Short Fiction

Face the Music

Published in the Nexus Literary Journal

Pianississimo

7:14 AM EST, 32.7357° N 97.1081° W

Looking at my hands again, they are mine; of course, they are mine. The scars from my boxing tournament in grade school, the crooked knuckle of my index and forefinger from getting them stuck in the hacksaw when I was eleven. The hooked forward joints strung with arthritis from the hundred thousand lines of code I had written and keys I had played. In a few short hours, these would not be just my hands anymore. Once everyone in the world can see you, who do you belong to then? Not yourself, not anymore.

Everything around me now would be watched, re-watched, analyzed, questioned, and torn apart. I could almost hear the newscasters now, “Ordinary Virginia man shook the nation… no one saw it coming… no one ever could have guessed…”

The sound of the approaching subway train B filled the underground station, the sound of thousands of fans screaming at the arrival of a singer on a stage. Ears ringing, stepping through the open doors, my ritualized morning steps began for the last time. I took up my usual spot in the corner of the carriage by the back emergency door, taking solace in the fact I would not be completing the ritual today.

My hands, my hands again, trembling outside the usual, someone would notice.

From nowhere, she was there. Clinging to my coat, pulling my arm to hold me to her diminished height; I couldn’t help the noise of surprise that escaped me. I should be used to the brash, even expectant nature of the homeless of Arlington by now.

“Help me, sir.” She was close to me, too close to me so I could see far more than I wished to.

She was covered in dirt, it painted her aged face like a dust of foundation, covering her clothes and skin. Her torn coat and undershirts revealed many swaths of ashen skin through large, well-worn holes. She was looking at me with the wide, yellow-rimmed eyes of a desperate addict.

I had grown accustomed to the average beggar roaming the streets and public transport after living in this city for a handful of years. Near the beginning, as most do, I became caught up in each of their tales of woe. Eventually, one is forced to accept the reality of the situation: that there is always the next person who will be asking to take from you, there is never an end.

“Sir, please…” She was drawing herself closer to me, or me closer to her, as a cat toys with its prey.

“Yes, yes,” I shook my arm out of my coat, so she no longer had a grasp on me. “I can help you, of course.”

Today was as good a day as any to settle my score. To clear the deck, as I had no need of any of the things filling my pockets anymore. She seemed taken aback by my eagerness and seemed to revert to a more docile state as she waited for me to finish retrieving what I wanted from my pockets.

To her outstretched hands, I dumped the contents of my pockets, spare change, my credit and debit cards, and a new hundred-dollar bill. I kept only my phone and security clearance card tucked inside my innermost pocket.

She looked down into her hands for the space of a breath, then reacting before I could theoretically change my mind, she left. A shadow through the open doors of the subway car and melting into the crowd.

A quick scan and I was sure no one had watched our interaction. Good, good.

Headphones over ears, I slouched back into my corner of the carriage, fingers scrolling through my music library. A choice alluded me, so I allowed my fingers to select a song at the touch of a random scroll through the classics. Flight of The Valkyries lifted me away from my inner cage, relaxing the tension from my shoulders in a liquid release.

As the song reached its zenith, I ran my fingers over the curves of the mobile phone that I had been clutching onto for so long as a lifeline.

They kept making them, bigger and smaller, thinner and thicker. Better, always better.

I ran my fingers over the camera lenses. The glass eyes stared at me, and I smiled back. To any of my fellow travelers, it appeared as though I was smiling down at something funny on my phone. Yet I alone knew I was smiling at someone, into the future, to many someones. This thought was very amusing, and I laughed. Heavy eyes landed on my shoulders, but I ignored them.

An intrusive thought interrupted my mental peace, as it resonated through my thoughts in my mother’s half-remembered voice.

“You deceive yourself,” her memory stood before me, shaking her head. “You are only hiding from your fear.”

Seemingly in confirmation, my hands were shaking once more.

I wasn’t afraid of what I was about to do, I knew it was the right thing. I do not have to worry about the consequences of my actions.

The song switched, shuffling through my recorded likes and dislikes, flirting with the algorithm to best supply me, its master, with auditory pleasure.

Mozart – yes, good.

Pianissimo

9:15 AM EST, 35.7796° N 78.6382° W

I flipped a pancake at the exact moment the internet went to shit. As the pancake rose in a beautiful crest, a crescendo of notifications, alerts, and dings flooded my senses.

