SYMPHONY IN FLESH

The lights went down, the packed house hushed.  The orchestra tuned up over the sterile silence of eleven hundred nervous patrons; even the critics were restless.  The Elizabethan theater was an Opera house painted in pale yellows, walled by dark, Italian marble.  Large, Grecian statues guarded the main hall and the foot of the stairwells to the balcony.  Apart from the reading lights attached to the orchestra's music stands, darkness enshrined the theater ... but for the spotlight upon the empty podium of esteemed composer and conductor, Gustav Hürtztikoff. 
     Gustav was something of an anomaly in the critical world of symphonies.  No one wrote them anymore, and those who did scored for Hollywood, not for the pure, benign beauty of composition.  One never knew what to expect from Gustav's baton.  He was a musical anarchist, but a genius; a composer who did not allow the listener's ear to rest or a listener's heart to grow cold.  Granted, his catalog was slim at best, but, as it was with brilliant men, when he emerged he left an impression upon the age.
     Tonight ... tonight would be no different.
     Gustav was almost forty years old, a prodigy, blind in one eye since birth.  He wrote his first symphony at the age of sixteen, then went into reclusion to finish his schooling.  When he was twenty-six, all but forgotten for his first effort, he re-emerged with a new great work titled Eve.  It was around this time he married, and appeared at the top of the world when he discovered his young bride became pregnant on their wedding night.  Tragedy would find them when, eight months after their honeymoon, she was kidnapped then found dead.  Again, Gustav disappeared from the map.
     Tonight's performance was his first time back to the podium since Eve's debut.  Amidst classical music aficionados, his sightings became like those of The Virgin Mother.  Speculation ran rampant when surfaced a "confirmed" published picture of a bearded man trekking through a village in Nepal.  He'd gone mad from his loss was the word on the street, and would never compose again.  Those speculations proved false, and here he was with another symphony, an epic, entitled Damnation.
     The orchestra settled down.  The notorious conductor appeared from stage right.  The audience went to their feet to cheer and applaud.  His tall, angular frame walked to the podium with straight-backed confidence.  His mane of shaggy, white hair flowed around his head.  Ever in his life, he wore a patch over his foul eye ... but not this night.  Gustav gazed upon them with milky-eyed contempt.  He turned to bow to his players.  The crowd relaxed themselves, settled into their seats when he raised his arms, cruciform, into the air, his baton firm in his right hand.
     The first part of the symphony began with violins.  The players bowed their bows over their nylon strings in a soft, lilting, steady bee.  After a while, the pianist joined them ... dark notes, notes in contrast to the delicate mood of the violin players.  The cellos then set in, a woofing bass tone into the construction.  One critic noted the musicians didn't look at their fingers, and their eyes were closed as they played through this wonderful instrumental tangle.  The discordant sonata paced along, addicts to tone submitted as the orchestra enchanted their listeners with Gustav Hürtztikoff's triumphant return.
     Gustav cued his blind ensemble into the next movement.  Horns.  Big, messy horns opened up the gates to some other sonic dimension.  The violinists attacked their instruments with vigor and the squeals of a thousand rats scurried up from the resounding depths of their strings.  The timpani boomed in a slow, steady backbeat from the main tempo, adding a disturbing meter to the cacophony.
     The auditorium was dark, but by now the people were seduced.  Even the Baroness draped in jewels in the center balcony closed her eyes.  She could tell but naught from the music.  She could not tell as the shadows rose up behind her, as the shadows closed around her, as the shadows pressed through her flesh into the lining of her soul, and the souls of every member of the audience.  Still ... they swayed.
     The ushers in the lobby had no idea what was happening; it was in Gustav's contract people be prevented from entering or exiting the auditorium.
     Gustav tapped into the third movement.  All was going according to plan.  The larger instruments quieted, the minuet began; a bouncing play between plucked violins and the piano.
     Gustav watched his orchestra as their music-stand bulbs glowed white under a green fog emanating onto the stage, rising above the performer's heads.  The musicians' flesh began to wither and gray.  Their wet bits dried up, their eyes receded into their skulls, skin shriveled at the ends of their fingers ... they continued to play. 
     The dead stench of sulfur filled the hall.
     The fourth and final movement began with a skeletal chorus ... the enchanting voices of the foredoomed.  Tears appeared in the shimmering blue scrim draped over the back of the stage behind the players.  The fabric was scraped open as winged imps twice the size of men with diamond-shaped heads of bone used their claws to rend reality to shreds.  Timpani bellowed below them, horns stabbed in with large breaths to prepare the way for Naàmut Räl, a Lord of Evisceration who would cleanse the Earth of soul and flesh.  The pitiless eyes of the imps glowed green in the dark as they made their way through the walls, as they made their way with their horrible mouths full of jagged teeth.  They leapt and flocked the theater, flying around the domed ceiling in anticipation of their master's arrival.
     Gustav's body caught fire.  His white bowtie and black tails melted into his skin as he screamed over his symphony, falling to his exposed knees.  His white hair burned away into crisp little knots.  He began to shift and twist, his muscles bulged, his calves began to stretch, and his arms ... his fingers gnarled into claws, the bones of his body shifted and swelled as darkness entered him.  Black, tattered wings unfolded from his spine, his body distorted and grew tremendous as the conductor's last notes played out.
     The cadaverous orchestra put aside their instruments.
     The Demon Lord, Naàmut Räl, turned to take His final bow facing his necrotic disciples.  The cruel horns on either side of His head issued white smoke.  His own eyes were black, but smoldered a velvety green.  His goat's snout sneered down at them.  Saliva dripped from His lips and burned His minions. 
     "Rise."  The crowd opened their glowing, red eyes.  "Rise, and follow Me unto a banquet of the senses."  They rose from their seats and, in an orderly manner, made their way toward the exits.

© 2006 by Mark J. Euringer