A Lucky Musician (Part 2)

7:00

As I left my workplace, I glanced towards Ariel's, looking for any sign that she might by coincidence be coming out at the same time. No such luck. I'd been permitted by Brian to leave work about an hour early, on account of my recent early mornings and late nights.

"Oh, sure!" Brian had said, after I'd asked in my usual confident manner. He clapped me on the back in a familiar gesture. "Blake, a hard worker like yourself deserves it." Trey, one of my coworkers nearby, had grumbled to me for a minute about favouritism after Brian had left. "Gosh, Blake, you must have the devil's own luck," he'd finished.

Now, as I walked to the parking space where I'd left my Ford, my thoughts turned to when I would next be performing for my special visitor. A whole week away. A week could be an eternity, if I wanted. I resolved not to be afraid, as I always did. A promise that was, unfortunately, always forgotten by the time he came again.

Upon coming to my vehicle, I entered it, started it, and pulled out of the parking space. Cruising along the highway back to my home, while I was still ambling along Memory Lane, I found myself, for the thousandth time, recalling the very first instance that I'd entertained a visit from the man.

On that evening, ten years ago, the evening that I'd spent countless hours reconstructing, I had yet to purchase the very nice (and rather expensive) condo which I nowadays call home. I'd also yet to be hired by Gladstone Real Estate. I was, in fact, working in downtown Clayton, at the Tim Hortons where I now buy my coffee, funnily enough. The place where I met Ariel. Most of my coworkers then had been gangly, greasy-faced teenagers, and came and went quicker than cockroaches when you turn the lights on.

Speaking of cockroaches, the place where I lived then had plenty of them, both the insect and the human varieties. It was a three-floor apartment building, with a basement that was also available for rent. I lived on the very top floor, in a three-room compartment. Living room, bathroom, bedroom. The water in the faucets and shower felt like and tasted like sewer-water. The wallpaper in the bathroom was threadbare and torn in some places. Time and cigarette smoke had clouded up the images of what I thought might have been ducks in sailor suits marching in line at one point.

The carpet in the living room was a mossy green colour, and smelled stalely awful. The lights were yellow and urine-like. There was a narrow counter at one end of the living room, a small, yellowing porcelain sink sunken into it. Above it were two faded blue cupboards, where I kept a stockpile of Minute Rice, Top Ramen, and Kraft Dinner. Bachelor foods. Nearby, there stood a small, ancient, circular wooden table. It was covered in a red-checkered cloth, which contrasted terribly with the lighting and carpet. Tucked in beside it were two rickety old wooden chairs.

A sofa kept vigil lumberingly on the rim of the living room, brown with huge beige cushions. It smelled evilly of old cigarettes, ancient flatulence, almost-cleaned-out vomit, and spilled beer. It was very soft, though, perfect for when you were drunk and you need a comfy place to pass out. Unfortunately, the smell of it was enough to wake you up in the middle of the night and send you puking all the way to the bathroom.

In the bedroom, my single bed (the room wasn't big enough for anything else, and besides, no woman would have been interested anyways) was always kept neatly made. It wasn't as soft as the couch, but it was much nicer-smelling. The sheets were changed regularly, and I sprayed it often with Febreeze. Still, the air of the apartment soaked into it, and it was somewhat unpleasant. A nightstand with a surface no bigger than that of a barstool was placed to the right of my bed. My Pixar lamp was on it, as well as a small notepad and a pen. A grimy window near the corner of the room showed a panoramic view of a dirty street, with low, equally dirty buildings.

I mentioned earlier that there were cockroaches. There were, and I would see them every morning when I flicked on the lights in the kitchen and bathroom. Scuttling along, they would crawl into the moldy cracks and crevices in the walls. Eventually, the very sight of them was enough to drive me nearly to insanity. I would see them in my nightmares, scurrying out of the walls in the millions, and burying me in their crunchy multitudes. They would pour into my mouth and nose, suffocating me, or crush me slowly beneath their immense weight. Sometimes they would eat me alive.

The floors were thin, which was a problem when I wanted to get to sleep. Below me were a Saudi couple who constantly shouted at each other in hoarse Arabic. Eventually, they left, only to be replaced by a group who I never saw, but heard all the time. Often there was the unmistakable mewling of a young baby, and sometimes the sounds of rough lovemaking. Much of the time, the sounds mixed together.

