Before We Disappear

by Shaun David Hutchinson

“How?” he asked, finally. “How is it possible?” “God,” I said. “God’s a con.”

Jack, however, appeared to me as a victorious cry. He crackled like Tesla’s fire. He was a million mirror shards turned inward, he was a rootless tree following the sun. Jack was the most glorious creature I had ever seen, so flawed and yet so hopeful, even if he denied it.

His rakish strut and disarming smile were the perfect counterpoint to the Enchantress. She was a dream made flesh and he was a bad idea impossible to resist. Together they were beguiling.

I was kissing the sound of applause, the smell of a new fire on a frigid winter morning, the warmth of the summer sun. We became vines entwined about one another for a season, we were the sun and moon dancing in the same blue sky.

I watched from the between as colors pulsed from Jack’s chest, traveled through his arms to his hands, and flowed into and then from the violin. Jack wasn’t simply playing music, he was creating it from his dreams and his heart, from his soul, and he was giving it to me. I caught the colors and wrapped them about myself like a cocoon, unsure what I would emerge as later, but I left room within so that when Jack’s song ended, he could join me inside.