Bloody Fucking Hell #5
Then reality would return in pieces, never whole.
First the sound of the monitor tracking his vital signs.
Beep. Pause. Beep-beep. Too long a pause.
Johnny tried to catch the rhythm, to fit it into quarters, eighths — anything familiar — but it wouldn’t cooperate.
The monitor lagged, sped up, stumbled, like a badly programmed metronome.
The ventilation above him hissed — a low, filthy noise, like distortion without tone — and the squeal of carts rolling down the hallway echoed back with a half-second delay every time, like a delay pedal that never hits the tempo.
One-two-three-four, he counted silently.
He failed. The sounds refused to lock in.
It was as if the hospital rejected rhythm itself, vomiting back the music he carried inside.
A place built to keep bodies alive, not to let anything live inside them.
He tried to move his hand. His fingers were numb.
The pads pulsed on their own, in a rhythm that wasn’t his.
When he tried to clench his fist, it felt like he was lagging behind his own intention, like the hand moved a fraction of a second after the command.
A doctor stood beside the bed, speaking in a calm, rehearsed voice about exhaustion, stress, dehydration.
Johnny nodded, because that’s what you do.
But beneath that voice — beneath the words and explanations — he heard something else: a deep, slow, persistent growl of a beast. The doctor listened to his heart.
Johnny listened to what was pounding beneath the heart.
And he knew, with terrifying certainty, that he was the only one in the room who could hear the real problem.
Guilt lay heavy on his tongue.
He told the band he needed rest. Asked for a week.
Just one week. Everyone understood. After all, he was the star, and stars were allowed to break.
He was the driving force behind Go! Fucking Bloody Hell!
— the band that had shot into the stratosphere.
The author of the most popular music in the region, maybe even in Europe.
They all smiled at him with the same look: take care, king — we need you.
***
And then came the days when he felt perfectly fine.
Not better than before — just okay. His body no longer ached, his heart kept a steady beat, without skipping, without that subterranean pulse.
He slept through the night. He ate normally.
The doctors said he was recovering. And they were right.
But something was missing inside him, a phantom organ removed without bleeding.
Nikola went on long walks.
A radio played in the café. Some old hard rock hit. Once, that riff would have made his foot tap, his brow furrow, his mind dissect the tone. Now — nothing. The sound passed through him the way air moves through empty streets. No resistance. No pleasure.
He only realized it when he tried to listen on purpose.
He played music on his phone, softly, then loud.
Guitars sounded like a refrigerator. Drums like an elevator.
It didn’t irritate him. It didn’t sadden him.
That was the worst part. He was calm in a way that felt completely alien.
He watched passersby through the hospital window and, for the first time, he thought he understood what it was like to be one of them.
To live without a need for sound. Without hunger.
Without riffs. Without inner fire. And for the first time, a cold fear crept through him: maybe this was the price.
He returned home — not to the old apartment, but to a new one, better, paid for by music that wasn’t his.
The key stuck in the lock as if the place didn’t recognize him at first; he had to turn it again, slower, more carefully, and only then did the lock give with a short, reluctant click.
Inside it was quiet, but not empty — an over-strained silence, like a string pulled tight, ready to snap.
The furniture was in place, the air smelled of detergent and fresh paint, but something was shifted just out of alignment, a frame that didn’t quite sit right.
Only then did he see it:
The CD.
Strangely enough, he hadn’t thought about it in days.
It lay on the living-room table, exactly in the center, shiny side up, even though he was certain he’d left it in a drawer, face down.
He didn’t touch it. He just stood there and stared, while a brief hiss ran through the speakers without a source — a breath that lasted too long.
He turned on the radio just to smother the silence.
Their songs were playing on every rock station. His songs.
Mine… if only.
His music, everywhere — except inside him. He sat in the dark and listened to the world sing something he had stolen. And the question returned, stubborn as a toothache:
Whose music is this?
He couldn’t shake it. He knew only one thing, as certain as death: it wasn’t his. It never had been. And somewhere, in the silence between songs, he heard something that didn’t come from the radio. As if the CD — the nameless one — was spinning on its own, far from him, waiting to be called back.
He mixed a cocktail of pills with no precision at all.
His hand shook as he pressed them from their blister packs, one by one, like bullets into a magazine.
Something to calm him down, something for the pain, something to lift him up, something to knock him out.
It all looks the same when you’re tired enough not to care whether you wake up normal…
or at all. He swallowed them dry, without water.
Bit his lip as the bitterness glued itself to his palate.
Sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the world to loosen a little, for the edges to blur, for the music in his head to go quiet — if only for a few minutes.
The phone vibrated.
He flinched as if someone had slapped him.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. It shouldn’t have been possible. He was sure he’d turned it off. The manager had handed out those fancy iPhones a few weeks back — “to look professional,” “to stay reachable.” Johnny kept his powered down, buried in a drawer like a gun you don’t want near you.
But the vibration was there. More insistent than sound. The sound came from his bones, not the device. He picked up the phone.
One message.
No name. No number. Three short sentences.
***
Why did you do it? It wasn’t yours to play. Give me back my sound.
That was all.