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He took a shallow breath, watching as rubies grew on the tips of his fingers and fell away to puddle on the floor.
He had done it again. This night, he hadn’t wanted to. He had planned to sleep, just like every other night; sleep, like a normal human being. But apparently his subconscious had other ideas (didn’t it always?) and now, here he was – again – watching blood spill from the fingertips of his playing hand. As the sun went down, The Voice seized him mercilessly and he had no choice but to pick up his guitar and pen. Words flowed freely – so fast he couldn’t possibly get all of them on paper. Chords, notes, diagrams, and insane scribbles covered the several scraps of paper he had used. Lyrics were a rushed mess down the center, marred constantly by a furious line-through of unsatisfactory words. Now the sun was licking upon the horizon, his fingertips were scabbed, his body ached, and his soul sighed with something akin to post-coital bliss.
But that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Had always been that. Sex. Release. The meshing of inner being and outer being. Something deep and primal and eternal – the dance between body and mind that had existed since the beginning of time and would last until the end of it. But never had the words treated him so generously as in the last few nights – and strangely as well. The inspiration (the craving, like a sick, pale, wasting junkie, slave to his brazen glittering dealer) only came late at night just as the rest of the world was tucking away and shuttering its eyes against the dark. But something told him, “Of course. Did you expect any different?” And it was true – his eccentricities rarely came out to play in the harsh daylight. His mind had always taken the road past the darkened forest, the one less traveled, the one not worn down with the soles of hundreds of like-minded others. The one that led to the greatest reward.
As his eyes drank in the mess around him, crumpled papers and droplets of blood vivid as death, it felt like a vision. A true reward.
The air grew cold. He placed a fingertip carefully on his tongue and swallowed the evidence of his nightlong intense jam session with his own demons. The coppery taste was not foreign to him. He did not relish it. But tonight it tasted different.
He stood, and dizziness seized him and unlocked his knees. He slumped to the floor gracelessly, scattering papers. His lips parted, almost reverently, and he softly sighed as the vertigo subsided and left him feeling weak and vulnerable. He could stand again. Shaky, uncertain, weak as a kitten, he threaded through tall stacks of books and paper of all kinds towards the far end of his apartment. His knee knocked harshly into the paper-strewn coffee table (under those absurd amounts of junk, he suspected, lay one of his old piano songbooks – or even a guitar) but he barely noticed. His predawn trance was in full.
The morning light shone stronger but paler in his cramped kitchen, and in it he felt rejuvenated. His injured fingers went numb – a pleasant, tingly sort of numb – and the lightness at his temples dissipated satisfyingly. He ran water over his fingertips for a moment or two, watching absently as the blood, already starting to crust and clot, dissolved. They were ugly, raw and red even after cleansing. The rough calluses he had acquired from playing catgut strings since his first time picking up the guitar had split open. He made a face and tucked his hands into his pockets.
“Sorry,” he joked with himself nervously in the still, unobstructed air. “No finger painting today.”
He passed the time peacefully with his own thoughts, both dreading and waiting tersely for the real day to begin. The sooner it got started, the sooner it ended… and then night arrived. He wondered solemnly when this orgasmic rush of words would shrivel up and die. Never? Unlikely. Someday? Probably. Tonight? Well, no way to know for sure. At least not yet.