Spitballs

The Trumpet Player

The couple spun around the floor, laughing and smiling wildly.

He kissed her, long and smooth,  and the continued dancing, their tiny living space filled with silent music and the echoing laughter. The quiet drums pounded in the background. The crisp, sweet violin plucked out the melody. The trumpet harmonized with a saxophone and a clarinet.

The trumpet player was just a little too loud, but they didn't mind. Now the woman was leaning her head on his chest and  the two of them swayed quietly.

The husband smiled. This was nice. Peaceful. And he loved it.

The trumpet player went up on a riff, dodging up and down with a masterful string of notes that slid together as if they were not multiple notes at all, but one, long sound.

But then he stopped, right up on the highest note of his riff, and it was, all at once, blaring.

The husband's smile faltered. That wasn't exactly what he called peaceful. The note continued on, shouting high and loud, almost an alarm.

He stopped swaying. His wife looked up at him. "Honey?" She asked.

The trumpet player wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop playing the note. The high, alarm of a note that stung in the husband's ears.

"Are you alright?" The wife said, but the husband could barely hear her. The trumpet player was too loud now, drowning out the rest of the band with the note, the note that made the husband cringe and the saxophone quiet.

"Stop it!" The husband said, parting from his wife to speak with the silent trumpet player.

"Darling?" The wife questioned, flowing after him, but almost cautiously.

The husband walked right up next to the stage, shouting now. "Stop it!" He repeated. "That doesn't sound good!"

But the trumpet player wouldn't stop. 

"You're ruining the dance!" The husband yelled. He started climbing onto the stage. The trumpet continued.

"Who are you talking to?" The wife said, although she didn't really want an answer.

"Stop it!" He screamed, grabbing a hold of the silent trumpet player. The musician's instrument fell out of his hands, but the sound continued, only getting louder.

The husband's hands were grabbing now, grasping over the musician, his white button-down shirt wrinkly in the husband's harsh hands.

The wife watched her husband rush around the room, reaching for something unattainable.

He fumbled agains the counter, knocking over two bowls they had eaten breakfast with earlier. The fell to the ground, the milk spraying in almost every direction. It seemed unreal, close to a movie that played in a speed that was near slow motion. 

What's going on? The wife screamed in her mind. Just a moment ago, they had been enjoying a soft, romantic dance, but now her husband was rushing around the room like a maniac.

She reached out to him, for him, grabbing onto the edge of his sleeve, and tried to turn him around. He wouldn't move. To him, this was only someone else, maybe one of the other musicians trying to tear him away from the trumpet player.

"Steve!" She shouted, yanking harshly on the fabric.

His head instantly swung around, but it wasn't really his. His eyes were dark, too dark, and they had a glazed look in them. His teeth were clenched together in a fierce snarl.

"Get off me!" He shouted, but it seemed more directed at the air than anything else.

She let go of his sleeve, but didn't move. That was not her husband. The look in his eyes, she had never seen anything like it before.

He didn't feel her release his sleeve. Instead, he could feel the nagging pulls of multiple hands, all trying to rip him off the trumpet player and the note that still issued from his discarded instrument.

He swung out his hand in a wide arc, but, although it was aimed in her direction, it again appeared to be aimed at something else, some unseen being.

As her thoughts caught on this, his arm swung out again, this time much closer to her. Unable to react in time due to the steady stream of confusion in her mind, his arm slammed squarely into her face, a sharp intense pain shooting up into her skull.

She thudded to the ground, only half trying to catch herself, as tears formed in her eyes.

Blood dripped down her face; something in her nose felt broken.

After a few seconds of shocked silence, she reached into her pocket. Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed 911 quickly. Her husband continued to swing his limbs around madly, fighting off fictional attackers.  His hands and feet ran into multiple objects, the walls, the cupboards, the counters.

She could feel the tears flowing freely down her face now, more from fear than pain. What had happened to her husband? The once sweet and gentle man was, in an instant, a raving lunatic, imagining being attacking him.

Then, as if on cue to display more of his madness, the husband turned around, standing perfectly still. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were still dark and glazed. She could see particles of spit dripping from his mouth. She thought of a rabid dog, an infected animal in need of shots.

"I'll take you on!" The husband screeched, but his voice didn't sound the same. It was louder, and harder, and it had a tinge of scratchiness to it that made the wife cringe. 

"I'll take you all on!" He continued, his eyes searching some imaginary crowd, waiting for silent attackers to make a move.

And then his gaze shifted farther back, as if the people were moving away from him. "Don't you run away from me!" He screamed, and the scratchiness was there again, only worse this time. The wife sat frozen on the floor. Someone on the phone was speaking, but no one could hear her. The wife was too scared of the sight, the sudden, terrifying, sight, before her, and the husband had lost all sense of the real world.

The husband ran, crashing half his hip into the edge of the counter. This barely slowed him down. He tore through the apartment toward the door, although the wife didn't know how, in his state, he even knew where the door was. He flung it open in a spur of motion and, rushed through the exit.

He ran into the hallway and paused for just a moment. From where she lay, the wife could no longer see him. But she could hear him, hear the scratchiness in his voice, and she didn't want to look.

"You can't hide from me!" He belted, the words practically ripping out of his throat. And, with that finite exclamation, he took off down the hallway, gargling nonsense words after his enemies.

The wife sat still on the floor for a long time, the blood still seeping down her face. She waited for her husband to come back, to enter the doorway smiling and say, "I got you, honey. That was just a joke." Even though it would have been a cruel joke, a very cruel joke that had caused her physical and emotional pain, it would have been easier to deal with. It would have been so much easier than being left with nothing, no explanation for why the man she loved had spontaneously gone crazy.

But he didn't. He didn't come back and tell her it was just a joke. He didn't return.

He didn't ever return.