#herbertlins

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Box Monkey Bourbon. Served neat. Like revenge.

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🎸Devil’s Chord Model #001: “The Howler”

Body:

• Box: Weathered wooden cigar box with burned-in veve sigil on the front (Box Monkey’s symbol)

• Finish: Torch-scorched edges, matte black stain with blood-red undertones

• F-holes: Stylized lightning bolt or open mouth “howl” sound holes on either side

• Custom plate: Brass corner guards stamped with occult glyphs

Neck:

• Material: Aged maple with rosewood fretboard

• Frets: 22, medium jumbo, fret markers as bone inlays shaped like monkey skulls or crescent moons

• Scale: 25.5” for full bluesy range

• Nut: Bone or synthetic ivory

Headstock:

• Shape: Flared, asymmetrical (like a devil’s horn silhouette)

• Logo: “Devil’s Chord” hand-burned with red metallic foil backing

• Tuners: Sealed vintage-style tuners, black nickel or brass

Strings & Hardware:

• Strings: 4-string setup (Open G or D tuning standard)

• Bridge: Floating hardwood bridge

• Pickup: Optional piezo or single-coil magnetic pickup hidden under a brass cover etched with the words:

“Every Chord a Curse”

Back detail:

• Etched backplate with Box Monkey’s quote:

“A tune ain’t worth playin’ ‘less it might bring somethin’ back from the other side.”

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Box Monkey Wise Words

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The Choir of the Damned

The church leaned sideways like it was tired of standing holy.

Somewhere deep in the swamps, where the roads gave up and the maps lied, Box Monkey found it—St. Lazarus of the Black Flame. Abandoned for decades, though some said it never stopped having services. Not the kind you wanted to attend.

Inside, the heat was unnatural. Not the kind of heat you sweat through, but the kind that seeps into your bones and starts whisperin’.

The walls bled scripture. The crosses hung upside down, weeping ash. He stepped through the narthex, and the doors slammed shut behind him—not by wind, but will.

At the altar, six choirboys stood in a crooked line. Their robes were tattered, faces pale, and mouths sewn shut with crimson thread. But they were humming. You couldn’t hear it with your ears—but your heart could. It was the sound of regret. Of promises broken in the dark.

Box Monkey unstrapped the cigar box guitar from his back. Its glow grew brighter with each step. The strings were wound tight with hexwire—tuned not by pitch, but by pain.

He sat in the front pew. Bowed his head like a man about to pray.

Then he played.

The notes weren’t chords. They were exorcisms. Each one tore at the seams of whatever foul force held that choir captive. The flames in the church swirled in rhythm. The boys began to cry, black tears running down sunken cheeks.

And then, something screamed.

It wasn’t the Devil. It was something older. Something jealous of light.

But Box Monkey kept playing. Until the stitches burst. Until the fire turned to steam. Until the music stopped being a weapon… and became a release.

When the last string went silent, the boys were gone. So was the fire.

Only the guitar glowed, whispering like it had something to say.

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BOX MONKEY’S BARN-BURNT BLUES

“Available Wherever Spirits Moan”

🔥 You can’t stream these tracks—

they stream you.

Each copy is hand-pressed onto a cursed wax cylinder

by a blind man in a forgotten train depot

somewhere between Baton Rouge and the afterlife.

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TRACK LIST INCLUDES:

🎵 “Whiskey in the Baptism Water”

🎵 “She Took the Dog, the Car, and My Shadow”

🎵 “I Dreamed the Devil Loved Me (And It Was Kind of Nice)”

🎵 “Mourning Dove’s Last Call”

🎵 “Track 5 (Do Not Play Backwards)”

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Warning:

Playing Track 5 backwards summons your high school regrets.

Includes a bonus harmonica solo recorded in a thunderstorm by accident.

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“Sounds like if Robert Johnson and a haunted jukebox had a love child.”

– The Phantom Times

“Not responsible for spiritual possession, romantic flashbacks, or sudden roadside weeping.”

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The Architect of Shadows”

A short story from the Box Monkey Universe

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The candle burned with a blue flame.

