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Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Louisiana
Gender: Male
Posts: 18
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Music Far Off In The Night. (Please Read!)
A SHORT
ADAM G. ROSS
There was music far off in the night that cut through the warm blackness, a syrupy texture about it. He reached over and grabbed her by her lower and kissed her neck.
“We gotta get that damned thing fixed,” he said banging onto the wall unit.
“Do you think she’ll turn it down before too terribly long? She knows that we can hear it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, she really loves Billy Holiday, just try and enjoy it.” He turned to her. “I hope not, I’m enjoying not sleeping.”
“You enjoy not sleeping too much lately.”
“I know, It’s been impossible for me to fall asleep, I don’t know why.” He grabbed the half finished bottle of wine from the bedside table. It was dark burgundy and smelled as wine should, which was still new to him considering he had never particularly cared for wine.
“Your teeth are purple,” she said while he drank.
“Well your the one who wanted to drink this mess.” A small line of purple liquid ran down his bare chest and mixed with the sweat that had been forming for the past hours.
“I know, my sweet, but I can’t drink anything else, you know it makes me terrible, almost unbearable.”
“Terrible, unbearable, what rhymes with those two?”
“Careable.”
“That’s not a word.”
“I know.” She leaned over and took the bottle.
“This reminds me of something, as if we’ve been here before. Do you feel that?” She thought for a moment, rising her dark brown eyes to some spot in her mind.
“No, this seems like the first time.” She put the bottle of wine back onto the bedside table.
“Oh, there it is I think.”
“What?”
“The music stopped.”
“No, she’s just resetting the record.” Moments later the music started again.
“Very observant of you.” He wrapped his hands around her and kissed her neck again and rubbed his hands over her breasts.
“Do you want to go to sleep now?” She asked in an almost moaning voice as he kissed her.
“No, I want you to tell me something I’ve never heard about you. A secret, if you have one.”
“Well if I tell you, then it will cease to be a secret then won’t it?”
“No, it will still be a secret, but a secret between both of us.” He hopped up from the bed and sat naked on the chair next to it. The legs of the chair were skinny and old, metal that had been painted into bright colors during a night of boredom.
“Well... I don’t know of any secrets that I haven’t told you.”
“Surely there is something.”
“No, noting, I’ve told you my entire life story I believe. Why do I have to be the one to tell a secret, your the one who brought it up, why don’t you tell me one.” She reached over and grabbed the bottle as she sat up in bed and kicked the covers on the floor.
“Well... I guess that’s a valid point, what do you want to know about me?”
“A secret.” She said sipping the wine. Her eyes drew upon his and she couldn’t help but to give a smile. He smiled back and dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pants that were laying on the floor.
“A secret, eh...”
“Give me one before you start.” He lit it for her and gave it to her after taking a few puffs off of it. He leaned back in the chair, making no attempt to shield his body from her sight. He thought for a moment and then exhaled slowly.
“I’ll tell you something, but you’ll probably think less of me afterwards.”
“Oh, this sounds exciting.”
“No, it’s not, it’s actually quit pitiful.” He said it as he exhaled a long plum of smoke that danced in the still air before his eyes.
“Your serious?”
“Very.”
“I won’t think less of you, no matter what it is.” She looked at him and really believed that she meant it.
“Ok, hear goes. My parents died when I was younger, a car accident on christmas eve.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“I know. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I can still remember the exact words my uncle said when breaking the news to me. ‘John, your folks have died in a car crash.’ He said it with such a matter of fact tone about him.”
“Oh, John, I’m sorry.”
“It’s ancient history now, but at the time there was nothing anyone could say to console me, and believe me, they tried to say everything under the sun. ‘It’s not you fault, it’s gods will, things will work out,’ all the standard lines. But, I believed non of it, I knew it was my fault, I knew things weren't going to be alright, and most of all I knew there was no God of any kind that could let this happen.”
“Why would you think it was your fault?” She asked as she smoke the last of her dying cigarette and took a long gulp of the wine.
“I thought it was my fault because I was young and knew no better. However, being young and guilt ridden is a serious thing. It can be so overpowering to the point of madness, which I felt I was rapidly reaching.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I know, but it’s the way it was. The root of my guilt was the fact that they were driving to pick up a gift for me, a gift for my birthday.”
“What’s your birthday?”
“Christmas day.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that makes it even worse.”
