Sangeet

The shatter of glass echoed through the small apartment. Each shard rang out with a note, building up into chords upon the carpet. Sangeet woke up but didn’t make a sound. He heard something shuffle in. But now silence. Under the blanket, he slowly stretched out his shoulders to roll onto the other side. One eye cracked open the slightest amount to observe the wreck. Light shone in from the open air only to reflect and dither along the shards.

A car below honked its horn and Sangeet could hear it speed away, likely leaving marks on the gray road. The smell of smoke began to fill the apartment. His eye opened further. He couldn’t see any marks on the floor to indicate that someone had climbed in. Relaxing, he got up from his mattress on the floor. Squeak, squeak, squeak. A squirrel climbed on top of his window. “Hello little one, I am not going to hurt you.” That little one peered around the room and jumped down the fire escape.

The glass was swept away and put into a bag. After he finished, Sangeet walked over to the only other thing in his apartment besides a stack of clothes neatly folded in the corner by the bed. A lone leather case. He crouched over it and inched his fingers along its side like the cheek of a dying lover. The latches were undone and he pulled it open. An acoustic guitar. His finger danced along the side of it, just feeling it. He plucked a string and let it ring throughout the space. He closed it and returned to his mattress. This amnesiac city would digest his soul but it wouldn’t break it. The window repair people wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. It didn’t matter what broke it at the end of the day. Directly outside his window squatted another apartment building obstructing any possible view. He imagined what their lives must be like. After he laid down fully, he stared up at the ceiling and screamed.

It was in the corner of the ceiling, bigger than him. He couldn’t even describe it. Joints cracked out and suctioned onto the wall. No eyes but each part of the creature pointed to Sangeet. The sounds from beyond the window’s threshold limped into the room just to die on the floor. A molasses dripped from its mouth. The maw opened before shutting quickly like it was doing things it wasn’t meant to. Sangeet sealed his mouth with his hands and breathed slowly. As slowly as he could. In and out.

The creature’s mouth opened again. A high-pitched scream bounced between the room. “Mommy! I fell!” a child’s voice rang out. A joint cracked and clicked. “I just learned we are losing the lease in January,” an older voice sighed.

Sangeet held his hands solid. Crimson paste started to drip from the creature’s hold in the ceiling. He slowly crept backward with eyes glued toward the creature, not noticing the blanket around his foot. On impact with the floor, his back jolted forward in pain. He bit down on his hand to not scream again.

Crack. “Are you doing okay?” a woman’s voice said.

The pain swung away when he looked back at the creature. Paste pooled on the carpet and sunk into some of the clothes below.

“H-hello?” Sangeet snarled with the pain still aching.

“Heya, da usual?” the creature’s mouth postured forth. The voice was that of an old man, one that Sangeet recognized. A deli worker across the street. A fellow immigrant. A friend. He would often prepare Sangeet’s sandwich while telling him about his thoughts on music, all of which were drastically different to Sangeet’s own. Two weeks ago, he mentioned this bar across the street and about how they needed a performer. The old man’s face stayed solemn into his work but a naked smile crossed his face while he told Sangeet this. “I asked them and they said they wanted a guitar player. Are you interested?”

“How could you…” Sangeet backed away towards the door behind him.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?” a young woman said. The apartment had only this solitary room with fear bundling inside and spilling out the window. He could hear the banter of some people below. The creature clicked methodically, Sangeet breathed methodically in backing track. One door stood as the solo boundary to leave the apartment and the creature inside. And his guitar in the corner.

“Hello, my name is Sangeet, we talked on the phone… I am going to play here tonight before the main act,” a heavily accented voice echoed throughout the apartment. The o’s dragged on for too long and all the other vowels clipped on the ends. The creature began to extend appendages downward, each one bringing a crash of cracks and crippled cries. The room had already begun to reek of iron. But Sangeet never would’ve noticed. The memory sat down atop his skull and burrowed its feet inside. The venue had found another performer at the latest possible time they could. Strangling blue eyes placed like buttons onto a face that demanded the presence of everyone around and to top it off, a grand average capability to play the guitar. Sangeet ate a delectable pasta dinner as compensation while grimacing in the corner. The performer never looked his way.

