Patient Music

PATIENT MUSIC
by s.c.virtes


4:03

Daydreams pass overhead: like firestars they dance through the amber sky towards outstretched hands. The hands are pale and pleading, their message is not being heard. Patient music is playing like an index of metals. The sounds are peaceful, yet there is a feeling of urgency and concealed pain.

I open my eyes.


4:06

The clock ticks away the time, happily and quietly, with its bold and sandy digital display. Someone wanted me to have that clock, so I could stare at it and count down, but why? Someone is watching, but their faces are hidden among the clouds and walls of the world. That patient music is playing somewhere, it seems miles away. Every now and then there is a morbid, forbidding chord. Something is going to happen soon, but what?


4:08

A world of echoes; there are pieces of myself coming undone, crying, running for shelter. There is a cold fear somewhere in the emptiness of my body. As my scream echoes off the walls in a chorus of helplessness, my fear is shattered. I watch the broken pieces as they fall to the floor and skitter about my legs. The sound of fallen fear is a maniacal, all-knowing laugh; just another chord in the deadly music. But just as I am not afraid, I am also not laughing. Someone else is.

I want to see him.


4:09

But there is nobody. I look at my bound hands and think about my fear. I know that it was in pieces around me, and I suddenly wanted it badly, but I could not reach it from where I was trussed in the chair. Without that fear, I could feel nothing at all, and the emptiness was excruciating.

One of my arms was bare, and an IV-tube pumped venom into my arm. A wave of nausea struck, and I looked away at a blank wall. I know that I have done this to myself, somehow. Yet I do not know how, or what was happening.


4:09:05

The clock says 4:11, but I know it's wrong, because I see it jumping around on small spidery legs. It hops onto its web and crawls toward me with the unbelievable swiftness of a predator. It flashes its hateful message, 4:12. Emptiness only hurts because of time, and time was trying to kill me (again).

A strand tickles my face, but my fear had broken, and I cannot flinch. The creature brushes against my cheek, weaving mad silk around me. Everything was lost behind the haze of its web when it bit into me. I screamed at the razor sharpness, and felt the blood.


4:10

A hand touched mine. "Steven?" said the voice. I tried to nod, but felt nothing. A shadow bent over me, and the clock over its shoulder said 4:10, but it wasn't as bright as it should have been. The glaring white room had faded to a wash of browns. My arm decided to convulse; it slapped the table wildly, and I could not stop it.

"...sometimes it takes ten minutes," said most of the voice to another shadow.

I realized how much I hated that voice. I wanted to reach up and strangle that voice, but then I understood. I had strangled people before, and this chair was proof that I would never do it again. They said there was no other solution, that nobody wanted to pay to keep me in jail, rotting.

Something in the growing darkness made me want to cry, but I had no eyes.


THE END

"The People are glad you're suffering," said part of the voice. "Some wanted to see you burn, but those days are over. We used humane drugs for a few years, but that was silly, wasn't it? After all, you people have caused so much pain."

I agreed. I was a murderer, and I would always be here in this chair. Something grabbed my wrist, but could I feel it?

None of the voice spoke: "That's that. Let's have the next."

I felt a body being thrown to the floor.

Suddenly, I was not alone in the darkness, for others had died before me. There were rows of dark faces, hundreds of eyes with no trace of sympathy.

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Note: this story was originally published in DARK STARR (12/86), and can now be found in my story collection "Year of the Twist" -- http://tales.scvs.com/bk_twist.php3?inw=sto.

=== Read more stories & poems on my home page:
http://tales.scvs.com/?inw=sto - come on in!