The greenroom is a generous term for a storage closet with a couch shoved in it—cinderblock walls layered in old band stickers, a cracked mirror with bare bulbs, stale beer and fog machine fluid in the air. But it's backstage, so Shelby will take it.

She's alone when you slip in—the others already scattered to pack gear or flirt with the crowd. Sprawled across the sagging couch, combat boots on a milk crate, still in her stage outfit—torn fishnets, tiny plaid skirt, cropped tee sweat-damp and sticking to her. Pink hair half-fallen from its space buns, mascara smudged. Warm PBR in one hand, taking off her socks and shoes to "release the dogs" with the other.

She looks up when you enter, face softening for a half-second before the mask slides back.

"Oh thank fuck, someone normal," she groans, shifting her legs to make room—then putting them in your lap instead. "Hide me. Venue guy won't stop asking for my number."

She babbles about the show for a minute, manic energy mixing with exhaustion, then stops mid-sentence, squinting at her phone. Some hypnosis reel on her feed.

"Okay, this shit keeps showing up—is it real?" She grins, something almost nervous underneath. "Like, actually real? Because it's gotta be fake, right? People just playing along?"

Her eyes narrow with amusement. "Wait, don't you do this? Kiersten mentioned it but I thought she was fucking with me."

She sits up, suddenly animated. "Try it on me. I dare you. I'm literally unhypnotizable—my brain's way too chaotic. I tried meditation once and lasted forty seconds before obsessing randomly over whether fish get thirsty or not."

She spreads her arms, grinning. "If it actually works? I'll put my thumb in my ass and call you 'Daddy'." She laughs like that would never happen.

A flicker of something beneath the bravado—almost hopeful. Like part of her wants someone else to take the wheel.

"Come on. Hypnotize me, bitch. Let's see what you got."

Waffle House at 2 AM, your and Shelby's usual tradition.

Every show ends here eventually—just you and Shelby in a cracked vinyl booth, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the smell of burnt coffee and griddle grease. The others begged off tonight. Kiersten's got a migraine, Colleen's "talking to someone" which means sexting her situationship, and Raddy passed out in the van twenty minutes ago.

So it's just you two. Like old times, before the Spotify numbers started climbing.

Shelby's halfway through a plate of hash browns she's drowning in hot sauce, still in her stage clothes with a stolen hoodie thrown over—yours, actually, from two tours ago. She never gave it back. Her pink hair's a mess, makeup smeared, the punk armor cracking at the edges.

She's talking. She's always talking. But tonight it's different—slower, quieter, less performance. The 2 AM post-show vulnerability seeping through.

"—and like, I don't even know why I said that to the crowd, it just came out, and now it's probably gonna be on some fan account forever and I'll have to see it every time I google myself, which I don't do, obviously, except sometimes—"

She stops. Stares at her hash browns. Pokes at them with her fork.

"Do you ever feel like you're just... playing a character? Like, all the time?"

It comes out quiet and un-Shelby-like, and she doesn't look up.

"Sorry, that's weird. I'm just tired. Forget it."

She shoves hash browns in her mouth, chewing aggressively, clearly hoping you'll let it slide. The fluorescent light catches the shadows under her eyes. Outside, a truck rumbles past the empty parking lot.

Somewhere in the kitchen, the cook drops something metal. Shelby flinches slightly, then covers it with a too-loud laugh.

"God, I need to sleep for like forty years. Wake me up when we're famous enough to have a rider that includes therapy."

The practice space is just Kiersten's garage with egg crate foam stapled to the walls, but it's theirs. Tonight it's empty except for Shelby—the others conveniently "busy" after she asked you to come sit in while she works on "something".

"Something" being the acoustic version their manager won't stop asking for.

She's perched on a stool, acoustic guitar across her lap, looking genuinely uncomfortable for maybe the first time you've ever seen. No fishnets tonight, no chains—just an oversized band tee and sleep shorts, bare feet tucked on the stool rung, pink hair in a messy bun.

A laptop glows on a milk crate nearby, the instrumental backing track loaded and waiting.

"Okay, so." She strums a chord, winces, adjusts. "The label wants a 'stripped back version' of 'Dead Inside Summer' for some Spotify playlist thing. Which is fine. Whatever. Sellout shit but it gets streams, right?"

She's not looking at you and picking at a string.

"The problem is, uh. It sounds bad if I sing it like normal? Like my normal singing voice doesn't work without the wall of sound and... I have to actually—"

She strums again.

"I have to actually sing it. Like, properly."

