by Neha Yazmin
PREFACE
It was awfully quiet in his head.
The unwanted silence drove out the sounds of the pavements and roads, footsteps and chatter, chaos and order, as Jamie made his fifteen-minute walk to the pub he was to perform tonight.
Out of habit, he ignored the vibrant Asian clothes and grocery stores lining Bethnal Green Road, the potent smell wafting out of the packed fast-food branches, half-empty English cafés and the occasional oriental restaurant.
This wasn’t the world he lived in, not anymore.
The slowly diminishing muddy brown ice on the ground hardly registered with him, the purring of car engines barely a murmur, as he tried to think positively. It won’t stay like this forever.
It had been too long since his mind had filled with music and lyrics. Thrumming guitar strings. Tinkling harps. Rhythmic drums. The warmth and depth of the piano. He missed it all, and Jamie hardly missed anything.
Ending the year without a single harmony greeting him in recent weeks was unthinkable.
Tightening his grip on the handle of his black guitar case, he entered the humble pub near Cambridge Heath Road, with its worn-out bottle green carpet and wood-panelled burnt-orange walls. Performing here, somewhere he’d once enjoyed, singing songs he’d written when he was most productive, ought to lure his creative instinct out from hiding.
When his name was called, Jamie emerged from the shadows at the back of the claustrophobic room where he’d been waiting for his turn, standing rigid as a tree, his black clothes camouflaging him into the darkness. Hurrying past a cluster of round tables, and avoiding the gazes of all those around him, he approached the microphone and sighed.
This gig just had to cure his musical muteness.
Slipping the guitar strap across his body, Jamie closed his eyes and went back in time, not just to when this song had come to him, but also to the times it spoke of.
Strumming his guitar unthinkingly, he began a soft, fragile song that mirrored the tiny piece of nothing he’d become.
“I’m still standing on the same square.
You used to be around here somewhere.
It was so beautiful,
When the sun was shining and everything was sparkling.
But then all the light disappeared.
Because you were gone,
And I was somehow wrong.
My whole life disappeared.
But time still went on,
And I am still so wrong.
And you’re still gone but everything else is still here.”
The tempo upped a little as he threw himself into the chorus:
“My life doesn’t make sense,
To anyone, anymore.
I don’t know why I’m standing here,
What I’m waiting for.
Coz I’m still standing on the same square.
You used to be around here somewhere.
Now gone.
Said I’m still standing on the same square.
I’m still standing on the same square.
Square one.”
The audience seemed to enjoy the chorus, but Jamie didn’t care. He wasn’t playing for them. Peoples’ opinions had ceased to mean anything to him. He just waited. Waited for something, anything, to creep into the blank, empty space that was his mind now.
But there wasn’t even the hint of a faint whisper.
The inactivity was deadening.
Repeating the chorus for the second time, Jamie prayed it would bear fruit. But his hands fell limply to his side when the song came to an end, and the silence took over.
There was no fruit.
It had been a very long day.
Out shopping for new work clothes, Mukti had taken all day. As per usual. Or did the night sneak up on her too quickly? Light faded very early these days. Darkness descended too soon.
The street was black and her arms were heavy with her many bags. Why was she walking home, again?
As she crossed a pub––or was it a club?––that she’d passed not long ago, she didn’t know which way to turn. Am I lost? The unsettling feeling that twisted in her stomach confirmed her suspicions. She was lost.
Bobbing crowds, busy stores, blinking Christmas lights hanging over the brimming streets of West London, all blurred into the blackness. She didn’t remember what they looked like anymore.
She didn’t know where she was anymore.
But she had to keep moving, running.
Someone was following her.
Slowly. Fluidly.
Pushing her legs at a speed she didn’t know she could reach, Mukti scanned the darkness for a hiding place. A terrifying shadow was close on her heels.
But the streets and the brick walls and the cobbled pavements, they led nowhere. They just took her deeper and deeper into the night.
Almost out of time, she could feel his fingertips clawing at her hair. How was he able to catch up with her when he was simply strolling and Mukti was running for her life?
Just when she thought there was no end to the winding, bumpy road she was bulleting through, her eyes noted a faint glow in the distance. She threw herself towards it.
Her legs had never moved so fast but they soon came to a sudden halt––there was nothing by the beckoning light but an even narrower alleyway snaking to the left. A way out! Dropping her bags, she shot for the exit.
This new turn brought her to a dead-end.
Despite the dimness, she could see the scarlet and terracotta bricks of the three walls cornering her. The only opening to this small, secret hole in the street was the doorway she’d entered through.
And her pursuer was silhouetted on the threshold.
Dark. Menacing. Intent.
With no way out, Mukti didn’t try to run. Her knees buckled, exhausted, terrified. Her palms found the walls on either side of her. Closing in on her.
The sinister shadow took two small steps towards her and she couldn’t even scream. She thought she opened her mouth but nothing came out. If it did, she heard nothing but the drumming of her horrified heart.
Cold, wet walls forced themselves against her. When she looked up, she couldn’t see the night sky, blinded by the black cloud looming over her.
Her body went limp, numb. She couldn’t tell whether she turned to jelly or stone.
Perhaps her body was no longer hers?
Only one way to hold on to her body, ensure it would only belong to her, Mukti shut her eyes and closed herself off from everything.
She pulled down all her walls. Heavy, thick partitions heaved down, quick and hard, from her head right down to her toes. Every metal gate clamped down, locking her away. She fastened the padlocks and threw away the key.
With a painful gasp, she squeezed her eyes as hard as they could go, ready for her life to be taken.
Ready to be broken.
When Mukti opened her eyes they were bleeding. Glowing red blood streamed over her pupils alongside heavy, dirty tears that clung to her long lashes. She blinked, and the blood and tears fused, smeared across her irises, sticky and viscous.
She could just about make out the harsh black night through the spaces between the bright red blotches across her eyes.
It was over now.
Part 1
Music is a moral law.
– Plato
Christmas 2009