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Requiem in Blue

Written by Nicholas Keyser

 

David Weller hated the silence induced by the pills. Here he was in seventh grade, a child who loved music, and they had given him pills that created silence. It was a silence that David’s imagination compared to what he imagined atheists felt death was like.

Silence was not golden, it was hell.

He dropped the pills down the sink. Running water quickly washed them down the drain. Ever so slowly, the bass drum began to beat against his spine more regularly than the rhythm of his heart.

****

The bass came in slowly, pulsing from each joint, up and down every bone in his body. David felt the deep pulse tie and bind the music together, even when it lay so far in the background that most people wouldn't know it was there. He just continued brushing his teeth, trying to ignore it.

The doctors told him that he had a thing called synesthesia. Something wrong with his head that made his sense of sight and his sense of hearing combine in a weird way.

It didn’t make any sense that his senses didn't divide the way that everyone else's did. If anything, his gift only served to expose reality for the fraud that it is. He didn't really care that other people couldn't understand him. He was just so very used to it. The doctors still made him take the pills.

 

27 January 2000

The last tender notes of the tenor bassoon faded as David Weller watched the setting sun sink below the West Virginia hills and take on a reedy kind of color. As the darkness of night slowly crept into the sky, he decided to add a full measure of rest. He didn't want his final work of music to end so abruptly. David looked over at the pages of notes and heard the harmony in his brain. It was written on staff paper, normal for written music, but it was written unlike any kind of music anyone else would probably see. Each note was represented by a line of a specific color for the duration of the note. Whole notes were lines that took up the whole measure, while sixteenth notes were like dots.

He knew he was probably taking a risk with the bassoon, but that was what that specific color sounded like to him. He remembered hearing during music class, that when "The Rite of Spring" opened, and people realized that the high notes belonged to a bassoon, actual riots broke out. Full blown riots, simply because of the people's misconceptions of what range a bassoon was supposed to have.

Music that didn't quite fit, by a person that didn't quite fit. Finished, he carefully placed it in the pocket of his backpack. With the world growing dark and quiet in his bedroom, he went to bed, steeling himself for what he had decided to do the next day.

****

In seventh grade, the bullying was even worse than it had been in sixth grade. Telling the teachers only made it worse, because then his tormenters called him a snitch. It would probably be better if he was dead. Then there wouldn't be any more bullies, no more trouble in school, no problems that he would have to worry about at all. Death seemed like the final rest at the end of a long musical work. It was the most beautiful sound a person could hear.

Today was his last day in eighth grade. It also happened to be the anniversary of Mozart's birth, but not many people would know that. He had picked this day because of its connection with music. Sitting in the back of the bus, he silently hummed his final symphony.

The opening: a French horn sounds, containing the very majesty of the first red, then orange, and finally yellow, sun. Then other instruments joined in; first the flutes, and the other wind instruments, like the singing birds of the morning. The strings began slowly and were ever changing like clouds being blown in the wind. A crescendo and the discord among the strings and reed instruments signaled a storm cloud arising. You could almost feel the cold air right before a storm.

The bus stopped and jerked David forward in the seat, jarring him back to reality. Outside, real thunder sounded. The dull-red brick of the school made a faint note in the back of his head as he headed inside. Grantville Middle School, home of the Fighting Gators. He breathed a sigh of relief, and put the symphony that he was going over in his head on hold. His first class was music.

****

"All right, class," Ms. Morat said, turning down the lights. "Today we'll be finishing up with this week's theme of music in film."

Small cheers broke from all around the classroom like metal bearings used on a timpani. "Remember that at the beginning of the week we watched The Sound of Music, learning about the scale. Then yesterday we watched Disney's Music Land, and the idea of discord and harmony. Today we'll watch Peter and the Wolf."

David had already seen it a few times on his own, but that didn't mean he didn't want to watch it again. He loved the duck, Sonya, represented by an oboe, and had adapted her melody for a special part in his symphony. He always wondered exactly how many musicians were in some way synesthetic. Meanwhile, the symphony in his head continued, with a soft percussion resembling the sound of a rainstorm.

****

What the cafeteria was serving was hardly worth considering being called a last meal, a choice of pizza or tacos, with tater tots on the side. What a last meal, he thought. It’s not fish and wine, but I guess it will have to do. Solemnly, he finished and took his tray to the cleaning area.

Outside the cafeteria he placed his symphony in his locker with his other music. It rested next to a finished requiem and a rhapsody he had written.

Notes quivered through the air as he slowly walked down the hallway. He listened to the ending of his symphony, drowning out the loudness of the brightly polished floor. It started with a crescendo of the strings, like a sudden wind heralding the storm clouds being blown away, and the restoration of calm.

When he opened the bathroom door, the oboe melody began. It was life, peaking its head out of its shelter from the storm. Making sure nobody else was inside the bathroom, he entered one of the stalls. He took off his belt, and after making a loop, he tied it to the rail above the stall.

Standing on top of the toilet, the final notes of his symphony were approaching. David waited, listening to the final notes of the French horn, signaling the sunset, and echoing the opening theme of the bassoon. His heart beat calmly as he slowed his breathing. He fit his head through the loop in his belt, and stepped off the toilet.

The music shifted and became softer and softer. David's heart began beating faster, throbbing like a timpani drum. This was not at all a part of his symphony, he thought, straining to hear the final notes, while the beating of his heart pounded furiously. The music died into an impenetrable silence as David's heart stopped beating.

****

Archie Clinter was in his office, doing the normal things that principals do. In the outer office, the secretaries took calls and redirected some calls. Archie sat behind his desk and looked out into the lobby. It was a good day. Not one student ...