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1. |
My Companion
04:40
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My companion lives with me in the dark. It’s a rustling behind the door, and then a shadow, moving, in the corner at the ceiling. I stay still, pretending its not there, but it knows I’m lying, and at the corner of my eye its teeth gleam in a smile broadening beneath laughing eyes.
My companion is hungry, but bites small, rolling pieces of me onto its tongue, holding them between its teeth, showing me, and then slowly swallowing. Always close, it watches me, studies me, choosing which part of me it will taste next. It does not hurry. I am not going anywhere, and there is no morning here. My companion whispers to me, gentle and close, that it will stay with me until the end.
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2. |
The Pool
04:52
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Beyond the house is a meadow. Beyond the meadow is a wood. Through the wood runs a path. Where the path ends is a pool, and at the pool I watch, and at the pool I listen. I see the moon course through the branches above me, waxing and waning. I hear the owls ask their questions of the forest, and I hear the frightened answers of the rabbits below them. I watch the bare twigs swell green and then wither. I see the mice poke out of their holes, and the perfect white skeletons the owls make of them. Occasionally, I too become hungry.
That evening was soft and warm. The grass in the meadow was not yet yellow, and the berries in the shade were full and black. An evening for playing out late, parents content and secure with their cups, listening to their children laughing on the hill, out of sight, yes, but safe, certainly safe.
I called to them from my pool. What is that bird, they said, and I sang the sweeter, and put into their minds a flash of colorful feathers low among the apples, great rich yellow apples, sweet as fresh pies in their little hands, and I sent them a little curling scent, like an early morning bakery, and another, like the tang of cider on a hot afternoon. And then they saw the bird at the path, there it is! And laughing they follow the path through the wood, the path to the pool. They do not see the trees close behind them, and they aren’t afraid.
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3. |
Lost Transmission
02:23
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4. |
The Black Thread
04:51
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He took his time. First I raged, then begged, then bargained. Finally I wept. Through it all the wall grew higher. He looked at me only once, through a space into which he would place the last brick. Then it was dark, and I was alone. I heard his shoes click against the floor, faintly, as he walked away, and then a silence so complete my ears roared with it. It was then I began to scream.
My death did not come soon, and it was not gentle. You may think you can imagine it, but you cannot, and I cannot tell you, but in time it was again silent, and for a time beyond that I lingered, there in the stillness. I cannot tell you for how long, but then, with a little push, I shook myself out of the crumpled heap of skin and bone and hair that I had been. I was free. The stone and brick was as thin as a gas, and I traveled as thought.
He was easy to find, for he had bound us together with a black thread, and I followed to where he lay in his sheets, sleeping alone. He felt me there, and stirred. I reached into his dreams. I made them wet and red and full of teeth, and he woke gasping, staring into the dark around him, clutching at himself. I came in close, whispering his name, reaching into him to wrap his fluttering heart in ice. Through all his sleepless nights, I told him, through all his waking nightmares, I would be there.
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5. |
Dust Devil
04:22
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It arrived with a sting of blown sand against my burned face, and a soft voice, whispering in the rising dust. I stopped to listen. Nothing. I wrapped myself tighter and lowered my head. I walked.
The water was gone. This was my only thought. I climbed the face of a dune, and I slid down the other side. I did it again. And again. Always moving toward a ragged blue line in the far distance, tall rocks, or hills maybe, or green trees swaying above a cool green pool.
I descended to a white plain. Sharp crystals whipped into my eyes, insistent, as a hot breeze swept out of the dusk. The voice again, from the slope behind me, then a call, far off in the shimmering haze. The breeze became a wind that pressed me to the salt. I crawled, near blind.
It was still when I woke, but utterly dark. My body was an agony of thirst. I waited.
And in that abyss, then, a distant orange spark, just a flicker, like a cat’s eye in torchlight. It took notice of me, and approached, growing, spinning slowly into a twisting braid, until it stood over me, a whirling column of flame. It gazed down at me, breathing, whispering my name, and I could hear how it smiled, and how it hungered.
