There’s a flautist in main square.
Every time Zedaph gets to work or leaves, he has to switch trams in the busiest part of the city. That’s where he can hear it. A constant, quiet melody, flowing through the streets and reaching his ear even through all the hustling and bustling of the moving crowds.
It’s always the same melody. Day in, day out, the flautist from main square continues his spiel unconcerned about the people around him. A quiet rhythm carrying through the wind, as beautiful as a single flute can be.
Every day Zedaph has to pass through the streets to get to work, dodging angry sleep-deprived workers in the morning and drunkards in the afternoon when he once again works overtime. Every day he spends time in the main square, sometimes alone, other times with his friends. Every day, Zedaph listens to the whistling melody of the flute. He has gotten so used to the constant background noise that he usually tunes it out, but when conversations start to ebb or his headphones go quiet before they switch to the next songs, he once again becomes aware of the flute.
The flautist of main square is infamous in the small city. Children like to make fun of him for repeatedly playing one and the same song, laughing about how, after all this time, he still hasn’t learned a new melody. Older people pity him calling him a helpless romantic.
Rumour has it he lost his wife many many years ago and the melody he plays was her favourite. Some older people say that he once knew a great many songs, but now his mourning heart cannot listen to anything else.
A few even think he’s a ghost- that he died playing his song and is now stuck playing it for eternity.
The rumours may vary,but everyone in the small city has one thing in common: no one has ever seen his face. Despite his years and years of standing in or around main square, not one person can recall ever having looked into his eyes.
Not that no one has seen him at all. Many people remember a hunched over body, wrapped in a thick coat, the brown leather looking shabby and worn. A large grey hat obstructing any view one might have, its shadow shielding him from the hungry gaze of the public eye.
He likes to stay hidden away. Even when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, he can only be found in the darkest corners in between houses. And no matter how burning hot the sun is, heating the asphalt to almost unbearable temperatures, he can never be found without his thick coat.
Whatever the guy’s real deal is, though, Zedaph can’t be bothered with it.
He works in a morgue. There are weirder things one eventually comes across in his profession, and a lazy flautist who may or may not be skilled clearly isn’t on top of his priority list. Not when he has coffins to carry, funerals to plan and families to console.
Somehow, the literal dead people part of his job is the least of his concern. Sure he tries his best to be respectful, prays when he can see they’re religious, shuts his mouth when they’re not, and occasionally he turns up at someone’s funeral when none of their family do. But all in all the remaining living people are the true horror of his work.
Of course there are also heartbreaking days, when the coffins are barely larger than his torso and he can carry them with one arm. There are times when they find someone rotting away in their house, having died alone and without family to ever check up on them until the smell got so bad the neighbours called. Every so often, there’s not much of a body left. When people throw themselves in front of a train or have maggots eating through their insides, when even the police can’t find any identification and another Doe joins the list.
Those days, Zedaph gets home and just wants to collapse, but his roommates catch him before he slips away. They crowd him onto the couch into a cuddle pile and make tea for him. Tango slips into the kitchen to prepare the mugs, while Impulse makes sure Zedaph stays on the couch, drawing him into his arms and hugging him tightly. Skizz sits next to him, searching for the remote and putting on his favourite comfort show and once they’re all huddled up together, they don’t leave until Zedaph falls asleep. Sometimes he wakes up in his own bed, other times he finds himself lying half on top of Impulse on the couch, with Tango and Skizz lying on the floor snoring loudly.
The more time Zedaph spends working as a mortician, the less those bad days threaten to overwhelm him and the more he becomes used to the coldness of dead skin. Since the need for such interventions from his closest friends become less and less, Team ZITS, as Skizz insists on calling them, makes it their mission to spend time together on at least one afternoon a week. Be it watching TV, playing board games, or singing Karaoke so horrendously the neighbours start to complain, there’s always something fun to engage in.
