Sky's The Limit

xlii

forty-two | antonio

Silence.

It was a rare occurrence in the studio. It'd be an anomaly in any recording studio, really.

But this place— typically conquered by a driving drum-bass combination and intoxicating loops of soul music— was completely swallowed by quietude.

Sorrow was suspended in the air, the source being the McKay shaped hole where he should've been sitting.

Even when there was an attempt to fill his void with his voice, the emptiness became so much more apparent. Painful even.

"Stop the music," Crystal croaked through a quickly encroaching tsunami of tears.

Kadence, too immersed in the only method we'd ever hear Will's voice again, was slow to fulfill such a request. So slow that he didn't move an inch.

"Stop the fuckin' music, Kay! Cut this shit off!" she reached and leapt across me in an effort to get to the control dials.

"I didn't hear you, Cris. Damn!" he did the very thing she asked while she snapped back from her stretch across the soundboard.

She settled back in her seat and crumbled as quickly as hardened cookie dough.

She sobbed into her palms and refused any caring hand that attempted to soothe her.

It was a long time before she settled down, but once she did, the silence became so overwhelming that it rang in our ears.

As agonizing as it was — listening to the air that Will should've been filling with his elaborate plans for the group and his cartoonishly boisterous laughter and his witty rap cadences— it was better than hearing his voice pour out of those speakers.

It was just too soon.

Everything was just too soon. Will was gone too soon.

And he wasn't just murdered, he was snatched away from us.

It wasn't his time. It couldn't have been.

Not when we were just getting a foot in the door of this rap shit. Not when his music video brainchild had just been given a date of conception. Not when we were just making our way out of the warzone of the streets.

A fallen soldier— that was never supposed to be his moniker. That was never supposed to be a part of his story. It was never supposed to be the way his story ended.

Not wrapped up in a bow of retaliation.

When I said that Will's hunt for the duo who left 'Shaan with a persecution complex wasn't over, never did I think it would actually end like this.

But typically, when a body is put in the ground, "an eye for an eye" becomes the name of the game. Simple as that.

As soon as Will returned with the blood of another man on Ishaan's chain, his fate was sealed.

Maybe that's why he was so adamant about doing it all on his own, why our two-man mission became a lone bounty hunt.

He sowed the beginnings of a great life, and within days, he sowed his finale too.

I hate it had to be like this. How the very thing he insisted upon leaving behind dragged him back into the ruthlessness of the streets.

The lifestyle we swordfought about because of his desire to focus on rap— the lifestyle I got him acquainted with— was his demise.

But like Cris said about Maceo, "everybody has a way out," right?

And he willingly backslid, right?

But what do you do when your way out is invaded by a past life's code? Street politics leave your brother defenseless and full of trauma; you gon' let that rock?