Lyris

"Y’know, come to think, I don’t really know how or when I met Ole Joel. Fuckin’ coot loved tellin’ folks ‘bout how he found a six-year old girl sleeping in his sax bag after a gig one night. That’s a load of Hallmark bullshit, an’ we both knew it. But after all these years, I can’t recall a time before Joel.

"I’ll never forgive that bastard. Taught me everythin’ I know: How to cook, how to hide, how to eat, an' how to play this rusty bitch of an instrument he used to call ‘Bessy’… Seriously. What a loon, huh? I loved the old fart to death, though - Which is why I hope he rots in hell for havin’ the nerve to actually go and die on me.

"I was thirteen. Things have been rough since then. Not that I’ve ever had it easy – me and Joel used to spend our nights jammin’ for cash, an' scrammin’ when the fuzz showed. Without ‘im, I scraped by as a street performer for a bit, but as I grew up, the ‘small girl, big blues’ routine grew stale, an' people stopped payin’.

"It was ‘round that time that I learned that buskin’ on the street corner wasn’t the only job that payed to blow. I booked gigs at several sleazy joints, an' quickly figured out that the patrons there cared more for my sex than my sax.

"Didn’t faze me, then, when a stranger asked me for a ‘private performance’. He took me back to some ratty motel den. I set my sax in the corner. The moment I’m naked, wham – the guy pulls a badge on me, tellin’ me I’m under arrest. Tells me I’m goin’ to prison, an' that my sax’d be taken.

"I…I never meant to kill’im, honest. But there’s no way in hell he was gonna jail me. So I caught‘im off guard, pick up my sax, an' bash his skull in. Then I run. I ran, an' ran s’more, an' after weeks I turn up here, in Nexus Park.

"You can see the dent in the bottom of the sax, where I hit’em. Now my damned low Bb plays a dime sharp, all because some asshole tried to cage me! Still. I aint got no regrets for what I did, an' if yer hear to try and shame me, fuck off.

"… Eh? That’s not why yer here? Doesn’t look like yer stickin’ around for the music, so waddya want with me? Go on, spill it!