The creature slinked toward the floor and soon came over the mattress. So incomprehensible that he couldn’t even consider a futile attempt at fight or flight. It had a countable number of sprouting appendages but when he looked at one, it crept backward to a click. The maw of the creature opened with a radio host, “Music ties us all together and with that idea, we present to you the one, the only…” A seedling’s pause and a click. “Music,” the radio host started again. “Music.” “How can you even be human without music?” an exasperated student’s voice came out. The creature grew closer toward the lone leather case in the corner. Without thinking, Sangeet’s body leeched forward and bit onto the case.

“Do ya think we go to that concert tomorrow, Pops?” a boy crept out of the mouth. Sangeet peered into the mouth now, closer than before. Dark ridges repeated into a pit of black conclusion. One of his hands came forward and the whole creature cracked and cowered away from it. The case was pulled open and Sangeet pulled out a beautiful hollow piece of treated wood.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Sangeet’s own voice came back to him.

A chord came forth from his left and a strum with his right. The creature clicked and vibrated as the wave of each note came to it. His heart snailed into the rhythm. Slow and melodic, beautiful swells fell into the room from above and leapt out the window into the city’s night where it came up into the clouds. Stems of music drifted down from them to wet the streets below. Its joints crept closer to Sangeet and his eyes sparked upwards to meet the creature’s lack of such. Stretched skin with the texture of a cross-stitched blanket. A spiked limb came forward towards the guitar. It slowly came down from each string to the next, letting a note ring. Once it approached the last, the finger lurched up towards the top. Sangeet played a new chord and clicked his tongue.

The creature’s mouth opened and materialized the chirps of a squirrel out. Squeak, squeak, squeak. The molasses-like substance in its mouth bounded between the top and bottom, softly swaying with each squeak. It leaned its body forward toward him. Close enough to pounce.

“I will not hurt you,” Sangeet said. Crack. The creature brought an appendage forward. A shard of glass parasite within the flesh. That paste pooled out around the wound. It reminded him of when his little brother back home would fall down when playing and come crying to him to help as the only one in the house. Rather, he would never come crying. The little man would simply come up to his side without a word and present the wound as if to say, “I’m sorry for bothering you but I need help.” The creature reminded him fully of a child. The blood of a child dripped onto the carpet. If it had eyes, he dreamed of them looking away toward a distant future of hope and dreams. Before he left, Sangeet’s brother ran up to him and begged him not to go. Sangeet imagined that he would know why he did years later. With a hand wrapped in his blanket, he pulled out the shard and the wound closed before his eyes like sand drawings with a wave.

As the human awoke the next day, he screamed again to find the creature at the foot of his bed driving its appendages into and under the mattress.

The creature clicked and opened its mouth, only to close it. Slowly, he approached the door and stalked the creature all the while. It didn’t move an inch. Upon leaving the apartment, he heard scuttling steps. In the street, a lone musician sat on the corner with a trumpet. Short, unkempt hair with grease stained clothes, both wet from the rain the night before. What anyone noticed first about her was a predominant crooked slab of flesh in the center of her face with freckles surrounding. When little, she saw herself in a smashed mirror and screamed like a monster faced her.

“Sangeet!” she called over and then with a nod, “I believe you’ll never believe this.”

“My home was broken into yesterday and I do not know what to do.”

“Uptown, there is this real nice place that wants lil’ folk like us, performers and the like and the such, to play together all in a big hall for richies. ”

Sangeet shifted his shoulder to hide the red marks upon himself.

“Just wear what you are wearing right now in like two hours or so, the owner said they want us all to be ya know ‘authentic’. Here is the address, he passed me by I think 3 hours ago and was just utterly enchanted by my-” she fumbled through her pockets and pulled out at least thirty business cards with four falling to the floor, shoving one into his hands.

“Listen to me, I do not know what to do, my home was broken into last night by a creature I do not understand.”

“I’ve heard all the excuses, mate, now do you want to know the pay or not?”

“... I do.”

“Real fucking good, I tell you. Real goddamn good.”

“...”

“No thank you? For lil’ ol’ me? I really helped you out.”

Sangeet looked in his wallet and she leapt at it, stealing away two dollars. He went further down the street into the deli. The older gentleman took one look at the door and then went back to the current order. “Heya, da usual?” he said.

“Yes… two please,” Sangeet said. The place reeked of sweat and bad cheese. He took a deep breath and enjoyed it.

“What’s da occasion?” he slathered mayo onto a toasted bun.

“Just really hungry,” his hand covered his stomach and a blood stain.

