…But hail thou goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright - to hit the sense of human sight; and therefore to our weaker view, O'er-laid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; - -Il Penseroso. John Milton
Look, I’m not the dramatic type. I don’t usually drown in this mushy emotional vanilla sauce. But today? Yeah. Today was a whole buffet of gothic vibes. The nightmare delivery guys brought the goods, and they didn’t even need a tip.
No matter how rattled I was—and okay, I was legit scared—I still noticed something weird: the stage was totally unlit. I mean, concerts come with spotlights, lasers, and other flashy nonsense, but this platform? Just a few poles with blank banners fluttering in the wind. No logos, no names, nothing to say who the hell was supposed to be playing.
I shoved my way forward, pushing these music-lovers aside like I was bulldozing my way through a wax museum. Nobody reacted. Their bodies felt stiff to the touch, and I didn’t have time for politeness. I kept going, forcing my way toward the stage. That’s where the answers had to be. I could feel it in my guts.
The meditative music spilling from the stage faded into something even softer—more like a lullaby made of stardust. And then—get this—a freaking organ kicked in. Someone’s invisible hands were straight-up dancing across the keys, and the orchestra joined in like they were conjuring sound outta thin air.
Sucks that you couldn’t throw roses or panties at these musicians. ‘Cause the stage? Empty. No humans, just ghosts. And yet the music played.
Instruments floating mid-air, doing their thing like magic. Bows pulled across strings, drumsticks hit the beat, and a conductor’s baton floated, directing the whole phantasmic rave.
- Darling, finally, we found you! – Said a tired but very familiar voice off to the side.
My eyes slid over the frozen teens locked in rapture, and there they were: Antwan and Julia, looking like they’d run a marathon, tongues out, still smiling like goofballs.
- Where the hell did you two come from?
Okay, yeah, I sounded rude. They both flinched. A little guilt tickled me, but honestly? With everything I’d been through, I was hanging by a thread. And unlike the strings on those haunted instruments, the string of my sanity was this close to snapping.
-Ali, oh my god, it’s you! We finally reached you. Mia had to max out all her skills to trace your signal and get us here.-
Hearing Antwan’s voice in my head should’ve comforted me. Should’ve. But I didn’t rush in for a hug. Nah, fool me once. I just squinted at their faces, reading every pore like I was scanning for fakes.
- Antwan’s right, sweetie! It took serious work to find you – Julia chirped, her voice sugary enough to cause cavities. – Your tracker helped, but the signal was weak, glitchy as hell. We stumbled around in the dark forever!
- What else did you secretly install on my implant? – I snapped, and then sighed. – Doesn’t matter. How the hell did you even get here so fast? I’ve only been here fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, tops.
They exchanged that look. You know the one. The -oh crap, how do we explain this- look. Then Antwan spoke up, avoiding my eyes:
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
- Well, here’s the thing… you’ve been gone twelve hours. When the connection dropped, we totally lost our Thought maybe it’d fix itself
—but nope. Hours passed, and still no word. We worked with Mia to lock onto your tracker, and finally got a ping. Thank god we did, because I was starting to think… y’know… RIP and all that. So yeah, we didn’t wait—we came to get you.-
- You shouldn’t have. I’m perfectly intact, — I said with a chill in my voice, then asked, — how did you bypass every single danger on the way and now just stand here as if nothing ever happened?
- It’s really simple, — Julia shrugged, — we didn’t encounter a single obstacle. They were all sent your way, darling, so we strolled the whole route in peace.
- — Antwan confirmed.
Our little chat was rudely interrupted by blatantly optimistic tunes—music you could dance anything to, from gavotte to shuffle, depending on your mood and moves.
And the instruments themselves couldn’t resist the sudden revelry: they crept to the edge of the stage, paused dramatically, then dove headfirst into the crowd. Of course, nobody raised a hand to catch their idols, and the violins and harps just vanished into the darkness.
We couldn’t help but stare at that spectacle, which was fast becoming my personal drug—its dosage rising by the minute, coursing through my veins without any pushers needed. After all, thrill-seekers chase new highs—and here I was, getting mine free, courtesy of my fried nervous system. Just like those hunters of fresh truths and perspectives.
Antwan let out a shout and pointed at the stage’s latest act:
- Look, that guitar is picking up
More than that—it seemed to stare right at us before bounding across the deck, aiming straight for our heads like a guided drone.
- Oh, God! — Mia sobbed, and she was first to launch herself through the scrum toward the exit on her short little We tore after her. The guitar’s speed defied reason, and it slammed into Antwan’s knee. His kneecap cracked, and I heard him scream inside my head:
-Alenari, nooo! Save yourself!
Third failure.
The guitar bounced off his leg, flipped end over end, and rocketed backward to gather speed for another run. Julia screamed and pointed above our heads to a forming cloud.
There hovered the very concert banner that had been flapping above the performance all along. It drifted down over us like a funeral shroud, eager to carry me off at last—something I’d been dodging forever.
I don’t want to go… not now! I don’t want to go… not yet!
The nightmare left me not one moment’s peace—it had become part of me.
All I could do was take one single step back… into the pale electric circle of the streetlamp. I looked up, unbelieving, and saw the bulb swaying, plastered with crawling bugs.
My enhanced night vision flickered out, and I was nearly blind again. But I didn’t mind—after all, the concert, its crowd, and the whole ghost orchestra had dissolved into silent Nothingness.
I opened my backpack and extracted a shaker bottle of cheerfully sloshing punch—my secret stash, untouched till now. Clearly, the moment had come.
I leaned against the lamppost, pulled my knees in, and took a long, satisfying swig of fruity, boozy punch. Delicious. I smacked my lips and drained the rest. Nature provided its own moisture, too—I heard rain start drumming somewhere beyond the barrier.
How long I sat, who knows? I simply felt the raindrops on my open face and smiled like an fool. When my thoughts finally began to regroup, I remembered I’d lost my friends somewhere out there. Time to stand and go find them.
- Oh merciful Gods, you’re here, the raisin of my heart! You made it out!