Tourist - 4 -
Part 4
I sat cross-legged in the dark, my fingers running over the freshly stringed guitar. I wet my lips nervously. It felt like everything in the room was alive...I could hear Darren's breathing, quietly waiting for me to begin, Ben's drumming of fingers against the floor. I began to panic. What if I couldn't do it? What if my fingers didn't remember the movements? Even in my audience of two, I could feel the familiar stage fright begin to creep up my spine.
A hand on my shoulder made me jump. I turned my head to find Darren's sparking eyes unexpectedly close. "Just relax," he breathed soothingly. My lips twisted into a wry smile. Easy for him to say. Then those eyes were gone, and I couldn't have been sure if I'd imagined them or not, except his fingers caressed my shoulder a split second longer. I shuddered to myself, trying desperately now to concentrate on the notes. Despite Darren's good intentions, he was more distracting than my fear of performance.
Over the past weeks, Darren had become more than friendly...or, at least, that's what I kept telling myself. The looks, the accidental touches, the soothing remarks...I wanted so badly for them to mean something more. But every night, Ben and Darren retired together, and I found myself unable to sleep. So instead I would write music. During the day, I would catch myself just staring at the raven haired swain, wishing, hoping.
I closed my eyes, and my fingers began their dance across the strings. The sound took up so much space in the room we had enclosed ourselves in, so much physical mass...it was overbearing. It didn't help, either, that this was an electric guitar. I thought back to the days when amplifiers existed...how good this would've sounded if it wasn't just tinny strings.
I had almost forgotten that I was playing when Darren's voice cut through the silence to match my chords. Singing...so beautiful, it made my head throb. Mostly vowels sung, words only slipped out by coincidence...but it had been so long, so painfully long since I'd heard any real music. I didn't recognize the tears dripping down my face until they hit my fingers; cold, wet, real. Darren's enchanting voice dwindled to nothing, and the still was broken by the harsh striking of a match. The flame flared up suddenly, and met a candle wick. Ben proceeded to light the room.
"That was..." attempted Ben.
"Good?" offered Darren. I pulled my gaze away from the instrument in my hands and looked up at him, questions in my eyes. He nodded. "It'll work, really. It's only a matter of time, now. A matter of teaching people. We'll take the streets by storm." He smiled. "What's the word for it? A marching band?"
A smile cracked its way through my face, and I almost laughed at the foreign words tripping off Darren's tongue.
"Has anyone come around yet?" Ben spoke, and settled back down, the room ablaze in candlelight. He favored one leg, spreading it in front of him.
Darren sighed. "A few people. I hadn't realized before just how many of them don't care about this way of life. It's how they've always lived, it never occurred to them that there might be something more. Something different."
"We don't know that there is," Ben said gruffly.
"Yes we do," I said defensively. "At least, I do. I remember..." I drifted off, half wondering if those memories were real. "I remember performing in front of huge crowds, thousands of people." I shivered. Large quantities of people were never my cup of tea, even when I could hide behind my music.
A chill crept up the base of my spine, this time not from the dank floor I had made as my performance area. Darren's haunting voice swept me back, and I wondered if he would be willing to use his vocals as a way to once more take charge of the small number of recruits we had gathered to our cause.
I hoped it would be enough.
~*~*~
I blinked awake on my small, cold, uncomfortable pallet to the warmest sight I could imagine. Darren's face shown down on me with concern and tenderness, his hand on my shoulder, the other gripping the bed. His lower lip was white where his teeth caught it.
"Are you okay?" he asked in a harsh whisper. It was then that I felt odd vibrations and curious noises echoing through the room. I nodded and sat up, feeling the room sway with the waves of some kind of electronic pulse. It faded quickly.
"What was that?" I replied, copying the volume he had used.
His eyes flitted to the side of the small room, where the door was, momentarily. "There's been an attack on our section of the drains. I'm not quite sure, but according to some of our men, the Writer's Guild has somehow caught wind of our plans and is protesting it."
"The Writer's Guild?" I asked, confused, my brain still muddled from sleep, lack of food, and swept-away dreams of Darren's voice.
"There's a band of writers who gather at the opposite ends of the town. They were banished down below just like the rest of us, the government labeled writers as artists too. But for some reason they don't think they belong here...snobs." With the last word Darren's eyes narrowed, and I caught a chord of past battles in his tone. "In some vain effort to prove that they deserve to be let back up to the surface, they fight our attacks."
His explanation was punctuated by another electronic pulse that made the air shudder. I didn't want to think about what kind of weapons they had that emitted such a wave. I made sure not to touch any metal as I crossed the room, seeing it glow with radiant heat.
They were trying to smoke us out.
continued in part five...