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muchtooarrogantLJI Week 3: Without You
Jake waited until everyone had left that morning before he started playing.
"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" his mother had stopped to ask before the family exodus.
"Dude!" his younger brother Alan had enthused, bouncing on his heals behind her, "I can't believe you're passing up a chance to see Deadpool & Wolverine."
"No thank you," Jake answered, looking up from the music score he had been flipping through to meet his mother's eyes. He ignored Alan.
Her expression flickered between concern and relief, as though she couldn't decide which emotion to settle on. The past few weeks had been miserable for all of them Jake knew, but worst of all for her, their family guardian and argument moderator. Today's outing had been held out to both siblings like a prize jewel, a reward to Alan for future good behavior, and an attempt to lift Jake out of his depression. He felt a stab of regret for disappointing her once again, but it had to be today! If he didn't do what he was planning now, he never would.
"Miriam?" His father, last of the three who had appeared in the living room doorway, looked apprehensive, as though he feared some last minute crisis would ruin the entire weekend. "Are we ready to go?"
"I was just asking Jake if he wanted to come with us," she responded, turning partially away from him as though acknowledging defeat, while leaving enough of him in view to spot any last minute reprieve.
His dad reached out and touched her wrist, and when she looked at him, shook his head. Clearer than any words spoken aloud, the gesture said, "You know what he's like when he's in one of these moods, he needs time alone to work it out."
All he said was, "Call us if you need anything, son."
After he opened the lid to the baby grand, Jake sat for several minutes without moving. The melody, which always began as a barely discernable flow of notes on the edge of his awareness, had been magnifying throughout the day as his family prepared to leave. He had made his final decision the night before, opening himself to the illusive strain of notes he had discovered years ago.
It was his talent, and simultaneously his curse, that once imagined a melody would run through his head over, and over, and over until he somehow gave it voice.
"Think of the worst earworm you've ever had," he once told Marissa. "It stays in my head, getting louder and louder until I hum it or play it."
"Which is why you're always humming," she had cried, giggling and playfully pushing him away.
Of course, the current melody in his head wasn't like any other musical composition. Attempting to delay the inevitable, he started playing notes from the score in front of him, a piece by Rachmaninoff he was trying to master, and when that failed, old favorites he had long sense memorized. The song in his skull swelled insistently until he could barely hear the notes he was playing. It began to feel as though, if denied his fingers long enough, the notes inside him would eventually come bursting out through his eyes instead.
Slowly, as though painstakingly releasing a torrent of water trapped behind a dam, Jake began interweaving notes from the current piece he was playing with notes from his internal melody. Experience had taught him that he must do this gradually, siphon the cascade of alien harmonics into a manageable flow, suffer through the immense internal pressure and control the deluge to show his mastery. Otherwise, the result would be a thunderous jumble of meaningless notes, as when a younger Alan had thrown a tantrum and attempted to smash down as many piano keys as he could at the same time. Jake knew if he failed now, gave into the pressure too soon, nothing would be achieved.
Note by note, the throbbing pressure inside his head began to lessen, and he was able to appreciate the beauty of the music he was creating. Although familiar--he had done this twice before--this iteration had its own unique characteristics; a trilling segway of notes in the upper register that left him gasping with the effort of playing so rapidly, and sweeping arpeggios that seemed destined to stretch his fingers out of their sockets. By the end, he was panting as though he had run a marathon, rivulets of sweat dripping from his face.
In the ringing silence that followed, he gently closed the piano's lid, rose shakily to his feet, and walked through the house until he reached the door to the back yard. The spacious rooms still felt a little off to him, as though the cramped existence of the shared bedroom he and Alan had lived in when they were younger was his true reality, and this comfortable and well-appointed home was a cruel fabrication. Fabrication or not though, he refused to meet with her here where his family lived.
He briefly considered writing his parents a note explaining that he had gone out for a walk, but then rejected the idea. Either he would be here when they got back, or he wouldn't.
