Infamy's Short Story: Tick Tock

Tick tock. The door closed with a quiet breath.

For a while, there was no sound, nothing to disturb the air. The walls remained silent, judgmental, eyeing the empty air with lifeless disposition, the false security of the gaily-painted ceiling and warm yellow wallpaper almost but not quite lulling the room's only inhabitant into dreaming.

He sat upright. Shook his head, felt the strands of greasy hair tickling his eyelids, and sighed. Ahead of him lay a vast console, sliders and knobs and adjusters; behind him lay nothing but air.

Tick tock. One hour. One hour before the crew would return with their cameras, their needles and pens and autograph sheets, one hour to create, one hour to destroy.

He set to work. Synthetic symphonies from days

Fifty-eight minutes, seven seconds.

The small room was, momentarily, very quiet.

And he began to play. At first, it was a progression of about eight notes, simple and faint. He introduced a drippy bassline, then another melody, a harmony, prodding and poking, recording and scrapping, the dull ache in his fingertips blossoming into a white-hot agony that ricocheted through his frail body and without warning brought him to a hunch, the music paused, clutching at his hands, not afraid to let himself cry. Pain was worthy of tears. Only pain and love, they told him, were to cry over.

He got up and wandered over to the far wall, eyeing the ceiling in bleak judgement. Each evening, when his timer reached twenty-one hours, they lowered a pod into the room, and he slept there until the timer marked three hours. For eighteen hours a day he played the synthesiser, breaking occasionally to use the restroom or eat.

As he stared at the ceiling, color returned to his face, numbness replaced with a warm sense of existing, the touch of the cool air against his skin. He looked at his hands. They were calloused and raw, nails gnawed to the quick, fingerprints lost among countless scars and burns. He grimaced. They didn't let him care for his hands, which was silly; he was a musician and he needed them to