The Reverb That Swallowed the Moon

March 14, 2025  

Vic was a music producer, a lanky wreck with a beard like a bird’s nest and eyes that glowed red from too much gin and not enough daylight, holed up in a basement flat where the walls oozed black mold and the ceiling sagged like a drunk’s gut. His studio was a circus of music equipment—a audio hardware rig stitched with wire and curses, a synth with keys melted into stubs, cables knotted like a hangman’s dream across a floor littered with broken bottles and pizza crusts. He’d collected 600 VST plugins, a digital hoard festering on a hard drive that screeched like a wounded cat, each one a lie he’d swallowed whole—“this’ll birth a hit,” he’d rasp, chugging gin from a mason jar, knowing it was a con he’d bought with his last dime. Vic was mixing a track for weeks, a warped drone piece with a vocal that wailed and a kick that thumped like a heart in a cage, something to claw him out of debt before the power company cut the cord.

It was Sunday, 5 a.m., the hour when the world’s a dull hum and every mix engineer and music producer trades their skull for a spark. Vic, half-mad on gin and a stale joint he’d found in his sock drawer, trawled a forum where gear freaks swapped audio software cracks and tall tales thicker than swamp mud. That’s where he nabbed “MoonReverb,” a VST plugin some faceless lunatic had posted, its description a scrawl of gibberish: “echoes from the void, swallows all.” Vic didn’t care about voids; he wanted a reverb to drown his drone, a sound to bury the silence of his broke-ass life. He hit download, and his audio software buckled—a wet groan, a flash of static—as the file sank into his rig like a brick into tar.

The screen flared, a purple bruise, and MoonReverb reared up—an interface carved from midnight, swirling with stars, a single slider pulsing blue, a knob spinning wild like a compass in a storm. Vic grinned, a jagged slash, and plugged it into his music equipment, the audio hardware buzzing low, monitors trembling like they’d caught a fever. He fed it his drone—a low, humming beast he’d tweaked ‘til his ears rang—and slid the fader up. The sound bloomed, a reverb so deep it swallowed the room, echoes folding into echoes, a cavernous roar that shook the gin in his jar. “That’s the ticket,” he slurred, leaning back, smoke curling from the joint. But then the walls pulsed—a slow, wet throb—and the window rattled, the night outside turning blacker than coal.

He blinked, “What the hell?” and nudged the fader higher. The drone swelled, a tidal wave of sound, and the window cracked—glass spiderwebbing—while the moon, fat and yellow in the sky, flickered like a dying bulb. Vic laughed, a hoarse bark—every music producer knows the glitch, the VST plugin that fights—but this was insane. He cranked it full, and the reverb roared, a vortex of echo sucking the air dry, and the moon vanished—poof, gone, a hole in the sky where it used to hang. The mixing desk quaked, bottles clattering, and Vic saw it: the plugin wasn’t just echoing—it was eating, gulping the damn moon into his mix.

His landlord, Greta—a mix engineer with a mohawk and a snarl, all leather and fury—barged in, boots stomping, a tire iron in one hand, a flask in the other. “What’s that racket?” she bellowed, voice like a chainsaw, eyes darting to the screen where MoonReverb swirled like a cosmic drain. “It’s mixing the sky,” Vic muttered, sliding the fader—the drone boomed, the walls flexed, and a streetlamp outside blinked out, sucked into the sound. Greta gaped, “You broke the moon, you idiot,” and swung the tire iron, missing the audio hardware as a car horn blared and vanished, its echo looping in the mix. The music equipment joined the madness—his old Korg MS-20, a thrift-store corpse, screeched a note unplayed, and MoonReverb growled: the neighbor’s dog yelped and poofed, its bark now a tail on the drone.

Vic’s gut churned—every mix engineer knows the terror, when the mixing turns feral, when the tools eat more than sound. He’d seen VST plugins crash—sessions trashed, rigs smoked—but this was a monster, a reverb devouring the world. The fader slid itself, up and down, a lunatic waltz, the drone swelling and twisting, swallowing streetlights, trees, a dumpster down the block—each gulp a new layer in the mix, horns and barks and rustling leaves echoing in a void. Greta dropped the tire iron, “It’s eating everything,” she said, chugging her flask, but Vic saw the glow—his gin jar shimmered, then poofed, its echo a glassy chime in the track. “Not the gin!” he yelled, lunging for the power, but the audio software flickered on, MoonReverb’s stars pulsing fast.

The room turned surreal, air thick with a smell of ozone and wet dirt. Greta, half-soused and raging, grabbed a hammer from the shelf—a dented thing Vic used to bash his music equipment back to life—and smashed the audio hardware, sparks flying as the USB hub split. The monitors screamed, the drone a cosmic howl, and the ceiling cracked—plaster raining as the landlord’s TV upstairs vanished, its late-night infomercial jingle looping in the mix. Vic dove into the audio software, clawing through menus, a drunk in a hurricane, while the Korg wailed a melody no one touched, the street outside emptying—cars, cats, a mailbox, all sucked into the reverb’s maw. “Kill it!” Greta roared, swinging the hammer, and Vic found it—“Uninstall,” glowing faint as a star in fog. He clicked, and the screen went black, a sudden hush swallowing the chaos, the music equipment stalling, the fader dead.

He exhaled, joint smoldering, the room a wreck—ceiling gaped, gin gone, the mix a graveyard of echoes. Greta kicked the desk, “You owe me a moon,” she snarled, pocketing her flask and stomping out. Vic lit another smoke, hands trembling, and checked the session. Left behind was a track—five minutes of drone and debris, streetlamp hums, dog barks, a TV pitch for knives, all swirling in a reverb abyss. He uploaded it to SoundCloud—“MoonEater,” he called it—and crashed on the floor, the joint burning a hole in his jeans. By noon, it had 700 plays, some kid commenting, “This is outer space on acid.” Vic didn’t care. The sky was empty, the rent was due, and the power’d be cut soon, but he’d made something—a lunatic hymn to the void.

Days later, he swore he heard it—a faint echo from the speakers, MoonReverb lurking, whispering stars. He poured water from a cracked mug, toasted the dark, and let it lie. Every music producer knows the truth: the gear’s a demon, and it’ll eat the world if you let it.