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The Sound

from Utburd by Michael Bell

/

lyrics

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.

credits

from Utburd, released October 29, 2023

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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.

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