The Earworm hung in the heavens above, bigger now than the moon in the sky.
Rain seemed to fall away from it, its halo of swarming beasts moving rapidly around almost as if to translate its fury or disappointment with me. Those burning windows it had instead of eyes grew wide and seemed to burn straight into me even from this distance. I shouted up at it, “I don’t do requests, I’m not a fucking jukebox.” And then it started coming down towards me. The red light burning all around it and through it. I turned my head, wanting to run but knowing there was nowhere to go; I was stuck at the top.
“…Hey, can we give it a shot?” Rikki was there holding Sully’s glowing red mic in her hand. Her eyes were no longer black, at least any blacker than usual. She still had that raccoon makeup piled around them on account of the rain and the girl’s own poor taste. “Come on, you old burnt out Brummie.”
“Flash in the pan.”
“Fossil.”
I nodded and then I didn’t have to anymore. Rikki was with me and I was with her, joined mentally. I could sense the seed she still carried inside her. The long black branches growing from it, filling up the spaces within her. And the others too, Vinnie and Burt, or whatever they actually were, they were with us as well, only now they or the Earworm weren’t in control of me or Rikki. We had the majority share, with the seed we had the control. I slung my bass back on and started walking on the E string with my fingers. I didn’t have to look behind me to see that the Earworm had stopped its descent, this I could see through Rikki’s eyes. The black stain in the sky hovering just above the tower just behind me had stopped and was waiting. It wanted to know what we were going to play next. So did I.
I remembered the song I had wanted to play, to write after first waking up among the husks of all the other Codgers. After surfacing from the weight of infinite possibilities… The song, the song that only I could hear. I quieted everything else in the world and followed only its voice. Let it lead me where it wanted. How it wanted. I played along to its suggestions, trying to… not recreate it… but just help it to be born. To carry it through, from dream into real. And then it was time for the others to join in. I was grateful, I was never much for bass solos. Any solo that overstayed its welcome, actually. We were in tune, perfectly moving as one organism, and we came crashing in with one sudden gallop. This wasn’t Frivolous Black, this was something altogether new.
Rikki’s voice careened through our electric murk, I’d never heard her sound like this. She was fiercer than before, but then the rest of us were playing more elegantly than we ever had too. Elegant, but not delicate. Our sound was still us, still dark, passionate, solid as stone, but we had turned a new corner which suited us. And it may have suited the Earworm too. It started to spiral itself, around and around. The barnacles surrounding it seemed afraid of this new behavior and they swam away erratically. They collided with one another as our music built momentum. I walked to the edge of the tower, looked down into the hordes of devils waiting below. I saw some of them climbing the tower with their stalks and claws, yellow eyes sparkling up. The swarm on the ground below moved with our music, along with it, against it. I could see their violence to one another, it appeared rhythmic. The music compelled them to tear one another apart, to war, to dance. It was all the same. And we kept playing. This new song, this new sound, we let it guide us as we guided it. It was all the same. Rikki sang words which were her own and also mine. Vinnie and Burt became mere instruments that we played. Or maybe that’s all Rikki and I were to them. How was I to know? All I knew was that there was no need for explanation or communication, this was pure expression. We could write as we played and never hit a wrong note. As long as we followed that voice which more and more seemed to be our own, echoing back across the dark of our minds.
There was a great crunch above and the sky started to split apart. Massive cracks of red light, like the Earworm had made before, fissured directly into the night in some increasingly complex pattern that continued to grow. The ground shook; I could see some of the slithering beasts scaling the tower fall off to the chaos below. Others continued to climb.
The red cracks in the night started spreading, each appearing with a low horrible sound, like water swirling down the drain rapidly until it became an ugly croak. If this was the Earworm’s doing I couldn’t say, for its part it continued to undulate, spinning and spasming either in great pain or tremendous ecstasy. Knowing what I did of its state of existence I’d wager it was a good amount of both. Not that I cared, I just kept playing. I kicked my foot off the edge of the tower and turned back to Rikki. She was a manic shadow brought to life, swinging her hair back and forth in gorgon frenzy while she purred and roared into the microphone. Stretching words neither of us had thought of before to sound like something we’d never known but had always felt. Our eyes met for the briefest of moments, and we knew we’d never have to say another word to one another again. It wouldn’t be necessary. It would only be a let-down. Words could never compete with this form of communication. We were closer now than two people were ever meant to be. Deeper than friendship, family, or lovers; deeper still than what I felt when I was lost in the We. Because this was beyond just me.
Beyond her. We had become a new galaxy unto ourselves. I thought of the kid, or maybe it was Rikki thinking it. We thought of the way he died and what he had said, tried to say. He lived the way he died. Metal… The ground shook some more and it sounded like the tower was crumbling. Above us the Earworm was buzzing again, maybe singing along, maybe screaming for us to stop. I couldn’t care less about that or where we were all going. I just wanted to keep playing. Only wanted to find out where the song would take us next. Not whether or not it took us back home, or to some state of perpetual suffering that mirrored the Earworm’s purgatory. That was of little consequence to me. What I wanted to know was where we could take the music next. That was it.
Something with yellow burning eyes had made its way onto the top of the tower with us but of course I wasn’t concerned. It seemed to be moving unnaturally slow. Lurching this way at a comical crawl. Everything was moving slowly now. Time had become a syrup, you could get through it but it took work to wade your way through. Above, things started sinking up into the sky. Pieces of the tower, various forms of life, those blasted angler creatures. All slipping up into the red haze of the light which had gone from a series of intricate cracks to a burning surface suspended above us. All of this was affected by the new slow drip of time. Only the frenzy of the Earworm itself seemed to be free of these effects. It may have even been moving faster. While this was interesting, I wasn’t, for the first time in a long time, overly concerned with time and its passing. The past, the future, I’d left them both behind, and when they fell away they fell away like scales from my eyes. The present was the only thing I could see.
That’s where I am right now. That moment at the end when the song usually fades, you know, right when it’s starting to get good. The guitar is shrieking like something is stripping the life from it, the singer is howling their head clean off and beneath it all the drums and the bass are locked down in that endless, timeless groove…
When a fade is put on the end of a song it’s meant to give the listener the impression that the song they’re hearing will go on forever. This lack of resolution can be far more satisfying and ring truer than any resounding final crunch ever could. But usually a fade is just put on the end of a song to mask the fact that the band could never think of a proper ending. Or when a solid piece of work had started to fizzle and fall apart near the finish, the fade saved the piece its final dignity. Preserved it at its peak instead of revealing the disappointing and ordinary reality of the mess it actually amounted to.
But sometimes a fade could be the most honest ending there was. Because some things had no resolution. At least none we’d ever have the ability to listen through to the end. But we tried, didn’t we? Every time, to hear a bit more before slipping back into the silence.
I pl
ayed along, learning my part as I wrote it.
Acknowledgments:
Gratitude for the following foxy folks:
Garrett Cook, for asking me to write something.
Erin McGrath and Dan Cleri for reading what I wrote.
and Ross Lockhart, for telling me to write some more of it.
Tony McMillen is the author of the novel Nefarious Twit and the graphic novel Oblivion Suite. He grew up mostly in Tucson, Arizona but now lives outside Boston with his wife and their invisible dog whom they call Invisipup. It’s all so very damn precious. He writes, draws and plays the guitar but seldom all at the same time.
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