A/N: Yes, I know I've got WIPs to finish. I've been working on the last chapter of 'The Burn,' but the weather has been so lovely for the past couple of days that it's distracted me. Instead of that storyline, I find my thoughts drifting to the upcoming season of sand and sun.

In the past, I've tried this method of working on a shorter storyline, with drabble-like updates, to help me get my creative juices flowing on other projects. This won't be exactly 100-word drabbles, but it'll be short bursts written in between other stuff and posted in between other responsibilities, lol. Beyond that, we'll see. ;)

Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.

Dactylic Rhapsody – An epic moment when one finds harmony if one can let go of cacophony. A story about a heartbroken man who may be lucky enough to discover his future if he doesn't allow his past to trip him up.

Chapter 1 – The Trifecta of Failure

Edward

I'm jarred into consciousness by a shrill shriek. It sounds like a banshee screaming in Hell. It's the type of ear-piercing caterwaul that hitches your latest breath and momentarily stops the rest of them.

My eyes pop open.

"The hell?"

Before I can say more, the she-devil's continued clatter is joined by a sharp glare threatening to sear my eyeballs. I lift a hand, trying to block the death rays while simultaneously squinting against the accompanying burn. Spots dance before my eyes, but I manage to spot a flock of birds squalling and circling overhead in menacingly slow motion.

I begin to wonder if I'm dead. Though, I'll admit, I'm less concerned with the details of how death claimed me than with the possibility that I may not mind this turn of events.

A bit morose?

Maybe.

But, in defense of my dreary outlook, it's been a tough few weeks. Four weeks ago, to be precise, I lost my job, my apartment, and my girlfriend, all in a seventy-two-hour time span. Afterward, my obtusely tactless sister named the three-day event 'Edward's trifecta of failure,' nodding at her own teenaged sagacity before adding with a shrug, 'Think of it this way, bro: At least you know you can't possibly fuck up your life any worse from here on in.'

This is why, if I've passed on – through no fault of my own – something that might seem like a sad fate to less jaded eyes, it sounds like an enforced yet not entirely untimely respite to me. At least, this state of being might be one in which I can hide from the aftermath of my trifecta – even if the hideaway itself may be actual Hell.

Then again, there could be drawbacks to being dead. For example, those vultures still looping me look increasingly hungry. I don't know that I relish the thought of being carrion.

Before I conclude that having my eyeballs pecked by birds of prey may not be worth the tradeoff, another metaphorical checkmark appears on the plus side of the arguments for my demise. This one relates to the nearby harpy's cacophonous convulsions, the ones that initially roused me.

The shrieking is still going. But it's not so much shrill as it's…melodious. Rhythmic. Lulling.

The nearby shrill shriek isn't a shrill shriek. It's laughter.

How a banshee's hellish laugh can be rhythmic, melodious, and lulling is yet another detail I spare my scrutiny. Because the sound is calming. Bewilderingly so. I can only assume it's some form of sedative – the she-devil's personal brand of heroin meant to keep us doomed souls in line, hypnotized, and under an inescapable trance.

It's working because, for all I care now, the vultures can go ahead and peck away. The underworld can burn to ashes, and me, along with it. If it means I get to hear that laughter as I combust, I'm sold.

The laughter then melds with fiery waves of molten lava crashing against the walls of Hades. Who the hell knew that Hell has waves, but whatever. Yet, now I note that the birds circling overhead aren't birds of prey. They're… seagulls. On a related note, I quickly realize that the bright glare searing my eyeballs isn't flames from Hell's fiery pits.

The late morning sun shines brightly overhead while the ocean's waves crash against the shoreline.

Yeah, it becomes increasingly apparent that I'm not dead.

I recall something else: the apocalyptic novel I'd been reading before I dozed off. It was an old paperback my sister had been toting around for the past few days. This morning, I spotted the book open and face down over a coffee table at our parents' beach house, the creases in the book's spine exposing Alice's savagery in marking her page. When I picked it up and closed it, my only goal was to snuff out her bookmark – just one of the many ways I'm exacting payment for that trifecta remark. On impulse, I shoved the paperback into my backpack along with a towel, water bottle, and the sunscreen Mom left on the kitchen table with a glaringly yellow post-it, demanding:

'EDWARD, WEAR SUNSCREEN.'

I'm a twenty-five-year-old grown man who's lived independently for several years. Yet, I'm back home for barely a week, and already Mom is scolding me via grade-school-level post-its when let's be honest, she's got no one but herself to blame for my susceptibility to the sun's rays. It tends to go with the ginger-haired and green-eyed DNA she passed down. Had I taken after Dad the way Alice does, the sun wouldn't be my enemy.

Regardless, my momentary bout with confusion begins to wane, and it turns out that I don't actually want to escape my reality by going to Hell. It was the apocalyptic book messing with my already troubled psyche. And now that I figured that out on my own, I won't need to drop two large on a half-hour session with Doc Gerandy to explore my dystopian daydreams when he and I have enough subjects to canvas.

While those dots finish connecting themselves, I lie under the beach umbrella and over my towel, shut my eyes again, and trade in the looping seagulls for the disjointed thoughts that have been circling my mind for the past few weeks.

'Mr. Masen, due to recent cutbacks, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go…'

'Mr. Masen, as you know, the L.A. apartment was a job perk. Therefore, I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to vacate by month's end…'

'Edward, this relationship just isn't working for me anymore…'

I squeeze my eyes, cringing, my hands in fists at my sides.

Again, that laughter rings out.

It drifts toward me, carried in the balmy beach breeze. It's somewhere close but not too close. Along with the crashing ocean waves and with the birds' susurrations, the laugh joins a chorus that begins to drown out my thoughts. My eye muscles relax, and my hands un-fist, The rest of me responds by releasing some of the tension that, for weeks, has kept me in knots, unable to focus, sleep, or even offer up a smile that doesn't resemble a grimace.

I exhale a long breath. Folding my arms back, I rest my head on my hands. And with my face up to gossamer clouds and the sun's warm rays, I bask in the laughter's strange spell and the accompanying rare, inexplicable, yet welcome moments of peace it offers.

A/N: Thoughts?

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