Nightime Melodies

The music was the sound of someone dying. That’s what I heard my first night in the new apartment. It was two in the morning and I lay next to a cum stained mattress left by the prior tenants, eleven empty bottles of Modelo that I hated myself for drinking because it worsened by headaches and no one in their early forty’s should drink that much, and a brown bag that held 3 debit cards equaling $300 minus the cost of the two six-packs.

              Why that much? Because a I’m convict who just did ten years and that’s what the state deems all that is necessary for a fresh start. And that’s what I wanted.

             A fresh start.

              But I couldn’t sleep. The music seeped into my skin. Its sharp notes and staccato rhythms were poison. The music did not end until mid-morning. But even after the music ended the sickening melodies torn at the sinews in my brain. I clinched my fist, trying to control my breathing.

             The second night did not get better. I had spent the day getting a look from high as fuck twenty year-olds or some (insert disadvantaged minority here) telling me I’m a risk to society.

             The worse part was every store or restaurant or diner I went to brought back some memory of Elizabeth. The mornings we would get coffee together down the street. Or the times after we got married when we were so poor we went into the store at separate times trying to see how apples we could shove in our pockets before we were caught.

             “Don’t be such a little bitch,” Liz would say to me, as she counted the apples right outside the store.

             I wish I could say that the way she turned around and walked back toward the car with her hair swaying in the wind and those tight jeans highlighting her curves made want to rip her clothes off and fuck her till I passed out because that’s what a twenty two year old would say.

              But really, I just wanted to be with her. I wanted to listen to her heart beat. I wanted to feel her hands across my back and chest. I wanted to feel her head on my shoulder.

             I wanted to know what it felt like to protect someone.

             With each night in that apartment, listening to the music, my frustration grew. I called the called the super but never got an answer. Went downstairs to the office but it was empty. It felt like this apartment building was an abyss for the desperate.

             So I used the debit cards, and I drank more beer. And when the beer ran out and the music still played I bloodied my knuckles on the dry wall until I fell asleep in exhaustion or I heard a sharp and painful crack in my hand.

             I preferred the crack in my hand. Its what I deserved even after the sentence. Even after the time in prison.

             There is never a good reason to be an alcohol, though I suppose some reasons are better than others. Because of what I did someone died. Because of what I did I lost everything. Worse still, Liz lost everything.

Don’t judge me for how I deal with my problems until you've stared down the same shit I have.

After a week with no sleep, I wanted nothing but to wrap my hands around that pianist, if you can call them that, and squeeze until I heard nothing but silence. I’m not a bad person, but it’s easy to be a good person if you aren’t desperate. Desperation changes everything.

             I left my apartment and walked the few steps over to the next door, listening to the music. If Liz were here she would have found a better way to deal with it. I missed her, but I suppose its easier to let someone go if you didn't deserve them. But I knew I could be what she wanted me to be.     

             The music stopped. I took a deep breath. Footsteps pattered behind the door. Something felt off and after a few seconds I no longer wanted to here. I wanted to be back with Liz binging The Office or Family Guy. I wanted to go back to that night we celebrated our ten-year wedding anniversary. We'd gone to Wendy’s because we couldn’t afford anything else, and it was that day I told her I wanted to sober up so our ketchup-stained table and went to the cash register and returned with a chocolate frosty.

             “Can’t get drunk on this can you?”

             “Guess I can’t.”

             I pulled her close. I told her I loved her. I said I wanted to be with her for a million years and she told me she wanted to have a baby.

             I could still smell Liz’s perfume fight the smell of sweet barbecue sauce and chicken nuggets as waited by the door.

             My body was ice in a dark cave. The door opened.

             “Yes?”

             Her voice was the splintered door to the apartment. Strands of gray fell across her shoulders. Her skin drooped beneath her eyes, and I took a step back from the door because I could feel cold air surrounding her.

             “I live right across the hall from you.”

             “I know. I can hear you slamming your fist in the wall.”

             Her eyes dug into my skin. How did this conversation become about me? I took a step forward.

             “Listen Boy.”

             I’m not a boy you fuck.

I couldn’t say it, but I wanted to. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. What was she hiding?”

             “You aren’t special. I get your mad. I bet you have some tear-jerker story behind those blue eyes as to why you ended up in this shit hole. But let me save you some time and effort. You’ll never leave. You’ll never get out. Once the state sends you here there is no coming back.

             “If I this music doesn’t stop –”

              “Talk to the super.” 

             “I did. And that didn’t help so now I’m talking to you. Is that your daughter in there?”

             “She has night terrors.” 

             “I just need a few hours is all. I’m trying to get back on my feet. Get my life back together. Beat the alcohol.”

             “I’ll do what is best for my daughter like I always have. Now please – ”

             The music stopped. A guttural moan echoed from the living the room. The woman turned around. She walked into the next room with a limp that made my own leg hurt.

             “Eeeeeeeeeee.” A voice from behind the wall.

             I could hear the voice of the woman behind the wall. She spoke in whispers. Her voice quieted by a tight jaw and flexed abdomen. I could hear the fear in her voice.

