Feel My Voice (Avi Kaplan Fanfiction)

1. Subsonic

CHAPTER 1

February 19th, I was at my faculty. I had started studying Physics at a community college far away from my hometown like a year from then. I was working in one of my favorite labs; Acoustics and Study of Waves. My professor had invited me and other three students to work with him as lackeys; it was a great way to spend our vacation. What? Don't believe it? I dare you to spend one day there and not to love it. Anyway, that day turned into a mess. I was so happy helping Dr. Adams with his project on sudden shock of sound waves through fluids. Air, for example; he applied a certain length of wave, with a really low or high frequency, then he studied the phenomenon.
At 3:00 pm, everyone was out for lunch, except for me. I wanted to stay. So by faking a lack of appetite, I managed to stay there and just play with the cute machine. I put on those special headphones we used to test the sound, and began calculating some measurements to start the circuit. I looked at my clock when I was 2 check-ups from finishing, 3:15 pm. Time flies when you're having fun, huh?
When the calculations were done and triple checked, I went on the knobs to turn them on and start. To my surprise, the lever was on I (on).
What? Well, I guess the Doctor forgot to turn it off. I shrugged.
I went ahead to start the pitch, I had decided to go on 9Hz and then fluctuate from there. Something between C0 and Db0 I had always loved to hear.
My eyes drifted from the ON sign, to the numbers on my paper to the needles and spectrums of the pitch.

At first my brain couldn't make up for what was happening. I snapped back to myself when I realized I was taking off my headphones with a wild movement, the wire strings flapping in the air as I did. I stopped moving for two seconds as my head processed the information, and then with a sudden move, turned off the whole machine.
The needles dropped and my conscious was dull. What had just happened? Like a flash of light, the image of the trembling pitch needle popped in my head.
It had been indicating 5Hz. My eyes flowed slowly to the decibels. A really high volume had stayed since the professor left. We had just worked with water and low frequencies the humans were unable to hear.
My eardrums had been put to the pressure of a subsonic wave length for all the time that I had been doing the math to begin the experiment.
I turned to my right. Turned to my left. My body was numbing and my hands getting cold. I knew something was wrong. I would have to be the luckiest person in the world to come out of this the way I entered. I was just too afraid to find out.
I stayed there for what felt hours. Days. Quiet. My brain had already figured out, but my heart couldn't accept it.
Finally, dead cutting the eternity that I had been standing like a paralyzed zombie, I took the pencil I had been working with. I left it up the height of the table. I felt a slow, but deep punch on my throat.

E# to the floor. I voiced in my head, closed my eyes, and released the pencil from my grab.
Nothing.
My head spun. The deep punch was now on my stomach.

I looked to the floor hopeful, wondering if by any mean it had got lost somewhere on the way down.

The pencil was on the floor.
Tears flooded my eyes and my throat broke into something that would've been heard as a choked sob.

I was still shaking my head and dabbing my fingers on the table like this anxious crazy woman...
When a hand took my shoulder making me jump.
Belle was there. She started talking to me as normal. My eyes kept on moving to every point to look at, my face a blank. I was unable to think clearly.
She made a puzzled face and started talking again.

I just looked at her mouth. Lips. I was choking on my one cry. But finally, I said it.
"I'm deaf!" I cried, hearing nothing but the deep boil of angst and fear inside my core.
The waves and sound that I had so much loved had destroyed the mean of my love for them.
The thing was that I never really heard them, because it wasn't even in the human hearing spectrum. I just stayed there, letting the sound dig deep into my ear nerves.

After that, I ended my physicist degree with no real honorifics. I was handicapped and I hated everything. I wrote loads of shit in my tumblr. People, as expected, never read it. I had the minimum amount of followers; some of my long time no see friends and some random people.
An evening, I was just mopping around when I saw a message on my phone.
*Amazing news! Get to my house ASAP*

Belle Saunders, my very best and now only friend. Nice enough to understand my situation. She had stayed with me through, let's say, "thick and thin". She had also mastered Optical at some institute in Tennessee, or something in the south. I had something against her deep in my heart. I hated myself for feeling that way, 'cause I had no reasonable argument to feel that way. I was just jealous that she could go ahead reaching the top of her dream and I could only watch her as she triumphed.

It was normal to feel that way. To be crushed by your very passion. I mean, what the fuck? I was just getting over all that...

When I arrived to Belle's house, I realized she had been cooking. Although she lived with her parents, no one could ever mistake her own way of cooking this delicious lemon and shrimp pasta. Gee, she knew how to improve my mood.

"Hi bae," she said and also gestured.

I hugged her and said "I knew you were cooking the moment your mother opened the door." I stared in her eye, "And she was a fair maiden, too; make no mistake!" I finished with a quote from our favorite David Firth cartoon.

We both laughed.

Then, we dined like two 20 something year old students, in the kitchen almost eating from the pot. Ok, we ate from the pot.

I relaxed so much, I had forgotten the reason that had brought me there in the first time.

"Jingle, you sent me this text saying that you had 'amazing news'," I made jazzy fingers.

She made a mischievous face and put my hand on her throat for me to feel her famous gurgling laugh.

"Stahp," I pulled on my upset face. (Grumpy cat style)

She straighten herself up on her seat. "Ok, so. Your birthday is coming soon."

I knew that.

"And your mother and I have been trying to come up with a true gift for you. You know, a trve gift."

I laughed, but I already knew that.

"So... I've been making third kind contact with some people and..."

What? I did not know that.

"Well... Remember Avi Kaplan?"

I didn't know what was going on. "You mean that Baritone guy."

She twisted her face, "Baritone? I thought he was a Bass..." she drifted, confused.

"Well, yeah, he is. But I'm deaf and I can't recognize vocal parts anymore."

"Gosh-darn it, Maj. This is BIG."

I looked to thin air, "Damn, she just called me Maj. Dis is 4 realz"

She slapped my shoulder slightly, I was now leaning over my crossed arms over the kitchen bar. She sat on the bar good three feet away from me to state our classy personal space.

"Good. I'm just gonna say it."

"Stop. I know what." She looked confused but waiting for my response. "You made him answer one the tweets I wrote him years ago." I faked logging twitter in my phone.

Her face features changed to irritated, "You ain't know shit, dude." She burst on laughing, mischievously.

"What?" She just kept on. "Tell me!" My upset face again. She sort of stopped.

"Girl, he's meeting you!"

My muscles felt numb and quivering. I was more than confused. Didn't know the hell was happening.

"OHMYFUKINGAWD!!!", I finally yelled with all the power of my vocal chords.