Dropping the skillet with a clang, my fingers brushed the flattop. I kissed the burn as I ran to my computer and TV setup in the living room. The screens were flooded with thousands of government alerts, newscasts, and telewarnings with more coming in.

The first broadcast I selected was flashing a large government warning system symbol with underlying text that read ‘Do Not Access the World Wide Web Network At this Time, in Any Capacity. The President Will Address the Country Shortly.’

“What the hell?”

I toyed my cursor around the internet app placed dead center on my computer screen. We all have the internet in our hands at all times, how are we not supposed to use it? I kept digging through the masses of notifications; all I could find was the same message. The second broadcast, and then the third newscast, where I paused.

This was different, it was streaming from a local network, and they were hosting a live stream of some sort of video feed.

It was the Oval Office, I figured this must be the Presidential broadcast. Always recognizable, the office sat in its classic caricature of a functioning office. The windows were painted with the colors of dusk, and the desk was cast in half shadow, which was wrong. It should be rising, not setting, at this time of day. It took me a further second to realize the perspective of the camera was off, not from the classic perspective in the middle of the room facing in, but from the side of the room. Propped up against an object, a quarter perspective was faced toward the engraved inlays on the ceiling. The American flag behind the desk moved with a slight breeze, and a shadow passed by the corner of the viewpoint.

I leaned in close to my screen to better make out the shadow in the background. It materialized as a hand, reaching out to adjust the camera recording, it shifted the perspective down from the ceiling. It startled me, in spite of myself. The image cleared, and the shadows materialized into two people.

One was easily identifiable as the President, he had just been elected a couple of months before in a devastating landslide for the Conservative party, and he was fresh in office. His running slogan had been based on the classic “Small town man looking out for the little guy.” The second figure was obscured from the neck up and was shifting from foot to foot. They were wearing the typical suit and tie of someone who would easily blend into the background of that setting.

“Sir,” the voice was male, deep, mature in age. “Must you record this?”

President Lewis laughed, a strange insincere octave.

“You know the deal, and besides, this is only going on the most secure phone in the entire country.”

He pulled the man by the arm and threw him against the desk, causing multiple articles to fall over and a stack of papers to flutter to the floor.

“And honestly,” he said, grabbing the man’s face with one hand, “How many times have I told you – never question me?”

The president began to force himself onto the man.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I had never clicked out of a page so fast.

What the hell? Like actually, what the hell?

My phone began to ring, cutting the silence. I dropped it and picked it back up again to see the name flashing on the screen. It was Sarah, and I answered automatically.

“Babe, you have no idea what I just saw -”

“Michael!” she was screaming into her phone.

“God damn Sarah, I can hear you.”

There was a moment of silence, and her breath rattled on the other end of the line with emotion, as it did when she had been crying.

“Babe,” I said, as I decided not to tell her what I saw. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” she said, almost before I had gotten the question out. “Have you seen – have you gotten the alerts?”

The smell of smoke drew my attention away from the screen, and I shouldered my phone up against my ear as I ran back to the kitchen.

“Yes, yes, never been more confused than I am right now,” I bit back a yelp of pain as I burned myself again, sliding the skillet to a burner that had not been left on. “Do you know what is going on?”

My breakfast stared at me from within a charred circle of remains as Sarah choked on her words across the line.

“Look, we have nothing to hide from each other right?”

“Yeah… Sarah, what the hell is that supposed to mean -”

“Just! Don’t look on the internet, at it. I did look and I regret it, and there is really no reason to do it at all. We should just follow what the government is telling us, and everything will be okay. I’m coming home, I’ll be there soon. Just, don’t do anything.”

She hung up on me.

Don’t look at it?

Too bad. I’m looking at it.

Piano

7:36 AM EST, 32.7357° N 97.1081° W

The car arrived at the next stop, and the largest mass of bodies boarded, smashing and grabbing. They pulled their way into every conceivable corner. Bodies, faceless people, all around me. A lady crushing into my shoulder, a tux dwarfing me in front, my back curved up against the window.

Closing my eyes, I focused on climbing the stairs of the music in my ears, up and out. Nine breaths, hold then release. Everything was fine, it was just business as usual.

