The Music That Stole It All

Chapter 2

Our town is a weird thing. Something you'd write about in a mysterious and epic fashion— most likely in a police investigation.

It was as if the world decided to play a funny joke— using kids already small voices and unheard pleas as the butt end of this— and made something so seemingly harmless, almost beautiful, into something terrifying and ruthless.

Yet our mystery wasn't whispered at bed time by a parent with a cautious voice, nor was it just some urban legend our town was seemingly obsessed with.

It was reality. Well, for kids at least.

This rugged town, with its streetlights that basically bowed at oncoming cars and houses that were made with solely human hands (that crumbled over time like those humans) was in a nice word—shit.

But parents found it endearing in a way.

Endearing like how a baby's first steps then tumble down a flight of stairs is endearing.

It lasts a moment.

And once that small, gracious and utterly blissful moment where you see that the buildings are not crumbling and not repainted merely because "history" and actually because adults lack the fine eye to see it, the town feels more like a hell hole. Specifically for kids.

It's as if every adult is under a trance. And this doesn't just start with the buildings.

Music slithers through the streets at night, like some beast prowling for any unlucky soul that dares to indulge in its song. To follow its commands as it sings, "come here, come here," in the way of tittering flutes that mimic the ways of sirens.

But our parents can not hear this. Not even when it becomes so loud it's hard to ignore the beckoning. When your feet start moving and your head gets foggy.

Every kid knows not to watch the sunset. Not to walk home alone. Not to leave the house. Not till someone is taken.

Because someone is always taken.

And we may cry, we may say we will try to find them, but everyone will always let out a breath of air, happy that they were not the one stolen by the music. For until next year we don't have to worry as much about the music taking us.

Because we are sure it's the music. The music no adult can hear.

Because every time a child is taken, the parents don't cry, they don't search, they don't plea.

They go on living, smiling, laughing, so utterly ignorant and blissful.

So no, we don't love our weird town. We don't love it's mystery. But we all know that when we turn 18, the music will seize. This ugly town will turn pretty. And that we can never, ever, leave.

And the town would never let anyone write a story about it. So we let it take our friends, take our family, take our memories, but we always remember, the music is not as lovely as it seems.

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Our town has 1,238 people. Of those 1,283 people, 376 of them are kids under the age of 18. And all of them know each other.

And while, like anywhere, not everyone is friends and you have your bully and the bullied, your outcast and the perfect child— we all know when to shove every little personal issue out the window and suck it the fuck up and talk in a somewhat reasonable manner.

We are quite civilized and progressive for kids, I'd say. And no, we aren't born in some place with no parents at all where we must grow up fast and fend for ourselves, but the mysterious music and disappearances seem to bring us all together in some way.