As you already know this is the first chapter to my novel, Listening For That Sweet Tune. It is currently being edited at the moment but I wanted to release the first chapter so everyone can see the progress I have made since this thing started 7 years ago. I hope you like it and I would like to thank Stephanie Bachman for helping me edit this.
I have this memory, subtle at first, but now it echoes through all of my bones and now it feels it’s more than a distant dream. I look around every corner, expectingto see my imagination blend in with all we believe to be reality, but everything that stands before me turns abstract like the last thoughts of a dying man.
It starts as if it were a movie. The silky red curtains draw, and the title passes by on the screen. What is the title of this movie that plays in my head? It is not known even to myself, but I know what to expect. I have always known what will happen as if it has happened before. My mind loops in circles and tries to figure out where it starts and where it ends but there is no distinguished point of arrival or farewell.
There is no escape no matter what I do. I run through bright white and seamless corridors illuminated with blazing natural light. The corridors I find myself in are no bigger than myself and the walls are only closing in. I take a right, then a left, then another right. I hope that I can find a way out, but everything remains whiter than fresh snow falling from the sky. I fall to the ground and begin to crawl. As the ceiling and walls close in I find myself with no more space to run and I am now confined into a small glass box. The white surrounding me and becomes a canvas painted with vibrant colorsI realize now that as I am sitting in the midst of people and they gather around me and look at me as if I am an animal in a zoo.
My mind flashes various images and text too fast to make sense of what was being show. A sense of dread overcomes me. I can only assume that everything is primal in nature and I acknowledge my soul is lost. Soon, everything stops, and I see myself walking in a dark rundown alley. I hear a man scream in the distance and I rush to see who was making the noise. I pass trash cans and graffiti of various symbols forebode what I would assume to be my fate. As I continue forward, the alley in front of me is covered with blood and strange pieces of metal in every corner and as I look up to the sky. The sky is blood red but is speckled with tiny blue lights and bright shapes resembling galaxies and nebulas. Upon turning the corner, I see the sun move quickly across the horizon and everything turns black except for the sky. I stop moving to catch my breath and I feel as if I am in a wide-open area. Lights cast on a white brick tower of monstrous proportions. The top of the building is rounded; the rest of the building is a skinny pyramid towering hundreds of feet high, maybe thousands. There is no light coming out of any windows in this tower, but I can see a light shining from the top rotating in circles similar to a lighthouse. As I walk closer I can see an estate at the bottom of the large building covered in lights. Spotlights shine back and forth on the ground and sky lighting up everything as far as I could see. Between the building and methere are large metal structures of abstract art in a field, but it’s obvious that they have a purpose on the account of the rest of the field looks like a war zone. Trenches and holes in the ground created from bombs and other weapons litter the ground between us. I then look around myself and notice that I am in ruin.
A city now surrounds me. Once it stood on better days, but now it is crippled and useless. I can see bodies crushed under the buildings as they are frozen in place, they were screaming for someone’s assistance when they died but somehow became petrified within seconds. Butthere is no denying that whatever happened here was no accident. I look back to the tower and I can hear laughing as if someone was standing next to me but as I turn around I can see noone—living that is. I look at more buildings and it looks as if they were burned down to the ground. The smoke is still fresh, and I can see hot ashes flickering in the middle of the buildings. Everything moves fast around me and I am turned to look away from the now distant tower and I see a forest. The forest rushes past me and I am taken far away from the ruins that surrounded me.
As I am being pulled forward through the forest I can see no sign of man and the forest is truly an environment never touched by destructive hands. At certain points the trees got so close together that I couldn’t even see sunlight above me as I am engulfed in darkness. For a small moments time I can’t see anything. I don’t panic, even though I begin to feel claustrophobic as I did only moments ago. A few more seconds pass and I am in the light again, but it is not sunlight but a great fire. The fire surrounded me as I moved forward. Although the fire never actually touched me, I can feel the heat creep up against me and I begin to sweat. Everything begins to slow down around me, and I leave the forest to something even more majestic.