Each person on this train would think back, mere hours from now, and try to remember standing next to me on their morning commute. Was that really him? Was it really the man I elbowed in the back when the conductor braked too fast? Was it really the man who stood in front of me so normal?

Would they call me a terrorist? A hero? A fool most likely. They would think, “Why would he throw his life away like that, all for what?” Upheaving the country, killing thousands, and perhaps starting the next world war. A new epoch: all in the blink of an eye.

Even so, they would recognize the loss of their anonymity in their own little worlds, just like me. They would recognize the positions they had been assigned in life, just drones, serving the Queen mother. The one who watches.

We arrived.

Us drones tried to squeeze out of the twin double doors all at once but failed; then polite diplomacy followed. I was near last. I walked out of the car, eyes watering in the bright rays of sunrise splicing through the trees surrounding the train station.

Bowing my head, my feet began to take me down my familiar route, which I liked to imagine had formed into a rut after fifteen years of walking it every day.

Vivaldi, Winter.

My steps felt lighter as I marched in time to the music. Dead leaves crunching, old snow and salt crushed into paste beneath my standard issue boots.

My mother loved Vivaldi.

Why had I never had a child?

I wish I had fallen in love. Had a little one, and taught them how to code and how to paint. I would have been a good father. Better than Da. I would’ve been a good husband too.

Why hadn’t I done something with my life? Decades of sucking up to supervisors, merely meeting the status quo, barely even living.

Fourteen months ago, I thought I had been living the dream, my father’s dream at least. I had become what he could not: a successful, functional member of society. A five-star security clearance officer in the blackout department of the FBI, I had surpassed every possible conception of what he would’ve thought possible. And yet, the deeper I got, the more I saw, and the less I believed in what he had drilled into me every night before I went to sleep.

“We are always in control. Of our lives, of our futures, of our past.”

We are never in control.

The city bloomed around me, with edges of glass and concrete. The morning rush of worker variants in beige, blacks, and browns cluttered the sidewalk like a spilled box of ‘office’ branded crayons. I felt a momentary breath of connection as I stepped into the ebb and flow of the tide, the hive mind pulling us all towards the day, work, eat, sleep, repeat.

My building was ahead, looming over the rest of the sidewalks, casting a long shadow onto the solitary square park in between the adjacent government buildings. As I walked past, my eyes caught onto the park bench under the elm tree. I could almost see the ghost of my daily lunch break, sitting under the tree, every day, eating the same lunch of tuna salad and saltines. The idea of sitting down once more for an absent-minded rest called to me, but the day was already full of the most important things.

The six floors of windowless concrete slabs rose above me, welcoming me home. The average passerby around me had no idea they were walking past six floors of empty, abandoned office space.

With my keycard in hand, I flashed my ID to the scanner, and then the plainclothes doormen flanking the single entry doors.

Mezzo Piano

9:21 AM EST, 35.7796° N 78.6382° W

What the hell is it? The entire internet, how am I supposed to know what it is? I popped open the Safari app on my computer, which opened to Google. And there it was. Instead of Google, a new title came up in the middle of the screen, ‘Dirty Laundry.’ Unfamiliar piano music began to filter out of my speakers. Underneath the heading were two lines of text in small print, ‘Search any name to discover their dirty laundry. They were always watching.’

“What the fuck? What the fuck,” I was whispering to myself like the police were about to bust down my door, guns blazing.

Sarah Birmingham.

Hesitating for only a moment, I remembered her assurance of having nothing to hide. No way, Sarah. I pressed enter, and the screen refreshed to a list of green text specifications on a black screen, reminding me of hacker sequences in budget action movies.

INPUT: State, Age, Father, Mother, Occupation.

I typed Massachusetts into the first box and my Sarah came up first in the search. I could tell from a shadowy screengrab profile photo of her face. Clicking into her profile, a long list of files appeared, scrolling down my screen. The top of the screen was sorted into three sections, HIGH RISK, SOCIETAL INFRACTIONS, and FLAGGED FOR REVIEW. Next to Sarah’s profile picture was a large number 6, along with the text CITIZEN SCORE.

I clicked the back arrow and scrolled down the list of Sarah Birmingham from Massachusetts. There were a lot of 8s, 9s, and 10s. A brief thought caused my fingers to freeze above my mousepad.

Was this the dark web? If I clicked the wrong button, would I send Sarah’s Social Security Number to a random fifty-year-old hacker based out of Turkey?

