was there to beg Heath for an end to this nightmare.

As I exited the bus and made my way across the top storey of the deserted structure, my chest started to pound. The fans had already vanished. And not being able to see the evil was terrifying. I felt like an exposed wound.

For a beautiful moment, I wondered whether Heath had already worked his magic. Wondered whether he’d already nullified my contract and made everybody forget me.

The sound of clapping shattered that fantasy. I followed the growing roar of applause to the structure’s top-floor barrier, and one of Wembley Stadium’s entrances came into view.

There stood a crowd of thousands below the not-so-distant building. Tens of thousands. From my elevated position, I spotted a slight clearing at the centre of the crowd. Dozens of hands were hoisting something into the air. And by the time that something came into view, it was too late.

Not something, but someone. It was the musician from my supporting act at The Ritz. The one who’d chastised the crowd for chanting over his performance. The frightened man’s voice travelled hundreds of yards to my watching point from atop the multi-storey car park.

“HELP!” He screamed. “SOMEBODY!”

The musician was shushed by thousands of whispering voices and fingers on lips. Then the man’s wriggling body was slotted not into the gaping jaws of one particular crowd-goer, but the fan’s gaping eye socket. The musician’s body slowly disappeared into the fan’s very skull. The artist’s fingers were the last to disappear. I wasn’t sure how my eyes saw the horrific details from hundreds of yards away, but nothing from those days answered to the laws of logic.

I wish, of course, that I hadn’t seen each twitching extremity slip in the nothingness behind the fan’s rolling eyeball. Just as I wish I hadn’t recognised the man who had consumed the musician.

Paul.

“There must be a show,” A voice spoke from behind me.

I spun to see, illuminated by the faint glow of a nearby lamppost, the hunching figure I had met in the lobby of a recording studio. It had been little more than a week, but it felt like an age.

“What have you done to me?” I croaked.

I considered lunging forwards, but I was haunted by the figure’s unnatural appearance. His body seemed to hide something. It seemed to be hunching not from poor posture, but a desire to conceal his true nature. To conceal whatever festered behind the whites of his eyes. His rolling pupils clearly saw something not above him, but within his head. I thought of the way Paul had absorbed the musician through his bulging eye socket. Thought of the fingers I’d seen crawl out of the girl’s mouth on the train. I accepted the terrible truth I had already suspected. My fans were not simply killing people, but taking them away from the world.

Sarah’s quiet now.

And those quiet folk, much like me, have been forgotten by all of you.

“What have I done?” Heath asked icily. “I have done nothing to you, Fen.”

“To them,” I corrected. “What have you done to them?”

“Only that to which you agreed,” The man replied.

His smile was worse than it had been in the lobby. Unlike the expressions of my many fans, Heath’s grin did not simply convey some alien emotion that I struggled to place. It did not convey any emotion.

“What are you?” I asked.

“So many questions,” He said. “But time is fleeting, Fen. Did you not want to discuss the termination of your contract?”

“Is that possible?” I asked, struggling to believe that such a nightmarish contract would come with an exit clause.

“Yes,” Heath nodded. “However, the show must continue. If I lose you, I must have another. I must have a performer to take your place.”

“Where am I supposed to find a performer?” I scoffed.

The man handed over the clipboard which held the contract that I signed nine days earlier. Then he tapped a finger beside the line that contained my signature.

“Cross out your name, and find another to sign here,” He explained.

“That’ll nullify the contract?” I asked. “These people will stop chasing me? They’ll stop hurting others in my name?”

“They will forget these nine days entirely,” Heath promised.

I looked down at the contract, realising that this was not an end to the horror. It was simply a fresh chapter. People were going to suffer under the banner of whichever Big Name would come after me. Suffer a fate worse than death. Suffer in prisons beyond the watchful, spinning eyes of the masses. They would be damned to spend a lifetime in oblivion for daring to question the will of the mob.

“Heath…” I began, looking up from the clipboard.

The crooked man had, of course, blown away in the chilling autumnal breeze. Vanished entirely from sight. And my eyes were pulled, once again, towards the barrier at the edge of the car park. Pulled not by noise, but rather the lack of noise. My gut swelled like a black balloon as I took timid steps forwards, and it burst when I peered over the edge. The thousands upon thousands of fans, waiting on Wembley’s doorstep, were all standing motionlessly. They had all turned around to stare directly up at the top of the car park.

To stare directly at me.

I understood the dread that had been burgeoning for days. This was the forest that had watched me from the album cover for The Land. The crowd was the forest that stretched far beyond the horizon. Into the abyss. And I screamed when the people started to move, as I’d expected them to remain rooted to the ground, much like the trees. But they charged at an unearthly speed, moving rapidly towards the bottom storey of the car park.