Eventually they left too, and the last neighbours  were a big, burly man and his timid mouse of a wife. There was usually drunken, enraged bellowing, followed by the sound of fists pumping against flesh. Pained whines followed thereafter. The woman would have bruises the next day, and the man would appear smug and self-righteous, not showing the least bit of shame.

Anyways, on the night of the first visit from my "friend", I'd been steadily downing several six packs, making myself drunker and drunker with every can. At first, I'd thought that the knock on the door was a hallucination. After all, after drinking as much as I had, you tend to doubt yourself about everything.

I hated my life. The reason that I was methodically drinking massive amounts of alcohol was to summon up courage. On the table in the living room, I had a gun. A Colt pistol. It was old, but it would do the job just fine. A good old bullet up through the roof of my mouth would end everything. I was sure that I wouldn't be the first to kill myself in such a horrid room, in such a horrid life.

The knock, sounding fatally hollow as it pounded away at the door, seemed to strike away the supports of my bravery, and I felt a bit of doubt shake me. I was sitting on the couch, with a half empty beer in my hand. To bolster my resolve, I finished the rest of the can quickly, and felt liquid confidence brew up in me again. The knock sounded again, but it didn't perturb me this time. I stood up clumsily, and stumbled my way to the door, barely able to keep my footing. At one point, I fell, and crawled across the rest of the floor.  When I reached the door, I stood, expecting it to be my landlord at the door. Supporting myself on the doorframe, I twisted the doorknob, pulled the door open, and looked out.

It was not my landlord, that was the first thing that was obvious to me right away. Instead of being about six inches shorter than me, this man was over a foot taller. Instead of a threadbare t-shirt and ratty old jeans, he was dressed in a trench coat, with a brown fedora on his head, and an umbrella in his hand. I looked up at his face. Sunburned. His eyes were black as night, and he had a grin plastered to his face, showing off teeth that seemed very sharp. His nose looked like a heron's beak.

"Hello?" I said. What I didn't notice immediately was that I was stone-cold sober again, all at once. My speech wasn't impaired at all.

"Hello, Blake. Can I come in?" His voice was grating, like steel being torn apart.

I was taken aback by his directness... and the fact that he'd known my name. "No, sorry buddy, but you can't. I've got some business to do," I said. I turned around, and went back into the room. Turning once more, I grabbed the door handle. I pushed it back outwards. "Now, if you'll please excuse me-"

Suddenly, a hand shot out and blocked the door from closing. Ordinarily, the hand in question would have been broken quite badly. But instead, fingers curled around the edge of the door, and pushed it back open with an inhuman strength. I was pushed backwards onto the floor. I saw with a dull, inarticulate horror that the nails had grown to become talons, with filth and blood clots caked under them. The hands were scaly and dirty.

He stood there in the wide open doorway, his shadow from the light in the corridor casting itself menacingly. "Now, I'm going to ask to come in again. Hello Blake. Can I come in?"

"Yuh-yes." I was dimly aware that I was trembling uncontrollably. There was a sudden release inside of me. A sharp, thick smell reached my nose, and with considerable embarrassment, I looked down at the wet spot spreading on the front of my jeans, and saw that my beer had made a reappearance.

"Splendid." He stepped inside. The stranger turned to look at me with a hint of disgust. Casually, as if it was something he had to do regularly, he pointed one scaly finger at the front of my pants. They were instantly dry, and that acrid urine smell vanished from the air. He strode over to the table with the checkered cloth, the one with the gun on it, and pulled out a chair. He sat himself down in it, sighed, and looked at me. While taking off his hat, revealing neatly combed hair, and leaning his umbrella against the side of the table, he said, "Well, aren't you going to come and sit down?"

I sat on the carpet, frozen in shock. His hands were back to normal. Even so, they were still very creepy hands.

"I said," he growled, "Aren't you going to sit down?" He pointed at me with one gaunt, skeletal finger. Not under my own control, my limbs jerked out awkwardly as I walked to the table. It was as if steel cables had been embedded in my body, and were controlling me. I felt myself wanting to cry. I sat down, and the moment I did, the force that was controlling me subsided. I sank back in my chair.

"Now, let's-" he stopped suddenly. I had started sobbing, and was mumbling over and over again, "...Just a dream, just a dream, just a bad dream..."