Tonight they’re on the way to a bar. It’s warm enough that they don’t need a jacket even though the sun is already setting. They arrive in town square, which is just about empty. Only a few people are about, probably on their way to get as wasted as the rest of the city. The little flute melody is the first thing that greets them once they step out of the tram, but the sound gets instantly overpowered by the noise of brutal vomiting.
“You’d think people would learn to hold their liquor,” Impulse notes. “Like, jeez dude, it’s not even eleven yet!”
They laugh and make their way to a little side street which leads to their favourite bar. While the other three merrily discuss the horrendous state of todays world, Zedaph looks around before crossing the street, but even after having disappeared behind a corner or two, he can’t quite shake off the feeling of being watched.
And was the flute music always that loud?
All of them get wasted. Since they don’t need a designated driver, thank god for night buses, and tomorrow is Saturday, there’s no need to hold back. Still, by now they’re old and experienced enough to know how much they can handle and since they want to end their night in good spirits and not in the hospital, they don’t overdo it.
The next morning, Tango is the only one who isn’t dying of a splitting headache and he laughs at them when they moan and groan about the unfairness of it all.
“This is entirely your fault! I don’t have any pity left for you!” He cackles when all three of them stick out their tongues, but still, there’s aspirin and water on the table. And he has ordered pizza- it’s noon after all.
Come Monday, Zedaph has already forgotten the strange feeling he had felt a few days ago.
Still, the flute is much louder when he crosses the square in the morning and he considers slapping his hands on top of his ears. But no one around him seems to be bothered by the increased volume of the otherwise so quiet melody.
He tells Cleo about it when he clocks in, but she just shakes her head.
“Yeah, there was definitely something off about it today”, she says.
“See? I told you!”
“It hadn’t occurred to me then, but now that you mention it–“
“Why would it be so much louder today? I’ve never seen this guy, but he should know that eight am is not a good time for a loud as f*ck flute concert in the middle of the town!”
“No, Zedaph, you don’t understand!” they interrupt. “The odd thing wasn’t that it was louder- the odd thing was, that there was no flute music today at all!”
“No music, haha, very funny Cleo.” Zedaph rolls his eyes. “That guy has never taken a break. I bet he’d keep playing even if he keels over!”
“I’m not joking around. I swear to you that there wasn’t any music today. You can ask Joe if you don’t believe me, or anyone else really, but I’m not playing around.” Cleo looks at him with such an earnest look in her eyes that Zedaph has to begrudgingly believe her. “At first I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was which felt off about today, but now that you talked about it, I’m one hundred percent certain that main square was quiet today. We must’ve gotten so good at tuning out the melody in the years that we didn’t notice sooner.”
“If you say so.” He gives in, but makes a quiet note to ask the rest of the staff during the day.
That’s exactly what he does, but like Cleo did, Joe, False and Stress say the same thing. Even Doc, who normally has a much more complicated sense of humour, tells him that there wasn’t any flute melody today.
The thought of the whole company pranking him quickly dissipates into thin air after the last statement, and Zedaph starts to entertain the idea that he has probably remembered it wrong. It’s just his brain playing tricks on him because he is so used to the music that now, when it has vanished, its absence got corrected in a weird way by his brain. The gaps being filled with what should have usually been here.
Throughout the day Zedaph manages to start tuning out the music, focusing intensely on his work and soon it’s but a whisper in the air. At least one of the benefits of working with corpses is that it’s quiet all the time.
He doesn’t even notice when his work hours are over, and almost stays too long, but Cleo comes in to tell him about an issue they had with the last cremation and asks what he’s still doing there. Only then does he realise the time, and with a sheepish grin, he explains that he got lost in his own head. Cleo laughs but shoos him out nonetheless. After all, a bit of waiting won’t hurt their customers.
