As Arthur weaved through the towering buildings of Greenwich Village under the pattering rain, the faint echoes of spontaneity and freedom enveloped him in a trance of blissful dreams. Taking refuge for a brief moment under an overhang, the middle aged stockbroker simply listened. The sounds came from down the street. In a drunken haze, Arthur made his way towards the club, stopping at a grimy, metal staircase under a f ire escape on the verge of falling apart. Arthur had not entered a jazz club since his time in college; memories of forlorn, hopeless times haunted his mind as he stood on the top step, blocking him from moving into the dimly lit club below. Arthur waited. However, it was cold outside and a sharp breeze stung Arthur’s cheeks; he could hardly wait on the top of those steps forever, and perhaps he was more of a romantic than he cared to admit.
Arthur made his way down the steps and through the dilapidated door, joining a collection of eclectic characters in a delightful harmony of sound. Waiters moved to and fro, balancing eight glasses between their fingers as if in the Cirque du Soleil. Patrons sat at tables in quiet conversation while others faced the musicians, listening to the abstract fusion of their instruments in sincere admiration. Arthur sat down in a corner, breathing in the eternal scene. The musicians continued to play, increasing tempo as the resonating beats of the drum, and resounding notes of the saxophone morphed into a frenetic cacophony. The edges of the room darkened. The dim lights began to flicker into oblivion. Arthur’s heart sank, leaving only traces of an inexpressible sadness in the depths of his irises. He was consumed by black, beady eyes which bore into his soul —a gaze which violated his most of his irises. He was consumed by black, beady eyes which bore into his soul —a gaze which violated his most intimate desires and fears, promising to condemn his life of sin. The cows had come. They always come in the end.
The spawn of satan are unable to resist the enchanting melodies, coming in violent waves which bury those born with little luck. Arthur was carried away to endless, midnight fields of cows milling about, mindlessly eating long stalks of dead grass. They noticed Arthur. He was filled with a dread only the damned feel as God flicks his finger downward in judgement to the skies bathed in a violent red. The cows began to move in his direction and surround him: a tide of black and white gazing at Arthur with their lifeless eyes. Coming to a stop a mere few feet away, the cows waited in an eerie silence, as if waiting for Arthur to speak, to confront his worldly temptations.
Arthur remained silent and still, both in mind and body. His thoughts fell into a state of paralysis. He feigned an air of ignorance, playing the fool in hopes of averting their piercing gaze. It was of no use. Flashes of green, open pastures, and ceaseless skies draping the land in blue folds rose from the recesses of Arthur’s mind; black and white spots gluttonously grazing upon the grasslands; the desolate, sunken eyes of his parents as he forsook the house lying atop the prairie; the mass of writhing shapes pushing against one another below the screens which control nations; the tears of the mother after losing everything; the high walls of the ornate apartment overlooking Central Park; the anguished, pained faces of his victims. It stopped.
The host of cows began to disperse, first one by one, then in undulating flows of thick molasses. Arthur was soon all alone. He was not sure how long he stood there, waiting, waiting for the spirit which would lead him out of that forsaken place, into happier lands where the breeze still blew and the sunlight touched the earth. In the silence, Arthur could just hear the hazy, charming notes of the musicians: an invitation to leave the harrowing landscape.
Arthur was swathed in the clamour of the club once again, inundated with the feverish pace of the instruments and the quiet murmur of the patrons seated around him. His chest rose and fell, first in rapid succession, then in long, slow movements. The glare of the light lessened and the bustle of the club fell to a soft dim. He was safe. A herd of cows was not going to simply walk down the narrow staircase and waltz through the door of the jazz club. Yet for the remainder of the night, as he studied the fingers which plucked the instruments and as he was strolling home through the misty streets, he felt the gaze of the black eyes on his back. The cows followed in judgment.
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