His head turned toward Sangeet with deep brown eyes that slit into a face of wrinkles. After a second, he shook his head and returned to work. “Alma came round ‘ere talking ‘bout some gig uptown, wanted to know if ya came in yet.”

“I do not really talk to her that much but money is getting tight.”

“She didn’t wanna ‘ear me out on dis kinda stuff so I will just tell it to you too. I don’t think dis is such a good thing. All dem kinds of uptown people are not like you and me or Alma or any of da others. We are dis city but we are not dem. I know dat you may disagree but… ‘ere are your sandwiches, on da ‘ouse. Just for today,” he said. As Sangeet scurried out the door with the sandwiches, the wrinkled man screamed after him, “Take care.”

Up to his apartment, the lights flickered in the hallway and the elevator contained an empty black abyss with haphazard yellow tape persuading people lightly to not go inside. The creature erected upright on the bed. Joints shifted into new vegetable-like shapes to infest into the springs. It was far taller than before.

“Do you want a sandwich?” Sangeet stood at the door far away. He slid the sandwich, which only had been wrapped on one end, over to the creature who promptly bent its tallest appendage with the mouth down in a bow.

“Shit, can you pick me up? I missed the last train,” a teenager came out of its mouth, muffled and exasperated. Crack. The smell of smoke wafted in through the window. “I am oh-so hungry my boy, please come here, come closer, please spare some change, I have been through so much and I have no options, please, please, please.”

“What are you?”

“We are dis city but we are not dem. I know dat you may disagree but…” the monster said. The older gentleman’s voice.

“...” In the corner, Sangeet devoured his sandwich while the red of the tomatoes wept and stained the collar of his shirt. The noises of the city beneath filled the apartment.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?” “No, but I just wanted to say how beautiful you are.” The creature talked with itself.

Without a word, Sangeet grabbed his guitar and left the apartment. The words of the deli worker rippled through his memory, into the folds of his brain, and down through the thick gel of the soul. His brother mourned his loss. He couldn’t make that worth anything but he also couldn’t make it worth nothing.

The venue lined itself with red velvet cake leather seats and marmalade chandeliers. To a nauseating light, Sangeet stepped onto the stage alongside three other performers, all in street clothes. Alma closed her eyes and held her head up to the light as it would bring her up and up into the sun with her trumpet-bronzy wax wings. Below, everyone had the nicest clothes he had seen. Suits with lapels and pockets squares, dresses cut just to right angle where it showed both enough and begged more. Jeering smiles upon them all. Glasses raised up into the air with whoops to fill the hall before the music. About a decade ago, his brother stood only about a foot tall and wept all day in a cocoon of blankets. Sangeet hated the sound so much. He wanted to do anything to get away from it. He strummed the guitar and smiled toward the crowd. Inside the internal refuge of his soul, that smile would never have directed itself towards these people. It was towards that baby in the box. That creature smiled and stopped crying for the first time whenever he practiced by it. A ritual at that point. Soon it could help feed them. After a minute, almost everyone in the venue turned away to their own conversations. Some stayed watching and pointed to their friends about musical theory to appear greater intellectually proficient. They shifted away from the stage and into the wallpaper. Crack. He looked backwards towards the rest of the band, only to see the creature by the backdoor. Mouth opened and closed rhythmically. Molasses dripped to the floorboards to create a sticky puddle. Sangeet froze. Then his legs started toward the door.

The street’s asphalt retained the memory of its shower the day before. Otherwise it lay naked and alone.

“That one has a blood stain on his shirt, how ghastly!” it croaked.

“What do you want from me?” he screamed out. It vibrated the creature and seemed to almost bludgeon it away into the air.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“You said that before and I still do not know what it means,” he said.

“I just wanted to say how beautiful you are,” the voice of a young man infatuated as he likely was before and likely would be again. But the sound sweet. A light flickered in the far distance around the corner by the deli.

“You are beautiful too.”

“Music ties us all together and with that idea, we present to you the one, the only…” a crack through the still and moist night. “Sangeet!” a voice screamed, Alma’s. He couldn’t tell whether it was from the creature or inside. But he started toward the one outside. Guitar in hand, he bounded toward the darkness, first in a skip and then a sprint. This city would digest his soul. The creature cracked and skittered, skin stretched and shone through the darkness like a beacon. Then its mouth opened, “I will not hurt you.