Nox and Justine

Listen (12 min) | Short Story | Horror/Magical Realism | Violence, disturbing imagery

There are two pieces no musician should ever play, but Nox wasn’t just any musician.

Other jazz virtuosos begged for a set with him, but they couldn’t keep up. No drummer in New Athens could touch his talent.

Top-drawer patrons packed clubs to hear his solos and fall under his spell. He watched them as he played—tapping, rolling, pounding the beat of eating, drinking, laughing, love-making—their mouths chewing, throats gulping, bodies rising and falling to his cadence.

When Nox drummed, the gods sat up and took notice. Performing for the Poseidon Club, Nox rippled the ebb and flow of tides and the churning of waves. Pipes burst, fountains erupted, and members swore the King of Waters danced naked with them in the geysers.

For the Dionysus Society, he brushed rushing blood, struck flesh-tearing triplets, polyrhythm unmaking minds as the God of the Unfixed Face slipped into the mayhem.

Nox was the greatest, but none of the greats got anywhere without a muse. At the center of his power glowed Justine. The first time he’d seen her dance—draped in a band of fig leaves and nothing else—he composed a piece that doubled the height of his potted palm.

He’d returned to the theater the next night, but by the time he got backstage, she’d left with another man.

He couldn’t compose. Couldn’t play. In his nightmares, strange eyes, hands, and lips covered her. Her face wore a mask of hatred for him, and he woke screaming.

He’d bribed the theater doorman, hired some muscle, and made sure to be the only one admitted to her dressing room from that night on.

She was at all his performances, worshiping from the audience, but in the breaths between beats, in the laughter of gin-soaked cocktail parties and the facades of costume balls her gaze drifted, and there was always someone ready to catch it.

Gripping Justine’s shoulders as she sat at the dressing room mirror, brushing her dark, bobbed hair, Nox proposed. From now on, she’d only dance for him. Leaning in behind her, he grazed her ear with his lips. “Baby, you and me’ll do great things together.”

The who’s-who wedding cost a fortune. The champagne alone would’ve set up a family with a month of easy living.

Nox and Justine slid onto the dance floor. Surrounded by their guests, faces blurred as they whirled.

Glasses clinked. Corks popped. Candlelight glittered from the tables, twinkling in diamond necklaces and silver cigarette cases.

The dark pulsed with an orange light, and a bang blasted the room.

The guests screamed. Nox ducked and ran, dragging Justine by the hand as a second bang scorched the air. Justine jerked against his grip and went limp.

In the balcony, Nox’s hired muscle shouted, piling on the shooter.

Justine lay at the center of the dance floor. The white silk of her dress ran red. Her eyes stared at nothing.

Nox’s trembling fingers caressed her face and body. Every inch of skin, every curve, unspoken word, unrealized dance was a piece he’d never write. Inspiration flowed out of the hole in her chest, and he had nothing to catch it.

When police removed her body, they tried to explain. The gunman might’ve been a rival musician or an old lover of Justine’s—either way, they’d get to the bottom of it.

Friends tried to comfort Nox, but he shouted, throwing plates and glasses at them until he was alone in the ballroom.

A puddle of Justine’s blood marred the white marble floor. Kneeling, he dipped his fingers.

He remembered Justine’s arms around his neck. Her fingers twirling his hair. “You’re a god, handsome. You’re my god.”

Seating himself behind the orchestra’s drum set, he flipped and spun the sticks. Stretched his neck. Closed his eyes.

He attacked, and the snare exploded with the beat of running legs. Left, right, and center, he struck the throb of laughing guts, clapping hands, and expanding lungs. He rippled eyes opening and closing. Pounded heartbeat.

Sweat tickled as it dripped past his collar. His shirt clung. His wrists cramped. Marrying sense, motion, and music he flung body, soul, and percussion beyond time and space.

Through closed lids, lights dimmed.

He drummed legs walking and falling. Sobs undulating from the gut. Hands stilling. Lungs sputtering. Heart beating ba-dum…ba-dum……ba-dum.

The last stroke fell and sustained itself as a dark, low exhalation.

The ballroom was gone. Obsidian floor stair-stepped to a riser. At the top, an inky velvet settee curled around two seated figures.

