"Child, the music is clearly exhibiting the composer's indecision. Listen to the way it races through the octave only to descend in the next breath. Doesn't it create a feeling of being off-kilter? Unsteady? Taking said feelings into account, wouldn't it be better to represent it with a jagged or broken line? Yet you have drawn a smooth curve."
She gazed up at the lady, incomprehension evident. The woman walked away huffily.
She turned her attention back to the troubling curve in question. Indecision? Where? The musician knew exactly where he was going. The tempestuous music was clearly to rile up an audience, the storm before the calm. As such, the calm would assuage all feelings of insecurity the earlier part of the music might have unearthed. It would be the perfect balm, a comfort blanket to wrap all people if need be. It was like a mother's generous embrace, welcoming, forgiving; that's what her books described them as anyway. What better way to represent this than with the breath-taking symmetry of a circle and its philanthropic tendencies; it literally made the world go round.
The melody ended with the same unsettling music it had begun with. She smiled, satisfied. It had come full circle.
The smile was the twig that broke the camel's back. Our Mayflower already chalked up several strikes in the past few minutes; burgeoning curiosity, free thought, opinions, contentment with her work, not to mention the little needling voice at the back of her head. Happiness, however slight, was the last straw. Well, that and her talking into thin air. That one's on me, I'm bad at being seen.
The men in white carted her off, taking great care to separate her from the music; while it was state-approved due to its rhythmic nature, its subjective effect on the listener had placed its existence under review. Bop to the same beat but ensure the tappity-tap isn't the sound of a revolutionary come a-knockin'.
The most curious phenomenon was observed by those who placed May under a similar review. They had originally hypothesized that the music was responsible for the onslaught of emotions that pinged them off; despite her bright yellow name, a child as properly gray as May was all but transparent to our esteemed doctors of the doctrine. Yet her gray was mystifyingly translucent.
It was unsettling, put mildly. It was concluded that she was ill and severely so, must be for the alternative was unthinkable. If their objective truth was akin gravity, then our lil' May was afloat. A false truth, reason objects; a mere shadow marketed as tangible reality.
May had to go.
They kicked her out of the reformatory, a rare feat if there ever was. She was first quarantined and when it was deemed non-contagious, politely isolated.
*****
It's May now and I'm still sitting in the same spot, stewing in the same pot. At this point I'm worse than stagnant water for even that possesses the potential to spread disease while I can only contract one. My shoulders ache so much, I might as well be Atlas; at least the weight of his world didn't flatten him into a pancake. Frankly, it should have. We'd have had a Titan frisbee. All future godly debates could be resolved with a quick frisbee match. No slice and dice while in flight. Speaking of which, I'd like a word with god. Or whichever inter-subjective concept is trending these days. Not to call him up on his crap, no nothing of the sort. I just wanna know when the sadness ends. It's the fear of forever that weighs my heart down the most. What if I'm never fully happy again? all my emotions seem flushed with grey, but joy is the one I miss most.
Still May, but while my friends are flying to college, I'm limping to my meds. How am I supposed to be happy for them when my own happiness is contained in a tiny yellow pill. But I try. And I feel like a massive flake, a subtle fake. I just– I feel so bitter. I wanted to go to college too. But I'm just stuck here. Stuck trying to get up, get out of this endless gray wasteland, reserved for my private perusal.
Where are my neon signs of exit, demarcating happiness.
An erratic switch to first person pronouns instead of third person ones, such a pitiable folly. Won't you sit with me as I try to find precisely where I dropped the ball, a ball of burple yarn? You haven't seen it, have you? You haven't seen May, have you?
Awesome