A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

And First There Is The Sound

And first there is the sound, like a thousand panes of glass bursting all at once.

It's sound like color, like pain, crimson and violet and blooming until the sound itself is all that's left.

And as this sound consumes the air around it – I fly, I dance.

The rooftop passes in a blur – ash grey concrete, silver steel, beams like bones – a melange of muted tone.

The sound follows close behind, but I am quicker, I dance.

Beyond the roof is the sky, clouds stretched like taffy across a sea of endless blue.

It's a candied sky, a cloying sky, marking the passage of my brothers, my friends who have run this circuit before me – marking their dance as surely as it will mark mine.

And still, the sound follows.

Finally I arrive, I arrive before I know I arrive.

Blue becomes brown and beige and red – the air slick and oily – the final movement of my dance ends in crescendo.

I shatter into shrapnel, and the sound arrives.

And he dies.