The Observers

Jazz

I hefted open the door. Plain wallpaper and the same concrete floor stretched left and right in a hallway painted with several unique entryways; mine, then, was just one of a number.

The air was still. No sounds emanated.

I studied the plain wallpaper. Was it so simple? Something odd was about, something familiar, but old... there was a brown trim at the bottom... the regular crinkles and bumps from irregularities, as if this place were a well-lived house, painted over with a new renovation.

No windows, no paintings, no tables.

I grasped my head... too much was happening.

Then, it happened: from one of the doors, somewhere down the hall stretched to my left, rose a soft jazz, dark, but calm. It was subtle, initially; I couldn't quite make out what I was hearing. But more it rose, more it swelled, until it rang out, until it was clarion, unavoidable.

Naturally, I drew to it, and the sound grew into a place, a memory. My mother's study lingered like a dream. It was hazy, but I found myself remembering the brown walls, the subduing desk where she wrote her business papers.

But that was all a dream, an impossible memory. Before me was the real hallway, with doors waiting patiently, the real music thoughtfully exuding from one room unknown.

I drew nearer, and, clearly, the song played from some record. It was loud, but soothing, something quiet, but ominous. It was hard to make out exactly what it stirred within me.

Maybe that was why I wanted so badly to get close to it. Maybe that was why, when I finally stood in front of the door that that loudness, that sound, came from - maybe that was why I needed to open that brown door, to twist its golden knob and open wide the room inside.