I sadly sat outside a pawnshop, with Wendy indoors. We are broke and she is selling her things, and this is tragic and frustrating. It's not quite whoring, but can't be too many degrees removed. To sit idly while a person you love sells their belongings to feed themselves is a weird enough torture, but that she's feeding me too with these profits is almost too much to take. It's only been a few days, and already we resort to this. Everything costs much more than we'd thought. A worthwhile man wouldn't let this happen to his woman, but I'm maybe not so worthwhile, and I'm certainly no man. Everyone could feel the vibe in this nothing town. The dogs in pickup trucks and little girls buying ice cream looked sadder for it.
Wendy went in with a wristwatch, and she came out with something much larger, and that's not normally how pawnshops work.
She got closer, and I saw that what she had was an ugly joke of a trumpet. I can't begin to imagine how old it must have been or what wars it had been through.
'Are you planning to take up music?'�
'No,'� she smiles large, 'it's for you.'� She extends her arm and offers me the trash.
'I don't know what to say.'�
'Play something,'� she said, and I gave it a shot.
The trumpet was in such crappy condition, I couldn't even get a clear note. There was no relation between what my lips were doing and what came out the other end. I put it down.
'It's no use. It's too beat up to play anymore.'�
'You were playing something.'�
'Yeah, that was something, alright.'�
'Keep playing.'�
'I can't. It's so off, it's like a whole other instrument.'�
'So play whatever instrument it is.'�
'I don't know how,'� I said, but then I felt bad because it was so nice, her buying it for me. So I played a little more.
The sound was so unpleasant, it was actually painful. But it was fascinating, too. Sometimes I've heard people play, and it kind of sounds like their trumpet's crying. Usually, the effect comes off super cheesy. But this trumpet had gone far beyond crying. It was a psychokiller. It was digging its nails into its face, wrenching its eyes out, gnawing on its arms, slamming its head against the concrete. As the music hit my ears, it filled me with an awful feeling. The fingers-on-chalkboard noise triggered something, all the rage and frustration and hate I feel towards my school or the world, or myself. All the muscles in my body contracted as this current flowed through. And all I could do was push it back out through the trumpet. It was a feedback loop, pouring out the trumpet, in my ears, through my body, and back out. It got louder and louder and I welled with electric poison. More and more searing and devastating and horrible and beautiful. They didn't sound like notes anymore. The notes had been ripped open, and whatever was inside them spilled out, got all over everything. I opened my eyes to see that we were all alone. All empty sky and barren fields. There was nothing but the sound of the trumpet. It was the sound of the world. It was nasty gut-wrenching noise, and it was my lovesong to her.
Then I stopped because I knew I was done. It was all gone and I could float now.

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