The Sound of Drums

The Sound of Drums
by Dustin Goodwin



A lonely silhouette sits on the street corner of a forgotten road within a forgotten city. Almost a pity, the ray of an overhead light casts a shadow over the “man”. Sand and dirt fill the streets around him and sit beneath his feet. Meeting the sand on the floor is the beauty of a brown and polished guitar with silver strings. What sings are the strings of the wood-clad instrument as the figure summons the music to pluck away. Some say the silhouette plays when the nights become days and the days become burdens of finding a purpose in all life. Tonight, this figure takes the guitar and plays a tune of a rising pace, strummed to the speed of the swift winds. "Sinful", the word to describe the sound that the instrument portrays, for it plays the noise of a thousand dusks and dawns on the horizon. Cries in the distance of another place arise as another man casts his stone:

Not much more but the filth of a rotten corpse or the scent of a diseased dog exists anymore. The sound of drums fills the atmosphere occupying every inch of space with a subtle noise that haunts the mind. I can't tell you what year it is, because no living person can recall a fact so useless. The people of this earth lost count simply because no one cares. A year to them is a new year of misery and torment. The entire population of the once United States of America became self-reliant when the collapse of Domacracy occurred; Government along with it.

What has this world come to? Each day that goes, this thought runs through my mind. I think about the deterioration of humanity as the rain gathers into puddles. The glow of red, flickering neon lights illuminates the darkened liquid, as I thrust my leg into the center. The water gets scared and jumps out from under my boot. It reassembles when it’s safe and away from me. To my right, a few darkened folks gather at their porch steps; some sit and others fall. The population has suffered a substantial loss in recent times. Everyone is dressed in black. It's as if they're all going to a funeral. They're standing in their graves.

Once again the figure picks up his guitar and strums the chords. He hits all the low notes; rarely moving down the board of strings. The moon illuminates the darkened backdrop of a saddened space. The pace of the guitarist slowly starts to rise. To the surprise of silence, the figure begins to chant. He can't speak English, he can't even hear. A look of fear strikes the man's face when he opens his mouth to sing. What his voice brings isn't the sound of a song, but the sound of a thousand bellows, his voice their single vessel. The night is still.

In the final hour I walk into the bar which was once a circulating business. The bottles on the wall behind the bar are gone, shattered or fallen over. A few chairs are missing their legs. A few people actually took the time to set them back up; certainly not
the man in the corner of the room with a mainline in his arm. Another man sits in a seat holding a bottle with a broken top on his table. He is a man who used to come here every day. He's probably never had a real home. No one knows for certain. I Haven't seen him in a while. The darkened rings under his eyes signify the lack of sleep. I don't blame him. For some reason, he's skinnier than I can remember. His hair is thin and he almost looks like a woman. His eyes are fixed on me and no one else. There's nothing to drink, so I sit across from him. He looks at me with a disturbed look on his face.

"It's the last one." he says.

"I know."

He says a few other things, but I can't hear him. Inaudible. I sit for a little while longer and decide to leave. Outside, there are a good number of people all looking in the same direction, while listening to dull roars of what sound to be bombs going off. I can't hear them. I can't hear them just as I can no longer hear the birds sing. All I can hear is a faucet. Dripping. Like the sounds of deep drums. It haunts me. Something so haunting, I'd rather not say. Like the face of death and God himself smiling to spite my presence. The waves of cold heat come from the distance and brush across my face. It feels nice.

For one final performance, the figure picks up his guitar and begins to pass over the chords with his dexterous hands. Bland is the night tonight. The light is only shining on and for the guitar, towards a new face of a new musical nuance. For once, the musician knows no limits, as he violently hits the steel strings with hands of hate and fingers of fear. The sound is almost unbearable, until the strings break loose. Hell once did the same.