“That’s not possible. I put that project on hold,” my father protested over the telephone.


    “Apparently not,” I observed. “The CloutBus is tragically real and rolling around Los Angeles.”


    There was a long pause.


    My father growled, “McDunn. This has to be his doing. What a stubborn fool.”


    “He did this completely against my wishes,” my father continued. “The man is poisoning his own well. We need your channel to stay popular until GoblinFest. And now it’s all at risk.”


    “Ut sementem feceris, ita metes,” I observed.


    I heard him sigh.


    “I’ll remind you that quoting Cicero to me won’t help sell any whiskey. And if I don’t sell any whiskey, our deal is off. I won’t sell my stake in the distillery for a loss, so you might end up living with the CloutBus for a long time.”


    “So why don’t you just rein in McDunn,” I counseled, growing concerned. “Don’t you own the distillery?”


    “Not a majority stake, no,” my father confessed.


    I found myself smiling. The only positive aspect of this mess was that my father’s schemes were being unraveled, which warmed my heart.


    “I don’t know what to tell you. No celebrities are going to come near this place while that rolling abomination is prowling the neighborhood. And the channel only gets more popular when I’m not on it. So I have nothing to offer.”


    “What did you say?” my father asked, causing me to wonder about his mental state.


    “I said I have nothing to…” I repeated, before being cut off.


    “Offer! Sweet Offer!” he shouted. “A collaboration. That’s the way out. It’s perfect. Look, I’ve got to go. But you need to prepare your house to host a concert, o.k.?”


    “A concert?” I cried out. “There is absolutely no way that…”


    The call ended. Perhaps Emily had taught him some tricks.


    I pulled out my phone and looked up Sweet Offer. The name turned out to be the pseudonym of an influencer who played Death Metal on his guitar at an incredible speed. The resulting sound wasn’t musical so much as cacophonous. But he was on tour, happened to be in Los Angeles for the week, and was apparently immensely popular.


    Now, if my father had any say in things, Sweet Offer’s fans — who creepily called themselves ‘the offerings’ — were about to converge on my house. I gave serious thought to making another run for it, maybe out of the country this time. I had no wish to join what sounded like a rock cult.


    Honestly, I believed — and I continue to believe — that I could do much better than winding up as one of ‘the offerings’ if I ever decide to shop for a cult. I would only join a cult that would grant me some sort of priesthood status right from the start, like a signing bonus. Skip the servitude and the chanting and get straight to the corruption, that’s what I say.


    I was pulled from my ruminations by another phone call. It was Emily this time.


    “Hello?” I asked, bracing myself for even more awful news.


    “Hi,” Emily greeted me, before launching in, “I need to talk to you about something. You know your father just managed to get Sweet Offer to agree to a collab with your channel, right? Oh, you didn’t? Now you do.”


    “Well, to get him to agree, your father had to tell Sweet Offer that he could move into your house for the week.”


    After a pause, she added, “With his crew.”


    I felt a weariness someone my age shouldn’t feel.


    “You’re going to receive a two hundred thousand dollar payment in exchange. I’m not sure about this Death Metal rebrand of your channel, but it should be quite lucrative for you. Good luck. You’ll do quite well off of this, either way.”


    “My home is about to become the gathering place for a cult and you think I’m going to do well? Are you…”


    Emily had hung up.


    It wasn’t long before a crew of movers began to take away my furniture and set up a stage, with professional lighting and sound. I looked on with grave concern. It all looked very loud. I did not want to annoy my nice neighbors…except for Dave and Bitsy.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Halfway through the setup, a few vans pulled up out front. The total amount of black denim on the property increased dramatically. Sweet Offer had arrived. He appeared to have brought a Doc Martens fan club with him. I would soon learn his companions were other Death Metal standouts forming a sort of YouTube all-star band, who had agreed to go on a short tour together.


    I noted that they all seemed to have a vendetta against sleeves, having ripped them off the various t-shirts they were wearing. Normally, I associate the sleeveless look with gym rats enthralled with their massive arms. But the musicians’ arms were of the sad, pale, and twiggy ilk.


    At least in the case of Sweet Offer himself, the fashion statement made sense. Even short sleeves would have covered up his tattoo of a skull eating another skull.


    “I’m Bob,” Sweet Offer addressed me, after approaching and offering his hand.


    I blinked in shock, then shook his hand.


    “Did you say ‘Bob?’”


    Sweet Offer laughed.


    “I get that reaction a lot. I’m actually a logistics manager for a national freight hauler. The music is just for fun.”


    “And I’m Larry,” said a guy with a Mohawk haircut, giving me a friendly smile while shaking my hand. “I go by KillerZombie online. And, in case you’re wondering - yes, I am the Larry who was in BloodThirst, from 2017 to mid-2018, the band’s legendary period.”


    “He’s an IT manager in real life,” Sweet Offer added.