“I know. It was late, and they had bought a book for me, a first printing which they knew I would love. However, they didn’t want me to find out about the gift so they kept it at my uncle’s house in the days leading up to christmas. They drove to get it, ice covered the roads, and my father lost control of the car, that simple. One minute I’m a young happy boy, the next, an orphan.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“You wanted to hear a secret, and I’m getting to it. So, my parents had died and in the days leading up to the funeral my only thoughts were of the moment that was sure to come.”
“What moment?”
“The last moment that I would be able to see them, that moment before the caskets were closed and I was going to be alone forever. In the funeral home, on christmas day and the next day, I still had the right to see them. I could walk to the caskets and look at them, touch them, know that they were still there, and in some way draw new memories of them. However, in the back of my mind I knew that they were going to go into the ground at some point. That at some point, I would never be able to see them again, and that was my worst fear.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited, and waited more, always thinking that this would be the last time that I would see them, always knowing that I would never be able to get back these last moments, and for that reason I convinced the funeral director to let me sleep in the funeral home on christmas and the day before the funeral. They felt pity for me, but I didn’t care, I didn’t care in the least, I just wanted to be with them as long as possible. However, I realized that it was doing no good. I couldn’t morn, I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that they were really gone, for the fact that I wouldn’t let myself. I would worry about a simple thing, the last time I was able to see them, and I would push the reality to the back of my mind. It was a cowards move, a terrible way to be-”
“Don’t say that, you were only acting naturally.”
“I realized that, I realized that there was no way that I was going to be able to watch them go into the ground. So, I made up my mind, I decided that I would see them on my own terms, for the last time, and that I would always remember them as such.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was late, or early rather, early in the morning, around four I believe. I was alone in the chamber, my parents in their caskets, I lying on the floor on a little cot the funeral director gave me. I knew that I was going to have to leave, but not before I did what I needed to do to be able to get over the death.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, this is the secret. I dressed for the weather outside, it was one of the coldest winters on record so it took me a minute to get fully dressed. After I was finished dressing I walked to my mothers casket, picked her up out of it and placed her on the ground. She was beyond cold, colder than any block of ice I’ve ever touched since then, so cold that I thought she would shatter if I dropped her on the carpet. Next, I picked my father up out of his coffin and placed him on the carpet beside my mother. I remember looking down at the two of them and realizing that I needed to lay with them. And so I did. I laid down with them, in between them, my father on the right, my mother on the left. I cried harder than I though was possible for a human to cry for fifteen minutes straight. I thought of all the times my father had taken me out to play catch, all the times my mother had tucked me in late at night. I though about the first time I lost a tooth and woke up in the night to see my mother and father placing a dollar under my pillow. I thought of all of my birthdays, christmas days spent opening presents and eating cake. I thought of how, late at night, I would sneak downstairs and watch my father and mother dance in the living room to the softest music I had ever heard, how he kissed her and she leaned her head on his shoulder as the two of them floated and twirled on a pillow of air. But, what I thought of mostly was what they said to me before they left on christmas eve, the last thing they ever said to me...”
“What...”
“We love you... They did, and I knew it. I knew it the night they died, I knew it as a child, and I knew it as I laid on that god damned floor with them. They loved me and each other, and it was time for me to say goodbye to that, forever. After I cried out all of my tears I placed both of them in my fathers casket, kissed both of them on the lips and closed the lid.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I left that night, in the night I walked and walked until I found a ride. The next day I was three states over and broke, but I knew that I would have to stay gone until the funeral was over. I knew that they might postpone it a few days, try to find me and make me watch it, but I wanted to remember my parents the way I left them, together. I drifted for a little over a week, doing what I had to to get by. When I returned home everyone was happy to see me, they thought I had killed myself and had had the entire state looking for me.”
“Did you get in trouble.”
“No, I didn’t, they knew why I did it. No one really wanted to ask that many questions either.” He moved from the chair back to the bed. She kissed him on the lips and they were silent for a long moment. Finally she reached over and grabbed the now almost finished bottle of wine.
“How long ago was this.”
“I was seventeen... So it was nearly fifty years ago.”
The two of them laid in bed and did not speak for a long while. Finally, without saying goodnight, after the bottle was fully finished and the cigarettes were gone, she turned of the lamp and the two of them fell into sleep with music far off in the night.
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