Salzburg
Justin woke with a start.
“What is it?” Aaron asked.
Justin could feel the sweat-soaked pillow cold on the back of his neck. The world around him seemed tactile enough but just for a while it had been in a state of constant motion.
“Salzburg,” he whispered.
“Shall I turn the light on?”
“No…”
Because the sodium glow from the streetlights was comforting. He imagined the electricity control room out there, somewhere. A man in a white lab coat carrying a clipboard, monitoring everything, lighting away people’s nightmares.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The music was coming from Mozart’s house. A fog had come in down from the mountains, and Justin didn’t really know where he was, but the music, oh, that harpsichord, it seemed to drag him along through the darkened streets.
An old lady leaned out from an overhanging window.
“If you’re off to Wolfgang’s, tell him to shut up. I’ve got an early start in the morning.”
“He’s a genius.”
“So they say.”
“You can’t stifle the workings of an artist.”
“I’d like to stifle his…”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She slammed her window shut.
The fog made the music sound muffled. Fingers of airborne moisture curled and swirled, he could see the fine droplets lit by the gas lamps. Around him, too, he could sense the Austrian mountains looming, like giants gazing down on him. And the music, oh, that beautiful music.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” Aaron asked.
“Not right now, thanks.”
He carried on walking along the narrow street. The buildings were so close together that they seemed to be leaning in to kiss one another. The cobbled surface was slippery with moisture. He came to a junction and the music seemed to echo all around him, but he didn’t really know which direction it was coming from.
“Are you Agent X?”
“Pardon?”
A figure stepped forwards from the shadows. He was wearing a 1940s trench coat tied around the waist and a brown Homburg hat.
He recognised his boss at once.
“Yes. I’m Agent X.”
“You’ve got only one shot at this,” he said, passing the bomb.
“There was a bomb,” Justin whispered.
“Interesting,” Aaron yawned.
“I distinctly remember. Oh my god, they wanted me to kill.”
“Was it round with a lit fuse?” Aaron asked.
It wasn’t. But that was all that Justin could think about, now.
“Mozart?”
“How did you know?”
“Salzburg.”
“Agent Y… I don’t want to do this.”
Agent X leaned in and brushed away an imaginary fleck of dust from Justin’s shoulder.
“I shall call you Napoleon,” he said, “because I don’t want you to get blown apart, Bonaparte.”
“Funny…”
“I must go. And when the deed is done, we shall be picking bits of Beethoven out of the gutters for years.”
Agent X vanished into an alleyway, enveloped by the fog.
“It’s not Beethoven!” Justin said, looking at the large round bomb he was now holding, the lit fuse getting smaller and smaller.
And the harpsichord music, oh, it was so beautiful, but now it seemed to be pulling him along, dragging him through the foggy city streets towards Mozart’s house.
“I don’t want to do this,” he whimpered, as he held the bomb in front of him, at arms’ length, following the sound of the music. “I don’t want to do this…”
Justin turned the pillow over. The other side was dryer. He didn’t feel quite so hot, and some of the details of the dream had started to dissipate, as if they were a part of the fog that had engulfed Salzburg.
“I was speaking to Marcie the other day,” Aaron said. “You know she lives in a ground floor flat. Her neighbour often gets supermarket delivery lorries turn up at all times of the night. You know, some nights its gone ten ‘o’ clock when they arrive? Anyway, her neighbour had obviously ordered this delivery and it was brought to their house after Marcie had gone to bed. And there was a big advertisement on the side of it, you know the sort of thing. The advertisement was of a woman looking very pleased with herself, a fork holding a piece of broccoli inches from her mouth, a big smile on her face as if eating that piece of broccoli was like the most amazing thing ever. As a side note, do you ever think that the actors and models they use in those advertisements actually eat the vegetables? Or perhaps they’re not even real vegetables, they might be plastic, for all we know. They use all kinds of tricks in the advertising industry. Heh heh, imagine being a model, and you think you’re going to lead this life of absolute adventure mixing with celebs and lounging around on yachts, but then the work starts to dry up, and one day your agent rings and he says, hey, I’ve got you this gig, to pretend to eat some broccoli, and it’s going to be on the side of a fleet of supermarket delivery vans. I mean, you might as well give up after that. Anyway, so this van pulls up outside Marcie’s neighbour’s house, and Marcie doesn’t know this, and she can’t sleep, and she looks out the window and boom, all she sees in the gap in the hedge is this huge, huge face glaring at her, grinning. And you know… And you know… That must have been pretty scary for Marcie.”
“Aaron.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
Justin looked up at the stippled ceiling and tried to imagine the cracks were a road map leading to the capital city of the lampshade.
Mozart had been playing jazz, he now decided. This was a detail he had obviously forgotten since the dream. Or had the details now started to change? He imagined the technicians in their white lab coats, late at night, glancing up from their clipboards and seeing a giant face outside the window, a giant fork, a giant piece of broccoli.
“Bloody hell!” one of them yelled, and accidentally flicked the switch that turned off all the street lights in the town.
“Now where am I going?” Justin asked himself, still being drawn along by the jazz music, but plunged into a sudden all-encompassing dark.
He could just about make out the surrounding buildings by using the lit fuse of the bomb. He saw his reflection in a shop window. He was Napoleon, of course. The jazz was catchy. Mozart was going for it.
“Aaron?”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps I will have that cup of tea.”
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Reader Comments
This is a strange one… I love it.