Feb 2015
He came home to the ordinary sounds of his everyday life. The phone would ring, the teapot would whistle and his parents would talk and argue. He closed his door, discarding his bag to the side and laying down on his bed. He laid there quietly, his computer beeping and blinking with messages from friends, those sincere and those insincere. Reaching out for the **** of his nightstand drawer, he pulled out the music box he received from his grandfather before he passed away. He flipped it over, carefully holding the lid and wound the silver turnkey tight, letting go. The familiar whirling of the mechanism inside came to life and the tone music echoed the room.
As the music played, he took the turnkey out and attached it to the lock on the side, releasing the lid to the hidden jewelry case. He didn’t have any jewelry to store there; he folded up snippets of letters and notes into tiny squares and dabbed them with color on the edges- each color meant for an experience or a person he favored. Purple was for his grandmother who wrote him little notes every two months… while she was in the nursing home. Red was for the girl that waited for him after school every day… before confessing his love for her. She reciprocated that in later years. Blue was for his own private notes of good times and the good things that happened to him… there were seldom few of those. Black was for the bad things he experienced… and it was in full abundance. The whole case looked much like an obsidian beach with rubies, amethysts, and sapphires hidden within. He looked at them one by one and placed the case back afterwards, then placing the music box back on the nightstand. One day, he’d turn the beach into sparkling gems with few obsidian stones buried below.
He placed his hand on the box, feeling the insides run and imagined the whole process. The spindle turned, rotating the cog connected to the metal drum with raised bumps. The thin metal comb came to meet these bumps and each bump struck a harmonized tone. Inside the mechanism, the pneumatic drum turned and hummed along as the gyros twisted the cogs, seemingly indefinitely never ending. To him, they felt young and ripe at the start but grew old and bitter after a while. The keys would slow, his head would ache from the loss of tempo and his heart would resonate with the soon to fade tones.
In that moment of solitude, his eyes would close, his breathing slowed, and his body relaxed into sleep; and one by one the little bumps would cease to exist on the music sheet, simply melding into the flat mundane roll which began its birth. The roll just turned and turned silently, never touching the flat metal comb or anything else again. It became like any other music box- silently playing with no purpose. It became his life in sleep… silently living with no purpose but to dream.
As the music played, he took the turnkey out and attached it to the lock on the side, releasing the lid to the hidden jewelry case. He didn’t have any jewelry to store there; he folded up snippets of letters and notes into tiny squares and dabbed them with color on the edges- each color meant for an experience or a person he favored. Purple was for his grandmother who wrote him little notes every two months… while she was in the nursing home. Red was for the girl that waited for him after school every day… before confessing his love for her. She reciprocated that in later years. Blue was for his own private notes of good times and the good things that happened to him… there were seldom few of those. Black was for the bad things he experienced… and it was in full abundance. The whole case looked much like an obsidian beach with rubies, amethysts, and sapphires hidden within. He looked at them one by one and placed the case back afterwards, then placing the music box back on the nightstand. One day, he’d turn the beach into sparkling gems with few obsidian stones buried below.
He placed his hand on the box, feeling the insides run and imagined the whole process. The spindle turned, rotating the cog connected to the metal drum with raised bumps. The thin metal comb came to meet these bumps and each bump struck a harmonized tone. Inside the mechanism, the pneumatic drum turned and hummed along as the gyros twisted the cogs, seemingly indefinitely never ending. To him, they felt young and ripe at the start but grew old and bitter after a while. The keys would slow, his head would ache from the loss of tempo and his heart would resonate with the soon to fade tones.
In that moment of solitude, his eyes would close, his breathing slowed, and his body relaxed into sleep; and one by one the little bumps would cease to exist on the music sheet, simply melding into the flat mundane roll which began its birth. The roll just turned and turned silently, never touching the flat metal comb or anything else again. It became like any other music box- silently playing with no purpose. It became his life in sleep… silently living with no purpose but to dream.
