Page 343 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

The memory of my father ended, renewing my strength.
I seized the dismal spirit of the spire, prying back its jaws,
denying it the last of my energy for its own. It would have to
make do with what I surrendered. Realizing that I would feed
it no more, willingly or otherwise, the incarnate melancholy
withdrew, begrudgingly dripping my stolen sadness as it
went, slamming a thousand doors behind it. I was alone
upon the moldering, cracked floor, the undesired memory
of sacrificial flesh my only companion, playing across my
tongue, passing into the doubtful myth of myself. What had
mother done to me? To all of us?
Somewhere, a song began playing, a soothing box
of musical notes cranking colored sound into the stale
air. There was an instant connection with me, music and
memory holding hands—yet it was a recollection without
recognition. The house was trying to come back to some
semblance of life, my misery bloating its arteries. It was a
kind of gratitude, I suppose. An ode to one man’s saving
failures. The desperate, dying dream was an indebted thing
now, wanting to repay me for my troubles. It was leading
me to a room, my room, made especially for—from—me.
I rose and made my way past countless derelict apartments,
corpses of living spaces. There were entire lifetimes heaped
into dirty corners, abandoned dreams without dreamers.
At last I came upon a room with its door ajar, music
seeping through, luring me. My next few thoughts seemed
trapped by the subdued harmony, flies caught within a web
spun from silken sound. I realized that the composition
of notes was scored from my own life—my very soul
made music, playing through my mind’s eye. It was a
somber piece, though not without its share of uplifting
notes. But most curious was the theme that played in the
sonic underground, far beneath the passing movements, a
submerged peal of deepest staccato, wavering and waiting.
It somehow had both the quality of a stringed instrument
and a vastly percussive creature. The sound stirred beneath
346 | Mark Anzalone