Box Monkey had followed the wrong chord. He knew it the moment the melody twisted and the shadows pulled long in unnatural directions. The tunnel he walked was made of old brick and grief — the kind of place built not for travel, but for reflection.

At the end of the passage stood a tall door carved with constellations and equations. It opened before he touched it.

Inside, the air felt old. Older than blues. Older than bone.

Books spiraled into darkness, shelves twisting like tree roots. At the center stood a man — thin, unmoving, his coat marked with star maps and compass veins. He didn’t look up from the parchment in his hand.

“You’re early,” the man said.

“I ain’t here for a riddle,” Box Monkey replied. “I’m lookin’ for the last piece of my song.”

“That’s not something you find,” the man said, finally meeting his gaze. His eyes flickered — like oil on water, like memories left in rain. “It’s something you build. Out of pain. Out of what you refused to face.”

Box Monkey took a breath. The room felt like the echo of a scream no one had ever voiced.

“And you?” he asked. “Who the hell are you?”

The man placed his compass-staff gently on the floor. “Some call me the Architect of Shadows. I draft the foundations of the soul when it’s ready to rebuild. I’m not here to save you. I’m here to show you the blueprints of the hole you dug yourself.”

He stepped aside.

Behind him, a wall of ink-stained glass revealed images: Box Monkey kneeling in the dirt, Box Monkey turning away from love, Box Monkey gripping his cursed guitar while a child cried in the background.

Every choice. Every silence. Every tune left unfinished.

“Look,” said the Architect. “Not to shame. To understand. Only then can you add the final note.”

Box Monkey didn’t speak. He stared, jaw tight, heart heavy. And slowly, his fingers moved toward the fretboard slung across his back.

He began to play.

Not to forget.

But to remember — and build.

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Back in the Lounge

Box Monkey wakes face-down on the bar.

The guitar’s still glowing, but one string is gone—snapped during the trip. Burned into the woodgrain beside him is a new chord shape he’s never seen before. A voodoo chord. A cursed chord. A beautiful one.

And deep in his coat pocket:

A sugar cube, untouched. Still dripping green.

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Every note’s a sip. Every sip’s a story.

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📖 THE BOOK OF BOX MONKEY

Scripture of the Church of the Blues

SERMON: “The Note That Wasn’t There”

—as spoken in a juke joint chapel somewhere between heartbreak and the end of the road.

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“Brothers, sisters, sinners and strays—

I ain’t here to save you.

I ain’t even sure I can save myself.

But lemme tell you a thing ’bout the note that wasn’t there.”

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There was a night—maybe the first, maybe the last—

Box Monkey sat on a crate under a burnt-out sign that used to say “JESUS SAVES.”

Now it just said “SAVES,” and even that flickered.

The rain was soft. The whiskey wasn’t.

A man came up to him—could’ve been a ghost, could’ve been God,

asked him, “Why you always play that broken tune?”

And Box Monkey said:

“’Cause the broken one’s the only one that ever answered back.”

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He strummed a chord in open D,

but left the last note off—

hung it there in the air,

unfinished, aching.

And in that silence,

you could hear everything he’d never said—

every sin, every sorry, every maybe tomorrow.

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See, in this Church, we don’t shout for joy.

We whisper to sorrow.

We leave room in the song for the things we lost.

For the things that left us.

For the things we ain’t brave enough to name.

And Box Monkey—he don’t preach in words.

He lets the guitar say what the soul’s too afraid to.

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So next time you’re playin’

and the world says “get it right,”

you remember:

Sometimes the holiest part of the song

is the note you don’t play.

Amen.

Now tune up, and pass the bourbon.

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The March of the Hollow Saints

Box Monkey stumbles into a street that wasn’t there before.

Lining the sidewalks are saints with no faces—hollow-eyed prophets in tattered choir robes. One holds a sign:

“YOUR NEXT SONG WROTE YOU FIRST.”

Another opens their chest cavity like a hymnal—inside, a chorus of children sings a chord he’s never heard before. It hurts. It heals. He bleeds lyrics from his fingers.