He was a stone as he sat on the bench, headphones humming. He thought it was a good song. This was a good song, but not because of the production quality, or the musician's ability. This was one of those songs where the music was pitched just right and the flow of the song was perfectly executed. The genre didn't matter and neither did the words of the vocalist. This was a song that literally washed over him and sent sound waves throughout his body. He could feel the hairs on his body stand up from his neck to his forearms and it happened in a rhythmic way. It was as if he were in a baseball game and could see people on the other side of the stadium start a wave, then watch as it moved over to his side. His hair wave was signifying how awesome this song was to his body. As the song passed over and through him, he kept his eyes closed as he envisioned every note colliding with his ear drum.
This was something that Robert needed today. Sparse and creamy notes to block out the shit outside the headphones. The album ended and Robert took off the headphones to wrap them up and put them in his pocket. As soon as he turned off his iPod, he heard it. It was a wailing; a child screaming. He took out his earbuds and the shrill shriek slapped him across the face. He looked to his right and left, scanning the sidewalk for the baby. He didn't have to look far. The old town square of Greenville was a lot like most any town square. Robert was sitting in front of the old Masonic hall that was now a newspaper printing company. To his right was the candy store, followed by the hardware store, and the steakhouse. The screaming kid was in it's stroller, angry and trying to get out. It looked like a girl, giving the pinks and purples of her clothes. Her mother sat at her side on the bench, in front of the candy store, reading a magazine of some kind. She appeared to be ignoring her the same way most mothers did with their children screaming in public. The girl's face was smeared with chocolate, which Robert assumed was the reason why she was angry: No more chocolate. The little girl's expression of anger tore through him as it always had done. Robert was physically and emotionally affected by the crying of children. He didn't know why. When he was growing up, his Mom would smack his sister for being a bratty little shit. Sometimes she would get smacked for fucking with him in the car or for fucking with him at home. She was a bratty little asshole of a sister. Almost every time she would start crying after getting smacked, although he knew she deserved it, he would start to cry himself. This really pissed his mom off. I mean,really pissed his mom off. Especially since he was the one bitching to her about his asshole sister in the first place. Sometimes he would get the shit smacked out of him, too. He couldn't help it, though. It was like a hypnotic trigger. It was as if he could interpret the actual meaning of the crying and sobbing as a pure language and it pierced him in the chest. Where his mother and sister shared the gene of mean-spirited assholery, he was given the gift of feeling too much at the wrong time. This was not what he wanted to hear and certainly not this soon. He got up and wiped his nose and eyes as he walked in the opposite direction. Robert stood just over six feet and carried himself at a generous 260 pounds. He was dropping weight, though, from his commanding 310 pound triumph that he achieved early last year. He had lost his most recent girlfriend along with the weight, too. Although she was the reason for his weight loss. When they had met, Robert was built like a brick shit house and scared the shit out of most all the guys in town. Uncharacteristically, he had fallen into a moderate depression after his best friend died in a freak accident on the river and stopped working out. It's hard when your workout buddy breaks his head open on a rock. He took up reading and listening to music as his hobbies and it hit him hardest in the waistline. It felt like only two weeks had gone by when he looked in the mirror and saw an upright-walking manatee looking back at him. By then it was too late. His girlfriend was already cheating on him and only broke up with him so she could take her new relationship public. Ever since his girlfriend left him, he would go to the square and zone out to his music whenever he got hungry. He began supplementing music for food, which resulted in weight loss but also an increasing library of music. Today was like any other, aside from the screaming girl. Robert finally composed himself as made his way back to his house to get dressed for work. |
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