The Vanishing Song
Marcus pressed record for the hundredth time. His fingers found the familiar pattern on the guitar strings. The melody flowed like water, each note perfect and haunting. The song filled his cramped apartment, wrapping around him like silk.
He stopped playing and reached for his phone. Silence.
The recording showed nothing but dead air. Forty-three seconds of nothing.
Sarah knocked on his door that evening. “Play it again,” she said. “That song from yesterday.”
Marcus picked up his guitar. The melody came effortlessly. Sarah’s eyes closed as she listened. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Record me,” Marcus said, handing her his phone.
She held it up and nodded. Marcus played the entire piece. The music soared through the room, each phrase more beautiful than the last. When he finished, Sarah stared at the phone’s screen.
“Empty,” she whispered.
Marcus tried everything. He borrowed professional equipment from the music store. He used analog tape recorders from the 1970s. He sang the melody into voice memos, hummed it during phone calls, played it near security cameras. Nothing worked.
The song existed only in the moment. Only when he played it live.
Word spread through the local music scene. People came to his apartment to hear the impossible song. They brought their own recording devices. All failed. The melody seemed to slip away from machines, hiding from anything tried to capture it.
Marcus stopped sleeping. He played the song every waking hour, terrified he might forget it. The melody lived in his fingers now, burned into his muscle memory. But what if he lost it? What if the song decided to leave him completely?
Friends stopped visiting. Sarah stopped answering his calls. His neighbors complained about the constant music. Marcus didn’t care. The song needed him. He could feel it feeding on his devotion, growing stronger with each performance.
Weeks passed. Marcus grew thin. His fingers bled from playing. He developed calluses on top of calluses. The guitar strings bit into his skin, but he couldn’t stop.
The song owned him now.
Late one night, Marcus realized the truth. The melody wasn’t cursed. It was alive. It chose who could hear it and when. It refused to be trapped in recordings because it wanted to stay free, to exist only in fleeting moments.
The song fed on his struggle, his obsession. It grew more beautiful as he grew more desperate.
Marcus smiled and played it one more time. The melody filled the empty apartment. No one was there to hear it except him and the living song had consumed his life.
The music stopped. Marcus set down his guitar.
He had finally understood. The song didn’t belong to him. He belonged to the song.
Marcus whispered to the silent room: “The most beautiful art demands the ugliest sacrifice.”
-S.B.