Going back through the town square gives him whiplash, since he turns so fast it seems like he can feel his neck snap in half. Suddenly, he can hear it again. The little melody that has haunted him in the morning has come back, rising and rising, but the crescendo never comes. Instead, it just keeps going and going until Zedaph has the urge to slam his head into a wall. But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t because looking around tells him that no one else seems bothered by the ear-infecting flute music and he really doesn’t want to stand out now. Instead, he plugs in his headphones and turns the music up the loudest it can go in an attempt to drown out the other noises. It almost works, and the further the tram gets away from the square, the quieter the music gets, until he can safely tell himself that he absolutely can’t hear it anymore. Definitely.
When he comes home the first thing he does is shout together a meeting to tell them about his weird day.
“Guys, I think I’m going crazy, but something weird is going on with that flautist guy!”
“Oh for real!” Tango butts in, “I didn’t hear it at all today, it was so strange!”
Impulse and Skizz nod in agreement, and Zedaph feels his heart plummet. This is not what he had been getting at all. But none of them could have known what he wanted to say, so he can be absolutely sure of their sincerity.
All of his courage leaves him and he deflates.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
“You okay there, bud?” Skizz looks concerned, but Zedaph brushes him off. He makes an excuse about being tired and having had a rough day, and the others seem to notice that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
They have dinner in a strange quietness and soon he gets up to leave for bed. His head hits the pillow, but it takes him ages to fall asleep. Twisting and turning doesn’t help to shut off his brain and every time he feels like his eyes are closing for good, a high-pitched buzzing keeps them from staying that way.
At first, he thinks it’s just a fly or mosquito, but the moment he notices the familiar melody, his eyes fill with tears of frustration. All he wants to do is curl up into a tiny ball and cry but he resolutely refuses to stoop that low. He might feel a bit crazy and nobody believes the things he hears, but he still has some dignity left.
It takes him many hours to finally fall asleep, and it’s not even the melody keeping him up. His brain is much more annoying than the music, trying to come up with possible reasons and explanations for a thing that shouldn’t be possible. The last thoughts plaguing his mind are those of everything being a bad dream and that everything will be fine in the morning.
Everything is not fine in the morning.
Zedaph wakes up with a headache and a similar tune faintly playing in the background. He groans. Evidently, nothing had been a dream, and now there’s sh*t he really has no want to deal with. Like ever.
The following days pass by similarly.
He can still hear the flute in its high-pitched fashion, but the more time passes, the louder it gets. On Wednesday his headphones are no longer enough to block out the sounds and he buys basic foam earplugs. Thursday morning he needs to get earplugs made especially for construction workers, but still the music will not fade.
He gets into the morgue every morning and dodges as many people as possible. He’s snappy and stand-offish, and his coworkers start to avoid him right back, not wanting to have to deal with his demeanour.
Cleo is the only one who can talk to him in the first few days and she basically tells him to get his sh*t together. Zedaph is so close to losing it that his fists twitch by his side but he takes a deep breath and calms himself down long enough to leave the room before anything can go horribly wrong.
His roommates are worrying about him, but even those he avoids as much as possible. Knowing how they all reacted when he first told them about the flute he’s hearing makes him stop trying to explain himself. Especially since he starts doubting his own sanity.
His sleep gets worse and worse, the bags under his eyes growing darker every day, and soon sleep deprivation takes hold of him. No matter what he does, he cannot escape the music- cannot escape the breathy sounds of a singular flute growing louder and louder every day, ringing in his ear until he’s reeling.
A constant pain has settled behind his frontal lobe, and not even the strongest pain meds are helping. Everything feels like too much and not enough, and the more time passes, the more Zedaph wishes to be like one of the corpses he tends to every day.
But a singular voice in his mind tells him that even six feet under, he won’t escape the haunting melody.
By now the death of the flautist has hit the news stations. People are thrilled about the headlines and the internet is going wild. Zedaph keeps scrolling through his Twitter feed and after the nth mention of how ‘weird the quiet town square feels, now that he’s gone’ he wants to hurl his phone so forcefully at the wall that it’ll break. And ideally, his head right after.