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6. |
The Visitor
04:33
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I linger in the cold dark, in emptiness and longing, wandering, but there, in the distance, I see them, campfires on distant shores, and I am drawn to them, want them, all of them, as they lie helplessly, sleeping in their beds. I come close in my need, looking for the key, the weakness that will let me in, and inevitably I find one.
When I find him I whisper his name. He sits up in bed, staring at the window opposite. His nightlight glows, dimly, beneath it, but serves only to darken the glass. His fear fills me, gives me weight, and with it comes the terrible hunger and anticipation, familiar and agonizing. I pull a shape from his mind and gather shadow around it. His eyes widen when he sees it. His mouth opens, but he holds his breath, frozen.
He will be a delight, this one. I will be his visitor, and night by night, in shadows at the window, and, scratching at his door, and a sudden chill at the foot of his bed, the door of him will open for me. I will enter it and he will clothe me. And until I leave him a husk in a shallow hole, I will feel again.
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7. |
The Sound
04:48
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I was out in the boat, late, when I first heard it, a hollow scraping knock, rhythmic. I stopped pulling at the net and threw a beam over the water, expecting to see a buoy that had broken free, or a raft of debris, but there was nothing but the slow rolling swells. The sound stopped.
I dragged the boat onto the beach and went into my shack, and sleep.
I woke in darkness. At first I heard only the soft hush of the waves, but then there, the sound, louder than before, like a distant mallet on metal. I stepped into my boots and grabbed the light.
The sound rang out from across the breakers, faint, but insistent. I pushed the boat into the water and motored past the waves, turned off the engine. The sound carried across the gently heaving sea, close and loud. I lifted the light, rocking with the boat. Nothing, but then there, an angular metallic shape in the water, almost submerged. I moved to restart the outboard, then a blow, a splintering crack. I was in the water, gasping in the cold of it, blinded, pulled down.
We are bound together in the dark, an enclosed metal space, swaying, a shipping container. I cannot see the others, but I feel them, pressing against me, breathing. The stale air stinks of shit and vomit. I have to get out. I grope around me, trying to find a way through the huddled bodies. My hand closes around something, a length of pipe. I bring it against the wall of the container, over and over, maybe someone will come.
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8. |
Toward Home
04:46
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It had rained, and the track through the fields was a slog of sticky mud that pulled at my boots. It was a dark night, moonless and starless. Completely still. I would certainly have lost my way if not for the dying flashlight which cast a dim orange glow down the path through wheat stubble ahead of me. I gripped my tools and kept moving.
I was peering ahead, expecting to see the lights of home, when I heard the rattling cough of a tractor behind me. I turned. There was no light, but it coalesced from the darkness and heaved through the mud. It was a hulking, rusting thing. It stank of smoke, and shit, and rot. It maintained a steady slow speed. I stepped off the track.
The driver slumped over the steering wheel, a wide-brimmed hat low over his face. He did not acknowledge me. The machine passed, churning mud, and I saw then what it pulled. A low cart, piled with something that twitched and groaned, a suffering mass, broken limbs, staring eyes, and in every clotted mouth my name, my wife’s name, my child’s name.
I dropped out of myself, falling back into the wet earth. The driver and his cargo passed on, and dissolved again into the night, like a thinning smoke, and where he had been, the distant lights of my home.
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9. |
The Gate
04:44
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The photographer folds his tripod with a clattering snap and leaves. It is again still, as I am still. My eyes do not see, my ears do not hear, but from above my body I can yet see, vaguely, as through a dewy morning window, and hear, as I would the sounds enclosed behind that window. The crisp white dress clings to the body that had been washed so gently. My clean black hair, brushed and pinned, frames my face, my lips sewn shut, discreetly, and a coin placed over each of my eyes.
At first, there is a soft tug, like being guided by a gentle hand, but it becomes stronger, implacable, until it is a relentless gravity. I can not resist it. I fall.
