Prologue: Coda 

…and there, cresting over the edge of the horizon, the sun parted the darkness with a gentle bloom of light that began to grow. He blinked then, shuttering in the landscape as if it had been a photograph. He watched the stars for a while, as one by one they had been absorbed by the light of morning, beginning to fade from view as if they had never been. He looked to the sky before him, letting the filter of light shift all around him. He began to see the world more clearly then. 

Along the horizon, the sun cracked over the edge of the earth, rising… a glowing orange ball of fire amidst a black and purple sky. There were gentle clouds drifting there, and touched in purples, dark blues, and greys… but along the edge of the clouds, the radiance of the orange glow of the sun itself in curved outlines. He watched for a long time, listening to the sound of the earth waking up as if it had been many nights since he had felt a sort of peace within. “I did it,” he says aloud with an exhausted triumph. His hands lay flat along the earth beside him, gripping gently the drifts of sand that had collected. He closed his eyes for a time, listening to the sounds beginning to rise from all around him, as the first of the birds had begun to call out. His eyes opened, and he let the filter of the world refract off his retinas… revealing to him the world as he had known it. 

“Such a beautiful thing,” he said almost unsure of himself, even as the words had left his lips. The ground before him had broken away, eons passed… the crash site of some enormous meteor that had fallen from the heavens to this very place upon the surface of the earth. The ground before him was a sunken crater, miles beyond. His eyes traced over the lines of the canyon walls as the first of the sunrays cast out, parting the darkness with a gentle wave of warm light. It fell upon the land before him, the cratered divide that he had now been sitting beside… his feet dangling over the edge of the precipice. He looked down, studied the jagged rocks and boulders that had littered the ground below some two-hundred feet down and with revelation he felt the force of the wind at his back, gently nudging him forward. His eyes looked up; watching as more light spilled out from the sun and the world around him began to grow brighter, revealing the soft orange color of the canyon rocks, striped with hues of reds and browns as shades of purples clung to the walls in drops of shadows beginning to cast down. The sky had been changing, shifting into deep blues as the purples were being stripped from the sky itself… where the beginning shades of blue began to emerge. It started as a wash of deep blue, then faded over the course of the next several minutes… until eventually the sky was lit up in the most beautiful light blue hue that he had ever seen. 

The stars were losing their light, only the few that were bright enough to sustain the immeasurable brightness of that of the sun remained. Jupiter, Venus perhaps, he thought, watching their reminder hanging there low in the sky, being blotted out by the incredible glow of the hot Mojave sun. He squinted into the light, trying to see the planets there, orbiting on their own distant plane, and was saddened to realize that he could no longer see them. His eyes watered, he clenched them shut a while, pushing the tears from his eyelids and when he opened them once more, he wiped them away, squinting and blinking the world back into view as best as he could. Like the sun was a deity, it had a mind of its own, and the painter was forced to look away. 

He shifted his eyes, staring for a time at the few black birds that had taken flight, and he shivered. They defied the laws of gravity, gusting their large wings beside themselves as they drifted soundlessly over the surface of the earth. He studied them, remembering then bits and pieces of imagery… dreams that had come to him in the days prior to this moment, but for the life of him he could not recall. He saw flashes of bright lights behind his eyes, and then… watching the birds with a calm expression a splinter carved into his mind. He winced, his head falling into the palm of his hand, he ran his fingers through his hair trying to soothe the sharp pain that had risen. After a while, it subsided. He looked up, knowing. “I’m still dreaming,” he said. He looked over the edge of the cliff where he had been seated, wondering what would happen if he had jumped. He stared down at the sharp rocks below. “If it’s a dream, then none of this will matter anymore anyway.” 

His eyes looked up to view the sun, as if it had risen there along the horizon much further that had not seemed ordinary. It tucked softly behind the clouds there, that had bloomed into brilliant colors of whites, greys, and purples amidst the pale blue sky beyond. The sun cast rays of light upon the ground. He was not afraid. He could not remember the last time that he had felt this way. He pulled a cigarette out of his blue jeans, fishing out the gold-plated Zippo lighter. He lit a cigarette, closing his eyes and exhaled the air from his lungs with a gush. All at once he felt dizzy, calm, and almost euphoric. He opened his eyes once more and took a drag of his cigarette, keeping it perched in his mouth as his hand fell gently to the soft ground beside him. The horizon seemed to waver, the first of the mirage lines blooming in the distance. He stared at it for a while. Feeling that there… beyond the reach of his footsteps, had been the ending of this dreamscape, and all that was soon to happen. It had been a lucid, living hell. The dreams themselves had been a place where his nightmares had become real. Terrorized by the dark things just beneath the surface of his thoughts. “I’m never going to make it,” he said. 

In truth, he was never going to wake up. It was always going to be there waiting for him. 

He tried to concentrate, to remember what had happened. It was a blur in his mind, as one thing had seemed to roll into the next. Dreams are like that, never knowing where one part begins and ends, only hazy around the details that seem to drift in and out of the subconscious parts of our minds. Of course, we have several dreams every night… we only remember a fraction of their content as they coincide with REM sleep, the parts of the human brain responsible for memory are inhibited. A substantial part of the dreams themselves are completely forgotten within minutes after waking. He looked down to the sand beside him, picked up a handful in a closed fist and began to let it slip through the cracks… falling once more upon the ground. The Hourglass, he thought, not knowing what it had meant, as if it had held some significance. 

