[story] pop you go
author: strangesingaporean (hellsings_home)
overture: non-silent words
I am on a mission: to fill my head with music.
Problem: the task isn't onerous or grand enough to count as a "mission"; it’s more along the lines of heaping praises on that little ant heap you found around where you dumped your leftover food.
But I can forgive that, or rather, I don't care much about that. Because it's a mission nevertheless! Big enough for an anchovy like me. Oh, right. Why am I an anchovy? Because I got scooped out of my school and woke up one day without a history, family or anything of the sort - a small, helpless and confused creature without anyone to protect him.
On second thought, I reckon that I'm an anchovy-sized piranha. I found myself pretty much in the situation of an individual, tiny fish, and infused with a rancorous obsession with people-music.
Unfortunately for me, a particular tune got stuck in my head several months after the physical awakening and I hadn't been able to hear anything since.
...somewhat.
I can still feel pulses at my fingertips for instance, but they'd all go dm dm dm dm dm dm. They all sound alike. And THAT runs me through the hayfields of Alaska crying bloody mercy. Dying to hear that melody and having my various ears shut off from all other people-music? I wonder why I lived long enough to be saved.
vivace: swell
Badum dum dum.
In the happy, early days of having an empty head, I'd danced the streets to the rhythm of my feet. And head.
Badumdumdum.
I liked to lay my palm on people's chests, to glimpse the songs inside them, and perhaps later to fill my senses with more of them too. How I wish I had the charm and body to go with my people-music (and people-body; my, some of them were marvelously yummy) eccentricities.
Still, no matter.
"Hola Senor!" I called to a fine young man on a fine young Sunday. I was jogging over as he returned my smile. "Care to let me listen to your heart?"
Then immediately I placed my right palm on his chest; carelessly, a finger brushed a nipple, the thin cloth of his shirt doing little to temper the closeness of our skin. The tingle woke him from his stillness, it seemed.
"MOTHER SON OF A FUCK--"
My hand was twisted like god knows what, I was yelping and hopping in pain, and then I tumbled.
"Oh gosh, sorry." I called cheekily after the stomping man, despite the pain.
The man turned and I kicked myself for my stupid tongue. He probably saw the kick because he left. Then I silently thanked all the lords and goddesses I could think of.
It was a wonderful experience, though, my hand on his heart, over my heart! Badum, dumdumdum! Bdumbdumdumdumdumdum! His rhythm was mighty fun to listen to, and ticklish. I looked at that finger of mine again, and rubbed it with my thumb, then sniffed it.
I'm not deterred: it was just fantastic.
calmando: uneasy
"Can sound knock a person off his feet?"
I stared at the little man for a while. Oh.
"I guess your expert sonics can. I'd hate to be anywhere close when you're roleplaying Bison, mind." Jokes aside, he does scare me shitless sometimes. Although, well, I had a lot of shit in me that day.
"Wait till you hear what I've to offer," he grinned, firing up his turntable and other goods. Don't judge me now, but I was dazed, and when I'm dazed, my eyes wander until I see something interesting, and that was one of his other goods.
The music came on: loud, hard, fast, thumping. But it was more bzzump-bzzzmp and wasn't all that human. I want my people-music! I'd just had a bad day and really wanted a good dose of people-music to cheer me up.
"Naw, Dave. Not really in the swing for Robo Dave tonight. Got anything organic? Between you and me, organic's what really sweeps a person off his feet." I stretched out on the sofa and yawned.
"Whatever you say." But Dave didn't even tone down the stereo. He just slipped off his shorts and squeezed his way onto the sofa I was lying on. "Can you hear my music?" he put my hand to his crotch. I felt the blood pulsing into his erection, but it was too sparse for my tremouring senses.
So I slipped a palm under his shirt, over his heart.
Badum dum dum, badump dmp dmp, dmpdmpdmpdmpdmp.
dal niente: unnecessary
On the third Wednesday night of the seventh month of my awakening, I'm drinking a light beer in a quiet pub. The music matched my beer; light, creating the ambience. I chatted with the owner behind the counter and listened to his stories of past nights of adventure and days of discovery.
"Do you select the music played around here yourself?" I asked, waving my hand around a little, leaning over to see if I could catch some of his person's music.
The man, Leon, was keeping the bill of a couple who'd just left. I waited for him to finish, half-expecting a very thoughtful answer to what must have sounded like an offhand remark. It was the first time all night that he seemed to want to talk very carefully.