Going to work has become synonymous with pain, since it seems the nearer to town square he is, the more painful and loud the music in his ear seems. But Zedaph pushes through.
He has no one who knows about his situation. He wants no one to know about his situation, even if it keeps getting worse. And the more time passes, the louder the music gets, the more Zedaph's limbs are shaking. It’s a slight shiver in the beginning, but with no sleep and a constant migraine, it never ever stops.
Finally, after five torturous days of agony and the feeling of not being able to discern between what’s real and what’s just his mind playing tricks on him, something in his hellish routine changes.
It’s Cleo who tells him the news excitedly. But Zedaph had known what she was going to say before she managed to get a word out. The melody is getting louder. The humming in his ear is more painful than ever, and soon a sort of static sets in, filtering almost everything else out. Cleo says something about them finally having found the corpse and how low the chances are of it landing here in their little morgue.
“It’s like our own little celebrity!” she laughs. But her face quickly falls once she sees his expression. It seems like there’s something she wants to add, but the cacophony inside his head is getting louder. And with the last edges of his reeling mind can he tell that the others have left the room..
Doc is the one who wheels him in with a little flourish. “The infamous flautist of main square, everybody!” He lifts the white sheet covering the corpse.
Laying there is an old man. He seems to be in his nineties, if not older, and the rigor mortis that has set in is starting to disappear again. He must’ve been dead for a few days at least. His eyes are wide open, but there is nothing behind them. They look glassy, like one of a doll’s. Zedaph can’t stop staring.
Looking at the corpse intensely, he notices the slightly parted lips and the whistling sound of air that seem to escape them. Nothing else seems to be of interest, and Zedaph can’t believe that an urban legend has turned out to be so…disappointing.
He wants to laugh.
The tormentor of his everyday life is laying dead right in front of him, looking like an ordinary man, and still the flute music will not fade away. It’s shriller now, more piercing than it ever was before, and Zedaph can feel tears starting to form in his eyes.
Having left the room a while ago, the others don’t notice when his knees hit the tile floor. Don’t hear it when a loud sob gets interrupted by uncontrollable laughter and goes back to sobbing and gasping of air. Don’t see his hands hitting the floor and then his head, then the floor again. They don’t look at Zedaph, breaking after days of agony and restless nights.
But what they also cannot see is the desperation that has been festering inside him, growing bigger and bigger. Large eyes scan the room in the desperate attempt to make everything stop, searching for something that might be of help but not knowing what it could be..
The large needle is the first thing that catches his eyes.
It’s a big one. Far larger and heavier than a standard one, specifically made for suturing large incisions through the chest and abdomen after the completion of a forensic examination. The thread is still attached to it. Someone must’ve not thrown it away after having used it, and suddenly Zedaph is standing right in front of the table it is laying on.
It’s like his entire being is looking at this object. The one thing that might help, that might bring him peace. Everything inside him is screaming to pick it up, to make the cacophony inside his head stop. And slowly, every so slowly, Zedaph reaches forwards to pick it up.
The metal is cool against his skin, but as soon as it’s in his hands, the shaking stops. His training must be coming back to him. And, as if in a trance, Zedaph walks forward to lock the door of the large room they are in. The large room he is in. Because he is alone. It’s just him and the corpse. Him and his thoughts and the music and everything is coming together in a crescendo of emotions and music and the tiny breaths of air that seem to escape the lips of someone, no, something which is dead.
Zedaph knows the body in front of him is simply that, a body. If he puts his fingers in front of the mouth, he cannot feel the air brushing his skin. There is no heartbeat and no eye movement. But still, the stiff corpse is taunting him.
