Music

“Break it,” the universe said, tempting Dillon as usual. The silver vase, which contained a prickly red and white flower, sat on his mom’s coffee table in the corner.

If he broke it, would he feel like he existed?

Screw that. Doing nothing always led to better results when it came to the universe.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     His mom’s voice popped in his head. It’s not the universe--it’s your mind teasing you. She made schizophrenia sound like a cute little annoyance. He rolled his eyes at his mom’s cream carpet. 

“Hey man. You ok?” Josh said. He offered Dillon a smile that stretched across his face and sagged a little, like over-chewed gum. Could that happen to people who exhausted their smile muscles? 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Dillon’s eyes darted to Jen, whose long fingers slipped between Josh’s stout ones. 

He tried to focus, a difficult feat with the loud bass music playing in the background. Josh’s sun-baked skin clashed with the pink curtains billowing in front of the open window. Jen resembled a sunflower with her slender frame and bright blonde pixie-cut. She pulled it off better than most girls, but if she grew it out, she’d look like a blonde Zooey Deschanel. Shyness fluttered in his throat.

Why couldn’t he have one interaction with a pretty girl where he didn’t resemble a neurotic tomato?

His mom’s “music” throbbed in his ears. Gentle piano notes rose up from the bottom of his mind, as if to duke-it-out with his mom’s noise. The melody was too quiet to recognize, much less put up a fight.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of worn jeans and a yellow sundress as a couple slipped by.  Fifteen of Dillon’s neighbors hovered in his peripheral vision; their voices blending together into one resonant grumble. Fifteen-and-a-half if he counted the neighbor's cockapoo curled up on the blue leather couch.The room was an almost perfect square with about a 20x20 perimeter. All the guests managed to fit--barely. Exactly six people leaned against the leaf green walls as if to make space. 

A little girl with red pigtails eyed a bowl of truffles on the coffee table. Her mom swatted her hands away as she tried to reach for one. Dillon plucked a chocolate from the bowl and held it behind his back for the girl to grab. Jen, who Dillon was pleased to realize had been watching, hid a smile behind her hand as the little girl snatched it. 

The notes in his mind grew in magnitude, he could almost recognize the song. Dillon’s fingers twitched by his sides. A physical manifestation of his constant desire to play the piano. His mom’s crappy music magnified this need. It was Space Cowboy by The Steve Miller Band. 

He glanced towards the door in time to see a horror stride in. 

A grotesque massacre of body parts flooded his vision. None of the monster's features fit together. Its face was the ninth circle of Hell. The piano notes in the back of his head slammed to a stop. 

“Leave,” the universe said. 

And for once, Dillon wanted to obey. He jerked towards the exit. “What the hell is that thing?” 

Josh and Jen turned. The creature stood in the doorway. Skin and nerves and muscle rippling. Only concern for his friends kept Dillon from surging out the door.

Josh turned back and eyeballed Dillon as if he were a vagrant who’d climbed out of a splintery shed and asked for pot. 

“Do you-- mean your neighbor Jeff?” Josh laughed. “Sure he’s difficult sometimes, but calling him a ‘thing’ is a little harsh.”

Jeff? The old man across the street? Your brain is teasing you again. Was the monster a shadow from his own mind?

“Leave,” the universe snarled. 

He clenched his jaw. Obeying the universe never led to a positive outcome, but taking no action was hardly different from not existing. If Dillon could be replaced by a potted plant and no one around him would experience life differently, was he there at all?

 He jerked away.  The creature had to be a hallucination. 

“So, uh. How did you guys meet?” He fixed his gaze on a painting of a dusty blue swallow hanging behind Jen on the wall.

Jen jumped into the story. “We met at a chess club meeting.”

“Cool.” With her toned muscles and dancer's build, she did not fit the stereotype of a chess lover. 

“Me and a friend made a bet that each of us wouldn’t last a week doing each other's favorite hobby.” She winked, reminding him of the anime character, Sailor Moon.

His eyes darted to the creature. It leaned over the cockapoo. Its breath rippled the dog's black-corkscrew fur. 

“I rock climb, and he plays chess.” Her blue eyes glittered. 