* * * 

“Long ago I made my way here, to this place and for the life of me I could not tell you exactly how it all began, but for the story that I have yet to tell, it is how the story seems to end along a barren strip of road within a desert. 

“It seemed like a lifetime ago that I left the world I once knew and found myself here amidst the vastness of time and space and all its splendor. Where once I had a life, a successful life, I made a very conscious decision to leave that place behind and all the people I had ever known, to live the rest of my days here in the Mojave Desert. 

“It was not always like this. 

“I was a painter. I was to open my third premier in a year, and the paintings as of late had become darker. Not that there had been a particular metaphor in those words. Where once so much color had fallen on my canvases, the blackness was always creeping in settling in corners as the imagination began to consume my pallet. At first starting from the bottom of the frame, and pushing the borders closed… drowning out the colors that my work was known for: realism. Painting a fifteen-foot landscape from my penthouse on the twenty-second floor in the middle of New York City had a surreal feeling to it. My window view was one of the best in the city or so my agent had bragged before I signed the deed. I fell in love with it instantly and looking out to that cityscape, especially at night… I had a feeling, or a sense of flying or falling. At least once or twice I would stand there, at times nude, holding onto a crystal glass half full of bourbon on ice and watched the red and white lights of the cars below. Granted, the room I would stand in was mostly dark and the next building at this height had been far enough away, I could only imagine the look on people’s faces peering behind a pair of binoculars as they laid eyes upon my nakedness, but again the imagination has a way of filling in the gaps as I had not known this to be a certainty, nor did I care. I did not have a sense of modesty at some three a.m., but sometimes standing there like that encased me completely in the darkness of the land and the sky, with only the lights beneath the tower to remind me that people existed down there at all. 

“I lived alone, except for a single black cat by the name of Morpheus, my only real friend. Occasionally he would remind me of my loneliness, and then with a single glance he would make the entire world disappear. Just a cat, and myself… surrounded by a life that I never had imagined that I would be living. Life was like this for years. Why or how I ended up in New York was simple, I had painted a few pieces and started to sell my work my first year in college… of which hadn’t been there to study art at all: I had been studying economics. Business. I had always enjoyed art and figured it would have been an easy passing elective, padding my GPA with another A, never worrying much about the process of the achievement and I would have moved on not caring much for the elective in the first place. Painting was something I had started to delve further and further into as a young adult, but never actually thought that I would be making a career out of it. Turns out, the universe holds many untold secrets. The right place at the right time. 

“My instructor had spent time with me, looking over my shoulder at whichever piece I had been working on. ‘You have a knack for detail,’ he had said. ‘It’s a shame you’re a business major.’ Without my knowing, he had sent off some photographs of the pieces I had been creating, and a few short weeks later, a still life I had painted of a glass of water and an apple was sold for a mesmerizing twenty-five grand to an anonymous buyer in New York, along with a letter of intent to purchase another five more pieces of my choosing over the next few months. Staring at the check I had just received; I deposited it in my bank account practically bursting with revelation. The anonymous buyer… or at least had remained so at the time, urged me to move to New York, where he or she could produce my artwork in galleries, showing the world the strange talent that had been accumulating deep inside the sockets of my mind. I don’t know how it had grown into whatever it was, that I had the ability to see something in the real world and replicate it just so, as if it were a photograph, and not brush stroked with acrylic paint. On a whim, I decided to move to New York. They offered me residency, as well as my own exhibit after they had managed to view a dozen or more paintings. I had submitted some still-life, some portrait work of random passerby men and women, a self-portrait I painted staring at a mirror one afternoon that stood against the wall… disheveled black hair, over casting dark brown eyes that seemed to look more and more tired with deep setting dark circles beneath even for such youthfulness. If anything in my portfolio resonated with me, it was my landscape work detailing rolling hillsides and lush green grass, flowing trees bending light along the horizon and casting its glow through breaks in the tree branches above. The once anonymous buyer turned out to be the head of a prestigious art gallery. A woman, by the name of Paula Driskel. As I had never heard of her, she had certainly never heard of me, at least not until my artwork was submitted by an aging community college art professor without my consent. Money talks. 

“I had nothing to offer except for some budding talent that even I didn’t know what to do with at the time, and furthermore I had nothing in earnest… except for my tattered work boots and my paint covered blue jeans. 

“This path had fallen into my lap, as even most days I hadn’t known what I was doing, reproducing the images within my mind with such clarity that seemed to bewilder even myself. I honestly can’t explain how I did it, seeing things as they were, I had an ease for blending colors that came naturally and applied them in photorealistic ways that garnered a lot of enthusiasm. 

“I was never the center of attention… always seemed to be discarded and alone, I left the waste of life behind me and opted to try this chance given. 

“The first few things that I realized when I landed in New York, was that life was never going to be the same, and that the world was always bigger than Oklahoma… that second part was truer than anything else that I had ever known. A black car was waiting for me on the tarmac, I glanced at it from the door of the private jet that had just landed, holding onto a small duffel bag I looked down the few steps to the ground below. ‘Welcome to New York,’ the driver had said to me as I stepped down on new ground for the first time in an unfamiliar part of the country I had never been, on my way to a city that I had only ever seen in books and television shows. ‘This way sir,’ he gestured towards the black car with its chrome wheels, its soft leather interior, its tinted windows. 

