Review Summary: I lived to love to death.
A man drowned in his own bed. It was atypical asphyxiation: a chest cavity filled with fluid, nose clogged yet eyes bone-dry, ears leaking profusely. He was found on the left side of the mattress, arms outstretched towards his right.
Perhaps the last moments of his life were filled with waves. The last waves of light he saw - emanating from the redundancy of morning moonlight. The waves he heard, the waves he felt - convulsions from thunderous sobs that wracked his body. His inhalations, taking in less and less air. In spite of deprivation, his valiant heart drummed on forcefully. Or maybe it was because of it.
Currents buffet him forth, roaring walls of blue-grey resonance cresting and forming anew. As they fall, he hears a metallic crash - rhythmic interjections to a tortured, irregular heartbeat. A deluge of saltwater forces its way into his mouth - he coughs up what he can. A scream, birthed from desperation, bursts out from half-submerged lungs. Light hits eyes sealed shut and blood red colours his field of vision. Useless illumination for a man who chose to close his eyes.
Eventually he does open them.
You’re too late, he thinks.
I’m too late. His last night, spent in darkness, had no moon. His last morning will. And what a glorious sight it is, a pale crescent not quite overshadowed by the brilliance of the sun. It seems to smile bashfully, knowing its presence serves no practical purpose. The man knows he’s dying, he can hear a deafening roar in his ears - and the song of the diurnal moon echoes, twice, thrice, until he loses track. Beauty when he can no longer want it.
(On a better day, he might have remembered that the moon pulls the tides.)
It is a delicate chiming that hovers amidst the dissonance. Distant notes travelled far to preside in terrestrial skies. He’s too frenzied to suss out the patterns, but a more sane man would have noticed their curiously melodic nature. The lowest frequencies are dense with gravity; they bear weight that befits the heft of a celestial body. That they are seemingly floating in infinite space lends an ethereal note to their existence.
When the body was found, it was noted that organs were missing. A hollow ribcage held nothing but saline liquid. The tear ducts were bursted, the auditory cortex had been incised. Authorities swept in; no foul play was suspected.