             Walk away. You need to walk away because behind that wall is something you can't unsee and will take you down a path from which there is no return. But my feet pushed me into the next room. Sweat laced with beer dripped down my forehead.

             When I reached the next room, the music started again. There was something about the elegance of seeing this little girl's fingers glide across the keys, her arms move like gentle waves through the octaves that distracted me from the horror of music.

A glue trap rested in the corner of the room, giving off a rising smell of blood coming from a motionless rat whose arm lay separate from the rest of the body. On the mantle was a broken clock that with a little polish looked as though it could be brought back to life. I looked down at the little girls feet as she worked the pedals.

My heart went numb. My broken hands formed fists so tight I cut the skin on my palms. Tight shackles were attached the girl's ankles. They were so tight it looked as though bruises had formed below and above the metal.

             “What’s going on?” 

             “Don’t fucking judge me.”

             The girl looked at me. She stopped playing. She let out another guttural sound that reminded me of the night I heard a deep cry in the woods. It was all night. Wrapped in one cry was loneliness, desperation, and pain. The following morning I saw a coyote on the highway near our house. Its chest rose and fell. Warm blood spilled from its mouth. Its entrails lined the pavement. I kept my distance but I sat there till it died.

             “Why the shackles?” I asked.

             “It doesn’t matter.”

             The girl looked at me. Her eyes were wide.

             “Yes it fucking does matter,” I said.

             In that moment I hated that woman. I hated the pain she inflicted on that girl. And, trust me, I could see the big forehead, the ears that were disproportional. I knew something was wrong.

             Still, trapped in that body was a sweet girl.

             She waived at me but the woman slapped her hand away. And that’s when I saw the cuts on the girls neck. We don’t waive at strangers, her mother said.

             When her hand landed on the little girl a wildfire of rage ran through my body. I was back in that doctor’s office holding Liz’s hand six months in and counting when doctor said he was sorry. That he was very, very sorry and that she would have to give birth anyway and that in a few months’ time we could try again.

             “Try again?” I said.

             Liz said nothing. She was strong. But I’m not, at least not as strong as her because I didn’t believe his apology because he’d spent every meeting, including this one, salivating over Liz’s tits. “Fuck you and fuck your apology,” I said to him even though I knew it wasn’t his fault.

             Everyone has a tragedy, but that doesn’t make your less tragic, it just makes you more human.

             “Please get out. Get out right now,” the woman said.

             “What are those for?"

             “You don’t understand. She is sick. She’ll hurt me if I don’t defend myself.”

             “Bullshit.”

              I reached for my phone.

             “What are you doing?”

             “Calling the police.”

             “No. You can’t. She needs me.”

             She walked toward me. She had something in her hand but I was too focused on dialing as fast as I could.

            The limping woman walked faster. I put the phone to my ear but by the time I heard a dial tone pain exploded in my abdomen.

             I hung up the phone and pressed my hand to my shirt. A pool of blood widened just below my ribs. The limping woman was staring at me, and that’s when I realized I totally missed it.

  She stabbed me again. 

             I dropped the phone and fell to floor. I watched her pick up my phone, stare at the home screen, and smile.

             “Cute,” she said.

             She was looking at a picture of me and Liz holding the sonogram at our baby shower.

             I wanted her to die just for saying that.

             I said nothing, and a few moments later she bent down and stroked my hair. Then she shoved the blade in my abdomen again. "You didn't need to come here tonight," she said.

             The smell of blood brought my back to the delivery room. When they pulled her out my wife her body was limb and she wasn’t crying. Liz didn’t want to hold her so I didn’t either, but for a brief moment, as my baby was passed around like a petri dish one of her eyes seemed to open. I saw green eyes. I saw love reflecting back at me. I saw the purest form of beauty there is in a world rotting away in hate.

She looked at me. I know she did.

              I grabbed the limping woman while the blade was still inside me. I pulled the blade out and sliced at her ankles ‘till she fell to the ground.

             I crawled on top of her. Angled the knife toward her heart because I thought somehow if I cut it out of her and ate it that would bring my daughter back into this world. Might reverse the clocks so that I didn’t leave that hospital room that night and get so drunk that I’d get back in the car and kill somebody on I-76 trying to get home. That I wouldn't have to look at Liz as see nothing but sadness and disappointment when I was supposed to serve her and my family and bring us joy.

             The little girl stood up from piano bench. The chains jingled as she walked over to the mantle and grabbed the clock. It looked heavy because she carried it over her shoulder across the room.

When she was close enough to her mother, she raised the clock and brought it down on her mother face.

             Her legs flailed. The glass face cracked. Blood spewed out across the wall. The little girl picked it up, raised it high, and then bought it down on her again. And again. And again.

             When she was done, she returned to the piano. The shackles were still on her feet. Cuts still lined her forearms. Blood pooled from the limping woman's motionless body.

The white keys were covered in blood as she started to play again. But the music was different. It was the music of hope. The music of forgiveness. The music of a Father who loves his family