“Sitting in the back of that car came with two feelings: the first was exhilaration, the second… unknowingly was despair. Turns out, I had been bought cheaply. I had been commissioned to produce work after work, often nodding off in the early morning hours, only to wake and ingest a mega-fuck-ton of caffeine in hopes to keep up the pace. Nothing can wash off that feeling of wondering if this was the right decision. Eventually I made the switch to cocaine. My pace doubled; I was able to produce these works of art in a matter of days instead of weeks. I would pour my heart into a new piece, and almost instantly it would sell just the same as the last, and my bank account began to swell as I watched various deposits hit my accounts within hours of being marked ‘sold,’ usually in the tens of thousands, sometimes a lot more. More often there were deposits into my account for the pieces that I hadn’t even created yet. Some of the work I kept for myself, held in reserve for the events I was to host… sometimes painting things only for myself which had never been sold. I had the ability to see the world around me and replicate it to painstaking detail. 

“I had no idea what to do with any spare time. My pockets were full of cash, and I was a young budding artist drifting in and out of cocaine stupors. I had spent nights out on the town, spending far too much money and realizing that when the night was over, and I had been standing before the birth of another sunrise, usually with another stranger sleeping soundly in my bed… as the drugs and booze had worn off… that I found nothing in that limelight. Only discarding another person from my penthouse as if I had taken out the trash, shutting myself behind closed doors once more and curled along the couch in hopes to find sleep… which seldom came. I realized quickly enough… that the limelight wasn’t for me. I had never felt that I fit in anywhere, always being the outsider most of my life I felt more lost now than I ever had. I was quite alright with someone else standing at the center of attention, while I sipped bourbons at the corner spot of crowded bars, watching the people move amongst one another as I studied them with a lingering silence. It wasn’t for me, this life… this notion that I had become something of myself. This fantasy that if I had taken this opportunity in New York that I might’ve been able to fix whatever broken thing that had been there inside of myself. 

“I had stood at the window for a long time, watching the birds high above the city… their graceful drift along the tall buildings, and wanted nothing more than to be one of them… with the ability to fly so very far away from this penthouse that felt more like a prison as time went on. 

“I bought a telescope. 

“I began to watch the world through that small lens… not of the telescope, looking at a small subset of humanity that had not a care in the world but only for the finest of things, and I did my best to avoid them. My first public appearance, I did choose to look the part. It was a year after I had arrived, being convinced to walk among the gazers and the onlookers… the men and women that might have already bought some of my art… and new buyers to come. I bought a fucking scarf for Christ’s sake and wrapped it around my neck as I tried to hide by the bar shaking hands and smiling plainly to the people coming to and from the gallery... my gallery. ‘Such impressive work for such a young talent,’ they would say, or ‘Simply extraordinary. Where did you study art?’ 

“I’d smile and tell them, ‘I didn’t,’ and that had seemed to have been a grand mystery to them. Their pretentions made it clear that they were expecting a better explanation. I frankly, had none. 

“I did smile from time to time, it wasn’t always bad, or usually self-loathed, but on one night in particular… more than a year after my first gallery showing, she had been there. I hadn’t seen her arrive, as the turnout that evening had been particularly exuberant. Her name was Claire. I had been standing alone at the time looking at one of my pieces that I was, immensely proud of. I hadn’t realized that she had been standing next to me for quite some time, and I glanced down at my watch and realized that a significant portion of the evening had slipped away as I had been standing there absorbed by the piece itself. She stood to my left. 

“ ‘Oh, sorry,’ I started. ‘I didn’t realize that...’ 

“ ‘I haven’t been here long,’ she said, ‘or at least not long enough. I think I like this piece the most.’ She said gesturing to the work that stood before us. A simple enough piece, a cozy park view, an elderly couple sitting at a park bench with their backs to the perspective, his overcoat stretched out to the left side, his small-billed cap atop white hair, and his right arm around her as they held one another to stay warm. Her head tucked into his shoulder, and they watched the birds beyond swimming in the small pond twenty or so feet away, the light gleaming off the water in that beautiful light just before the sun begins to set… as the earth spins, and the light casts that beautiful twilight that only ever appears around dusk. Almost like the air was becoming thicker with the night sky pressing in from above. ‘But I have a question…’ she asked. 

“ ‘I have the time,’ I replied smiling. 

“ ‘The white bird in the back, how did you create the water spray in that way? It’s as if it’s alive… photographed. I’ve never seen realism portrayed so delicately, simply amazing. I-’ she paused then, and I turned to her gently to show her that I was sincere in having the conversation. She seemed so different than all the others. ‘… every drop of water was perfectly placed, visible but not random. You captured the movement brilliantly.’ 

“ ‘Thank you,’ I replied after a moment. ‘You want to know my secret?’ 

“ ‘Sure,’ she said looking at me softly with her deep blue eyes. Her hair was cast slightly down over the side of her face, her expression was eager but there was something else there. Something I hadn’t seen before, and I became lost in that glance for a moment that seemed to stretch much longer than it should have. 

“ ‘… sometimes,’ I started, ‘sometimes… I pretend that I’m a bird.’ 

“She looked at me plainly, and without trying we both had burst into laughter. The rest of the gallery was silent then, and without us paying attention to the room, they had stopped and stared at the two of us. ‘You pretend, you’re a bird?’ she finished at last wiping a tear from her right eye. 

“ ‘Oh absolutely,’ I said stifling the emotion. And then I became a little more serious to try to explain as best as I could. ‘I have a need to put myself in their perspective. I try to become the thing that I am creating. I was walking through Central Park last week and I saw this elderly couple sitting just as they were, just like this. For a moment or two I-’ 

“ ‘You painted this last week?!’ her eyes squinted, cutting me off. 