Dillon searched the monster's features for some evidence of his cantankerous neighbor, Jeff. 

“But it turns out,” Josh cut in, “Jen has a natural aptitude for chess.” Josh’s chest swelled as if to accommodate the growth of a second heart filled with nothing but love for Jen. 

Happiness for Josh warred with jealousy in Dillon’s gut. Guys as jacked up as Dillon didn’t get to have a Jen. If he were lucky, he’d get an Olga or an Ethel. Who would want a guy whose mind was split?

Schizophrenia. Either an illness, or the word people used to explain away his unusual perceptive abilities. He saw monsters, so they wanted him to be crazy. The truth--that the universe enjoyed screwing with him--bewildered anyone he tried to explain it to. 

He shook his head. That wasn’t the truth. No matter how real it seemed. 

He glanced toward the monster. It stood on the opposite side of the room, shoving a handful of his mom’s white-rose cupcakes in its disfigured mouth. 

Dillon’s stomach clenched. What if he was a hallucination from the monster’s imagination, rather than the other way around? He pressed the thought to the back of his mind. 

Jen went into a lengthy description of when she first met Josh. Dillon only caught fragments of her words. Phrases such as, “I loved his smile the second I saw him” and, “He was red as a barn when I asked him out, but in a cute way,” bounced around in Dillon’s head. Why did girls talk so much? 

Josh stared at her the way he used to stare at video games as a kid.

In high school, Josh was the guy with a million friends but never a girlfriend. Josh deserved happiness more than most people. Jen and Josh both deserved better than his ogling. Shame slackened Dillon’s shoulders.

“I’m going to grab a drink,” Jen said. The smell of watermelon hit Dillon as she passed. She pranced over to the refreshments. Right next to the monster. A yell stuck in the back of Dillon's throat. 

“Guess it’s just you and me man.” Dillon swung back to Josh, who smiled like a kid reluctant to have his picture taken. 

Dillon kept Jen in his peripheral vision. She turned and headed back before he opened his mouth wide enough to shout her name. 

“Eat up,” Jen said as she reappeared and handed both Josh and Dillon a brownie with white frosting. 

His eyes swiveled to the monster and he clenched his jaw as it neared his mom. It’s just your brain teasing you. He forced his attention back to Josh and Jen. 

It was half-an-hour into the party, and Josh had already received more smiles and claps on the back than anyone else in the room. Why had he chosen to waste time on Dillon? A mixture of gratitude and embarrassment bubbled in his stomach.

His eyes darted between his friends and the monster, the monster that couldn’t exist. Dillon felt it as sharply as Josh. Why torture himself? He needed an exit strategy. Stress frayed the nerves in his chest. He glanced up the stairs. His fingers itched to play the dusty old piano on the second floor. 

Dust motes streamed through the window behind Josh. They collided with each other and flared. As if alerted by the fireworks, the creature turned, glared into Dillon’s eyes and lumbered towards him. 

“Run,” the universe whispered in his ears.  He spun away from Josh and Jen and headed towards the door without a word, trying to strangle his panic. If they tried to talk to him, he didn’t notice. The creature followed him with lidless eyes. 

It’s not real. His mom’s voice trilled in his head. If it wasn’t real, why did he feel ashamed of running from it?

He opened the door and stepped into the blue pebbled driveway. A handful of stars flickered in the space above his head. The voices of his neighbors rustled like paper back in the house. He took three slow breaths. As it got darker, new stars blinked into existence. Away from his mom’s hideous music, his brain played its own song. At first, it was so quiet he didn’t recognize it. Its volume increased until each note rang crisp and clear in his head. Familiar. Beethoven’s Third symphony in E-flat major. The symphony brought to mind Washington and MacArthur. War heroes. Men who risked their lives on fields of blood and fire. The music swelled inside him--strengthening him. Telling him to march on. 

 Music was real. It was not something he could touch--but the things that mattered most were reached in other ways. 

“Stay,” the universe whispered. 

 Dillon smiled. Perhaps his mind teased him after all. He turned and grasped the doorknob. His heart stumbled in his chest. Real or not, he would face the monster.