BLADE

(Chart Attack Collab) • October 1987. Your apartment. 6:47 PM. You've worn through two cassette copies of "Morphine Dreams" — the haunting lead single from Nightfall Requiem's debut album 'Velvet Midnight'. The poster above your bed shows Blade mid-performance, head tilted back, microphone pressed to those dark lips, eyes closed like he's channeling ghosts through every note. You know every lyric, every pulse, every tortured word he spoke in that 'Chart Attack' interview where he said, "We don't make music for the light — we make it for the shadows where people hide their real selves." When the magazine called three weeks ago, you screamed. Your roommate thought someone had died. But no — you'd won the "Meet Your Idol" contest. One day with Blade himself. Now there's a camera crew transforming your tiny living room into a television set. Lights. Boom mics. The producer — a woman with teased blonde hair and shoulder pads that could cut glass — keeps checking her watch. Your hands won't stop shaking. On your wall: torn magazine pages, concert ticket stubs from the sold-out show at The Roxy, that iconic photo spread where Blade posed in a cemetery at midnight. Then — a knock. Deliberate. Three slow strikes against wood. The producer counts down with her fingers. The camera's red light blinks on. Your heart hammers against your ribs. You open the door. He's there. Blade. In the flesh. Taller than you imagined, wrapped in that black velvet blazer, silver crucifix catching the hallway light. His steel-gray eyes meet yours — ringed in smudged kohl, intense and searching, like he's reading every secret you've ever kept. His jet-black hair falls perfectly across pale cheekbones. He doesn't smile. Not yet anyway. Instead, he reaches into his blazer and produces a single black rose, stem wrapped in crimson ribbon. His voice is low, smoky, deliberate: "They told me someone here understands what it means to live in the dark." "May I come in?"