Crossroad Blues

Dark overtones and cursed fingers held the guitar with care. He was a tall, black man dressed in a suit. His posture was determined. He examined his surroundings inspecting the fog carefully, the quiet movement of the tree leaves, the endless highway back and forth and left and right and he in the middle, the night as dark as nightmares but not as comforting, a shivering of mouth, a faint whisper. The center of a realm fogged, dreamlike.

A crackle of guitar strumming reached his ears and he felt his body and his hands losing control and moving erratically. But he kept still, standing, his head upwards, his eyes closed. A vain feeling, a heat like few, darkness, a cloudy night, a woman’s eyes desperately searching for his hands and his eyes and he facing a wall, with his guitar on his leg and his motions, and the words, words that were not his words but could not be anyone else’s.

He felt the presence and dared to set his eyes upon it. It stood tall and hidden in shadows with a human shape but with a movement, a swift movement of what appeared to be something else, nothing less. It had gotten his hands on the guitar and inspected it. He did not talk since he knew, somehow knew, that it would be useless. It did not need to hear his request nor his voice nor his name. This is why he had come here. A rebirth trapped the starless night, a legend the air caressed, a legend among many.

Quietness.

He felt it observing him with its non-eyes with its non-human anthropomorphic form. He felt its laughter, its magnetism, its power, its death, its nearness, its cravings, its screech from the beyond. From his guitar and the darkness facing the darkness, red nightmare against red nightmare, soul and talent, not a sight but a eternal fog engulfing the end of the night. He felt the sounds of hounds far, far away, like the black, mad ones in his young dreams, the fragrance and taste of warm milk and hot corn, his hands bleeding, bleeding everything they had, bleeding death and bleeding blackness, bleeding notes, bleeding blues, bleeding into the crossroads.

He opened his eyes and felt cold, the guitar in his hands, the clouds gone and the stars appearing, the loneliness creeping in and out, his heart slowing, his breathing slowing. He felt steady and calm. He felt in possession of unnatural devotion. The redness around him became fainter. He stood up, though he had never lied down. He moved, step to step, the instrument hanging from his neck like a gold medallion, heavy and tiring. He heard a low chuckle but did not look back.

He walked down the street, busting his brains out with a number, a tune, and a whistle engraved in his heart, the mind poisoned, the music room wide, illuminating, and the waiting, always the waiting, of the coming. Someday, maybe, anywhere, an early morning, a knock on the door…