There was a storm on the horizon as Brick lay down hoping for a moment of respite from consciousness. He had left the other members of the band to their own devices when he retired for some much needed slumber. As the winds outside whistled with force and glee, all that Brick could see were the indents of the tiled ceiling above him. After weeks of denying it, he had reached a breaking point. His health was slowly slipping away from him; his appetite was waning and the vibrancy of his world was desaturating until it was merely a spectrum of grey. With no funds to sustain either the band or himself, nor the energy or enthusiasm to continue recording, Brick slipped away to the furthest deepest recess of his mind while the building was drenched by hostile beads of August rain.
He found himself stripped of all pretense of art or society. Here he was just a man, no longer a fraction of a person. He was in the last place where he had felt a sliver of joy. It was a dark little coffee shop downtown, quite close to his old university. The name was borderline obscene and he had never actually tried the coffee but the place was dear to him, even after only one visit in his life. The rows of tables stretched from the entrance down the length of the building towards a small stage where local musicians could play to caffeinated intellectuals or perhaps wax poetically while the literati chewed on biscotti.
This place was sacred to him, at least in his mind. He could never return here. No, he wasn’t banned for idiotic behavior or anything like that. It was just that if he were ever step foot through its door again, he would not return to the place he had been. That place only existed for the length of an afternoon and expired once he reluctantly returned to the harsh and empty concrete outside. Here he had witnessed the greatest musical performance of his life. It eclipsed even the monumental performance of his musical heroes Motörhead at the Roseland Ballroom, Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden or Faith No More at the Williamsburg Waterfront. It was here that he saw his beloved muse and inspiration perform a set with only her acoustic guitar and infinitely captivating voice. Perhaps love may have altered his assessment of the event but for Brick it was as close to heaven as his weary spirit would ever reach.
He delved even deeper into his vault of memories for some last glimpse at his beloved muse as she was the final time he saw her. She still had on the quaint summer dress she had worn; her chestnut hair was still short yet feminine, glistening from the café’s lights as well as the sun’s rays at dusk. Her russet eyes obliterated his mind with casual affection.
“Why are you here?” she asked him finally.
“I didn’t know where else to go. The storm has finally caught up to me and I’m not sure I’ll make it through this time. I feel like I’m drowning.”
“You are.” She replied as the walls of the café began to moisten with sheets of water crawling down to the floor.
“I just keep searching for anything and everything to keep my mind off of it, but my mind keeps drifting back to this day. When you played… I didn’t care if you were singing about someone else. When I sat in that chair across from you, the rest of the world was gone, and it was just the two of us, even if only for a little while.”
“You’re just romanticizing one random afternoon. I’ve long since forgotten it. It makes no sense for you to make such a big deal over it.”
“I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense. What has sense ever brought me but an aching malaise? Existence makes no sense. We try to justify why we are here with our passions, religion or some sense of purpose but if you strip away all of those lies, then there really is no reason for us to be here….”
“You’ve gone mad” she said as her ankles and Brick’s were submerged under water as the room was slowly filling up.
“Maybe.”
“You have to let go of all of this. I’m not the one you loved, the one who gave you one last embrace as she showed you the door. I’m just a Shadow of a memory, a photograph wilting from the fire in your mind, warped beyond recognition. “
“A shadow…” Brick repeated with an echo filling the chamber that was once the memory of a long forgotten café. The howl of a mighty wind pressed up against the windows of the entrance behind him and the falling water sounded like a hail of lead against the cracked brick walls but sounded more like porcelain than stone.
“Forget this…forget me…”
“If I forget you, I forget the last ounce of happiness and humanity I have.” Brick said, struggling to breathe. “What use to me is this world without you? I have no need of objects and ideas when I have you… I am at peace”
“Don’t use me as an excuse not to live…you have to leave.”
Before Brick could utter his final protest, the storm finally eroded the shape and integrity of the café and everything in it began to dissolve. Brick reached out to his muse for one final embrace but grasped at only air as she was finally gone from his mind. Although his eyes opened up to his room at home, the storm was still in full force and he could no longer move. His breathing was still getting worse as the wind shattered his window and sent everything fly in all directions. Objects were as good as sand scattering and fragmenting into infinitely smaller pieces. Brick tried to do something, anything to avoid the dissolution of everything around him but the more he struggled, the more water filled his lungs. His eyes glazed over as he was thrust forward, a familiar, debilitating pain returning to his chest. Through the crumbling ceiling he could see a large hand reaching down through the veil of water to get him.
His room was gone, replaced by the claustrophobic confines of the bathroom where he had lain on his back as the shower filled with water. Shadow had raised him and spared him from almost certain drowning and pushed the water out of his lungs.
“Brick! Are you ok?”
Coughing with newly rediscovered life, Brick expels the last of the water before standing, getting a glimpse at himself in the mirror and grinning with a menace previously unknown to him.
“I’m free…”
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