"Oh, stop that!" he shouted. He lifted my head up off the table, and slapped me a good one across the right cheek. I stopped. I felt a warm, smooth trickle of blood ooze down the side of my face.

"Now," he began again. "Let's have a talk, you and I. You want to kill yourself, yes?"

I didn't ask how he knew. The discarded cans of beer and the neglected pistol sitting on the table told their own story. I only muttered, "Yeah, that's right."

"Wonderful. But you know? I've got a better idea," he said. He picked up the pistol, and put it into an interior pocket of his trench coat. I knew better by now than to protest. "Tell me, Blake, what do you want most in the world?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I want to have a normal life. I want to have enough money, and I want to have a good job." After a moment, I added, "And I want out of this shitty apartment building."

As I said this, he rubbed his hands together excitedly. His peeling red face seemed to glow. His brown hair, which was the exact same colour as my own, suddenly burst into flame. I yelped.

"Oh, sorry, I'll just fix that." With a wave of his hand, his hair extinguished, and was, miraculously, untouched by the fire. It was just as neat as ever.

"Who are you?" I said, sounding far more belligerent than I felt. My eyes felt like dinner plates.

"Oh, I'm called by many names," he said mysteriously. "Some you wouldn't be able to pronounce. But you can call me Lou."

"Lou," I repeated, dumbfounded. "Okay, sure, Lou, why not? So Lou, why are you here?"

"Oh, Blake, I thought you were smarter than that!" he said. "I'm here because you want to kill yourself. I absolutely hate to see any sort of potential wasted. So I've come here to strike you a deal."

"A deal?"

"Oh, yes. You play the violin, correct?"

I was surprised by this question, which seemingly came from nowhere. "Well, sort of. I mean, like, I took lessons when I was a kid. I was never really good at it, but I was decent."

"Hm." Lou seemed slightly disappointed. "I suppose that'll be good enough. So, do you have a violin here?"

"Nope." I hadn't touched a violin in six years, let alone played one.

"That's alright, no worries." He frowned in concentration. He put his fists together in the air, and pulled them away from each other. A small, shiny new violin appeared between his hands.

"Whoa!" I stood up quickly, knocking back the chair. It hit the ground with a squeaky thud.

He grinned, his face stretching out into a grotesque expression of cheer. In his manic glee, I saw his face swim, as if it weren't real, only a mask he'd put on. This thought terrified me more than anything else.

Still smiling, he held it out to me. "Go on, Blake," he said, his eyes sparkling like black water in the moonlight. "Take her for a spin."

I briefly thought that grabbing the violin from him was the last thing on earth that I wanted to do.

I reached out, and took it from him.

It had a comforting weight in my hands, a surprisingly welcome weight. With even a bit of slight enthusiasm, I placed my jaw on the chinrest, and my left hand on the neck. I realized that I didn't have a bow.

"Oh, darn, sorry, I forgot the bow!" he laughed. He made a flicking motion in the air with his hand, as if snapping an invisible whip, and a brightly polished bow appeared in it. He handed it to me. I accepted it willingly.

As I touched the bow to the strings, a shudder of ecstasy rippled through me. Back when I was a boy, I'd considered my music to be a chore. I'd never actually enjoyed it. But this was a joy that I had never known, an excitement that both invigorated and frightened me. It was a feeling of power.

"Now, could you play something for me?" he asked.

"I can't remember how to play anything," I responded.

"That's alright," he said. Once again, he outstretched a finger towards me. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, all at once, it was as if I'd been struck by lightning. A blinding heat filled me, as pain flared in my temples. It only lasted for a second, but it felt as if I were trapped in that second forever, banging at the invisible walls like a street mime. Then, all at once, the pain vanished. My head felt heavy, as if packed with sand.

"There," he said, lowering his hand. He seemed satisfied.

I suddenly grabbed the violin, and began playing immediately. Except I had no idea what I was playing, or how I was playing it. My fingers lived in their own little world, as I tried to imagine what could be happening. The sense of power returned, stronger than before. But it was now so strong as to be sickening, and all I wanted was for it to stop. The man made another flicking motion with his wrist, and my hands finished playing. They shook violently, as I dropped the violin, and fell to my knees. I felt an enormous sense of draining, of loss. Power that I'd felt so immensely a minute before had dissipated, almost as if it had never existed at all.

The man was beaming. "That was great!" he said enthusiastically. "I knew you'd work out."