"Music, my friend, is the soul of my little place. The drinks are its lifeblood, surely, it's how I earn the cash to keep going."
I gulped a mouthful of beer, waited a moment, then swallowed it.
"But the music is what keeps it alive. They don't know it, but it's the music that brings in people."
I told him that music was what's keeping my alive, just like his pub. I'd whispered it in his ear; our cheeks brushing, and I felt the sweet beat of his. I breathed in his music deeply, settled back in my seat and smiled again.
"Indulge me with a performance of your true music, Leon? Please."
So we danced in his bedroom upstairs and the broom cupboard on the way up. And all that time, I was listening to his melody.
I let his heartbeat tell me his life; there, an intimacy that transcended contact, growing and connecting our consciousnesses. I played with his nipples, the fine hair that covered his skin, stroking, to open the introduction of another chord.
Dmdm dm badumdmdm.
"You're the only one who's acknowledged a soul at all," he said later, as we rested.
"I'm glad I do."
A pause, as we took in the silence and the sound of our breathing.
"A shame that this may well be our only night. I like you."
"Love you too, music and all" I said, and slipped my fingers down his length, coming to clutch his crotch, drinking in the pulse of his blood.
Or so I thought.
The morning after was my second awakening: on a park bench with my bag for a pillow and with that mysterious, swooning tune in my ears, eyes and skin.
And did I try to hunt down Leon. His pub wasn't where I remembered it, the memory of his face kept getting squashed, or swirled, or crinkled, or pocked or any other damned distortion possible, but I knew that some part of that memory-cum-dream was real because the beer and the wine I'd downed the night before was crushing my skull like a kettleball.
Bumbled around the surrounding streets and watering holes for the first couple of days - I didn't even bother going home first.
fortepiano: irritating playful fore-teasing
I was listening to the crinkle of the packet holding my breakfast croissant when a tinny echo of the melody wafted over from the left.
Ding!Ding!Ding! that was how my head responded.
Then the tune was gone.
I swore as politely as I could ("Gracious!") and side-hopped in the direction of the sound, hoping that the left ear would pick up on the trail again. People stared but who'd care, if they were in my position? Honestly, honestly? Damn, the loss of the melody is driving me nuts.
The tune never revived though. Not with the crowd that I inadvertently walked into while trying to follow the sound - I had turned into the harried, lunch-time street. All the noises of talk, laughter, footsteps, clangle of metal melded into a wall of silence, as if shielding my ears from everything.
What is the music of life?
Silence, my brother.
Oh phooey. It's noise, turning into silence.
I kicked at a can on the road, annoyed at losing the trail of tinny. I couldn't hear the can or my angry, stomping footsteps.
In the false aural void, I decided that maybe the reminder of the lost tune was scraping my brain, not the real loss of it.
marcato: unexpected
I was drunk on despair, drunk on madness, drunk on sorrow. Then I made it all worse by getting drunk on classy wine.
The liquor worked its way into my sensory organs, heightening every darn thing I had in my body. In some ways, that could've meant removing the block on which I'd been banging my fists, but what it really did was create a wall with barbed wire strung all around and over it. So banging my fists started to heart like a fuck.
And then some sounds added electricity and cat claws to that wall and its barbed wire.
Pain.
The violins had begun filling the air with the sound of pulled string over string. Tiiiing. Tiiiing. Ziiiingziiiing. Zrrreeeerrrch. Zrrrreeerrch.
Madness. To smile. Madness. Scraping ears. Tearing skin. Madness.
Shutting my ears with my palms did nothing, but it helped me brace the body for the screeching, accompanied the screwing shut of the eyes to block out the images of madness.
False, false, false.
This music is false.
Still tensed, shaking, someone took my arm and held me close. I felt myself lifted off the ground, carried off to somewhere else. Slowly, the screeches faded, as if all sound were gone and I had been taken into a vacuum.
Then slowly, I heard it. The sound of a man, a person: real music.
Still wary, I let my eyelids relax while maintaining the clamped hands over my ears. A man, glowing, and with a heart that beat like mine, complementing mine.
Meltingly, the hands slipped off the ears to meet his skin, feeling if he were real. So yielding, light. Like music.
"Thank you."
Grateful and thankful, for taking me to safety and staying so close. The curious feel of his skin had me enraptured, and so too the faint rhythm pulsing from his heart, spreading through the surface.
I put my ear to the hollow of his neck, tongue reaching out to taste what I could of his skin.