As he walked into the forest in back of their house, a new pressure began building in Jake's internal awareness. Unlike the melody he had experienced that morning which had slowly increased in intensity over several hours, this force was a rushing avalanche of power that he could never master in a thousand years. Somehow, he managed to continue stumbling forward. He tripped repeatedly, and fell twice. There was a clearing he wanted to reach before she arrived. A clearing with a grand old oak at its center. An oak with a tree house where he and Marissa had spent countless hours becoming friends.
Jake's journey ended in a demeaning crawl on all fours, but he made it to the clearing. There, with his target oak in sight, he convulsed as the pressure from within burst free, leaving him collapsed on his face in the dirt.
When she spoke, her voice was both beautiful and terrible. A beloved song from his childhood, mixed with a slithering progression of cacophonous notes. "So, young human, you have summoned me again." Her next phrase was filled with a horrible glee. "What will the bargain be this time?"
Struggling to sit, Jake brushed the dirt away from his face. The amorphous figure before him was vaguely human in shape, but spotted with pulsing shadows and numerous appendages which fluctuated in and out of existence around its main torso. The tightness in his throat had nothing to do with phlegm, but Jake still coughed and then spat to one side.
This was it, the meeting he had been agonizing over for weeks. He was terrified, but also filled with self-loathing. After the last encounter with her, he had sworn to himself that he would never do this again.
"All of your bargains end in pain," he rasped.
"The compact," she hissed back at him, "the compact has governed the interactions between your kind and mine for thousands of years, young human. There is a wish, and there is a price!"
"I was a child, and I didn't know!" He wanted to scream it at her, but terror robbed his voice of any volume.
Nighttime, and sounds from his parents' bedroom. Sobbing. His mother's voice. "John, what are we going to do? How will we survive if neither one of us has a job?"
"The dog was old anyway," her voice crooned, "I thought I was being generous."
Jake shuddered.
Rough fur in his arms. Desperate panting. Alan's sobs. His fault!
"Besides," her voice now had a mocking lilt to it, "the second time you came a seeking, you certainly knew of the price then." Her hands come together like the crack of frozen trees bursting apart in wintertime. "Enough! You summoned me and I am here. What will the bargain be?"
"I have a friend. A friend who needs help."
"Which … friend?" She drew out the two words like a door with a screeching hinge being pushed slowly closed.
She had sworn him to secrecy. "Promise, Jake. Promise you won't tell anyone." And yet, even as he had promised, he had known he would do this eventually.
"Her name is Marissa."
He had met her the first day after moving into their new house. Wandering through these trees, arriving at this clearing, and there she had been, perched in the treehouse in the branches of the old oak.
"Her father … hurts her."
"Ahhhhhh." The horrid creature licked her lips and swallowed, as though downing a tasty morsel. "For a monster like that, someone who would do that to his own flesh and blood, you want him dead?"
Jake nodded.
"And …" again she drew the words out, "what price would you offer for this … murder?"
Driven forward by love for her, faltering and turning back because of cowardice, he had traveled such a long path to get here. Soon enough though, soon enough it would all be over.
"Our friendship," he offered.
There was nothing beautiful about her laughter, a ripping tearing sound from the depths of her throat. "Ya-young human, you cannot bargain with something you do not possess." She leaned forward, pinning Jake with her gaze. "She has told you too much, shared her deepest pain. She is terrified that you will break your promise and tell, and yet," she grinned, "hates you a little more every day because you do not!"
She licked her lips again, as though she could somehow eat his stricken expression as well.
"My life," Jake choked out the inevitable words, "you can have my life in exchange for his."
The silence spun out between them for what felt like ages.
"I have a counter offer, Young Human."
"A counter …" Had he misheard?
"When you die, your talent is passed on to another human. But," that terrible laugh again, "if you give it to me instead, I am freed from answering future calls to this realm."
For the rest of his life, Jake will remember this moment. His growing feelings of relief and amazement, the knowledge that he had suffered for a beloved friend and survived, and always and forever the hideous creature standing there before him.
"Yes!"
He will curse himself again and again for not listening to her words more closely. She had not said his talent for summoning, had not, in fact, specified which talent she was claiming at all. When she did take what he had freely given, all musical talent, including the power of summoning, vanished from his life.
