Somewhere, Paramore is Playing…

Tia woke up to the silence first.

Not just the absence of yelling, doors slamming, feet pounding down the tier — but the kind of silence that made your teeth hurt. That pressed against the inside of your skull like it was trying to dig its way in.

She blinked against the flickering light.

The bulb in her cell always buzzed faintly — had for months — but today it didn’t. Just that stuttering flicker, casting long shadows that didn’t line up with the bars.

No one brought breakfast. No one brought meds. No one walked the row.

Tia sat up slowly, her joints clicking in the cold. She’d been in seg long enough to know how time stretched weird here, but this wasn’t time stretching — it was time stopping.

She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing.

No footsteps. No pipes creaking. No yelling from the cell three doors down where someone was always starting shit by 8AM.

No one. Nothing. She was alone.

And not just alone — last.

She stayed curled on the mattress for what could’ve been hours. Or days. Time had no edges anymore. Even seg had its rhythms — coughs from down the row, guards dragging their feet, clinking keys, the hum of fluorescent lights pretending to be sunlight.

But now: nothing.

The toilet didn’t flush. The sink wouldn’t run. The bulb overhead kept its little twitching seizure of light, but it didn’t buzz. No electricity hum. No white noise. Just her breath, sharp in the stillness.

She banged on the door once. Twice. A third time, for ceremony. No echo.

She shouted. Not words. Just noise. To hear herself.

It sounded wrong — like yelling into a dream. The kind where your voice doesn’t come out right and you don’t realize you’re dead until you do.

Her fist hovered over the steel again, but she let it drop. If there was no one left to hear her, what was the point of asking?

She started counting screws in the vent. Tracing cracks in the floor. Tried to remember all the lyrics to every Paramore song she knew. Got stuck on the bridge of “All I Wanted” and cried for no good reason.

Sleep stopped working. So did hunger. She wasn’t hungry. She just remembered what hunger felt like.

By what might’ve been day three — or five — she whispered, “Am I the last one?”

And the silence answered like it wanted to be believed.

By now, the quiet had turned physical — like mist inside her lungs. It was no longer about waiting. No longer about being scared. It had calcified into something else: a feeling like static under the skin.

She wasn’t thinking survival anymore.

She was thinking: If I’m the last person alive, then everything I make is the last art left on Earth.

So she reached for her sketchpad.

The paper was warped, edges curling like it had absorbed some of her dread. The stub of a pencil sat in the groove between her mattress and the wall, just where she’d left it after drawing portraits for ramen.

She didn’t think — she drew.

Lines first. Quick strokes. She knew this dog by heart now. A blue merle Aussie. Alert ears. Speckled fur. Eyes too knowing. She used to draw it for the girls on the yard — one in particular who said it reminded her of someone.

She shaded in the fur, soft graphite shadows against the bone-white page. A little blur at the edge of the tail. Tongue lolling. One paw curled just so.

She was halfway through finishing the nose when something shifted. The page pulsed.

She froze.

The paper was still. But the dog — the one she had drawn — blinked.

Not like a trick of light. Not like exhaustion. It blinked at her.

Then the pencil rolled off the mattress and everything… folded. Not violently. Not even loudly. Just — the cell unraveled. And when the quiet returned, it smelled like sandalwood and vinyl…

The cell didn’t vanish. Not all at once. It peeled. First the air — it changed texture. Became warm and soft, like the inside of a hand. Then the cold steel bed beneath her thighs shifted into something with give. A mattress. Real. Fabric, not plastic.

She smelled… something. Vinyl. Paint. Dust caught in sunlight.

And when she looked up, the bars weren’t there anymore.

In their place was a wall — warm-toned, almost pink, the color of sunset bleeding through gauze curtains. There were books on the floor. Records stacked in leaning towers. Art prints layered on the walls like overlapping memories. A dog with speckled fur sat panting in the middle of a southwestern rug the color of terracotta and dreams.