"What did you do to me?" I croaked. I tasted faint blood in the back of my throat, and was suddenly sure I would vomit.

"Oh, I just transferred a bit of my own talent to you, that's all. I took it back, though. Just to see how your body reacts. You'll work out just fine."

"What's the deal? You said you wanted to make a deal!" I was close to tears. I wanted to wake up. Thankfully, the urge to vomit had dissipated.

"And I do," he said. His eyes were pools of shadow. "Now, Blake, you say you want a normal life?"

"Yes! I've already said that!"

"Well, I can give that to you. But there's a price."

By now, I had a pretty good guess as to who my visitor was. "What's the price? My soul?"

"Oh, no. You, my friend, have been affected by the media far too much. No, I just need you to do me a favour every so often."

"A favour?" I was finding it harder and harder to believe that I was awake, but somehow I doubted it less by the minute.

"Well, yes. You see, I simply love violin music. It's something that the storytellers have not erred about. Unfortunately though, I'm getting to be very old now, and I am no longer able to play."

"You don't look old."

"Why, I'm flattered. But back to what I was saying. Since I am no longer able to hear myself play, I am only able to hear other people play. But the music that you humans make is imperfect. Deeply flawed. It hurts me to hear it.

"And that is why," he continued. "I need to hear my own music. I have quite a few compositions,-" he waved his hand, and several sheafs of paper appeared. "- all of which are far better than anything that is made by man. I tried giving the most accomplished violinist I could find the task of playing some for me." Here he sniffed. "Needless to say, he couldn't even play the simplest one. So I found that I need to loan out my talent to my human volunteers. Possess them, in a way."

I shivered, and rubbed the goosebumps that had shot up on my arms.

"But unfortunately, the possession process causes great discomfort. Of course, they always get used to it after a while, but never completely. In time, you'll feel less of an effect when you play for me."

"Why would I want to play for you!?" I shouted. I felt like my body had been wrapped in live wires, and my stomach seemed to be full of convulsing snakes. "It feels like... It feels like death."

"You'd want to play for me because you'll lead the life you want," he said somewhat angrily. "I'll make sure of it. I take care of my performers."

I stared at him, agape. I could change! I could turn my life around!

Why, then, was I so goddamn frightened?

"Deal," my mouth said. My brain was in hibernation.

"Excellent!" he said. "Shake on it?"

With a wince, remembering the talons, I extended my hand towards him. He reached out tremendously fast, and grabbed my hand in an extraordinarily powerful clutch. His hand was as hot as a kettle after it finishes boiling. With a hoarse shout, I tried to let go, but he still kept me prisoner. I could almost feel my flesh beginning to lose its form as it melted away from the bones on my hand. From the wrist down, I was in mortal agony. I screamed, a long high note that wavered in the air like a bird on a perch. I was sure that one of the neighbours would come and help me. Even the man below who beat his wife would be welcome.

I looked up into his face, and saw that he was grimacing, as if he too were feeling pain. Then he released my hand, and I went flying. I hit my head on the table, causing me to see stars. Then, with a sudden feeling of blissful relief, the pain in my hand stopped, replaced by cool numbness. I raised it to my face, sure that it would be just a jumble of scorched bones. Instead it was normal, looking just as it always had.

Lou stood near the door now, and he was replacing the fedora on his head. He had also grabbed the umbrella. For the first time, I wondered why he was carrying an umbrella on a muggy July evening. He was facing away from me, and I could see that there was a symbol emblazoned on the back of his trench coat. A fiddle, with a human femur as a bow. I screamed again.

"Oh, hush, Blake," he said, rebuking me, but sounding satisfied and happy. "Nobody can hear you right now, but that goes away the moment I leave the room. So you might want to stop screaming now."

I stopped.

"Great. I'll come back in a week. Then we'll start the real business. Oh, and I almost forgot!" He pointed a finger at the violin, splayed on the ground with the bow, and they both jumped perkily into the air, and levitated towards him. I didn't react. I was no longer surprised. He tucked them into his trench coat, where they were soon invisible.

"Bye-bye," I croaked.

"Bye-bye, Blake." He smiled, revealing his pointed teeth again, and left. In the small breeze created by his movement, his trench coat fluttered at the back. As it lifted, I sucked in breath, trying my hardest not to scream once more.

