Savage Tales

don't look nice?" I said.
    And I don't know why I was suddenly on the defensive.
    "I just meant –"
    "I'm going to bed, mom. Good night."
    I ran upstairs before she could respond and after brushing my teeth and flossing, I buried my head in my thickest pillow and let it engulf my face like a marshmallow. And I screamed and sobbed into it till I passed out and didn't have to think about things so much, and didn't have to look the day in the face quite so squarely, and I could barely feel the ring that I now wore on my finger.

THE BLISTERING CALL OF D YING MOZART

    Mozart is in the Amazon again, dressed in a frock coat that makes him all sweaty and with boots totally inappropriate for the jungle floor. Look there! A giant anaconda descends from a tree for a lean scrap of Mozart meat. Yum. His tongue flickers through air. Something is awry. The beast flinches and retreats into the moss, vanishes, all unaware to the Mozart, this Mozart.
    The composer follows something like a trail for nearly a mile before it reaches a cave. But it's not a cave! Look there, a door! He lifts the heavy stone knocker and it falls on the moss-eaten door with barely a sound. He waits and no one answers. He knocks again, forsaking anything that might resemble music. Again no one answers the door. He tries the handle and it opens. Inside he goes and darkness is in every inch of the place, as though even the light he has admitted with his entrance will not dare venture into such unknown territory. His steps are slippery and uncertain, the floor not remotely level, bumpy with a stone path and moistured staccato. Even here the music follows. He tries to walk more quietly to curb the soundtrack but even that vague clip clop represents a tune to him.
    Finally he reaches the end of the hall. He knows it is the end because suddenly there is light. Where does it come from? It is mystery. There are no windows or other portals to the outside. There is no incandescence in thi s primitive hovel. There is only a stone altar, and upon it a small box, encrusted with jewels. Each jewel seems to reflect an ocean of light, a sun, but the source is mysterious. All is unknown. Where is the light from?
    He strokes the jewels instinctively and thinks of the many women he has stroked, each a different song, and all the sound that he played through them. It is a memory he doesn't want to think of now, for some reason. He can't remember why.
    The jeweled box will open. He sees the hinge, the folded line around its edge. He lifts it slowly and it creaks ajar. And inside—
    But before we reveal, let us consider the perspiration-drenched man and his disregard for logic, narrative in this moment. He is here and the jeweled box can be opened, so he is the one to open it. He is the only one in the room!
    I write this in a style that's meant to sound like translation, even though English is my so-called native tongue. But it is not. The native tongue is in the jeweled box.
    He opens it – not again, but a continuous movement springing from the previous opening – and from within issues the sweetest, most novel sounds, from an alien future that he'll never breathe, from a sister he'll never carouse with, from a car he'll never drive.
    This sound opens up vast caverns in the mind of our Mozart, the oldest of Mozarts, this final Mozart. Sound blends indescribably with other senses and boomerang back upon themselves and he loses all sense of his greatness, his past achievements, his separation from other composers (even the lowly Salieri), yes, he, one, past, present, old, young, male, female, time, time, time. It overflows all direction. All time is one song, one note even, played around and forever. Forever. The very word sings out the truth that a mind cannot comprehend except through music, an intuitive faculty that will not be named, identified, pointed out, is both unfathomable and experienced in nearly every moment by every sentient being on the plane of being. It goes within us and without it there is no "we" for us to speak of.
    This is what Mozart holds within his hand in the impossible cave. This is what we all hold within our hands. And even though we can't always feel it, it is there.
    Mozart gasps his final note and his skin screams ultraviolet beauty, a scream of beauty is the only way to describe it and it is soft, hard, loud, effervescent. It is Mozart. It is you, me.

    The doctor released the man's wrist and shook his head. The doctor put his hand over