“What…”
My voice trails off.
Pavel turns and looks at me, and I see pure madness in the white of his eyes.
“What happened?” I gasp, unable to keep from looking back down at the poor dead boy.
“I think I’m getting closer,” Pavel replies. “Listen. Tell me if you agree.”
He starts banging the bucket again, hitting it rapidly with the pen. This continues for a few seconds, before he stops and turns to me again.
“I know it wasn’t music,” he continues, “but it was something. I think I’m getting there.”
“What happened to Adam?” I ask, taking a step forward but then stopping as I see that the boy’s brain has been partially torn from his head, with chunks left crushed against the dirty floor-tiles.
“If I can just get this right,” Pavel replies, turning back to the bucket and hitting it again, “I think I can build an actual piece. It’s just a noise right now, but it’ll become music eventually. Won’t it?”
“What happened to your son?” I stammer, horrified by his apparent lack of care. “Tell me, man! What’s going on here?”
Pavel looks down at Adam’s corpse for a moment, but then he turns back to face the bucket.
“Something’s holding me back,” he says finally. “I need to focus more. I’m allowing myself to get distracted. He was distracting me at first, but then he stopped. Now I need to focus all my attention, all my senses, on getting music out of this thing.”
“Tell me you didn’t do this,” I reply, unable to ignore the fact that there’s blood all over Pavel’s arms and chest. “For the love of…”
Again, my voice trails off.
“I’m seeing too much,” Pavel continues. “I need to focus on just hearing. Don’t you get it? Adam didn’t understand, he wouldn’t stop whining and begging for things. People came and took the food. Adam tried to stop them. At least he doesn’t whine anymore.” He holds the pen up and examines the tip. “I need to focus purely on the sound. I can’t let anything else into my mind.”
“Listen to me, man,” I say, trying to work out how I can help, “I think you need to come with me.”
I wait, but he’s simply staring at the pen. And then, before I can say another word, he turns the pen around and drives it into his left eye.
“Stop!” I shout, stumbling forward, but I’m too late.
Gasping, Pavel struggles to pull the pen out. The clip on the side of the lid is caught inside the eyeball itself, and blood starts pouring from all around the socket as the pen is finally torn free. Then, as I watch with a growing sense of horror, Pavel does the same to his other eye, blinding himself completely.
“There!” he shouts triumphantly, as he starts laughing. “Now I can’t see, I’ll be able to focus better on the sound!”
He starts banging the bucket again, faster than before but with no rhythm whatsoever. He’s completely ignoring the blood that’s gushing from his eyes, and after a moment he starts tapping the side of the bucket in an attempt to establish some sort of harmony.
“Maybe smell!” he shouts finally. “Maybe I need to get rid of my sense of smell as well! It stinks in here! I need to block my nose. That’s when I’ll be able to make some music.”
“Pavel,” I stammer, “please… Your son is dead!”
“I need something that’ll really stick,” he continues. “Do you have any glue? Or cement? How can I make music when my other senses keep getting in the way?”
“Pavel—”
“Leave me alone!” he screams, banging the bucket harder and harder. “I can’t hear anything else! Stop polluting the sounds in here! I need to hear what I’m doing!”
Stumbling back out of the shop, I stop for a moment and listen as Pavel continues to bang the bucket. I want to help him, to do something, but the man seems completely insane. Shocked, I turn and make my way back toward my apartment building. I’ll find food from somewhere else, but for now I need to get home and then I must find a way to forget the horror that I just witnessed. Even as I walk away, however, I can still hear Pavel in the distance, banging his bucket and screaming into the night air.
Seven
“Damn it!” a voice hisses in the darkness, as I get close to my building’s front door. “Nearly!”
Startled, I turn just in time to see a rat scurrying away into the darkness, and then I watch as a man – one of my neighbors, I think, although I don’t know his name – chases the creature.
“Get back here!” he shouts. “Come on, this isn’t fair!”
Stopping in the little pool of light in front of the main door, I listen to the sound of the man hurrying through the bushes. I can’t quite believe that he’s attempting to use a rat as a source of food, but then I tell myself that this would not be the most horrific thing that I have witnessed so far tonight. At least I can no longer hear the sound of Pavel hitting his bucket, although I have no doubt that he’s still hard at work trying to make music.
I have to get inside.
Turning, I take the key from my pocket.
“You’re that musician.”
I glance over my shoulder, and for the first time I notice a man sitting on the bench near the broken lamppost. He must have been there all along, and I simply didn’t notice.
“Derek something, right?” he continues. “I know about you. You had a hit back in the 80’s.”
Squinting, I try to make the man out, but he’s too far from the light.
“There’s no point denying it,” he says. “I knew about you even before all of this happened. You’re the nearest thing this part of town has to a celebrity. Why would someone like you live in a place like this, anyway? Didn’t you make millions from your song?”
“It wasn’t that much of a hit,” I say cautiously.
“Weren’t you, like, number one in France for two weeks?”
“Three weeks, actually,” I say cautiously.
“And you didn’t make a load of money?”
“I get by,” I tell him. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must—”
“Can’t you play us a little of it?” he asks, interrupting me. “Just part of it. I know you’ve got a guitar. I used to hear you practicing for hours and hours. To tell you the truth, the sound used to kind of annoy me. I almost came down sometimes to ask you to pack it in, but my wife used to say that I was being mean. So I didn’t say anything, even though the tenancy agreement here gave me every right to put in an official complaint. Don’t you think that means you owe us?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I tell him, “but I can’t just—”
Before I can finish, I hear a shuffling sound nearby, and I turn to see that there are in fact three more figures standing in the shadows, a little further from the bench.
“I’m afraid I can’t play anything tonight,” I say after a moment, trying to remain diplomatic. “It’s just not possible. I’m sure you understand.”
“Can’t you play?” the man asks.
“The situation is rather—”
“I heard you,” he adds, suddenly getting to his feet. “About two days ago. I heard you play a few bars of music, and I got to thinking that maybe you’re keeping it from the rest of us.”
“I assure you,” I reply, “that I am doing no such thing.”
As I say those words, however, I hear a rustling sound over my shoulder. Turning, I spot several more figures in the shadows, and I begin to realize that I seem to be rather surrounded. I take a step back, bumping against the building’s front door, and then I reach into my pocket and fumble for my key. I don’t want to seem as if I’m in too much of a hurry, but at the same time I very much want to get to the safety of my apartment.