Jake waited until everyone had left that morning before he started playing.
"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" his mother had stopped to ask before the family exodus.
"Dude!" his younger brother Alan had enthused, bouncing on his heals behind her, "I can't believe you're passing up a chance to see Deadpool & Wolverine."
"No thank you," Jake answered, looking up from the music score he had been flipping through to meet his mother's eyes. He ignored Alan.
Her expression flickered between concern and relief, as though she couldn't decide which emotion to settle on. The past few weeks had been miserable for all of them Jake knew, but worst of all for her, their family guardian and argument moderator. Today's outing had been held out to both siblings like a prize jewel, a reward to Alan for future good behavior, and an attempt to lift Jake out of his depression. He felt a stab of regret for disappointing her once again, but it had to be today! If he didn't do what he was planning now, he never would.
"Miriam?" His father, last of the three who had appeared in the living room doorway, looked apprehensive, as though he feared some last minute crisis would ruin the entire weekend. "Are we ready to go?"
"I was just asking Jake if he wanted to come with us," she responded, turning partially away from him as though acknowledging defeat, while leaving enough of him in view to spot any last minute reprieve.
His dad reached out and touched her wrist, and when she looked at him, shook his head. Clearer than any words spoken aloud, the gesture said, "You know what he's like when he's in one of these moods, he needs time alone to work it out."
All he said was, "Call us if you need anything, son."
After he opened the lid to the baby grand, Jake sat for several minutes without moving. The melody, which always began as a barely discernable flow of notes on the edge of his awareness, had been magnifying throughout the day as his family prepared to leave. He had made his final decision the night before, opening himself to the illusive strain of notes he had discovered years ago.
It was his talent, and simultaneously his curse, that once imagined a melody would run through his head over, and over, and over until he somehow gave it voice.
"Think of the worst earworm you've ever had," he once told Marissa. "It stays in my head, getting louder and louder until I hum it or play it."
"Which is why you're always humming," she had cried, giggling and playfully pushing him away.
Of course, the current melody in his head wasn't like any other musical composition. Attempting to delay the inevitable, he started playing notes from the score in front of him, a piece by Rachmaninoff he was trying to master, and when that failed, old favorites he had long sense memorized. The song in his skull swelled insistently until he could barely hear the notes he was playing. It began to feel as though, if denied his fingers long enough, the notes inside him would eventually come bursting out through his eyes instead.
Slowly, as though painstakingly releasing a torrent of water trapped behind a dam, Jake began interweaving notes from the current piece he was playing with notes from his internal melody. Experience had taught him that he must do this gradually, siphon the cascade of alien harmonics into a manageable flow, suffer through the immense internal pressure and control the deluge to show his mastery. Otherwise, the result would be a thunderous jumble of meaningless notes, as when a younger Alan had thrown a tantrum and attempted to smash down as many piano keys as he could at the same time. Jake knew if he failed now, gave into the pressure too soon, nothing would be achieved.
Note by note, the throbbing pressure inside his head began to lessen, and he was able to appreciate the beauty of the music he was creating. Although familiar--he had done this twice before--this iteration had its own unique characteristics; a trilling segway of notes in the upper register that left him gasping with the effort of playing so rapidly, and sweeping arpeggios that seemed destined to stretch his fingers out of their sockets. By the end, he was panting as though he had run a marathon, rivulets of sweat dripping from his face.
In the ringing silence that followed, he gently closed the piano's lid, rose shakily to his feet, and walked through the house until he reached the door to the back yard. The spacious rooms still felt a little off to him, as though the cramped existence of the shared bedroom he and Alan had lived in when they were younger was his true reality, and this comfortable and well-appointed home was a cruel fabrication. Fabrication or not though, he refused to meet with her here where his family lived.
He briefly considered writing his parents a note explaining that he had gone out for a walk, but then rejected the idea. Either he would be here when they got back, or he wouldn't.