He had no shirt on underneath. His body was made up, not of flesh, but of thousands of cockroaches, all crawling around and on top of each other as the kept in the shape of a body. Cockroaches...

I felt the world begin to swim. The last thing I saw was the door to my apartment shutting. I thought, as the world turned grey, that I could hear his maniacal laugh as I drifted away.

The next morning I awoke with a blinding hangover. I groaned and sat up, thinking that the visit had been a sickeningly horrible nightmare. I looked at my hand. Perfectly fine. I searched the rest of the apartment, and there was no sign that he'd been there. All was in its former place. Empty beer cans were strewn disordered on the living room carpet. Not a dream, then. Just a hallucination. I'd probably fallen asleep on the couch, and had that awful, alcohol-induced dream...

I clung to that possibility like a stranded mountain climber to a helicopter's ladder. Yes, of course, that was it. It was impossible for violins to levitate, or for men to have hands that burned flesh. All a dream. Wonderful. But where did the gun on the table go? I reasoned that I had sleepwalked, and probably thrown it out. I tried to recall in the dream whether or not he had taken the gun with him. Didn't matter, though. Just a dream.

With that, I showered, and dressed for work. I'd be on the morning shift at Timmy's today. I grabbed a cold bowl of leftover Kraft Dinner from the fridge, and devoured it mercilessly. I hadn't eaten dinner. I'd been too preoccupied with thoughts of suicide. Now, in the cold light of day, I found it a bit harder to contemplate those sorts of things.

After scarfing down the macaroni, I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and went to the door to leave. I looked at the doorframe, and my breath caught in my throat. It almost felt solid, like a tennis ball.

On the doorframe, where he'd shot his hand out to block the door from closing, was a scorch mark. A scorch mark in the shape of a human hand.

I went straight to the bathroom and vomited.

I didn't go to work for the rest of that week. I stayed locked up in my apartment, like some sort of wanted criminal, listening to the sound of my heart beating, and the sound of the man beating his wife on the floor below me. I also seemed to hear a sort of ghost laughter, as if the walls of my apartment had soaked up his last, evil laugh, and were playing it back to me repeatedly. The laugh didn't seem human. Not human at all. And my mind kept turning to his final, gaping grin, with those razor-like teeth glaring at me.

Finally, a week after he'd come for the first time, I sat huddled in the corner of my living room, terrified to death of what would happen. I heard a church bell in the distance chime twelve. On the very last note, there was a knock on the door. Resolving to be strong, be brave, I unfolded my body, walked over to the door, and opened it.

I found to my relief that he wasn't quite as scary as I'd remembered him as being. He still looked much the same, same umbrella, same hat, but he had a much less threatening atmosphere now that we were associates. "I take care of my performers," my mind echoed.

"Hi, Blake. Are you well?"

"Yes, I am. What are we going to do?"

"Well, let's go in and sit down in your living room."

We went. Before sitting, he walked to the far end of the room, put his umbrella and hat down on the counter, and went back to the couch.

When we were seated, he on the couch, I on a chair I'd pulled up in front of it, he pointed towards the ground on my right. When I looked, I saw that the same violin was there. I picked it up. It was a very well crafted instrument, polished to perfection, made of some fine dark-coloured wood, and splendidly suited to my hold. It felt like home to hold it.

"Now Blake, I have several performers like you. Twenty one, to be exact. I have each of them play to me once a week. You're going to have the midnight to six o' clock shift on Friday mornings. Sound good?"

"Six hours?" I was dumbfounded.

"Yes, six hours. But I assure you, it's only once a week. You'll get used to the feeling after a while. Besides, your mind doesn't have to do any of the work. It'll all be automatic."

I was still struck at the thought. Six hours of that torture? Every WEEK?

"Look, Blake," he said. "I know that the possession can cause.... some discomfort. But it'll all be worth it. I can make you the person you want to be. But you're going to need to do this."

I took in a deep breath. "What am I supposed to play?"

He clapped me on the shoulder, in a gesture that I would eventually find to be horribly familiar. "You can leave that up to me. You see, I've composed twenty one different pieces of music, each of which lasts just under six hours. Each performer has just one piece that they play for me. You are to me what CDs are to you."

"Gee, thanks." I didn't quite like the thought of being just a human CD.