The first, in the shape of a woman, wore a clinging silk gown rippling like a prism, changing from black to green with blooming flowers.

The other, like a man, wore white tie and tails, a black sash across his chest pinned at the bottom with a gold bident.

Shadow covered the faces. Both wore gold jewel-encrusted crowns. At their feet, sat a growling, three-headed dog, dark, with red pupils, wearing three diamond collars.

The King of the Dead spoke to his Queen, voice deep as a cavern, pale fingers drumming on the arm of the settee. “What shall we do with the insect, my dear?”

The Queen’s voice was birdsong. “Bold for an insect, bold and impious. Fortune favors such creatures, and we must play the game.”

Nox ignored the chill creeping up his limbs and knelt. “I meant no offense. I’m only here for my wife. She was taken at our wedding, long before her time. Chance took her. All I ask’s a chance to bring her back.”

Nox heard the grin in the King’s voice. “What love you must have for one another. I suppose she has eyes for no one else. All the kisses on her lips are yours alone.”

The Queen snapped long, ringed fingers.

Justine appeared, still in white, blood flowing down her front.

Rushing to her, Nox’s arms passed through her form.

The King laughed in his throat. “You don’t understand the rules. You will play. Play until the lights of the land of the living shine on your face. But, if you look at her before the piece is complete, she belongs to me.”

Nox felt the King’s gaze running over Justine with the eyes of every man who’d ever desired her.

Her dark lids rose to the throne and fell.

Nox ground his teeth. She was his muse, and she belonged to him.

The King pointed a finger at the drums.

Taking his seat and sticks, Nox jerked his chin at the throne, smiling at his wife. “See you up top, baby.”

She licked her darkening lips, pupils wide like a hungry cat’s.

Nox raised his hands and closed his eyes. Bass and center, he beat a rising, steady pulse.

There was nothing left to stop him. Together, he and Justine would compose a thousand percussive pieces until the King of Gods himself was called down.

Drum-lungs barked and rolled under his strokes.

The sneer in Death’s voice nibbled at him, and he imagined Justine spending her life—won by his genius—in other arms.

He tapped the bending of joints, the rhythm of one foot in front of the other.

She was always tugging at her rope, a kid’s balloon hungry for blue oblivion.

Nox popped laughter from the rim of the center drum.

He could play the piece ‘til every soul in Hades danced in the streets, but he’d never keep her. To bring her back was to set her free.

Tapping the slap of running feet, Nox swallowed the groan in his throat.

She was on her way to cross the River when he found her. People younger than her died every day. He was always going to lose her. All he could be sure to keep was a last look of devotion, the expression she wore at every one of his performances. The sight of her, adoring her god from beyond the grave, had to be enough.

Striking the first beat of his big finish, the glow of the living world kindled.

In the half-light of resurrection, on the second-to-last measure, Nox looked at Justine.

She sat alone in the audience at a table in their wedding hall. Stared at him as he beat the last of the music.

In place of worship, her jaw fell open into a silent scream. The whites of her eyes stretched, retracting under a wrinkled, gnashing mask of hatred.

Frost wrapped his body, and he dropped the sticks.

Justine rushed him, her nails clawing at his sight.

Nox cried out and flailed backwards.

Justine’s legs, torso, face, and hands faded to nothing.

He sat up, gasping in the empty hall.

Retrieving the sticks and righting his stool, he wiped the sweat from his eyes. Stilled his breathing.

Raising his hands, he began to play, but the room dimmed, and he heard himself drumming the Death Piece.

He jumped up, pacing until his body and the lights regained their warmth.

He sat at the instrument. Stretched his neck. Rolled his shoulders and flexed his wrists. He squeezed his eyes shut and played, focusing on the first piece Justine inspired, on her dark, fluttering lashes and the pomegranate smile on her lips.

The Death Piece vibrated from the snare, and the picture in his mind turned to a loathing, bloodless shade.

Nox roared, punching and kicking membrane, wood, and metal until his knuckles bled and there was nothing left to play.

In the balcony sat a clapping figure in black tails and a crown, who laughed and disappeared as the lights came up.

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