As he walked into the forest in back of their house, a new pressure began building in Jake's internal awareness. Unlike the melody he had experienced that morning which had slowly increased in intensity over several hours, this force was a rushing avalanche of power that he could never master in a thousand years. Somehow, he managed to continue stumbling forward. He tripped repeatedly, and fell twice. There was a clearing he wanted to reach before she arrived. A clearing with a grand old oak at its center. An oak with a tree house where he and Marissa had spent countless hours becoming friends.
Jake's journey ended in a demeaning crawl on all fours, but he made it to the clearing. There, with his target oak in sight, he convulsed as the pressure from within burst free, leaving him collapsed on his face in the dirt.
When she spoke, her voice was both beautiful and terrible. A beloved song from his childhood, mixed with a slithering progression of cacophonous notes. "So, young human, you have summoned me again." Her next phrase was filled with a horrible glee. "What will the bargain be this time?"
Struggling to sit, Jake brushed the dirt away from his face. The amorphous figure before him was vaguely human in shape, but spotted with pulsing shadows and numerous appendages which fluctuated in and out of existence around its main torso. The tightness in his throat had nothing to do with phlegm, but Jake still coughed and then spat to one side.
This was it, the meeting he had been agonizing over for weeks. He was terrified, but also filled with self-loathing. After the last encounter with her, he had sworn to himself that he would never do this again.
"All of your bargains end in pain," he rasped.
"The compact," she hissed back at him, "the compact has governed the interactions between your kind and mine for thousands of years, young human. There is a wish, and there is a price!"
"I was a child, and I didn't know!" He wanted to scream it at her, but terror robbed his voice of any volume.
Nighttime, and sounds from his parents' bedroom. Sobbing. His mother's voice. "John, what are we going to do? How will we survive if neither one of us has a job?"
"The dog was old anyway," her voice crooned, "I thought I was being generous."
Jake shuddered.
Rough fur in his arms. Desperate panting. Alan's sobs. His fault!
"Besides," her voice now had a mocking lilt to it, "the second time you came a seeking, you certainly knew of the price then." Her hands come together like the crack of frozen trees bursting apart in wintertime. "Enough! You summoned me and I am here. What will the bargain be?"
"I have a friend. A friend who needs help."
"Which … friend?" She drew out the two words like a door with a screeching hinge being pushed slowly closed.
She had sworn him to secrecy. "Promise, Jake. Promise you won't tell anyone." And yet, even as he had promised, he had known he would do this eventually.
"Her name is Marissa."
He had met her the first day after moving into their new house. Wandering through these trees, arriving at this clearing, and there she had been, perched in the treehouse in the branches of the old oak.
"Her father … hurts her."
"Ahhhhhh." The horrid creature licked her lips and swallowed, as though downing a tasty morsel. "For a monster like that, someone who would do that to his own flesh and blood, you want him dead?"
Jake nodded.
"And …" again she drew the words out, "what price would you offer for this … murder?"
Driven forward by love for her, faltering and turning back because of cowardice, he had traveled such a long path to get here. Soon enough though, soon enough it would all be over.
"Our friendship," he offered.
There was nothing beautiful about her laughter, a ripping tearing sound from the depths of her throat. "Ya-young human, you cannot bargain with something you do not possess." She leaned forward, pinning Jake with her gaze. "She has told you too much, shared her deepest pain. She is terrified that you will break your promise and tell, and yet," she grinned, "hates you a little more every day because you do not!"
She licked her lips again, as though she could somehow eat his stricken expression as well.
"My life," Jake choked out the inevitable words, "you can have my life in exchange for his."
The silence spun out between them for what felt like ages.
"I have a counter offer, Young Human."
"A counter …" Had he misheard?
"When you die, your talent is passed on to another human. But," that terrible laugh again, "if you give it to me instead, I am freed from answering future calls to this realm."
For the rest of his life, Jake will remember this moment. His growing feelings of relief and amazement, the knowledge that he had suffered for a beloved friend and survived, and always and forever the hideous creature standing there before him.
"Yes!"
He will curse himself again and again for not listening to her words more closely. She had not said his talent for summoning, had not, in fact, specified which talent she was claiming at all. When she did take what he had freely given, all musical talent, including the power of summoning, vanished from his life.