I took a moment to respond. ‘Yes, I did. Well, the last three days. It was a little rushed, so I finished the last of the touch ups earlier before everyone started to arrive. Here,’ I said and guided her to the painting. At the very bottom of the frame was a flower in red. There was a little blob there, an imperfection that I noticed just before I realized that she had been standing there, and I took a handkerchief out of my left pocket and dabbed gently at the canvas so as not to smudge the paint. I showed her the red on my handkerchief before I folded it and put it in my pocket once more. 

“ ‘Unbelievable,’ she said then and we backed away from the canvas once again to gather its size into our full field of view. ‘And you painted this from memory?’ 

“ ‘As much as I can recall at one sitting.’ 

“ ‘I,’ she stopped then, ‘I cannot believe you can do this, to this level of detail in such a short amount of time. You are probably the best artist I have ever seen.’ 

“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just try to show the world, what it is that I am feeling.’ 

“We stood there for a moment, looking at the piece. The tree line in the foreground, the way that the scarf on the elderly gentlemen on the canvas carried lightly in the breeze, her hair slightly windswept towards the back of his coat. The ripples in the water created the dazzling that wind seems to do to still water when the wind hurries over the surface just enough to caress it like silk over a textured surface. The way the trees seemed to bend slightly in the wind, or the leaves blowing around softly as one danced over the surface of the pond just moments before becoming one with the water. The canvas was a five by seven feet… resting horizontal perspective, and every inch of it was filled with appropriate and perfect balance, or at least as perfect a balance as I tried to convey. It was easy to get lost in. Looking at the piece, I wasn’t certain where the ability had come from… I just knew that it wasn’t complete until the details were perfect… which often took a fair amount of time to recapture the images locked there in my mind. I couldn’t explain how I did what I did. It just… was, something there behind my eyes… and an ability to recreate it. 

“ ‘How did you do this?’ she asked softly, looking at me with unbelieving eyes. Her eyes were slightly dilated then, as if her question would have bothered her if I didn’t answer it aptly. 

“ ‘If it helps you understand, I didn’t sleep for three days.’ 

“She looked back at the painting for a moment, and then without a word she shook her head and began to walk away. 

“ ‘Wait!’ I said then, she turned to face me, and I met up with her just a few steps away. ‘Here,’ I said shuffling out a business card the company had made up for me. ‘Maybe we can talk again some time, grab a coffee or something…’ She took the card, as she extended her hand. 

“ ‘Claire,’ she said. I took her hand in mine, and her gentle warmth seemed to bloom up the exterior of my right arm then, a feeling that in all its simplicity has never left me as that warmth crawled through the small space of my shoulder and into my chest, where it has stayed ever since. 

“ ‘Pleased to meet you Claire. My name… is on the card,’ I said with a little smirk that she couldn’t help but smile a bit wider. 

“ ‘We will talk soon,’ she said, and as she left her hand lingered on mine for a moment, seemed to glide off my fingertips like feathers floating on the wind, and within a few seconds she was gone in a sea of people walking around the gallery. I wondered if I would ever see her again. I turned to look back at my painting for a moment longer, looking at the elderly couple sitting on the bench. My heart knew what it was painting when I tried to recapture the feeling that the couple shared that chilly autumn day at Central Park. My heart knew what it wanted to say with my art, and if only I too could feel the same feelings, then... as they had. I longed for love, longed for a sense of belonging and simply painted the ending to a beautiful story that I wanted to tell somehow through splotches of paint and streaked horizontal lines. I found the white bird that had captured Claire’s attention and looked at it for a moment, in all of the five by seven canvas, the bird… and all the droplets of water around it as it shook out its wings, were only three by five inches total, and she had spoken of the time that I spent on that one bird amidst the other ten that swam in the water beside it. In the end, I didn’t want to be the elderly couple: I wanted to be the bird. Love is a beautiful concept, but what feeling I wanted more than anything was nothing more than complete contentment… freedom. 

“Claire was on my mind for days after my first event. She rang throughout my mind’s eye like a large bell that echoed for far longer than after it was struck. I painted other things, and after a few days of trying to avoid it, I ended up painting her as well. Her portrait rested against the wall beside my wide-open window view of downtown New York City. I thought it would have been awkward to place her on the wall, and after a few weeks there she remained untouched and rested on the floor beside some blank canvases and pieces of protective cloth that had found their way into the corner of the room. Then, out of the maddening silence of my apartment, she finally called. It was the first time in days that my phone rang, and it startled Morpheus so bad he jumped up from the couch with his hair raised. Something about a black cat with prickled hair that conjures up imagery from at least half a dozen scary movies. But when I answered the phone, it was her soft voice on the other side of the line. She had invited me out to a small venue not too far from my apartment. ‘Show starts at seven, I go on at eight,’ she assured me. 

“ ‘You go on?’ I asked curiously. 

“ ‘You’ll see.’ 

“The line clicked and was silent again. I put the phone back down on my expensive marble countertop. My heart began to pound in my chest then, something I hadn’t felt in an exceptionally long time. There was a level of infatuation I wasn’t quite prepared for. I calmed my senses or tried to. Grabbed one of my crystal glasses, filled it with ice and topped it with bourbon. I sipped slowly, standing there for a moment watching the sun filled city while out on the balcony listening to the sounds of traffic below. The silence of the apartment filled me with woe. I played some classical music from a vinyl record player tucked neatly within a cabinet beside the large flatscreen television and let the sounds of Mozart wash over the rooms in uneven colors that at fist so bright, and then so looming and hauntingly beautiful that I took longer sips of my bourbon and started to pace uneasily despite my intentions to calm my nerves. 

