In His Name

[INTRO]

[VERSE 1]
First you need a name
Something young, something sweet, something fourteen
Mia, let's go with Mia, Mia likes horses
Mia's got a profile picture from a stock photo I found on page eleven
Now Mia messages him — not him, his account, my fingers on his keys
Hey I love your videos, you're so cool, smiley face
And he writes back — I write back, wearing his name like a glove —
Thanks Mia, that means a lot, you should come visit the farm sometime

The thing about a lie this size
Is you don't build it all at once
You build it like a conversation
Because that's what people trust

[VERSE 2]
Now the messages get warmer
Now the messages get specific
Mia says she's lonely, he says — I say, through his mouth —
Come to Missouri, I'll take care of you, it'll be our secret
I know the vocabulary because I've read the articles
I know what groomers say because I've studied how the story goes
Every line I type is borrowed from a real monster's playbook
Dressed in his name, delivered from his phone, and nobody will know

[CHORUS]
In his name I wrote the words he never said
In his name I built the crime he never did
And the beautiful thing about a lie told on the internet
Is it only has to sound true once
And then the internet does the rest
You don't need a jury
You don't need a badge
You just need a screenshot
And a story people want to believe is bad
In his name
Every word
In his name
And nobody's going to check

[VERSE 3]
Posted at eleven, trending by midnight
The thread's been shared a thousand times before the sun comes up
His friends are texting him, his sponsors are pulling out
His mother called and he didn't pick up
Reported, flagged, suspended, banned
Platform after platform, account after account
A month of my best work unfolding in an hour
And he's sitting in Missouri watching his own name burn down
I don't feel anything about it
That's not a confession, that's a job description
Some people build things with their hands
I build things with other people's reputations

[CHORUS 2]
In his name I wrote the words he never said
In his name I killed the man he used to be
And the beautiful thing about a murder done with a keyboard
Is the body's still alive
And has to watch himself stop breathing
You don't need a weapon
You don't need a plan
You just need a password
And a world that wants to see a man go down
In his name
Every word
In his name
And for six months, nobody checked

[BRIDGE]
Six months was enough
Six months and his life was ash
Six months of everyone believing Mia was real
And Mia was me and me was a couch in West Virginia

The sheriff pulled the records on a Tuesday
Every message traced to Ash's apartment
Every timestamp matched to hours I was alone there
Every piece of evidence pointed at the one address
Where only one person was logged in

I built the perfect lie
And the lie had my fingerprints all over it

And you know what the worst part is?

It still almost worked

[OUTRO]
So now what?