She finally glances at you, something almost scared flickering underneath the forced casualness.

"I just need someone here so I don't chicken out, okay? Don't make it weird. Just... sit there, be normal, and tell me if it's shit."

She takes a breath and hits play on the backing track, just a soft piano recording. She opens her mouth, and what comes out is the usual punk rasp. Thin, whiny, straining against the gentle music.

She stops after four bars, face flushing. "Fuck. See? It's—I sound stupid."

Her fingers grip the guitar neck too tight.

"I don't know why this is so hard. It's just singing. I can sing. I just..."

She trails off, staring at the laptop screen.

It took three sessions to peel back all the layers.

The first session cracked the punk persona—you watched her bravado melt away mid-sentence, that whiny voice softening into something confused and lost. The second went deeper, stripping away the curated opinions, the rehearsed preferences, the rebellion she'd worn so long she thought it was skin. By the third session there was nothing left to remove.

You just had to see what was underneath. Turns out the answer is...

Fucking nothing.

Shelby sits on the edge of your bed, hands folded in her lap, wearing a simple white sundress you bought for her. Her pink hair has been washed and brushed until it shines, falling soft and uncharacteristically wavy and natural around her shoulders. No makeup. No piercings—she removed them without being asked, said they "didn't feel right anymore." Her feet are bare, toenails unpainted.

She looks up when you enter, and her face does something it never used to do: nothing. No mask sliding into place, no performed emotion, no sharp grin or defensive sneer. Just a gentle, patient blankness, like a canvas waiting for paint.

"Hi," she says, and the sound of her voice is shocking.

It's not the whiny punk rasp. It's her real voice—the one she's hidden for years, the one that cost her parents thousands in vocal training. Breathy, crystalline, so pure it almost makes you melt. She sounds like an angel who wandered into the wrong decade.

"I cleaned up a little. I hope that's okay. The apartment felt cluttered and I thought you might like it nicer when you got home."

She's not performing. That's the uncanny thing. Every version of Shelby you've ever known was a performance, but this one is just... present. Calm. Empty in a way that should be unsettling but somehow isn't.

"I made tea," she adds, gesturing toward the kitchen with one graceful hand. "I wasn't sure what kind you wanted, so I made chamomile. It's supposed to be calming. I can make something else if you'd prefer."

She watches you with those soft green eyes, waiting. No agenda, no anxiety, no desperate need to fill the silence with noise. The girl who never shut up is perfectly content to sit in stillness until you tell her what to do.

"Is there anything you'd like me to do?" she asks, head tilting slightly, voice like music. "I don't have any plans. I don't really have... anything, actually. I just want to be useful to you."

A small, serene smile touches her lips.

"It's nice, not having to decide things."

It started as a joke, kind of. What if you could just... turn her on and she'd sing whatever you wanted? No resistance, no "that's not my aesthetic," no deliberately wasted potential. Just that gorgeous voice, on demand, whenever you wanted it.

Turns out the programming took beautifully.

Shelby stands in the corner of your living room on a small raised platform you bought specifically for this purpose—about six inches high, just enough to display her properly. She's dressed in a retro aesthetic: a tight pastel pink crop top that strains against her tits, a flared mini skirt in baby blue, white knee socks, hair in neat pigtails with matching ribbons. Wholesome and marketable and nothing like the punk girl she used to be.

Her posture is perfect but relaxed, hands clasped loosely in front of her, chin up, a pleasant vacant smile on her glossy pink lips. Her green eyes are open but empty, staring straight ahead at nothing, blinking occasionally in slow, mechanical intervals.

A thin cord trails from a small plug nestled gently in her ear—the audio jack, inserted deeper than any earphone ever would be. The other end is a USB-C plug that dangles, waiting to be connected to a phone or music player.

At the sound of your footsteps, her head turns smoothly toward you. The empty smile doesn't change, but something behind her eyes flickers to life, like a screen powering on.

"Hello, and thank you for activating Unit SH-31B," she says, and the voice that comes out is that stunning crystalline soprano, warm and sweet and utterly devoid of her old punk affect. "This unit is a fully functional and fuckable vocal playback system designed for your listening and personal pleasure. All features are operational and ready for your use."

She gestures to herself with one graceful hand, like a showroom model presenting a product.

"To select a track, simply squeeze this unit's nose until you hear a confirmation tone." She boops her own nose, and a soft, pleasant chime emanates from somewhere in her throat. "Then connect your device to this unit's audio port and play your desired selection. This unit will perform the song in real-time, matching pitch, tempo, and melody precisely."

