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THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Short Story
By John True
Based on concepts by Larry & Andy Wachowski
* 1 *
The sounds fill your ears, soaking your brain in their sweet soft alcohol. The choir's voices combined from both sexes and all ages intertwine with the enormous pipe organ's vibrations in a communion that must constitute a higher dimension. Your eyes close to allow the inner reality to take hold, to switch to a lower gear, to a more primitive state of consciousness. Wonderfully tuned muscles in your face give you that ability that still resides solely to humans -- you smile with ecstasy.
The nervousness melts away; the tension comes off you like a worn-out skin, and happiness as water fills your glass soul. Amid all the sanctity solitude and circumstance; it is as if you are alone in your mind, surrounded with the endorphins of pleasure. Walking forward is no longer prevented by the paralysis of fear, the hot itchiness of the black and white coverings no longer a distraction. You walk on.
As you walk past row upon row of friends family and admirers, your feet no longer feel pain, no longer feel the floor beneath them. You look down, and it looks like you are floating an inch off of the floor. An interesting illusory image, to be sure; but nothing that needs to be questioned or dwelled on. Reaching the front, you turn around and wait for the most important thing in your life to follow you up the aisle. Beaming like the village idiot, the surroundings slide into the background as emotion takes the foreground.
You can hear your own happiness, the breathing of the congregation, and the rustling of the trees outside, yea even the heartbeat of the world. "This must be what the music of the spheres sounds like", you think to yourself. Then the music stops, and your spell wavers enough to remind you where you are, until the next song begins.
This song so familiar, provoking a flip of an inner button and lunch at the throat, but now it is new, every note an exploration on another world. And then you see her, appearing at the doorway like an angel, white as a cloud. Her clothes flow around her and behind her like a ghost. She is walking this way. She is walking straight towards you. Slowly, so agonizingly slowly, she comes to you.
No, something is happening. A commotion in the back, a chaotic cacophony. Time seems to regain its normalcy, but it feels as thick as the space around you now. The white one that is your only one turns towards the back as the choir stops in confusion, the organ too is quitted by this minor chord. Two voices rise to the rafters like frightened doves. Two voices full of negative emotions.
"But Penelope, you can't be serious."
"I am. I told you to leave me alone, I've repeated myself these many months but still you persist."
"So, you won't come back to me?"
"Never, you psycho bastard. I am marrying Bobby Lyle and that is that. Now, leave this place and never return to my life!"
"It is true, then."
You can now see the perpetrator. He is short and chunky around the middle, yet his arms and legs are lanky. He seems lost, covered in inattention to the details of life. Hairs jut out of his face, dirt lives neglected on his skin, and his clothes and hair look worn two weeks straight. Walking for him seems like an effort, not from something physical, instead it seems to be something mental. The love you felt earlier sours into hate, dries in this anti-sun like a luscious purple plum shriveling into a black wrinkled prune. Everything else fades into the background but these two.
You decide to take action. Marching down the aisle with your smile of some yesteryear retooled into a scowl, a plowshare mangled into a sword, you walk towards your prey. Not taking more than a dozen steps, the scene changes right before your eyes.
The bedraggled little man says something, pulls an unfeeling piece of metal out from the front of his waistband, and inserts it into your pre-wife. Screams are produced from the mob, a flock of birds scared from their hiding place soar past the windows. Red stains the white in front of her dress as she turns towards you with a look of shock and longing.
Meanwhile, you just stop and stand there, helplessly watching your angel fall to earth and bounce heaven bound again. These events occur as if in drying concrete, sticky and sickeningly slow. You slowly walk over to her, reach out to her as her eyes slowly close. Inexplicably, you place your hand on her stomach where the wound is, where the nameless mass of cells that could have been expanded and released to be another human lie. The sticky red is sucked up like a sponge into your palm, you concentrate and try to heal her with only your hands.
You close your eyes and try to see inside of her. For a brief second, you sense a green glow around you and you feel your hand entering her body. But then you remember how the bullet got there and you change gears. You cannot save her, that's impossible. But, you CAN catch the thief who stole your wife's life and steal his. Breaking into a run, ignoring the crosses engrossed in the conversation of the wooden pews, you take pursuit of the daemon who stole your angel. He is running too. Just a waste of energy, just a waste of your time that boils the water in your shattered glassy soul even faster.
As you zigzag past still and moving objects, your eyes glued to your quarry, your mind empties of all but the things you will do to him. The primitive takes hold. The music of the spheres turned upside down. He started out so far away, out of view even. But, you focus on him and you can sense his particular signature. You can see all the obstacles in your way. You rush past the other people so fast they blur.
Bastard almost got away, almost was able to defend himself against the savage weaponry of your body in angry motion, almost survived your vicious attack. Your fists go so fast it makes you look like the multi-armed Indian God. You can feel the bones shattering beneath your fists of furious steel. Your love's blood on his hands, your hate's blood on your own. After what seemed like no time at all, hands come out of the blue to drag you to the flashing red and blue to race you to the building of the blues.
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