His lips were numb to the whisky by now, and he delighted in knowing that the rest of his body had likely already followed suit. Get to the brain, he thought. Wash me.
He turned down the music and took another sip. There, that’s better.
He reached for the knob of his stereo again and felt the sharp pain in his clavicle return. Perhaps the whisky armor wasn’t as thick as he’d thought. He finished his glass. More.
He got up from the cramped position he’d been sitting in, moving slowly, intentionally, to avoid any further pain. At all costs he must avoid the bodily reminder that he was in pain. It all started with the body. With the wrong movement, his upper body would twinge, reigniting the memory of how that pain had been inflicted. And from there, he was staring at the abyss.
More whisky, he thought, then we can continue with this self-prescribed “exposure therapy.”
And that’s exactly what it was. He’d heard that the man he killed in the accident was a prolific musician. It was time to hear what he’d destroyed.
It was his custom, he realized, to remind himself that it wasn’t his fault whenever he poured himself a drink — a reaffirming and increasingly frequent ritual over the past…how many was it now… five days.
He’d surprised himself with how readily his left hand had taken over day-to-day responsibilities with his right arm hammocked in its sling. He was even more surprised with how accepting he had been of the whole affair. To kill a man. He would have expected himself to roll up in a ball and fall through the earth. But no, he had taken it in stride. It wasn’t my fault, after all, topping off his glass. There, that should get me through the end of the album.
He waded through the pile of recycling waste that blocked the entryway of his 21st story studio apartment, reaching into the pocket of his coat that hung on the apartment door. Feeling around, he relayed to his right hand first his lighter then his pack of cigarettes, knowing full well that he wasn’t going through the routine and effort of smoking outside. Fuck it, I’ll keep my head out the window.
He stumbled towards the open window across his apartment, pausing to turn up the volume on his stereo — perhaps a little too loud. The speakers boomed with a melodic groove of what felt to be an interlude between songs. He turned back to lower the volume, then stopped himself. Fuck it. If we’re going to do this, let’s do this.
The music pulsed as he leaned out the open window, lit up, and took in the Tokyo skyline.
He’d read the headlines over the past week, mostly hosted on popular music forums. It was the comments from his diehard fans that had been the worst. One in particular wouldn’t leave him alone.
“The world lost a rare gift today. His music has always surpassed the traditional bounds of instrumentation and genre, now it also transcends beyond the creator himself in his short time here. He has impossibly achieved immortality through the beautiful art he leaves behind for all of us. RIP Nurehma.”
…surpassed the bounds of instrumentation The fuck does that even mean? He sipped his whisky and felt its renewed burn in his throat. There, how’s that for transcending?
He hadn’t heard Nurehma’s music before the incident. He wasn’t one for chillhop, LoFi, or whatever the indecisive people on the forums wanted to call it. In all honesty, he hadn’t much cared for it at first listen. It was, he felt, similar to jazz — wandering, amorphous, directionless.
But it was unique. He hadn’t heard anything like it. Maybe it was the whisky, or the nicotine, or perhaps even of the natural progression of the albums, but if he tried, he could almost feel what the attraction was. It’s a stretch though, that’s for sure.
And now he was gone. One day you’re producing music the world loves, the next you’re crossing a street at night and getting hit by a car that can’t fucking see you when you’re coming out of nowhere.
And where did that leave the living party in this transaction, exactly? What about me? What about the one who killed this “immortal” god? He would forever be figuring that out, he realized. And he had a heart-sinking feeling that the answer wouldn’t be coming to him from the glass, or the smoke, but from the music itself.
He stubbed out his cigarette and looked down at the sidewalk far below. And the longer he looked, the closer it seemed to get, until it really didn’t seem that far at all.
And the album played on.