Music

"Joshua, turn that down. I can still hear it."

Her son shot her a look of pure, cold, hard death in the rearview mirror and thumbed at the device. He slouched even further in the seat and bobbed his head, looking out the car window with resumed majestic apathy.

The volume may have decreased, but she couldn't tell. She could still hear the incessant thumping bassline and the scratchy angry lyrics that occasionally resolved into epithets.

She dug her nails into her palms around the steering wheel. The veins on the back of her hands writhed.

He had this thing lately where he would ride in the back like she was his driver. His gangly legs folded just so to dig his knees into her seat. When the chorus came in he would slap out the beat on his lap or drum his fingers against the glass.

What drove her up the wall, however, weren't his antics. She had done her reading on parenting, spoken with her elders and her experienced "mom" friends. She knew well enough that she and her son were powerless before tyrants. Hormones and the quest for self-identity. For pussy and possibly penis. She'd found all his pornography long ago.

No, what was digging its hooks into her skin more than anything else was the simple fact that her son and child and flesh was abjectly tone deaf. The fact that he listened to snarling overpaid idiots encouraging him to rape and vice didn't bother her nearly as much as the fact that he couldn't keep pace with the rhythm and the rhyme scheme.

It was only through force of will that she kept from swerving the car into a curb, reaching back and snatching off his headphones to shriek in full fury,

"LISTEN! GOD DAMN IT... CAN'T YOU FUCKING LISTEN. IT'S NOT: uh UH UH these BITCHES ain't SHIT to me. THE EMPHASIS IS CLEAR AND PLAIN: uh UH uh THESE bitches ain't SHIT to me. IT IS NOT THAT HE WANTS YOU TO GET THE POINT THAT WOMEN ARE BITCHES, BUT THAT THESE FUCKING WOMEN IN FUCKING PARTICULAR ARE BITCHES. AND THERE'S A MELODY, A SIMPLE LITTLE MELODIC HOOK TO THE CHORUS. SIXTEEN NOTES. LIKE A GOD DAMNED NURSERY RHYME; WHY CAN'T YOU FOLLOW IT? WHY CAN'T YOU CARRY A TUNE? IT'S IN A MAJOR KEY FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IT'S NOT THAT COMPLICATED. AT ALL. I WAS FIRST CLARINET FOR MY ENTIRE FOUR YEARS AT STATE. I WON CONTESTS - CONTESTS. I FUCKED YOUR FATHER IN THE ORCHESTRA PIT FOR 'CARMEN' IN PARIS AND I BLEW THE CONDUCTOR ON THE SIDE. I FUCKING HELPED HIM WITH HIS ARRANGEMENTS - REWROTE THE PART FOR VIOLA FOR THE ARIA MYSELF AND THE WEDDING MARCH FOR THAT ASSHOLE'S SECOND MARRIAGE. AND WHY. THE FUCK. ARE YOU. MY. CHILD."