My body closes around me, cold and inert. My sight fades to blindness. I hang suspended in a thick darkness that holds and pulls, harder and harder until I am dispersed, fragmentary, my thoughts and memories motes of dust spiraling apart, and every part of me alone. Now I am only fear. I wait for the light. I was promised.
There is none. There is only a cruel delight, all around me, and an endless laughter.
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10. |
A Path in the Woods
04:18
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It is cool in the trees, and dark. The heavy bough where I crouch over the path is worn smooth, for I have lived a long and patient life, and I remain still as I watch, so still that sometimes small creatures hop close to me, and soon they are squeaking and squirming between my teeth, for a moment. Then there are only the sighing woods, sleeping under the moon.
I hear him blundering down the path long before I see him, and I see very well in the dark. He is singing and talking to himself, in his fear. They are always afraid, even when the path is warm and sun-dappled, but in the whispering dark, when they find themselves late and hurrying, they feel that I am watching, and in their terror they sing and talk even though they are alone, as though their songs could protect them.
So he does not hear me when I descend. I follow him along the path a little while. When his warbling song rises the loudest I crack a twig for him, and he stops, straining into the dark, but he does not see or hear me. When he continues, I follow, and still he does not see or hear me though he knows I am there, and then he is squeaking and squirming between my teeth, deliciously, until again there is only the silent moon, and the silent, watching woods.
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11. |
Birthday
04:03
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His reedy voice trembled through his fire, and it amused me to answer his summons. I found him there, standing in robes he had decorated himself, squinting at the book he tilted toward his smoky candles. The light illuminated a poor room smeared with blood and salt, hung with threadbare tapestries.
I stood in his circle, showing him all my teeth. His hand shook as he lifted his book and his wand, his voice trembling as he mispronounced my name. I nodded, and his eyes widened in hope, and in them I could see all his fatuous dreams of naked bodies, opulent rooms glittering with wealth, his portrait in lights high above sparkling cities.
I let him enjoy these pictures, for a few moments, then I stepped across the edge of his circle. He dropped his paraphernalia and stumbled over the hem of his robe, searching for the door. I waved away the light and ran my hand down his spine, slowly, a caress. His flesh parted, like the unfolding of an orchid. His shriek was as lovely, and long-lasting.
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12. |
Burnt Tongue
02:46
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13. |
The Utburd
03:51
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The snow was falling lightly from a low gray sky the morning they took me outside. I could yet taste milk when they scratched a shallow hole in the frosted earth and laid me into it. They were not ungentle, but they took the blanket with them when they walked back down through the trees. I stared up into the drifting snow and listened to their soft weeping grow fainter until there was only the silent sky. I grew cold, and for awhile my body shook, but then I was still.
The bright winter stars wheeled. I was still, but I did not sleep, and in my endless waking my body became cold stone. I gathered the hard night into me, and in dark I was reborn. Then I could move, and I rose from the ground, insubstantial, a freezing fog, but tall as a hill, strong as river ice.
In the distance, their fire glowed through the cracks in their shutters, they with their thick blankets, their bowls of soft grain, the animals snoring on the straw beside them. I moved toward the light, and trees cracked and splintered before me. In the gale of my howling all light went out.
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Michael Bell Bellingham, Washington
A Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too.
Some of this is music for video games. The rest is a fairly raw document of my ongoing attempt to find something new among the blinking lights in my studio at home.
Michael Bell recommends:
Noveller got me started. This is essential listening for guitar explorers. Always inspires me to continue the search for new ways to shape the air.
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This is the sound of music after music. For brave listeners (or those, like me, who aspire to be).
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Some Music for Robby Müller
by SQÜRL
If you find yourself washed in blissful guitar feedback as you play alone in your attic studio at 3am, this is for you.
go to albumIf you like Michael Bell, you may also like:
Disasters for Piano
by David Peacock
David Peacock reimagines the Disasterpeace score for piano.
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Mini Metro: RMX KIT
by Disasterpeace
Disasterpeace's latest game soundtrack is packed to the gills with samples, mimicking the background noise of the subways in the game.
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featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 5, 2013
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