Then I heard it, clearly this time. Dadeedum dump dmpdmp dump badum dum dump.
the end
overture: non-silent words
I am on a mission: to fill my head with music.
Problem: the task isn't onerous or grand enough to count as a "mission"; it’s more along the lines of heaping praises on that little ant heap you found around where you dumped your leftover food.
But I can forgive that, or rather, I don't care much about that. Because it's a mission nevertheless! Big enough for an anchovy like me. Oh, right. Why am I an anchovy? Because I got scooped out of my school and woke up one day without a history, family or anything of the sort - a small, helpless and confused creature without anyone to protect him.
On second thought, I reckon that I'm an anchovy-sized piranha. I found myself pretty much in the situation of an individual, tiny fish, and infused with a rancorous obsession with people-music.
Unfortunately for me, a particular tune got stuck in my head several months after the physical awakening and I hadn't been able to hear anything since.
...somewhat.
I can still feel pulses at my fingertips for instance, but they'd all go dm dm dm dm dm dm. They all sound alike. And THAT runs me through the hayfields of Alaska crying bloody mercy. Dying to hear that melody and having my various ears shut off from all other people-music? I wonder why I lived long enough to be saved.
vivace: swell
Badum dum dum.
In the happy, early days of having an empty head, I'd danced the streets to the rhythm of my feet. And head.
Badumdumdum.
I liked to lay my palm on people's chests, to glimpse the songs inside them, and perhaps later to fill my senses with more of them too. How I wish I had the charm and body to go with my people-music (and people-body; my, some of them were marvelously yummy) eccentricities.
Still, no matter.
"Hola Senor!" I called to a fine young man on a fine young Sunday. I was jogging over as he returned my smile. "Care to let me listen to your heart?"
Then immediately I placed my right palm on his chest; carelessly, a finger brushed a nipple, the thin cloth of his shirt doing little to temper the closeness of our skin. The tingle woke him from his stillness, it seemed.
"MOTHER SON OF A FUCK--"
My hand was twisted like god knows what, I was yelping and hopping in pain, and then I tumbled.
"Oh gosh, sorry." I called cheekily after the stomping man, despite the pain.
The man turned and I kicked myself for my stupid tongue. He probably saw the kick because he left. Then I silently thanked all the lords and goddesses I could think of.
It was a wonderful experience, though, my hand on his heart, over my heart! Badum, dumdumdum! Bdumbdumdumdumdumdum! His rhythm was mighty fun to listen to, and ticklish. I looked at that finger of mine again, and rubbed it with my thumb, then sniffed it.
I'm not deterred: it was just fantastic.
calmando: uneasy
"Can sound knock a person off his feet?"
I stared at the little man for a while. Oh.
"I guess your expert sonics can. I'd hate to be anywhere close when you're roleplaying Bison, mind." Jokes aside, he does scare me shitless sometimes. Although, well, I had a lot of shit in me that day.
"Wait till you hear what I've to offer," he grinned, firing up his turntable and other goods. Don't judge me now, but I was dazed, and when I'm dazed, my eyes wander until I see something interesting, and that was one of his other goods.
The music came on: loud, hard, fast, thumping. But it was more bzzump-bzzzmp and wasn't all that human. I want my people-music! I'd just had a bad day and really wanted a good dose of people-music to cheer me up.
"Naw, Dave. Not really in the swing for Robo Dave tonight. Got anything organic? Between you and me, organic's what really sweeps a person off his feet." I stretched out on the sofa and yawned.
"Whatever you say." But Dave didn't even tone down the stereo. He just slipped off his shorts and squeezed his way onto the sofa I was lying on. "Can you hear my music?" he put my hand to his crotch. I felt the blood pulsing into his erection, but it was too sparse for my tremouring senses.
So I slipped a palm under his shirt, over his heart.
Badum dum dum, badump dmp dmp, dmpdmpdmpdmpdmp.
dal niente: unnecessary
On the third Wednesday night of the seventh month of my awakening, I'm drinking a light beer in a quiet pub. The music matched my beer; light, creating the ambience. I chatted with the owner behind the counter and listened to his stories of past nights of adventure and days of discovery.
"Do you select the music played around here yourself?" I asked, waving my hand around a little, leaning over to see if I could catch some of his person's music.
The man, Leon, was keeping the bill of a couple who'd just left. I waited for him to finish, half-expecting a very thoughtful answer to what must have sounded like an offhand remark. It was the first time all night that he seemed to want to talk very carefully.
"Music, my friend, is the soul of my little place. The drinks are its lifeblood, surely, it's how I earn the cash to keep going."
