AMKent books

Part 4

The soldier begins to speak without missing a beat, as if he had an internal metronome dictating through his digits.

“The naked devil wanders again, then I know my fate. I used to be so ready to die, almost willing it on at times. Yet, now that I have a hunger to live I am obliterated by it. I have been terrified of death, managing my existential terror poorly. Then the state of mankind came, and everything once civilised and virtuous turned to degeneracy and unchecked acid that burns through everything. When the primal peeks from the atmosphere of one it spreads, infecting with its de-evolution. Now we all eat without prayer or love, and my willingness to live cannot survive nihilism or circumstance. But, I tell you devil, I do wish to live. I know my words are akin to this piece of music to the deaf, but nevertheless, my will is there.”

The Fugue will begin soon, and with a single thrash of my hand the negative space, silence, resumes. The soldier slumps from the chipped wooden stool.

“Philosophically sadist, rather than physical. What a horrible thing you are.”

I place my hand on his hip and it sinks through to his socket like water, I replace my damaged bone and am once again new. The body lies on the floor next to the piano, its pelvis looted. I take my seat and begin to replicate the music I heard from that glimpse of paradise, the musicality of God. But this is not an ode, there is no glory here but mockery. My fingers are not trained or nimble, I am clunky and violent, and I create variations on the fragment I remember. My own inversion. Cruder. Hungrier. I was never built for Bach. The variations progress into repugnance, the melody deforms more and more keeping its spirit tortured and humiliated. Let it hear how little separates its harmony from ruin, I play with fury so that the violating noise gallops into the ears of that little Angelica, how disgusting it is with but a few differing variables. It bends. Then breaks. The same notes, wrong. It becomes apparent how even God’s musicality is but a few notes from filth. I will lure, my breathing laboured, a weight falling upon my shoulder fishing for my soul but it shall find nothing but that old wretch and a dissociation inspired by the shadow of our creator. To hide in the neurons of the lords mind is truly magnificent, but every great artist steals, and I shall take it and shape this into something unthinkable.

“It looks like you have your response, hound.”

And so I do, I am still seated. Yet I watch myself approach the piano. A replica to mock me back. Our creator has a sense of humour, and still finds me not worthy of an audience it would appear.