Miranda

I sat on the arm of the snow-colored couch, legs crossed and toes sinking into the contrasting, black carpet. I twisted the slick torso of my music stand and flipped through the pages if my book of standards. The saxophone is a beautiful instrument. It's sound is so exciting and pure. I gazed at the curved neck of the magnificent tenor and ran my hand slowly down to the bell, rising and falling carefully over the keys. After pasting my tongue to my lips, I slipped the mouthpiece into my mouth. I bit down on the worn top of the mouthpiece and tongued lightly on the smooth-shaved wood of my reed. I filled my lungs with sweet air and blew into the instrument and began my practice session.

I twiddled my fingers rapidly, soloing over Mack the Knife with my own imaginary rhythm section, backing me up in my head. Once I stopped, I smiled proudly for I had improved since last I've played.

Just then, Knuckles walked in fro the kitchen. He too was smiling. He applauded me. "Bravo," he eulogized. "Bravo! Encore!"

"Sure thing," I replied, "as long as I have my drummer to back me up." I winked at him.

"Hey, no problem," he said, sitting himself down at his drum set and pulling out his drumsticks from behind the stool. "Anything for the greatest sax player in the world."

I chuckled. "Yeah, whatever," I said.

"So," he said swinging back and forth in the stool and patting on his thighs with his sticks, "what are we playing today? Jazz? Rock?"

"Experimental," I replied.

Knuckles smirked and began tapping in a tempo on his snare drum. I tapped my foot along with it. It was a fair tempo, not fast, not slow.

"Anything goes," he cheered as the soft metronome of the drum crescendoed over his voice. I smiled and nodded and off we went playing our asses off.

Knuckles is a tremendous musician but he never wanted to get too involved with it. He always it solely be one of those things he did in his spare time, like Sonic watching TV and Tails constructing new inventions. If you ask me, though, he could've gone pro, no doubt. He plays the drums like you wouldn't believe and he too, like myself, plays the tenor saxophone. We love to jam together, we make a great duo. Playing with Knuckles is different from playing in an ensemble not because of size or intensity, but because of connection. We, both as musicians and friends, read each other's minds when we solo back and forth. We tell stories to each other and we each write a chapter, a lyrical passage describing our feelings, our passions, and our secrets. We speak in melodic verses that spill rivers of thoughts we do not normally think and words we do not normally say. This is what music really is.

Suddenly, his playing slowed down drastically.

What is he trying to say?

He brushed on his drum slowly and steadily. It was quiet. Still.

Knuckles…

He tapped on the tom-tom and beat louder and louder gradually.

Is… is he warning me?

He rolled on his bass drum. I quivered. My nails buzzed against the brass exoskeleton of my saxophone as a shook, astonished at what he was playing. I closed my eyes to put a vision to his beat, but it looked nothing like I had expected. There was only the chaos-driven madness of my inner mind. I saw darkness with rugged scrapes of deep purple stratus that stretched across the blackened sky. The entire image swirled and twirled about like dark and evil spirits, haunting me from the inside. Now, a lighter hue, larger than the rest, shined in the middle of the patterned mess. It whispered to me.

"Save me… save me… please…."

The soft voice turned to whimpers. It groaned and cried. The drums behind me were louder. The crashes of cymbals pierced through me like lightning. It thundered and roared as the screams from the mysterious wails echoed in my head.

"Oh God," it cried. "Oh God, please. Anyone, anyone at all! Help me. Save me!"

I lost myself. I forgot where I was, who I was. I was captivated. I was consumed. The voice and the music continued. There was no escape. All at once, the purples flickered and shocked to a sanguine red that dripped like blood down the dark walls of my skull. There, in the nothingness, stood a figure of a young woman, covered in the bleak, red soil. She reached out her hand, this, too, covered in blood.

"Kill me…."

Then, my eyes shot open. I grasped onto my chest and felt my heat pounding inside me, racing rapidly as I took in air. It felt as if I hadn't been breathing the whole time. My eyes scanned the room. It was dead silent. I turned to Knuckles who looked concerned. I then spotted Rouge, standing at the door which was wide open behind her. She grinned and walked over to us.

"The door was unlocked so I came in. Hope I didn't disturb anything important."

I'm never really sure when she's trying to be sarcastic.

Rouge glances at me for a moment. She looked disgusted. She pointed at my face. "What the hell is wrong with you," she asked me rudely.

Sure, I was mad. She was clearly trying to make me feel uncomfortable, but even still, I tapped my face with my fingertips and rubbed around until I reached my cheek and underneath my eye. I was soaked with tears.

Had I been crying during all that?

Rouge crossed her arms and shook her head. I braced myself for her to give me some more shit. She didn't. Instead, she swayed over to Knuckles who was still sitting on his stool. His face was emotionless.

"Knuckles, darling, are you ready," Rouge she asked.

"What? Ready for what," Knuckles asked, puzzled.

Rouge looked annoyed. She tapped her foot and scoffed. "You forgot? You silly boy," she sighed.

Knuckles' eyes widened. He growled and smacked his palm to his forehead. "Oh, of course, we were supposed to go out tonight, weren't we?"

Rouge raised an eyebrow. Knuckles got up from his seat and took her hand. "Rouge," he pleaded, "I'm sorry, baby. I really am."

She pondered for a moment, then stocked his face. "Fine," she said. "You can make up for it tonight."

The two of them went hand in hand to the door. Knuckles continued outside while Rouge stayed to give me a goodbye scowl. She squinted and yelled back at Knuckles, "Maybe if you weren't so busy playing your silly music with… what's her name over here, you would have remembered." She took one last look at me, then strutted out the door, slamming it behind her.

With that, I put my sax back on its stand and flopped over face first on the couch. I held my breath and wedged my head in between the cushions like a fucking ostrich. I felt like I needed to hide for some reason. In my hole, I thought about the last couple of hectic minutes, about the crazy day dream, about that whore, Rouge, about Knuckles playing what he played. Once I started getting light headed, I lifted my head and breathed deeply. I grabbed onto a little white pillow. It felt so soft and cuddly, so I hugged it tight and squeezed it out of anxious feeling that it would leave me.

"He didn't even say goodbye," I said to myself.

Holding onto the pillow even tighter, I rolled off the couch and onto the floor. I lay on my back now. Here, I thought of nothing at all. I was just a body taking up walking space. I felt useless. Soon, I found myself going a little crazy because I started giggling out of my own confusion. It was the fakest laugh I've ever heard. I swear, if Sonic or Tails had gone into the room at the time, they would've thought that I was high. I threw the pillow back onto the couch. I tried to get back onto the soft, white cloud of a sofa we have, but I couldn't seem to pull myself up. Giving up trying, I tumbled back onto me stomach and stared at the blackness of the carpet.

"It's funny how one minute you can be on Cloud Nine and the next…" I paused, "you're here in the unforgiving abyss of darkness, hate… nothing."

Having said that, I banged my head on the floor and held my breath once more to wait for Knuckles to come back. For whatever reason, it made me feel better not to breathe. Don't ask me why. After a while, of course, I was breathing and sitting up with my back up against the couch. Minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days but I kept on waiting so I could at least talk to him about that song before bed while it was fresh in my memory. Finally, though, at one in the morning, I decided to go to sleep. I doubted that he'd be coming back that day anyway. That fucking whore.