"Oh, I didn't mean to disrespect you. No, I value each of you greatly. You see, for me to find each of my performers, there are certain requirements that have to be met. For one, they have to have at least preliminary experience with the violin. Makes it a lot easier for both of us. The more experience the better. Secondly, they need to be considering suicide for me to approach them at all. I don't know why, but it's a law of nature. I can't change it. Anyways, for the third, they need to be willing to enter into a deal with me. Very few are."

"I wonder why," I said sarcastically. "After all, all that you did was scare the hell out of me and burn my hand."

He laughed, and clapped me again. I shied away from his touch, remembering the cockroaches, and wondering what other nasty surprises he might have waiting for me in the future.

"And so, Blake, there's only one piece that you'll ever need to play for me." He snapped his fingers, and a sheaf of paper fell into my lap from nowhere. I picked it up hesitantly, worried that it might have teeth.

It flipped open in my hands of its own accord, and turned to the first page.

"Alright," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Let's get started." He clapped, and the huge surge of power returned to my body all at once. At first, it was invigorating, and yet, as it increased, it was becoming more and more unpleasant.

I grabbed the violin- or, rather, my body grabbed the violin. I had no say it what it was doing. I began to play. Listening, as an outsider in my own body, I couldn't help but feel pure wonder at hearing that music. The chaotic heat of the possession forgotten, I marvelled at how perfectly, how beautifully the notes were strung together. I realised that I was not, in fact, hearing just a violin. Rather, through some enchantment, I was hearing an entire orchestra, a cascading downpour of melodies all joined together. I didn't mind playing this at all. I could hear the phantom bellowing of the french horns, the high mourning of the clarinet.

Of course, it didn't last. Once the initial amazement had passed, the sickening, overfilling power intruded once more into my consciousness. The orchestra disappeared. I looked over to my guest, and saw that he was reclining in evident pleasure, right foot drumming on the ground in a slow, even rhythm. But it was his face that caught my attention. The flesh was bubbling slowly, like hot tar. His hair had caught fire again, but it burned low, and did not damage anything, not even the cushion it was resting on. His clothes smouldered, but did not burst into flame.

He was breathing deeply, and his thin chest expanded dramatically with each inhalation. Through the boiling of his facial skin, I could see a warped twisting of his thin lips that could only be a smile. His eyebrows had started smoking. Suddenly, he stopped. He returned to his normal form. Then he turned his head to me, and looked me straight in the eyes. I was paralysed in meeting his cold black stare. Suddenly, he winked one of his eyes at me. It was a slow, deliberate wink, the kind that implies the sharing of a secret between friends.

He disappeared.

At first, I didn't know what to think. Did he actually disappear just now? Then  saw that he hadn't, in fact, vanished. Where he'd sat, there was a huge, writing mass of cockroaches. I couldn't move my body, or even open my mouth to scream. I sat there, horrified, as they started to flow off of the derelict couch, in a manner that seemed almost fluid. They creeped across the mossy green rug, and up my legs. I couldn't feel them, but I saw them there. They started eating me, as they had in my nightmares before. I tried to scream, but as before, I was only a mind. My body was inhabited by something else, and I could only watch as it was torn apart.

Suddenly, the roaches were gone. The floor was clear, save for several old cigarette burns imprinted on its surface. He was sitting on the couch again, arms folded, leaning back happily while he listened to the music. His flesh didn't boil; nor did his hair flame or his clothes smoke. He looked like he was any normal man enjoying good music. My body was unharmed, not even my clothes damaged. Even so, my heart seemed to pound in my ears, and I was, not for the first time, terrified. But not of him. I was frightened of the fact that I may have been going insane.

It took a lot of effort to avoid doing so for the remainder of the six hours.

The moment the music stopped, the power sped away in a raging torrent of energy. I collapsed, suddenly finding it extremely difficult to breathe. It was as if my throat had closed to the size of a straw, and I'd just run a marathon. I glanced at my battered wristwatch. It told me that it was 5:58.

"Oh, we're early. Oh well. So, see you next week, Blake." He smiled dangerously. "You know?" he said. "I think, since it's your first time, I'll give you a surprise."

I shuddered.

"No, no, you'll like this one," he said eagerly. He went and collected his hat and umbrella from the counter.  "But you won't have it right now. Later." He turned back around, and walked towards the door with the step of a man whose cancer has just been miraculously cured. He walked with a spring, and I heard him whistling ACDC. Highway to Hell. I groaned.

