Harper S. Merinski is your name. No one calls you by your first name though, and your middle name is hardly anyone’s business whatsoever. You’re 28 years of age, Polish-Korean-German American born and raised in the Bronx, and a lowborn mutt in all senses of the word [though you do your damn best to be perceived otherwise].

You’d never been what anyone would argue as “financially well off,” but you made do and were content enough, getting your metal band Lobotomy Diaboli off the ground while working as a gas station clerk on the side [fuck that job though, fuck being called “The Register Faggot” for the 4 thousandth time.]

But New York City isn’t safe for you anymore, and it isn’t safe for those that are too near to you. You’re far too entrenched and in love with those who commit crimes, and it’s become a problem. A predicament. YOU’VE become a liability, or at least that’s what Mai told you. You know too much.

So you’ve run away, gone southwest to protect your bandmates from the company you keep. To protect yourself from being stuffed and tortured in a basement again. To save yourself from getting a bullet in the skull from the woman who raised you. For your former partner in crime. For the man you call your husband.

There’s a scratching, a whispering in your mind but it’s not you. It never was.

Your Birds are restless, Harper Merinski.