The echo of a car door slamming from down the street at a neighbor’s house jump-started my brain back into processing. I was already this far, I rationalized. Far too late to back out now.

I clicked back to the top file underneath the section SOCIETAL INFRACTIONS, which was the only category with files underneath it. The file opened up in my video media player, much like the broadcast of the President. The video player began with a government symbol, flashing in red caps, CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED. Clutching my heart, I pulled out my office chair to sit down and watch.

The video began with a shaking view of grass, dark tall reeds rushing by the camera, as the perspective jolted and shook. Heavy breathing could be heard in the background, as well as slight suggestions of screaming far off in the distance. The camera angle shifted as the filmer came to a sudden halt.

I leaned closer and closer to the screen, and jumped as the scream echoed out of my speakers at max volume.

“Serena! Serena, stop!”

The view focused on a bright light surrounded by blurred shadows and was shifted away again as the person began to run once more.

“Serena,” I whispered.

The camera focused once more on the bright light. Fire. Fire engulfed the entire view of the camera, massive and consuming what could only have been a house. A solitary figure stood in front of the blaze, gazing up, not at the house, but at the sky.

“What did you do?!” the cameraman asked the figure in a strangled scream.

I already knew what was about to happen. Ever since I was a little kid, I could always predict the big reveal, the unmasking of the villain, the secret that had been hinted at all along. Sarah hated it, hated when I called the twist of the movie within the first ten minutes and hated that I was always right.

Knowing didn’t make the big reveal any better. Not this time. As the child version of my wife turned to the camera, her face wiped of emotion and empty of fear, I felt I had discovered the reason behind the ‘We have nothing to hide from each other.’

“They hurt me,” Serena said in a calm monotone as the house began to implode behind her. “They hurt me, Sammy, I wanted them all gone for good.”

The footage cut out there, and I had a moment of space to let out a single breath before a compilation of clips began to flash across my screen.

Sarah – Serena, varying ages progressing as the compilation worsened in crimes and social infractions.

Shoplifting, assaulting an officer, arrested for arson again at thirteen, a hit and run, a jewelry store break-in, a DUI, and a prescription pill offense.

All before the age of eighteen, then nothing.

Then two years later, we met in a bar in Daytona Beach on my company holiday, and we connected over our love of crappy roadside diners and making love inside the dingy bathrooms of said diners.

“Shit.”

I ran my hand over my face, not really feeling it. I was engaged to a murderer, among many other things. However the hell this happened, it was going to start World War Three.

I heard Sarah’s car pull into the driveway and knock over our trash can as she sometimes did when she rushed too much.

I hit the power button on my computer monitor.

Mezzo Forte

8:03 AM EST, 32.7357° N 97.1081° W

“Morning Phil, morning Darryl.”

I received two grunts in return.

It was early, and on Thursdays, the primary staff didn’t transit until nine, so I was counting on a deserted office. I worked at the main branch in D.C. on Wednesdays, connected by the vast underground tunnels by tram. The stolen uplink drive was sitting in the Azalea pot inside the small entry sitting area, obscured under a dusting of potting soil. Palming it as I passed by, I pretended to touch a leaf for the cameras. It took me another twenty minutes to pass through three more levels of security and a long trek to my home cubicle before I was in the clear.

The sea of cubicles felt like the only real home I’d ever had. It was a welcome sight as I stepped off of the final controlled lift onto my home floor. Our floor was fondly named, ‘The Sifting Floor.’ We watched hours and hours of flagged footage every day, from every screen and camera of every citizen born under the American umbrella of control. We comb through high-risk, suspicious-risk, and even low-risk citizens. The most classified footage was only reviewed by the floor management team, meaning me and my partner, Rodney.

Rodney was a closeted white supremacist who most definitely got off on the government’s time for his many voyeuristic tendencies. It is one of my only regrets that I will not be able to see his fall from grace.

As a part of the ‘Classifieds’ team, we are the elite, hired to be the chosen few who were seen as gods among the drones, with access to all the most classified of materials.

The only defining characteristics that the company sanctioned in our honeycomb cubes were a single photo and one memento. I refused to look at the photo on my desk as I entertained the idea that Ma and Da weren’t smiling up at me anymore. Picking up my memento, my hands began to steady. My prized boxing medal still shone with its burnished gold. The medal took me back to the time I took down the regional champion with the whole high school cheering my back.