Now I’m in a meadow. I look around to see tall grass shifting in the wind. With the bright blue sky, I can see for miles. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply; I can smell various amounts of flowers and wildlife being mixed together. I open my eyes again and the field that once represented itself to me as a creator’s great gift is now in cinders. The fire spread to the meadow and now surrounds me. Off in the distance I can see a silhouette of a tree fall down to the burning ground. I begin to gasp for air as the smoke around me chokes out my breath and I fall to my knees.
The pain leaves my body and I suspect that I am dead. There is a light in the distance, small and minute but it was the only object I could see in the darkness. I began to walk towards it and I noticed I was waist deep in liquid. I could not feel it as it is the same temperature as the room, but I could tell my movement was strained with every step. Walking towards the light, the light shimmered off the liquid to reveal the liquid was red. When I got close enough to the light, though, I could not tell what the light source was coming from. I heard a scream behind me, but it was not of a man or a woman but of something else. It sounded animalisticat its core and when I turn around to see what was behind me everything lit up as if the sun was rising and every color turned from black to blue.
Apparently, I have had no need to breathe because in seconds I find myself underwater swimming to the surface. About to give up, a hand from the surface grabs my hand and pulls me upon a small boat beside a large metal ship. The people in the boat looks as if they were dead for they did not speak, nor did they make a single sound. They push me up against a ladder that descends from the top deck and I begin to climb. When I finally reach the top deck, I cached my breath and while trying to see through the black blotches that asphyxiation had to offer, the men push me to the ground. When I get to my knees I hear yelling—but it was not coherent. It was like everyone was speaking in slow motion. I open my eyes and I see a rather large man with thick muscles on his arms and legs in front of me pointing a gun at a young woman who is bound in front of me.
The man is bald but has a thick beard as if he lived far away from civilization but has a fancy white coat and white pants that have been recently cleaned. The woman in front of me is crying and has been crying for some time as I can tell because thick black mascara is all over her cheeks dripping down to the floor. Looking at her more intently I see that she is barley clothed and looks to be in shackles. Trying to grip onto where I was now I see that the boat looks clean and other men are standing around us in a circle laughing and cheering. No one is struggling to stand even though the boat is rocking ferociously as it starts to rain. Lightning strikes the water in the distance and a loud echo of thunder is all I can hear. I am now afraid of what is about to happen, but I can’t look away. I always wait for the flash of a new scene before me, but it never changes.
Within seconds the young woman falls to the ground. All chaos goes quiet and the man walks to me. Finally, it strikes home, my hardened heart of a Pharisee scream for what was lost, and I start to cry. The man crouches to my level and I see sympathy; it’s almost as if he was the one that received the bullet as he looks into my eyes. He watches me closely; my eyes meet his and he stands up to face away from me. I look around the boat and everything once brand new now turns rusty and worn. I can hear the boat creak with the crashing waves hitting the sides of the boat. All who were cheering for a good show are now dead and a few bodies wash up and fall off the boat. Their eyes are carved out and their throats are slit as blood pools around their bodies and weton my knees. I then look at the woman and her eyes have been carved out as well and she is smiling. I can feel her looking at me even though where her eyes once were are now full with blood and torn tissue and muscle. I look at the man again and he doesn’t seem to notice anything as he is left standing to appear to be thinking about the next move. He folds his arms with the gun in hand and taps it against his shoulder. His face is deteriorating and appears to be almost melting along with his clothes, which look like they are being burned by fire, but no flames are on his body.
A bone chilling scream plays through the air and everything I see starts to fall apart. The ship rocks as if its sinking, but the man stands firm. The woman's body vibrated and shook like she is going through shock. Her body begins to levitate and stayed in its retrospective position exactly over where she died even though the boat is swaying back and forth, and everything is moving around her. The bald man turns to look at me and walks towards me. The man crouched down to my level again, puts his mouth to my ear and says; "Seven, twenty-one, six, sixteen, fourteen. She would be proud." He pushes me onto my back and I take a shot to the chest. The blood and pain never felt more real, and all at once I realized. Nothing will be perfect, but at the time the blood flowed out of the internal body, it couldn’t have been a more perfect timing. Curtains close, lights grow brighter, and my story begins.
Remember me