He looked back at me right before leaving, his eyes stabbing me with their pointy glare, sunburned nose jutting out, and left me with this; "As I said, human music is terrible. But it's catchy."

He left. I heard his footsteps reverberating off of the echoey hallway. Then they stopped. I listened for the creak of the door to the stairwell opening, but it never came. I laid on the carpet, ears cocked for any sound indicating that the door had swung open.  I laid there for a long time. It was as if he'd suddenly turned to smoke, and drifted out. Or if a hole had opened up in the earth and swallowed him.

I walked to my bedroom and fell onto the mattress, still fully clothed. And, though I was very weary physically, I was a long time falling asleep. And when I finally managed to drift off,  his sparkling ebony eyes pursued me into my dreams.

The surprise turned out to be in the form of a lucky lottery ticket two days later.  I didn't win a fortune, but enough to vacate the apartment building that I detested so. The day before his next visit, I'd already arranged to rent a larger apartment in a better area of Clayton. On the day of my departure, the day of my next arranged performance, before leaving, I paid a visit to the man living below me. He answered the door with a grunt after I knocked, the stench of booze and cigarettes wafting out into the corridor.

"Whaddya want?" he growled. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins in his nose broken and purple. He had a greasy, greying goatee, and a long black ponytail that shined with oil. He was wearing a tank top that might once have been white, but was now a urine-yellow with the residue of smoke and sweat. His skin was the colour of old leather, his nose squashed and ugly.

I could hear the whimpering of his tiny little wife inside. A glance inside showed her huddled in the corner of the entrance, her arms raised protectively. A bolt of anger coursed through me. While he stood there drunkenly, barely aware of the world around him, I made a fist and drove it into his face, hitting his broad nose with a satisfying cracking sound. My lips were drawn back, baring my teeth. My eyebrows were lowered, eyes themselves narrowed. The man stumbled backwards, hitting the carpet with a muted thud. He brought his hands up to his face, to cradle his damaged nose. He was thick with muscle, but drunk as a fraternity boy, and his nose gushed dark blood through his hands to stain the carpet.

"Roberto!" his wife screamed. I looked over to the corner where she'd been cowering, and saw that she'd gotten up and was running towards her fallen husband at full tilt. She sank to the floor, weeping, and cradled his head in her lap. He groaned, and pushed her off with one bloody hand, the other still held firmly to his face. He turned to me, and said plaintively, "You busted my face!"

"Sure did." I swung my foot out, where it connected powerfully with his side. His red-stained face contorted with pain. He curled up into a defensive ball around the place where my kick had struck.

"Why you doin' this to me?" he croaked. His Hispanic accent distorted "you" to sound like "joo".

"You won't hit that wife of yours any more," I responded.

"Go away!" the woman shouted at me. Her eyes blazed with maligned fury. "Get out of here!"

I realised with sudden certainty that she meant to go on with the beatings for the remainder of her life. "Ma'am, I think you should leave. He isn't going to stop hitting you."

The fire in her sockets faltered a little. "Roberto is getting better," she insisted. "He don't do it as much any more."

"I can hear it, you know. When he beats you. It isn't happening less. It's only happening more."

I saw in her face that she knew I was telling the truth. Roberto stirred, and looked up at the woman he married. "Rose, you bitch," he said menacingly. Rose winced. She was a small woman, shorter than me, and much shorter than Roberto. Her long, black hair was greying, and she had sacs of premature wrinkles drawn around her face.

Then, for what I'm sure was the first time in her life, she looked him in the eye, and said, "Don't call me that, you bastard!" Rose kicked him in a similar manner as to what I did, except that her foot pounded cleanly into his groin rather than his stomach. Breathing heavily, she looked down at her husband's bleeding face, heard his pitiful moans. I saw her expression waver. Then it set itself in granite. "I'll get my coat," she said coldly.

Roberto was still lying on the ground, in a fetal posture. His wife was grabbing a shabby overcoat from a rusty rack near the door. She snatched up a purse, and made towards the door.

That was when Roberto's hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. Her mouth formed an O, and she wore an expression of surprise that was almost comical. Rose tripped, sprawling onto the dirty carpet in the entranceway.

Roberto wore an expression of pure malice on his bloodstained face. He laid on his back, seemingly unable to move anything but his arm. His hand was locked around Rose's ankle, holding it with so much force that the knuckles were bone white. I stepped over to his side.