It was not hard to imagine an army of people chanting my name, begging me to do it! We need you to set us free!

The entire floor was empty, no one was here to see me yet. I plugged my phone into my computer’s speakers system and pressed Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 to play.

I was ready.

Forte

7:00 AM MST, 35.0844° N 106.6504° W

The same bell, same day, same constant buzzing of the children’s voices mixed with tinnitus. My own purgatorial sentence, one that I had crafted for myself with my questionable fine arts degree and teacher’s license.

Six more months, six more months, six more.

The bell was ringing, the yelling began, and the scraping of seats and desks followed in a practiced orchestral performance. There was shoving, a squabble in the back corner of the classroom. Freshmen were so prone to fights these days, not like in the nineties or the eighties.

“Sit down boys,” I only had to say it once.

They knew by now that I meant business and those that did not were the ones that didn’t have an ounce of prepubescent common sense to go around.

I could still imagine the taste of the chocolate raspberry cake and the cherry cordial sorbet from the retirement party on Saturday. It was lingering like a toothache with the sweetness of six more months, just six more months.

“Listen up,” my voice was hoarse today, I cleared my throat. “Today is the second workday for your Macbeth group projects. Nod if you understand me.”

Nods.

The group of hagglers in the back corner were at it again, barking laughter like a pack of Hyenas.

My bones were unhappy with my decision to stand up.

“Clearly, some of you don’t have functioning ears this morning,” I said, watching as heads turned in a wave to the back of the room. “I’ll say it one more time. Nod if you understand me.”

The boys in the corner complied, and I continued.

“We will work on the project for the rest of class period today, with everyone turning it in to me by the end of the period. I expect perfect grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You all have dictionaries on your phones. Look them up.”

My chair protested as I fell back down into it. I’d have to tell the custodian to tighten up the bolts again, this chair has to last me six more months. My desk phone started ringing, causing a chain reaction of silence to fall in the room as each student worried the call was for them. It was goddamn seven in the morning, it was too early for this.

“Mr. Anderson speaking,” I said, picking up the phone.

“Cooper.” It was Principal Sam. “We are alerting all of the teachers, it doesn’t appear to be any cause for concern as of yet but -”

The class was chattering again like monkeys, the volume growing in intensity.

“The State has sent out an emergency alert… the internet is…”

My tinnitus was blaring in my right ear, and I shifted the phone to my left ear.

“Sam, I can barely hear you. Hold on,” I covered the receiver of the phone with my hand.

“I am on the phone! Have some manners, and keep it down.”

Fortissimo

8:35 AM EST, 32.7357° N 97.1081° W

I logged in to my headset with a touch of my thumb, plugged the virtual interface into my head port, and booted up my system. I was in the database. Toying with the USB in my pocket, I took the adapter out of my sock. I plugged in my adapter with the USB into the system in the desk port drive and accessed the internet with a swipe of my mouse. I had about two minutes before an alert was sent to the security office that a sifter was utilizing an outside device to access the system.

I accessed the ghost Google website I had created, a virtual library. All of its shelves were empty. I created an uplink route and programmed the USB to connect to the library. It contained the security clearance codes and a hacked fake Sifter employee identity to gain access to the system and upload it to the library. The process would continue no matter what, the two systems were now so intertangled, only I would be able to release them. No one had access to my website’s code.

I scheduled a simultaneous upload to all video streaming services and local news outlets, just in case. Pressing the final key, the program began to run with a delayed upload. Everything would be live in T-minus 18 minutes and 20 seconds. It was done.

I unplugged myself from the system and stood. Keeping my eyes averted, I found the picture frame and tossed it in my waste shoot to the incinerator.

It was done. My job was to protect the country from itself; to be an omniscient eye behind every webcam, camera, and security footage. I was the drone that had served its purpose.

Returning to the elevator, I looked at my hands again. They didn’t belong to me anymore. I pressed the entry points of the terminal and my security bypass. Without a second thought, I stepped in. I was going to take an early lunch break today. Time to go sit on my bench.

Fortississimo

7:04 AM MST, 35.0844° N 106.6504° W

“Cooper? Cooper, are you there?”

“Yes, yes, I can hear you now. You said something about the internet?”

