Random Creativity

[hkellick]

New York City
8:32 AM

Chris walked down the street, his breath misting around him as he walked. His guitar case, holding his Fender Telecaster, the true love of his life, slowly swaying as he walked. Today should be a good day, he thought, as he walked. Not only were they going to practice some of the new stuff he'd helped to write, but Tracy and Ben, from RDO, said they might come down and jam, which was always fun.
It was a typical late February day in New York. The air was crisp and the sun tried valiently to shine through a fairly thick layer of clouds. The air was fresh, if a little cool for his tastes. He breathed in deeply and walked towards the Studio Apartment where John, the bass player, lived and where the band practiced.
As he walked, he delighted in watching a couple of kids giggling as they threw snowballs at each other, their breath materializing in front of them and spiraling quickly upwards towards the heavens. He remembered a time, not too long ago, when he and his brother had built snowforts on the opposite sides of the driveway, occasionally throwing snowballs, occasionally trying to build tunnels through the fort, whatever passed their fancy at the time. He chuckled at the memory of his father pulling up in their '84 Buick, getting out, his briefcase in hand, head towards the house only to get hit by a handful of snowballs. Some fathers probably would have yelled or run into the house, but his dad... he'd never seen a man drop his briefcase so fast so he could grab a handful of snow and chase him around the yard, pelting snowballs at each other as they ran.
God, thought Chris, I love the winter.
Smiling in recollection, he never saw the girl until he ran into her. Startled, he looked around, realized he had bumped the poor girl to the ground and offered a hand to help her up. Taking the offered hand, the girl stood up and brushed the snow off her brown cat. She looked young, 16 or 17, maybe 5 and 1/2 feet with long blonde hair cascading past her shoulders and bright blue eyes. She looked rather Nordic.
"I'm so sorry." he apologized to her. "I was lost in thought and didn't see you."
She looked up at him. Here it comes, he thought, readying himself for the typical New York attitude. Whatzamatteryou? You can't watch where you're going? Idiot. "The machine is grinding to a halt, Chris. They have returned and they don't like what they've returned to."
He blinked quietly, trying to make sense of that. "Huh? What?" He swore to himself. He'd plowed into a loonie. He didn't have time for this.
"The machine is grinding to a halt." repeated the girl "When the machine has stopped, they can begin anew. The Newtonian years are over, Chris."
He shook his head and started to edge his way around her. "I'm sorry, miss. I really need to be somewhere. I'm really sorry that I walked into you."
She stepped right into him and peered right into his eyes. "The lights are going out, Chris. The engine will fail. They're not coming back. Do you know your mythology, Chris? Do you know the stories? They're all true. They have come back!" He backed off from her and ran off. The farther behind him she was, the better. Something about her was... disconcerting, to say the least.

*****
10: 51 PM

Chris's fingers flew across the Telecaster. Tracy and Ben hadn't showed up yet and so they were screwing around, jamming to Boston's "Rock and Roll Band". Already a fairly hard 70s Guitar Rock song, they decided to speed it up and add some teeth to it. If Boston had tamed the beast, they had let it out of it's cage.
They really did sound hot today. Mark drummed, going back and forth from a basic number probably from the original song then segued right into something that sounded like it came right out of a Metallica song. John's bass growled along, putting a real bite to the melody and punctuating his words. Jenny was using some odd spacy-sounding sounds on her keyboard, giving the song a truly fucked up psychedelic feel to it. Like, in his mind, maybe if Led Zeppelin had composed the song. Maybe. And him, well he was just hot today. It was really hard for him to evaluate his own playing, but if the song kicked than he was doing alright.
I closed my eyes quietly and just listened, letting my fingers do their own thing. The song was really kicking today. He could feel it within his very soul. The music flowed around him, alive. It swayed and turned. He could see it in his head and feel it in his soul. They were really sounding good today.
They segued out of "Rock and Roll Band' and into "Dance Machine", one of their originals. He'd written this one after spending far too long watching the dancers over at a club they'd played a year back. The dancers had moved of their own accord. The steps were intricate but repetitive. They only thing that had changed was the tempo. It was like watching a dancer on a musicbox.

He closed in on his mic, breathed in and sang

Spiraling through the masses
A pinwheel in disguise.
But there's a method in your madness.
and there's madness in your eyes
I watch your every motion.
It's a resistance-diode thing.
Vitus Ex Machinae
Stop the Dance Machine.

The automatom moves on
with it's parabolic grace.

And then the lights went out. It took him a second to realize that the mics had died and the lights were out. Putting down the guitar, he swore "Son of a Bitch."
"Yeah, that's about right" agreed Jenny from the left. Movement. It sounded like John going through his case
John swore even louder "Shit. The flashlight's not working. Batteries must have died."
"Hey guys?" called Mark
"Yeah?" I asked as Jenny asked "What?"
"Do you guys notice anything?" asked Mark, obviously noticing something.
"What?" Jenny and I asked simultaneously
"What don't you hear?" asked Mark and I listened and then I realized what I was hearing. I was hearing the wind. I wasn't hearing any loud televisions, any blaring stereos, any car alarms. The sounds of the city.. were gone. It was like being in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Mark put his drumsticks down loudly, walked behind him to a window, pulled the shade behind him up and looked through. We all advanced towards the window, peering past each other, afraid of what we'd see.
"Holy shit." whispered Jenny, looking down into the street below. The street was full of dead cars. No engine running. No headlight on. Only a bunch of confused drivers trying to figure out what may have happened. Looking around at some of the nearby buildings, he saw faces peering down, tranfixed at the ground below.
Chris looked down again, transfixed as one woman checked on her baby in the backseat, got out of the car, opened the hood and tried to peer in. What had happened? What could have happened that made all these cars just stop. There hadn't been a big bright flash, right? He would have seen that? Heck, he was alive. So were the people downstairs. What the hell happened?
"That's nothing" whispered John near his right ear "Look up."
We all looked up and saw it, a flash of light, sun off silver and then it was like watching a bad hollywood video. Then he spotted another. And another just to the right of it.
The planes were falling like bricks.
"Oh shit." he breathed.

Comments

[kareila]

Hey, that's really good. I want to know what happens next. :)

[lite.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)
I think I'm not happy with the descriptions, personally. I was never very good at them.
It's just a possible opening sequence for a story I've had in my mind for.. a couple years now. :)