The Violin

The violin's sultry song played quietly as he slunk out of the car parked two blocks away. It was black and melded with the night into a cacophony of types of darkness: hard, shiny angles against the serene stillness. He, too, was dressed in black, not because he had to, but for effect.

A mournful bath of Schubert washed over him as he soundlessly splashed through puddles lying haphazardly in the roadway. And then he could see them, misty-lost through the veil of the curtain. Smokey but there. He just needed to take aim, and fire. But he wouldn't, couldn't. The violin music swelled and then abated as he reached the door. It lapped against his consciousness and urged him on. He needed to do it, needed silence.

The jarring melody shook him as he unlocked the door. Too easy. He could hear them laughing now, the deep, male voice harmonizing so well with hers. Those two always did have their own symphony, harmony away from the world in a realm that no others could enter. Well, he would. Tonight. He'd quite their symphony with his own. They were still laughing. His laugh rolling under the sweet bell-tones of hers. But then Schubert cut in, and he couldn't hear them anymore. He didn't care, really. They could laugh this last laugh, and that would be it. Finished. Done.

His boots, black and big, sunk softly into the carpet, white. And then he was at the door, and they looked up. They saw him. They both started talking, but he couldn't hear. The music inside his head was too loud. It rattled around his brain, and he had to holler to even hear himself.

"Shut up! ShutUpShutUpShutUp!" They did. But not the violin. It played on calmly, loudly, insistently.

She was talking now, quietly begging. But he couldn't hear her over the rush of the music. He couldn't stand it anymore. Slowly, gracefully, he raised his gun, and slowly, gracefully, he fired in time with the music. He kept firing after there were no more bullets left. With each note of the music, he fired until the phrase was done.

But the music didn't stop. Schubert poured long laments into the night that only he could hear. He reloaded his gun. The music needed to stop. The violin couldn't continue. Jerkily, painfully, the torrent of music abated but did not go away. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" he said with each bullet into the gun that promised quite.

The music soured triumphantly, and he smiled as he raised the gun slowly, gracefully to his own head. He would make the music stop. And, just as the blood reached him from the other two and pooled around his feet, he fired.