And the flute is playing inside his head and he feels as if he’s going to explode.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he starts the first stitch. The needle pushes through the skin with almost no problems, having been made for far more tougher spots, and the blood is minimal. The little that does trickle out, is almost instantly caught by the thick thread going through the new hole. Stitch after stitch, Zedaph sutures its mouth close and stitch by stitch, it feels like he can finally breathe again. The music quiets down again and after Zedaph has almost completed sewing the lips together, it has reached a volume it hasn’t been for days.
Once again tears fill his eyes, but this time he doesn’t stop them from falling. They roll down his cheeks, gather on his chin and drop onto his working hands. A few even fall in between the slightly agape lips before Zedaph finishes the last stitch and pulls tight. The nylon thread draws together and locks into the place he wants it to hold.
Finally. It’s quiet.
And Zedaph slumps forward in relief.
He catches himself quickly though, straightens up and wheels the corpse to one of the fridges in the wall. The shaking has come back, his knees feel weak and the pain inside his head is still there, but the high-pitched melody is no longer plaguing his mind and Zedaph feels like he can finally relax.
Shutting the door tight, Zedaph puts on the ledge and throws away the dull needle. He hides the dirtied coat and switches into a new, cleaned up, white one. Washing his hands gets rid of everything else, since he hadn’t bothered with gloves in his frenzy, and once he glances at the clock he realises that his shift is ending soon.
On his way home, he can finally pull out the earplugs. His body tenses once he steps into town square, but the quietness that hits him almost makes him tear up again. His heart is beating so quickly the entire time on his way that he feels he might have a heart attack, but the rest of the trip goes smoothly.
He greets the rest of team ZITS with smiles and laughter, knowing fully well there will be questions about his recent behaviour. But for now there is quietness and peace and the occasional laughter and scream when Tango tries to cheat in UNO. Again.
His head hits the pillows with a dull thump, the Aspirin he took just in case having kicked in after days of having no effects, and Zedaph closes his eyes to sleep. He is completely exhausted and sleep finds him soon.
He dreams of a big theatre. He’s sitting in the crowd, but he is the only one, and every other seat is empty. It’s pitch black and he cannot see the stage until there is a clanking sound and a singular spotlight turns on. It illuminates the middle of the stage, casting a wide shadow to the sides, and for a second Zedaph thinks there is nothing there.
But then a figure steps out of the shadows.
It’s the man from before. It is undoubtedly him, because Zedaph can see blood dripping down his face where he had pierced the skin with a needle, even though there really was not that much red before. Zedaph wants to run. Wants to get up and bolt for the exit. But he is frozen in place, gaze locked on the figure on the stage staring at him with a smile that pulls at the stitches of his mouth.
The man has his hands hidden behind his back, but they’re slowly reaching forwards, revealing a little wooden instrument. Zedaph’s heart plummets.
It’s a flute.
And the man starts to play. Pushes the mouthpiece against his sutured lips and even though it should be impossible, the stitches had been airtight, Zedaph had triple checked, a singular melody makes its way across the theatre.
Zedaph jolts awake. There’s pain in his head and he’s sweaty all over. The melody is back, much simpler than it had been at times but still piercing loud. There’s a strange wetness running down the sides of his head, and there’s a coppery smell in the air.
He knows that smell. Knows what it is, and still he can’t help but check. He lifts his hands towards his neck, travelling upwards until he can feel the liquid touch his fingers. Bringing them both in front of him again, under the dim shine of the street lantern not being blocked out by the covers on his window, Zedaph can see blood.
His heart is beating fast. His breaths are coming quickly, the flute is still playing and suddenly Zedaph has the urge to check something else. Once again he touches his neck, travelling further up than before, but instead of hitting his ear lobe like he would expect, there is nothing there.
There’s blood oozing out of his ear canal on either side of his head, but the earlobes are gone. Wildly looking around, Zedaph jumps up in a panic to turn on the light. And there, in the middle of the pillow, sitting in a pool of his own blood that’s seeping deeper and deeper into the fabric, lay his ears. The flute music picks up again, and Zedaph knows:
The nightmare is just getting started.
