Burst: A Novel by Mary Otis

Author:Mary Otis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zibby Books

chapter sixteen

Through her open kitchen window, Charlotte heard the world rush in—a single plane shearing the clouds, cars streaming down the 10 Freeway, and wild parrots that had recently descended upon Glenalbyn after a pet store in Palm Desert burned down.

But then, out of the blue, there was the other sound—the mysterious noise, the sound like a tiny person hammering metal in her ear, the thing that signaled the other thing—the music. It had disappeared a few months ago, but in the past two weeks, suddenly and without warning, she’d become her own private jukebox, albeit one with an endlessly shifting playlist that played for hours or seconds. It had scared her enough to stop drinking. For now.

It was impossible to know whether in the next second she would hear the stuttering symphony, the tinny, looping calliope music, the minor-key canticle, or the elevator Muzak that seemed to squirt directly into her brain. Charlotte tried to ignore it, and sometimes, for a few days, the music vanished. But then it would begin again when she least expected it.

The previous day she was relieved to discover that the music she suddenly heard blaring came from a car radio. That was, until it morphed into mad parade music. But Charlotte had a plan. She was going to will it away. Mind over matter, and she was starting today.

Charlotte didn’t expect Viva, who’d been convalescing at her cabin, to be up for hours. She’d gone to bed early the previous night, and Charlotte worried about the amount she was sleeping. Still, Charlotte treasured this time alone. Being cooped up with her daughter in a 550-square-foot cabin for the past three months had created a continual static in the air. Charlotte stepped outside and surveyed her plants.

Charlotte ran a no-kill garden. No beetle murders. No aphid massacres. No ladybug slaughter. Forget the thrips. She’d never even gone after the crickets, not when they got into her garage and took up residence in her cache of empty garden pots and not when they somehow migrated to her cabin and mysteriously made their way up a flight of stairs in an overnight silent siege, invading her cedar closet, popping every which way when she opened the door. If they brought good luck, as some believe, Charlotte had a great deal coming to her.

But sometimes saving a thing involves killing a thing.

Today Charlotte planned to salvage what was left of her poor skeletonized Brugmansia tree, its leaves, or what was left of them, lacy with holes. Small green caterpillars no longer than an eighth of an inch had arrived the previous week during days of strange, fretful, hot October winds. At first, Charlotte had painstakingly picked them from her Brugmansia, put them in a bucket, and relocated them to her compost pile—a relocation of epic decadence if there ever was one. But she couldn’t stay ahead of the caterpillar carnage, and because she had no privacy, because her daughter swanned around in a perpetual state of mourning, because the music was starting to drive her crazy, today something snapped.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.