The Music of Midnight by Dallas Mullican

Author:Dallas Mullican [Mullican, Dallas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781074897048
Publisher: Charon Press
Published: 2019-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Andy lay in bed staring at the walls, his thoughts the white-gray of a cloudy day. Summer waned. Late into August, the southern climate remained warm and humid, yet he felt so cold. He gazed at his muses posed on the walls. Did they embrace their destinies, or find their fates thrust upon them? Mozart with his sly smile, Brahms majestic and wise, Beethoven stern and serious, he wanted to ask them a thousand questions. The only friends left to him, and their silence made the loneliness unbearable.

Andy wondered if he would look back on this time from somewhere years removed and laugh at his own foolishness. He did not see how he could laugh tomorrow when he could not even smile today. The gap between the two seemed immeasurable in both time and space. Still, how many teenagers endured such angst when forced to envision an uncertain future? How many, like Darren, chose to check out rather than deal with the pain of now and the fear of tomorrow? Were they cowards or the bravest among us?

Maddie feared suicides doomed to hell. She believed only God possessed the right to take a life—to take one’s own life was to play God, to place one’s self equal to the holy Lord. Andy thought not. If true, taking medicine or having an operation to become well again, or to stay alive, was equally playing God. Maddie believed taking one’s own life showed lack of gratitude for the gift God gave. Why could a person not be grateful to God for granting them reason enough to recognize when a life no longer merited living?

Andy did not consider himself suicidal, not really. As much as he wanted the pain to end, as much as he feared the future and lamented the past, he would not kill himself. Damned hope! He still possessed so much hope. Hope that a dream he dimly envisioned might someday materialize. Hope for reconciliation within himself. A happy union taking hold between the nurture of childhood and experiences yet forged.

Andy supposed he just needed to understand. He needed to come to grips with what Darren had done. As much as it sickened him to admit it, he aimed much of his anger at his friend. Yes, Darren’s dilemma frightened him, perhaps it even became unbearable, but could he not brave finding out where it might lead? The answer to that question lay comatose in a hospital bed.

Did Darren consider for the briefest moment before swallowing those pills what he would leave behind? Andy supposed he did. His leaving for New York may have been the most forceful push sending Darren over the edge. If so, guilt ought to be the sole occupant of this emotional whirlwind. Why then such anger with Darren for leaving him? Because he left him. Now he was alone.

Better to blame himself and take it inside, roll it into self-loathing. If the fault lay with him, he could fix it, maybe. However, if he

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