Sam was speaking indistinctly on the other end of the line like someone had begun to talk to him as well.

“Look, we are about to make a school-wide announcement,” he said.

I sighed, perhaps too loudly to be on the phone with my boss.

“Cooper, just – keep the kids off the internet!”

He hung up the phone. I entertained the idea of banging my head against the desk.

What the fuck was this morning already? It wasn’t even 7:05 yet.

The kids began cackling in the pitch of seagulls, again, in the back of the room. From my vantage point, I could see whispers and conversations making their way across the room like flighted birds. Today must be one of those days where it is physically impossible to reign in the focus of the kids.

“We should only be working on our assignments now! No chitter-chatter is needed. Get to work!”

Faint echos of classical piano music reached me through the ringing. Instead of heads turned down towards desks for diligent work, more and more eyes were turning toward me at the front of the room. Whispers began to punctuate the sirens in my ears.

It says it’s dirty laundry… his first name is Cooper… internet history…

I must be losing my mind.

My fingers burned as I slammed both my hands down on my desk. “What is going on in here? Do I need to start sending people to the office?”

Someone I didn’t see shouted out “Pedo!”

My tinnitus sharpened into a shrill drill.

“What…”

They were laughing, all of the faces were laughing, laughing tiny little dogs. “What did

you say? Who said that?”

They were all holding and staring at their phones, tiny little cancer devices.

Pedo… he gets off to kids… look at his society score…

I grabbed the phone of a bulky nerd in the front room, his name was Justin or Jonathan or – “Hey, give that back!”

The screen, the screen had a picture of my face. What was this? A large number three was emboldened next to it, and a long list of SOCIETAL INFRACTIONS blazed red down the screen.

RISK ALERT: HIGH

CITIZEN EXHIBITS INTERNET TENDENCIES TOWARDS SEXUAL DEVIANCE AND PEDOPHILIA, EMPLOYED IN PROXIMITY OF CHILDREN. ADDRESS TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Silenzio

9:25 AM EST, 32.7357° N 97.1081° W

The world ends, not with a bang, but with a million ringing cell phones.

From my bench, I saw it all. I feel like I did, I really did see it all.

I had no phone, I ditched it in the trash can on my way out of the office, so I had no way of knowing how things were progressing. But, from each person’s face as they passed me by on my bench, I believe I could see when each person gained the weight of the secrets I had been carrying for the past year of my life. The moment when their fists clenched with the weight of the burden I had had to bear alone.

They started out slow. Tracing the lines of age and misuse across my knuckles, I watched as people began to increase their speed, fast walking, slow jogging, ringtones pinging through the air like auditory darts. A handful, then entire groups of people would freeze in the middle of their strides, staring blank-faced and wide-eyed down at their phones. The thin sounds of piano reached me on my bench, carried by the wind, accompanying my viewing pleasure. Then, as if from the sweep of a conductor’s baton came the gasps, the screams, and the running. Those that hadn’t noticed yet stopped and stared at the developing situation.

The street in front of my section of serene park space became littered with debris, briefcases, coats, scarves, backpacks, and phones. Within half an hour, the city felt deserted. No one wanted to be here, of course not. The occasional person sprinted by as sirens began to fill the streets with blank noise of EMERGENCY EMERGENCY. No person has paid me any mind as I sat back on my bench, under my tree, in my little park.

There were no police, not yet anyway. They were far too busy searching all of their fellow officers’ and supervisors’ names on the internet, then inevitably themselves.

Everybody was facing the music.

I knew it was time to face my own music as well. My fists released in a facsimile of acceptance, scarred palms open to the grayed-out sky.

There was nowhere to run for me, no home to rush to, no place of work to call up to explain myself to, no family to search down. I was the only person in the country at total peace with my loss of anonymity, I was a ghost in the network. Mere lines of code in the generational machine of the United States.

Checking my watch, I noted that they would be able to begin tracing the leak in less than two minutes. Law enforcement would begin dispatching to my location in a matter of minutes. I listened to the ghost of the music playing from a lone cell phone left discarded as I reached under the bench to dust away the light cover of dirt I had placed there last week. I unearthed my final instrument and placed it in my pocket.

Conducting the empty air to the melody of Lacrimosa, I left my little park and began the long trek back to the train station. On my path, one last time.