I gulped a mouthful of beer, waited a moment, then swallowed it.
"But the music is what keeps it alive. They don't know it, but it's the music that brings in people."
I told him that music was what's keeping my alive, just like his pub. I'd whispered it in his ear; our cheeks brushing, and I felt the sweet beat of his. I breathed in his music deeply, settled back in my seat and smiled again.
"Indulge me with a performance of your true music, Leon? Please."
So we danced in his bedroom upstairs and the broom cupboard on the way up. And all that time, I was listening to his melody.
I let his heartbeat tell me his life; there, an intimacy that transcended contact, growing and connecting our consciousnesses. I played with his nipples, the fine hair that covered his skin, stroking, to open the introduction of another chord.
Dmdm dm badumdmdm.
"You're the only one who's acknowledged a soul at all," he said later, as we rested.
"I'm glad I do."
A pause, as we took in the silence and the sound of our breathing.
"A shame that this may well be our only night. I like you."
"Love you too, music and all" I said, and slipped my fingers down his length, coming to clutch his crotch, drinking in the pulse of his blood.
Or so I thought.
The morning after was my second awakening: on a park bench with my bag for a pillow and with that mysterious, swooning tune in my ears, eyes and skin.
And did I try to hunt down Leon. His pub wasn't where I remembered it, the memory of his face kept getting squashed, or swirled, or crinkled, or pocked or any other damned distortion possible, but I knew that some part of that memory-cum-dream was real because the beer and the wine I'd downed the night before was crushing my skull like a kettleball.
Bumbled around the surrounding streets and watering holes for the first couple of days - I didn't even bother going home first.
fortepiano: irritating playful fore-teasing
I was listening to the crinkle of the packet holding my breakfast croissant when a tinny echo of the melody wafted over from the left.
Ding!Ding!Ding! that was how my head responded.
Then the tune was gone.
I swore as politely as I could ("Gracious!") and side-hopped in the direction of the sound, hoping that the left ear would pick up on the trail again. People stared but who'd care, if they were in my position? Honestly, honestly? Damn, the loss of the melody is driving me nuts.
The tune never revived though. Not with the crowd that I inadvertently walked into while trying to follow the sound - I had turned into the harried, lunch-time street. All the noises of talk, laughter, footsteps, clangle of metal melded into a wall of silence, as if shielding my ears from everything.
What is the music of life?
Silence, my brother.
Oh phooey. It's noise, turning into silence.
I kicked at a can on the road, annoyed at losing the trail of tinny. I couldn't hear the can or my angry, stomping footsteps.
In the false aural void, I decided that maybe the reminder of the lost tune was scraping my brain, not the real loss of it.
marcato: unexpected
I was drunk on despair, drunk on madness, drunk on sorrow. Then I made it all worse by getting drunk on classy wine.
The liquor worked its way into my sensory organs, heightening every darn thing I had in my body. In some ways, that could've meant removing the block on which I'd been banging my fists, but what it really did was create a wall with barbed wire strung all around and over it. So banging my fists started to heart like a fuck.
And then some sounds added electricity and cat claws to that wall and its barbed wire.
Pain.
The violins had begun filling the air with the sound of pulled string over string. Tiiiing. Tiiiing. Ziiiingziiiing. Zrrreeeerrrch. Zrrrreeerrch.
Madness. To smile. Madness. Scraping ears. Tearing skin. Madness.
Shutting my ears with my palms did nothing, but it helped me brace the body for the screeching, accompanied the screwing shut of the eyes to block out the images of madness.
False, false, false.
This music is false.
Still tensed, shaking, someone took my arm and held me close. I felt myself lifted off the ground, carried off to somewhere else. Slowly, the screeches faded, as if all sound were gone and I had been taken into a vacuum.
Then slowly, I heard it. The sound of a man, a person: real music.
Still wary, I let my eyelids relax while maintaining the clamped hands over my ears. A man, glowing, and with a heart that beat like mine, complementing mine.
Meltingly, the hands slipped off the ears to meet his skin, feeling if he were real. So yielding, light. Like music.
"Thank you."
Grateful and thankful, for taking me to safety and staying so close. The curious feel of his skin had me enraptured, and so too the faint rhythm pulsing from his heart, spreading through the surface.
I put my ear to the hollow of his neck, tongue reaching out to taste what I could of his skin.
Then I heard it, clearly this time. Dadeedum dump dmpdmp dump badum dum dump.
the end