"Let her go."

"No," he growled. "Teach that bitch a lesson, I'm gonna teach-"

Without missing a beat, I put my foot out, and placed it over his wrist. I slowly applied pressure to it. I saw his fingers slipping over her foot. Still, I pressed harder. With a strangled scream, Roberto writhed on the floor. He refused to let go. At last, there was a thunderous crack, as his mighty wrist shattered. He yelled hoarsely, and flailed like a fish out of water.

Rose had stood up, and was watching this scene with disgust. As Roberto screamed and twisted, she threw her coat over one arm, slung her purse over her shoulder, and turned away. She left without a backwards glance. She walked confidently, something that filled me with hope.

"Gonna get you," Roberto hissed from the floor. I turned back to face him, my attention undivided once more. Spittle erupted from his mouth in heavy strings. "Get both of you, and then you be sorry-"

"Oh, hush." I leaned over him. Despite my proximity to him, he made no threatening moves. "If you tell anybody about this, or if something happens to Rose or me, you're going to be the one who's sorry."

His face twisted. I saw when his eyes locked with mine that he knew I was serious.

Without another word, I left the apartment. He did not call me back.

That afternoon, I moved to a new apartment. This one was more spacious, and much cleaner. Instead of three rooms, this one had five. Two bath, one bed, a kitchen and a living room. After years of living an a blatantly neglected disaster zone, I finally felt freer. I felt clean.

I felt human.

That night, by midnight, I was scared out of my mind, but also excited, because each performance was bound to bring me happiness. Happiness which had evaded me for so long was finally within reach. How could I not be eager for that?

Thus, when the knocking came at the door, I leapt up from the sofa (a new one, mind you- not that foul mound of cushions that passed for a couch in my past), and it was almost with delight that I swung the door wide open.

The delight shrivelled and died the instant I saw him. Rather than a trench coat today, he had donned a knitted sweater, an image of a reindeer on a green and red striped background. His face was the same, as was everything except for the sweater. He still carried the umbrella in his left hand, and had his brown fedora in the right.

"Evening, Blake," he said raspingly. "Mind if I come in?"

Thinking that I minded very much, despite what I might get from playing for him, I stepped aside. A few minutes later, I was cradling a violin, and making it sing more beautifully than anything in the world.

My life continued to improve. I didn't win the lottery again, but when my parents died (which my friend assured me was none of his doing), they left me a considerable amount of money, not to mention a house and a car. I sold both of the latter, being more of an apartment person myself, and not needing a car. Public transport was always good enough for me. I began working at Gladstone almost two years to the day of the first time he came to see me. I was finally happy...

I was shocked out of my memories by my foot pressing the brakes. I seemed to jump back into my own body, slammed into reality by that simple reflex movement of my lower body. I looked around worriedly. I was in my parking spot in the basement garage of the condominium. Shaking, I removed a handkerchief from my pocket, and swiped my sweaty forehead with it. I'd dozed off while driving, and managed to park safely in the right place? Now how on earth did that happen?

Sullenly, but somewhat gratefully, I thought- He doesn't want to lose his performer.

I got out of my car, and slammed the door back shut with more force than necessary. I'd learned after about a week at Gladstone that you had to have a car, or you risk being ostracised. I'd bought my Ford just two days after that.

I went back up to my condo in a daze. My driving incident had sparked up the memory of Trey's words- "Gosh, Blake, you must have the devil's own luck."

These words repeated themselves in my head all the way through the elevator ride, and the walk through the hallway. They persisted though my evening, and even drowned out the drone of the news reporter on CNN. The image of him turning into cockroaches in front of my eyes reappeared too. I'd never quite gotten over my aversion of cockroaches.

The sick irony of what Trey said was impossible to escape either. "Devil's own luck," I muttered, as I laid in bed, trying to sleep later that night.  "Trey, buddy," I said. "You just don't know how right you are." I tittered a little at my private joke. The titters turned to chuckles, then giggles, then they morphed into full-blown laughter, the laughter of a man gone insane. I revelled in that insane laughter, basked in its warming glow. Because with laughter, fear is easier to face, and goddamn, despite all this, I was frightened. So frightened.

And it was in the middle of the insane laughter, that despite my terror at things unknown, sleep came. And when I slept, I dreamed of cockroaches.