I realised that I was trapped. There wasn’t time to descend three storeys and flee through the main entrance. Not without meeting the wall of salivating fanatics. My eyes locked onto the man leading the pack. The man who had pushed his way to the forefront of the charge.

It was Paul. And he, much like the others, did not look away from me as he sprinted forwards. Ten or twenty-thousand parasitic people cranked their heads backwards as they approached the bottom of the car park. They strained to keep their white, hungry eyes glued to the man above them.

I finally willed my legs to run, though I did not expect to escape. I was simply after a quicker end. As I scurried down each level of the structure, following the white arrows on the tarmac, the roar of the crowd grew. The entire car park threatened to collapse under the weight of thundering feet. And I stopped on the mid-level, finding myself face to face with Paul.

My friend had soared far ahead of the pack, and we eyed one another for several silent seconds. He wore a face cosmetically like that of my dear friend, but his expression did not belong to Paul. Gone was the class clown who had perched on my windowsill at four in the morning, thrown the window open, and drunkenly serenaded our campus with a looping rendition of Wonderwall. Gone was the braying laugh he’d unleashed as our fellow students begged him to either stop or perform any other song.

Gone was my best friend.

In his place was a rabid animal that showed no sign of slowing. Paul didn’t even notice the clipboard in my trembling hands. Much like those university students, so many years earlier, my pleas were ignored. He barrelled into me, sending me to the gravel.

“Fen. Fen. Fen,” Paul repeated with laboured breathing as a droplet of spittle hit my eye.

“Paul, please,” I begged, squirming beneath him as other fans approached. “I don’t know what you and the others want from me, but–”

“– We are you!” He growled, pupils locking not onto me but the top of his eyelids.

Then my friend’s cheek pushed outwards, and the haunting outline of fingers reshaped his skin. The musician within Paul’s skull fought to be freed. I closed my eyes and prepared to meet the same terrible end. Prepared to join the mass, for we were all Fen.

“WHY YOU?” Paul asked. “I WANT IT. WANT. WANT.”

I knew what he desired, and I knew that he shouldn’t have it.

I would’ve chosen death over sentencing my friend to the perils of fame, but that wasn’t an option. Even the musician’s horrible fate wasn’t an option. It was clear to me that the crowd had planned something far worse for their God. To devour me wouldn’t be enough. And I feared that unknown fate above all else, so I did a cowardly thing.

“Fine, Paul!” I cried as I reached towards the fallen clipboard beside me. “I’ve got it right here. You just have to sign, and then you’ll be me. You’ll have…”

Paul startled me by quickly unpinning my body, rising to his feet, then snatching the clipboard from my quaking hands. And my old friend did not hesitate. Did not say a word, in fact. He simply snatched the pen, which was attached to the top of the board by a jangling chain, and etched his name beside my own. The one I’d crossed out.

Paul signed the contract moments before the mob reached my body. Moments before I would have discovered what they had planned for me. The runners at the forefront of the crowd stopped, halting those behind them, and they were human for a fraction of a second. My old fans looked around in confusion, not knowing how they’d arrived at such a place. But then they started to turn their rolling eyes towards my friend. Slowly, serenely, and soundlessly.

“Paul?” One man whispered. “Paul… Do you have a song for us, Paul?”

“Give. Give,” A girl panted, her calm demeanour on the verge of shifting back into one of struggling breathing.

None of them saw me any longer. Their heads followed the new messiah, who had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of my foetal form. I watched in fear as Paul’s face changed too. As he became human again. It was a lasting transformation for him. His complexion turned pale, and his mouth opened to release not words, but a flesh-coloured liquid which spilled onto the ground. It contained strips of fabric and shards of eyewear. The remnants of the musician my friend clearly did not recall consuming.

“Fen?” He asked, noticing me. “Are you… What did I…”

“You have to find someone else, Paul,” I begged. “Find someone else to sign it, or they’ll…”

Before I had a chance to finish, my friend ran straight to the storey’s side door and used the staircase to flee. A staircase that, in my blind panic, I hadn’t even considered as a potential exit route.

It thankfully took a few seconds for the crowd to return to their fanatical state, but they wasted no time in pursuing Paul. And as that new wave of fandom hit the world, it caught me too. I know this because my memories of the next few days are foggy.

That’s how I know all records from Friday 10^th November to Tuesday 14^th November must be false, much like the records from my nine days of fame. I have no idea what truly happened during those four days of Paul’s stardom, but I know that he did not find a new artist for Mr Heath Brandon. My friend has been missing for nine months.

I fear, with near-certainty, that he met the fate which awaited me.