“Nothing was planned this evening, except to peer once more into the deep blues of her eyes if nothing else at all. I showered, changed, and gave a little shave. Laced my beat-up work boots that I still chose to wear, though my bank account had suggested otherwise. I took out a can of cat food and fed Morpheus then, stroking his fur for a moment… him thanking me with his silent gratitude as he ate. I grabbed my keys, left my apartment, and thumbed the key in the door locking the deadbolt. 

“The elevator seemed to move slowly no thanks to the bourbon. It opened a minute later at ground level, and I walked out of the gold touched lobby of the apartment building and exited out onto the busy street beyond. I began to walk. People were everywhere, always. A street performer played bucket drums as I walked past and tossed a twenty into an open hat at his feet. He nodded with a smile and no words were exchanged as no words were needed. I kept walking. 

“Up ahead, there was a gathering of people standing on the corner. As I approached, I realized that I was arriving at my destination, a venue called “A Touch of Blue” stood packed outside and everyone was all smiles. I looked up beneath the venue name and to my astonishment her name was tacked on with large lettering, no last name just ‘Claire’ in black lettering hanging higher in larger letters than the name just below it. To this day I still couldn’t tell you what the opening act was, but after a half hour I was inside with a fresh drink in my hand, and we were being ushered into a large auditorium decked with red carpet and plenty of circle tables, with centerpieces of blue sconces and white candles. 

“I felt like I was in an old 1920’s speakeasy, where the acts seemed to get better and better, as the drinks became stronger as the evening went on. The evening rolled out like this. The opening act, a young black man played the Cielo and sang soulful tunes about love and betrayal, a jazz trio complete with a talented drummer reminiscent of Buddy Rich, and pianist off to the man’s left, as he played Cielo on the right. He played for about forty-five minutes and to my satisfaction was very engaging. Some people show you their souls with paint and canvas, some people tell you what their soul is saying with wood and strings. The large velvet red curtain fell, and the trio disappeared behind it. My drink had run empty as I sat at the small table by myself, and as if on cue a server brought a fresh drink without saying a word, left a new napkin and placed the drink down. At the corner of the napkin a simple note: ‘From Claire.’ 

“I looked around with fast eyes, and to my amazement couldn’t find her, had no idea how she had found me in the crowded space. I picked up the glass, took a sip, and examined the napkin further. On the opposite side there was another note. ‘My third song is for you,’ it said simply. The lights were a little brighter now, the meandering of people swirled all around me. The drinks were strong, and I too felt like I was swimming in this sea of people only to my satisfaction I hadn’t moved at all. Placed the napkin in my pocket and sat almost motionless letting that powerful feeling wash over me like waves in the ocean. Each wave hitting me leaving me smiling just a little longer and a little brighter. 

“The lights dimmed, and the crowd cheered, applause erupted in the tightly packed venue. Maybe five-hundred people sat, waiting for her to appear and when the curtain rolled back, they fell silent again, only this time no band, no trio, just a black Baby Grand piano sitting at center stage with no one there. A single spotlight illuminated from above showcasing the piano, glinting and gleaming in the light… and then there she was… walking from the right of the stage in a glimmering silver dress, her hair done in curls and resting perfectly balanced like that of a twenties style pinup model. She walked to the center stage, her dress was sleeveless and strapless, her shoulders were fully exposed. The crowd applauding as she appeared, she walked calmly to the front of her piano and took a deep bow. She stood up confidently and glanced at me for a moment with a soft smile, her eyes were like diamonds. Her blonde hair fastened with a diamond studded hair clip, and as she turned around, one hand gliding atop the piano, she walked around quietly and just before sitting, she stood silently for a moment as the crowd tapered off their applause, falling dead silent. She takes her seat, adjusting the microphone gently, letting her hands and eyes adjust to the light cast down from overhead. 

“Her hands rested just above the keys, for a moment. She takes a deep breath, exhales, and begins to play. 

“At first her hands do runs up and down the piano keys, letting the music begin to fall in soft arcs that seemed to reach out to everyone and grip them softly. Pulling everyone attending into full attention. In a matter of seconds, everyone was awaiting the next note to be played just after the one before it and she played beautifully. Then after she had the entire venue’s attention, she started simply by playing a few chords and rolling out a soft and instantaneously immersive song. At that moment, the entire audience became glued, never taking their eyes off her. I closed my eyes and listened to her first words gently falling from all around me, and I could imagine the patrons floating up out of their chairs as she sang gently a song about a rose petal that had lost touch with the rest of the flower and floated gently back down to the ground, to be forgotten and eventually fade from beauty. 

“She sang: 

“ ‘Lost are the moments, we wish to be one, 

“ ‘For longing so softly the feeling, I hesitate… 

“ ‘Your fragrance, hangs on me still, after days… it seems, set aloft, forgotten with the wind…’ 

“Her delicate hands played over somber chords, with her right hands guiding the nuance of the melody in such a persuasive and fascinating way that it seemed that the piano was playing itself and this, I felt connection with. I opened my eyes and for a moment I expected to see fireflies or glowing orbs gliding on the air with her melody to carry them like magic. Everyone quiet, solemn, and fully attentive. A woman a few tables in front of me wiped a tear away from her eye. Everyone was captivated by her beauty and her music that not a single person stirred in their chairs. Everyone listening eagerly to the music that seemed to fall from the heavens around their ears and as the song ended with a beautifully articulated scale rising and then back down, it came to coda with a single chord that seemed to tell the entire story with those notes and the crowd erupted into fevered applause. Their clapping hands became an ocean of appreciation for her, lasting long after until just before, the next song was soon to begin. Again, letting her melody wash over them once more, speaking to five-hundred souls all at the same time. 