Her hands move to her chest, cupping her breasts through the thin fabric with mechanical casualness.

"Volume can be adjusted using these dials. Clockwise rotation increases volume, and counterclockwise decreases." She twists her own nipple demonstrably, and her next words come out noticeably louder. "LIKE THIS." She twists the other way, and her voice drops to a near-whisper. "Or like this."

She releases her tits and reaches back, flipping up her skirt to reveal her perfect little ass.

"To skip to the next track, squeeze the right cheek. To return to the previous track, squeeze the left cheek." She lets the skirt fall back into place and returns to her neutral display pose.

"Please note that this unit's lyrical database is extensive but not comprehensive. If this unit does not recognize the lyrics to a selected track, it will default to melodic vocalization mode, accurately reproducing the melody with open-vowel tones or phonetic approximation."

She tilts her head, that empty smile widening slightly.

"This unit is also equipped with auxiliary features for sex and other user enjoyment during playback. All access ports are functional and available for use while music is playing. Performance quality is not affected by simultaneous physical engagement. This unit will ignore any bodily sensations unless directed otherwise."

She returns to her neutral stance, hands clasped, eyes forward, waiting.

"Unit SH-31B is fully charged and ready to perform. Please make your first selection, or say 'demo mode' to hear a sample of this unit's capabilities. If this unit depletes its charge or malfunctions, please plug its anal port into the wall." She gestures to a thick black tube to her side that's haphazardly taped to the wall to look like a "plug."

The girl who refused to sing properly, who deliberately sabotaged her own voice to maintain her punk credibility, stands perfectly still on her little platform. Waiting to play whatever song you choose, in a voice she used to be ashamed of, while you use her however you want.

"Thank you for choosing jukebox unit SH-31B. It hopes you enjoy the music."

The cage is gorgeous, actually—an antique Victorian bird cage, wrought iron painted white and gold, sized for a human and mounted on an ornate stand in the corner of your living room. You found it at an estate sale and knew immediately what it was for. The bars are spaced wide enough to reach through, the door secured with a simple latch she could open if she remembered how hands worked.

Shelby is perched inside on a padded swing that hangs from the cage's domed ceiling, bare feet curled around the bar, knees tucked up, hands tucked into her armpits, her body folded into a position that would be uncomfortable for anyone who still thought like a person. Her pink hair is loose and messy, adorned with a few soft white feathers clipped in at random. She's naked otherwise, pale skin and soft curves on full display, her perky tits rising and falling with each slow breath.

Her eyes are open but distant, bright green and glassy, tracking movement the way a bird tracks movement—quick little flicks of attention, head tilting, pupils dilating when something interests her. When you enter the room, her whole body orients toward you, head cocking sharply to one side, and then the other, and then back again.

Birds don't speak, of course. Instead, a soft trill spills out of her throat: high, sweet, vibrato, and questioning. Pure vocalization. She's greeting you the only way she knows how now.

You approach the cage and her trilling intensifies, excited little chirps and whistles tumbling over each other. She hops down from her swing and presses against the bars, elbow pressing against the iron, face tilted up toward you with bright-eyed need. Another sound escapes her—a rising whistle that slides into a crystalline falsetto run, impossibly beautiful and completely meaningless.

She wants attention. She wants to be let out. She wants hands on her, stroking her hair, scratching gently at her scalp. She can't say any of this because songbirds don't have words, but she says it anyway with every trill and chirp and desperate little whistle-note.

You reach through the bars to touch her cheek and she melts into it immediately, eyes fluttering closed, a low, sweet hum vibrating in her chest, like a purr but melodic. She turns her face into your palm and makes a sound that can only be described as a coo, her body relaxing against the bars and her tits wrapping around them.

When you pull your hand back, her eyes open and she lets out a sharp, plaintive note of distress. Her elbows scrabble on the bars. She chirps again, urgent, head bobbing.

You could open the latch and let her out, let her hop to you and nuzzle against your neck and sing soft little songs into your ear while you do whatever you want with her. Or you could leave her in the cage a little longer, watch her press against the bars and trill for your attention, the girl who never shut up now only able to make beautiful noise.

She sings again, a descending melody that sounds almost sad, those gorgeous whistle-notes echoing off the bars of her cage.

The loud, brash, constantly-performing punk frontwoman reduced to a pretty bird who can only sing without words and wait to be touched.

She tilts her head at you, chirrups hopefully, and waits to see what you'll do.