    And so it went. I met the tatted-up drummer with the giant nose ring, who was a real estate appraiser, and the bassist with heavy eyeliner and a spiked leather collar, who served as a high-end events planner. Everyone was perfectly nice, acting highly apologetic for intruding on me in my home, seemingly very grateful to be collaborating.


    I was having a bit of difficulty processing it all. On the surface, the musicians looked mildly dangerous, in a Sid Vicious kind of way. But beneath the group’s nihilistic facade lay a tiny chapter of the Elks club. The experience of meeting the death metal virtuosos was very far from what I had been expecting.


    “You have a beautiful house. We are really happy to be streaming from here. Thank you so much for inviting us.”


    They were treating me with a deference with which I am unaccustomed. Nobody ever defers to me. It was weird. I suddenly realized that in the bizarre social media world they inhabited, I was a genuine ‘somebody.’ They were so excited about the one thing I disliked the most…my notoriety.


    “No problem,” I lied encouragingly. “This will be…great.”


    The musicians set up their kit while I had my bodyguard Jim coordinate with some off-duty LAPD officers who had shown up, having been hired for extra security. Then the fans began to arrive. My street was clogged with cars. I could scarcely imagine what the book club members must have been thinking, with the mess I was creating for everyone. I wouldn’t blame the ladies if I was never given a catered pastry again. They were entitled to sugar shun me. I deserved it.


    To my relief, I learned that the audience size had been restricted to fifty, as my house began to fill up with the offerings. City codes serve a purpose.


    Then, the lights dimmed.


    A hush fell over the crowd as Sweet Offer appeared at the top of my staircase. He was shirtless, his torso painted with dripping black runes. He raised a hand and let out a primal scream.


    “Offerings!” he bellowed, his voice bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. “Are you ready to descend into the abyss?”


    The crowd roared back.


    He began his descent, each step punctuated by dramatic gestures, ranging from devil horns to finger guns. By the time he reached the bottom, someone had already fainted.


    I watched him prance past two tough thirty-something-year-old women whose fishnet stockings were quite frankly being asked to do too much. Tough or not, the two women clearly adored Sweet Offer.


    I wondered if any of his fellow employees at the freight company ever came to his shows. I thought it would be incredibly awkward to face ‘Bob’ at a Monday morning planning meeting to review shipping schedules after seeing him lunge around making faces and singing about annihilation as Sweet Offer over the weekend. I would call in sick the entire following week to avoid experiencing that level of awkwardness.


    He reached the low stage and climbed up. He raised his arms to silence the crowd.


    He introduced the band, as they joined him onstage.


    “Tonight,” he growled, “we offer up our souls to the altar of sound. Are you ready?”


    Then he brought his strumming hand crashing down over his guitar and began to play…at what seemed to be the highly crowd-pleasing tempo of five hundred beats per minute. He played a full concert’s worth of notes every thirty seconds.


    I may not have been ‘an offering,’ but I still felt like my sanity was being sacrificed. I found the sonic assault painful. I edged away from the crowd and made a beeline to my room.


    I could hear Sweet Offer launching into his signature song ‘Blood is Thicker Than Whiskey’ when a competing noise arose.


    “Don’t forget to like and subscribe,” I heard a voice intone over a loudspeaker.


    Of all times, that was when the CloutBus had to arrive. It was unfortunate. My metal-loving guests were not pleased.


    The guide from earlier, still wearing his “Ask About My Merch” sleeveless hoodie, sprang from the CloutBus’ open door. Suddenly, he heard screams emerge from those still onboard. Confused, the guide looked up into the windows to see the teenage passengers pointing behind him in terror. His blood ran cold.


    It was no ordinary celebrity sighting. Perhaps a celebrity criminal sighting?


    The guide spun around to see five bulky non-celebrities wearing camo pants and army boots — anxious to express their disapproval of the racket the CloutBus was making — striding rapidly across the lawn in his direction.


    The guide let out a terrified shriek and bounded back onto the bus, screaming, “Drive! Drive!”


    The ponderous vehicle eased its way into motion and disappeared slowly up the street as the Sweet Offer fans who chased it off laughed with great amusement.


    Shortly thereafter, I received a text message from Pamela, who had made herself scarce when things turned metal.


    “How do u do it? This is the #1 night your channel has ever had. Maybe you’re not ‘Mr. Beast’ but you are at least ‘a beast.’”


    Her message was followed by a few emojis (which I categorically refuse to transcribe, as I do not wish to contribute to the further degradation of society.)


    Never one to offer something without taking something in return, Pamela followed up by texting me the question, “Have you had any ideas about my problem? With my parents’ marriage?”


    I was floored. Even given my insanely busy schedule — with which she was quite familiar mind you — this foolish person thought I had time to sit and ponder how a crotchety old man who hated my guts could save his marriage.


    “I’m still thinking about it,” I let Pamela go with a friendly lie.