Tia didn’t move. She just blinked. Slowly. Once. This had to be death. Or madness. Or both. Because she was barefoot. Because her hair was a mess. Because the air didn’t smell like bleach and fear. Because this felt like the inside of someone’s favorite daydream — and nothing in prison had ever felt favorite.

She stood, legs shaky. The dog bounced once, tail thumping like it had been waiting just for her. She turned in a slow circle, taking it all in — the pink locker covered in stickers, the record spinning soundlessly, the glass of water with lipstick on the rim.

She reached for the vintage Playboy on the shelf. And that’s when she heard the voice…

“Don’t touch the vintage Playboy!”

It was bright. Familiar. Smiling. Tia turned just in time to see Missy — her favorite nurse, her soft crush, the one with the red hair and the laugh that made pill call feel like flirtation — materialize midair, barefoot and radiant. Missy grinned like this was all completely normal.

“Come on,” she said, tossing Tia a jacket like they were already late for something. “We have plans.”

Tia didn’t remember leaving the apartment. One blink, and she was standing in the middle of a street she’d only seen in movies. West Hollywood, neon-soaked and pulsing. A low buzz under her skin. The air smelled like expensive perfume and fryer grease, glitter and gum, summer and sweat.

Missy held her hand like it was a natural thing to do. Tia looked down and realized she was dressed — not in state greens, not in the too-thin thermals of RHU, but in a jeans that made her feel taller and a leather jacket that hugged her like it meant it. Her body felt… hers.

“Where are we going?” she asked, breathless.

Missy grinned and tugged her forward. “The bar. It’s emo night. You’re not ready.”

They walked past murals and palm trees and soft, half-sleeping faces lit by phone screens. A bouncer waved them in like he’d been waiting, like he knew. Inside: warm light, low ceilings, a disco ball trying its best. Paramore was already playing.

The beat hit her chest like a memory.

Missy ordered drinks, something pink and frothy. Tia pressed her back against the bar and watched the show begin. The first performer stepped out in fishnets and tears painted down their cheeks. It was theatrical and raw, like someone had turned heartbreak into choreography.

Missy leaned in and whispered, “We’re elder emos now. This is our reward.”

Tia laughed — and it sounded like freedom. Like she’d never laughed inside a prison before. Like maybe she hadn’t.

The bass shook the floor. Girls with smeared eyeliner screamed the lyrics. A drag queen in a Paramore hoodie fake-cried into a microphone stand, and someone in the crowd threw a paper heart.

And Tia — Tia swayed with Missy under a haze of colored lights, blinking hard to stay in the dream. But it didn’t fade. It didn’t warp. It didn’t end. She was here. She was warm. And nothing hurt.

A week later, a postcard arrived in a town outside Boston. The handwriting on the front was unmistakable — tight, slanted, all-caps. The kind Tia used when she wanted to be taken seriously. There was a doodle of a dog in the corner, tiny and familiar. Her mother turned it over slowly, breath caught in her throat.

The image on the front was a blurry photo of a pink-lit stage — sequins, fishnets, hands raised mid-chorus. On the back:

Mom —

I’m okay. I think I’m in West Hollywood. There was a drag show. It was emo themed. They played Paramore. Everyone knew the words. I danced. I laughed. I didn’t feel afraid.

Missy was there. You’d like her.

I wish I could explain it better. But I think I’m happy.

Love you.

T

The postmark was real. West Hollywood. Dated four days ago.

But the prison — the facility in California where Tia had been housed — had been part of the fallout zone.

A nuclear blast. Instant.

No survivors.

The call had come already. The official word: she was gone.

And yet. Here was her handwriting. Her drawing. Her joy, pressed into cardstock. The dog on the stamp was a blue merle Aussie. One ear flopped. Tongue out. Like it knew a secret.

Her mother sat with it in her hands for a long time. She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She just whispered, “Good. Good,” over and over, like a prayer she’d just remembered how to say.

Because maybe death was the end. But maybe — maybe — for someone like Tia, it was finally a way out.