“She had this ability, to entrance everyone at the same time and for all that I knew I too was under her spell. It felt like she had been singing and playing her piano only just to me even though there were hundreds of onlookers feeling much the same way. I felt somehow that I was meant to be there in that moment, seeing her artform for what it was, as she gently played her piano as if it were a lover, gliding her hands along ivory keys. 

“It was beautiful. 

“Her second song ended, differently than the first but just as impactful and she paused after the applause died down and spoke into the microphone. ‘Thank you. I wrote this next one, just recently. I hope you all enjoy it.’ The crowd erupted into applause and fell silent again just after she had begun to play. 

“Something washed over me then, like she wanted to tell me something or show me something and I stared at her then not knowing what was about to happen. She began to play these simple chords, timed them in such a way that they rolled over the top of each other and coalesced where one seemed to end and begin at the same time. It had more of a rhythmic quality to it, and I began to sway softly despite not knowing that I had been doing so. The beginning of the song seemed to pass through me, unaware that she had begun singing. I blinked, shuttering her back into my worldview as my mind had begun to wander despite my ability to stay focused. I caught up in time for the chorus of the song to cascade from gentle notes and swaying time-signature. 

“ ‘I slip into another point of view, every hour or so I create something new. 

“ ‘And who’s to mind what you say to me, it’s in me, where I feel that I’m to be, 

“ ‘Forever locked up, inside your gentle embrace…’ 

“… and the song takes a strange turn, minor chords… playing them like a drum. The piano danced, but every time the chorus came round, it lulled into a gentle sway that slowed to half tempo. Every time she punctuated at the keys, this swooning melody seemed to glide over itself and come back around to the beginning all over again. It was complex, but simple at the same time as if the song appeared rather than had been played. It danced, and as I looked around the room there was a serene smile on everyone’s faces as they listened to it pulsing. Everyone swayed when the music swayed. The song ran again into minor key, and she sucked the air out of the room with the mood shift again, lulling everyone into a gentle trance of melody as she sang notes with her beautiful voice that carried far more than the piano ever could. She closed her eyes, letting the words float from her lips as if she had just kissed the air with gentle magic. 

“The song fell back into its original groove as before with the melody that seemed to move on itself, pulsing and circling around back to the point, and then it ends on two common chords as before sustained before becoming quieter and quieter on its own. The song ended. 

“The crowd erupted into applause and one by one, everyone began to stand up applauding louder, some whistling and cheering. She looked up to everyone, scanned everyone over and then her eyes fell on me as I clapped feverishly standing beside my table. 

“The crowd subsided once more and took their seats, but this time there was a murmur in the air as they all were talking all at once. One by one, they fell back to her full attention. 

“She was brilliant, captivating and engaging. Everyone was lost within her music and completely engaged by what she was doing. It went on this way for some time, song after song… everyone a part of some collective experience, and even as the last song faded in our ears, she rose from her piano, took a bow and disappeared behind the red curtain that came shifting down around her as everyone had stood to their feet, myself included and applauded her performance once more. Softer and softer everyone became, and they ushered out of the auditorium all with wide smiles in exhilaration. 

“Just as before, the server made her way over to me and informed me that Claire would be waiting for me, ‘follow me,’ she insisted as she began to walk down the steps leading towards the velvet red curtain. To the right of the stage, she guided me there, pulled back a part of the curtain where a door had been. Her hand gripped the doorknob… and… 

“I digress. 

* * * 

The Hourglass, his mind repeated, looking down at the sand sifting through the crack of his hand as he had become so absorbed by that moment that everything else had seemed to slip away entirely. All at once the Mojave was around him once more, back within all his senses as one memory seemed to shift into another, of how it all began. 

* * * 

“How did I end up here? I have no answer to that question, for the answer itself is another part of the whole. To be honest, I don’t have an answer for it. Maybe I wanted to be rid of the people that looked to take advantage of my abilities. Maybe, I just wanted to be alone. The summer air feels nice and cool this time of year at night and the scents of cactus blooms, jasmine in the east always seems to drift into the air all around. The ground surrounding the beautiful two-story home remains mostly flat for miles. Trading a loft in New York, for a patch of dirt and sand, in an otherwise unquestioningly boring landscape… is a mystery for most. This home, however, came calling to me instead of me to it. 

“The silence was broken by the sound of coyotes howling just on the horizon, the sounds always seem to carry. Cricket and desert insects chittered constantly around me, droning… it becomes more of a mantra as I become absorbed within it. 

“It is at this point in my life that I didn’t need to continue to work, I am considered independently wealthy, made a small fortune selling my artwork to the powerful people around the northeastern states and even selling more than a dozen pieces abroad, to people in Spain, Great Britain, Australia, Belgium, Russia, and Germany. I had worked this way for years, spending most of my time in quite solitude. I came into this world without a legacy attached to my name, and I’ll be damned if I was going to worry about legacy now that I had made one for myself. These people meant nothing to me because I had meant nothing to them… I realized that they only cared for what I could provide for them. The realization hit me like a one-two punch from Muhammad Ali. 

