/yesod

Tag: singing

  • doo wop

    I wake, half asleep, in the downstairs guest room, fumbling for the alarm clock on the bedside table. The clock radio is warbling a doo-wop tune from the 60s, the music is tinny, fading in and out of the radio static. 

    “Let me in…” the voice sings, mellow and soothing. “You can’t resist me… Let me in… Let me inside…”

    I struggle to sit up, sleep still heavy on me, weighing me down.

    The radio, the song, louder now, insistent: “You cannot resist me, let me inside…”

    My hand finds the nightstand, flat against the tabletop.  Nothing.

    I realize then that there is no radio in this room, no clock. 

    The music, the song, the singing is coming from outside the window.

    A shadow looms there, just visible between the half-drawn blinds. Tall and dark, learning down to peer in at me, singing… cajoling… calling softly…

    “Let me inside, you cannot resist me, let me in… let me in…”

    I put my hand up, the selenite ring on my finger like a little moon, a bright ward against the darkness outside.

    The singing fades. The shadow slowly withdraws. Maybe it hisses as it does.

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good.

    Here’s what’s left…

    …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are…

    …my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days.

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song.

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings…

    …I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.