Days Between the Tomorrows

The Gramophone

You hear it. The subtle sound that started after you yelled, sounding like some sort of music. It is a familiar sound, like a song you can't quite remember. It sounds far away, foggy somehow.

What's music?

What's fog?

What's a song?

Your thoughts are still echoing through the darkness. It starts to annoy you. You wish that they wouldn't echo, repeatedly saying over and over again your thoughts, which are supposed to be private.

You decide to walk towards the music. It sounds calming, soothing even. Like a tune your mother would sing you to sleep with as a child.

What's a mother?

What's a child?

Do I have either of those?

Am I one of those?

Confusion sets in again. You sigh in frustration as your thoughts echo around the darkness, ringing in your ears.

You keep walking in the direction of the sound of the music. It is gradually getting louder. Bit by bit.

Eventually you see a light, you pick up your pace and soon see what the light is coming from.

A hearth. A fireplace. Or, actually, a corner of a room. With dark hardwood floors and oak paneling on the walls. The fireplace itself is made of stones, dark and light shades of grey, the fire flickering from within. Upon the hearth sits few things; a candle, a ring, a crucifix, a small doll with blond hair and wearing a faded red dress trimmed with white lace, a simple book with no title, a paintbrush, what looked to be a music box, a piece of stained, bright blue glass, and a very small, very worn out, very old indeed, a simple scrap of black fabric.

You dare not wonder what these things are or how you know them.

In front of the hearth were two large chairs. Next to one them was an antique end table. And sitting one that antique end table, was a gramophone, playing that oh-so familiar tune on a record.

You suddenly become aware of the black cloaked figure sitting in the chair closest to the gramophone.

The record stops.

The figure moves, as if to start the record again.

You watch in horror, mouth slightly agape, you hand covering your mouth to hide your shuttering breaths.

For the hand that is resetting the gramophone's record player, is that of a skeleton.