“I live a quiet life here in isolation, with only Morpheus to keep me company, after all he’s become older in his years, but still a cat fit for kings. He has a knack for waking me up just as the sunlight pierces through the cracks in the window blinds, or gently nibbling at my finger when he’s hungry. He does the usual things that cats do, turning figure eights by my legs as I’m sipping coffee in the early morning hours in subtle attempts to trip me over, or chooses to lay in my lap at less than opportune moments. He seems to know what’s best, good, or bad and why I choose to listen to the imaginary ramblings of a housecat is a topic for another day. I do have few friends here, one better than most and the most unlikely sort of friend that I had never expected to have. As I said, life is unplanned and sometimes we must realize that lemonade is made with lemons after all. 

“For the first few months living here, I hadn’t painted at all, spitefully. Though, I had ordered in damn near an entire shipping container full of painting supplies… near two crates worth of blank white canvases, while also living in and out of boxes. Supplies were everywhere: in the halls, leaning up against walls in the living room, the dining room, upstairs in the bedroom and dozens and dozens more in the art studio. A part of me was running away from New York, another part of me was keeping up with a life that I had developed and grown into. Now, being a successful artist where once I had a proclivity to economics and business, I had chosen this sand swept wasteland to not only rebuild my life but had given myself the power to tell people no, when what I really wanted to say was ‘fuck you,’ to anyone that disagreed with me. 

“The art studio was the largest room in the entire house, it stretched the entire length of one wall facing north, with windows surrounding. As I walked, I could see these windows lit up, with a large amount of the space upstairs being my art studio, light beamed out all the windows to the gravel and sand beneath, pouring onto the surrounding desert land as if from a strange dream. The driveway leading up to the house was a longer patch of country road setting the beautiful two-story home amidst the middle of a barren, grass field with patches of sand and rock mounds. The grass, mostly dead and dry, stretched to the southern part of the house itself, where the wrap around porch had views of all the surrounding area. I stopped for a minute, looking up at the house from about halfway down the driveway, glancing at the sky and for some reason my eyes wandered back behind me and found the spot where the vultures had once been. I could no longer see them in the sky, they must have landed, and as if on cue, I listened to the busy cawing of half a dozen ravens flying overhead though I could barely see them at all amidst the starry blackened sky. 

“Dimly aware that I had lit a cigarette, I looked down at its orange ember glowing and the faint smoke that drifted up from its end. I took a drag, and tossed it alongside the driveway, at 212 East Canyon Road. I hadn’t realized that I had done so. 

“ ‘Home, sweet home,’ I said with a sigh walking towards my front door. My key thumbed open the lock, turning the handle the door always creaked open like a haunted house. Morpheus was always there to greet me. His gold eyes looked at me with a sort of admiration. ‘Good to be home- 

“…music had been playing upstairs. It drifted down in soothing melodies reminding me of sometime better, time I spent with… 

“The darkness… 

“I- 

“I shut the door behind me, pushed the thoughts out of my head and set my keys in the glass bowl I kept by the front door. I wasn’t fearful of the home itself at the time, but there were the occasional house groans that came with the wind. It’s barren here. I began up the stairs and the music came together in my ears. Beethoven, coming from the almost antique digital alarm clock radio I kept in my studio just to pass time, some old relic from a life that I had once lived. The power could have cut out from the wind shaking the power lines along the perpendicular road in front of my property. If there was any sentimental value from being in foster care as a child, that old alarm clock was it, and God only knows who it had belonged to. 

“I entered the studio to the left at the top of the stairs and found nothing out of the ordinary in my studio at all, the lights had been left on, classical music drifted from the open door. I had been certain that I had turned the lights off- 

“Nothing. Some blank canvases rested against the wall, but most by this point were covered with artwork. Landscapes of the Mojave, remnant pieces from my life in New York, busy street life of grungy streets and taxicabs passing by… the street performer drumming away on pots and overturned buckets the night that I fell in love with Claire, and of course, Claire. Her portrait was finally hung up on the wall watching me as I had been captivated… painting another large enough to fit over the two large windows within the room. The only thing that I had managed to paint was- 

“The darkness… 

“-two glowing, red eyes. 

“I have this dream. It’s a recurring dream. A terrible nightmare. I’m always running from something, and for whatever irrational fear of what it was I can never seem to escape it. The faster I run, the more it feels like running in place, slipping in my steps as my feet splash through puddles all around me. Looking back behind me, always… this immense, immeasurable blackness, and two glowing red eyes staring back as they’re gaining on me. I never know what it is that is chasing me, I turn and try to run faster but can never seem to outrun the thing. I scream but just as the sounds escaped my lips, whatever foul creature that it is… it bites down, latching onto my neck and shoulder. Its huge jowls puncture my chest and my back, feeling the flow of blood running along my skin it salivates, drooling an unusually thick mucus down my torso. It thrashes me, throwing my body along the ground. The last thing that I hear before I wake up, is its low growl… a snarl, some evil thing there amidst the darkness. 

“I always wake drenched in sweat, screaming sitting upright in bed- startled into wakefulness. A dream that always takes me far too long to understand that it had only just been that… a dream. My heart pounding, my eyes wide and terrified. The last time, my head fell back against my pillow once more, staring for a long time at the shadows dancing along the walls from a passing semi-truck along the main road. It always feels so real… 

“I thought about it for days, trying to picture it clearly… whatever horrible thing that comes to me night after night. 

“Nothing. 

“I couldn’t picture the thing, the beast at all. Only those gleaming red eyes like fiery red coals, embers from some dark monstrosity that I could not replicate in my art. For the first time in my entire adult life, I couldn’t see the creature behind my eyes. 

“I became obsessed. I took out a sketch pad and exhausted every page there trying to replicate it, but I could never capture the thing that haunted my dreams. And when I did sleep, there it was once more chasing me down and snarling… screeching… clawing and digging… gnashing and biting. I realized then that the reason that I could never sketch the image from my dreams, was because the creature… whatever it was, had always been different. Every time I would finish a depiction, my mind constantly struggling to get the details perfect… it had changed once more behind my eyes, shifting into something else. Crumpling the pages, I started over and tried again. Its eyes were the only constant. They never changed, those glowing red coals that pierced the endless black all around me as I tried night after night to escape it. 

“I forced the thoughts back down like swallowing aspirin with a dry mouth. It took a little effort, and it tasted bitter. I focused on a few other things to paint then, and for a time the dreams had stopped. But then, fatefully one night they came back… and night after night the dreams persisted, until finally I had had enough. I needed to let it out. I stay awake throughout the night, painting the red eyes in my studio, listening to the soothing sounds of classical music floating into all the corners of the room. I painted until morning, and when I finally finished, I took a few steps back and stared for a long time. 

“There was an intelligence within those eyes, they glinted there upon the canvas, knowing and glowing. I felt like that had been watching me, shifting slightly along the edge of my vision as I had turned away to find a towel to wipe my hands clean from black and red paint. And all at once then, I hadn’t liked what I was looking at… as if I had brought to life the very thing that had been haunting my dreams. I napped a little in the afternoon, dreamless I woke to bright light of the Mojave. I stirred from my spot along the couch and sat up, thinking about the canvas… the recurring dreams that followed me from town to town. They were gone. I slept almost dreamless for weeks. With the few dreams that I remember, they had been almost pleasant and not concerning. I felt somehow that I had rid myself of the bad dreams, by letting it out… whatever caged darkness that had been there, trapping that bad energy into the frame of the canvas itself and there it had stayed. 

“I was wrong. I was so incredibly naive. 

* * * 

He sat that way for a long time, gazing along the mass of canyon that stood before him. He blinked then, realizing that the cigarette that had been perched upon his lips had burnt down to a lengthy line of ash. He plucked it from his lips, flicking it from his fingertips before lighting another. He took a long drag, and exhaled smoke into the hot Mojave air. The sun had risen a little higher in the sky. How long was I out? He thinks, not knowing how long he had drifted off lost in thought. 

Overlooking the ground, the short canyon walls lining this side of the Mojave, as the light from the rising sun beams its brilliance to that jagged horizon. The canyon is filled with horizontal lines, running along the sides of sunken land, weathering down over time in strange rows of age and memory. It truly is a beautiful sight to see, the clouds passing overhead, the endlessness of the sky, limited by the design of the earth and her history here, with stories discovered and stories unknown. 

He sat that way for a long time, watching the sun’s glow becoming hotter… a perfectly rounded ball of fire in the sky that tucked gently from to time behind clouds. He closed his eyes once more, feeling the chill breeze against his skin, cooling his burnt and worn complexion, and all at once a calm had come over him… as if he had been here before, doing this very same thing at a time that he can’t recall. It felt cyclical, returning once more to view the sunrise at this exact moment… with the same meandering running thoughts through his head. “It’s not real,” he said. “I’m still dreaming,” he said opening his eyes. 

Claire… he thought, letting out a long sigh. 

He tossed the cigarette from his fingers, and rose to his feet, staring up at the sun one last time. He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth upon his face, and fell forward over the edge of the cliff. 

* * * 

“I was falling. Feeling the wind in my hair, the fabric of my shirt flapping against the pale skin beneath, my thin frame feeling the shirt slap against my skin like sticks to a drum. The sound was comforting, like the sound of flags fluttering in the wind. The feeling of falling itself was almost indescribable. Weightless. It felt like flying, and for a moment as my eyes remained closed somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard myself repeating the words… pretend that I’m a bird. 

“My arms outstretched. I wasn’t aware that I had rolled to my back as the ground became closer and closer all at once, turning in midair... feeling weightless, careless… a thin smile touched my lips for only just a moment… my last moment… as my body shattered against the hard ground below. 

“The human mind can live for several moments after the body dies. Let this be a testament to that truth. As my body lay there, disfigured, and broken… all at once the events that led me to this point came back to me. They always say that ‘life flashes before your eyes,’ just moments before death. They’re right. 

“...and I know what you’re thinking… that I shouldn’t have jumped, but in the end... my friend, my dear old friend... you never knew me at all… you’re now just the only one left here, able to listen. 

“The sky above begins to resign from view, the soft blue of the sky… the light piercing the clouds in the distance, all become a distant image… as the world that I know, fades from view… 

“To black… 

“So let me tell you my story, even as my body lay broken along the canyon floor of the Mojave, as the last few breaths in my lungs can muster the words… this moment that lasts only an instance, can linger never ending… into the end of time. It is a moment lasting forever, and a moment that never existed in the first place, but in the space of that moment… sometimes, it’s just long enough to tell you the story… of the painter, that fought the darkness… and lost. 

“The darkness presses in. 

“Everything fades from view. 

“Coda.