A friend of mine had died close to the time when it happened. We had been very close with each other while we were in high school but he drifted a bit away when we went to college, in the last few years of his life I barely talked to him at all. A car accident was what did him in, they say he didn’t fill his brake fluid and the whole system went out on him, it was a fiery wreck altogether, I watched the tail end of it when it happened on the news.
Apparently, he had left me a box of stuff to give after death. A few weeks after I received the box, I could open it and look through the contents. There were a lot of items that he had borrowed from me in the past, even a twenty that had a note attached to it saying it was payback from when I got him lunch in our freshmen year of high school.
It made me choke up a little looking through the old box, it wasn’t until I gazed at its contents had the weight of the situation really hit me, that I was never going to see my friend again. Along with the many little knick-knacks that he had left me, there was a single cassette tape. It was small and black with a label on it that read “His Word.”
I didn’t have a cassette player so I sat it off to the side and continued to look through. It wasn’t until about three in the morning that I finally went through the entire container. I was packing everything back up and my eyes fixed onto the cassette. What did His Word mean? I thought to myself before being snapped out of it by a ring of the doorbell.
I got up and walked slowly to the front door. I stood still for a moment by the door. Suddenly they began to knock as well as ring the doorbell over and over until I opened the inside door but left the glass screen door closed as a barrier.
“Good evening sir,” The man who stood outside my front door said.
“Hello, why are you here?” I quickly asked without many pleasantries.
“Well, why is anyone ever knocking on the door of a non-believer, I’m here to tell you of the words of our savior,” he made a transitional movement with his hands and arms between every word, seemingly to emphasize what he was saying, although the action was distracting, it was hard to focus on his face while his hands punctuated every sound from his lips.
“And how would you know that I’m a non-believer?” I asked quickly.
“If you had to ask why I was here then you are one,” he replied with his little flourishes between each syllable.
“Well I go to church every sabbath, I am a believer sir!” I said slightly offended.
“In your god yes, but in Mine no,” the man said, only making a single gesture in the middle of the sentence.
“Well I’m not interested in a sermon right now sir, I respect your beliefs but I would like you to leave!” I shut the door on him and there was silence for a moment.
The knocking began once more after about five seconds as I began to walk away. I opened the door, more annoyed than anything.
“You did not let me finish,” he said without a single movement.
“What?” I asked peeved.
“You have something I want!” he said, with accentuation at the end of the phrase.
“And what would that be?” I asked.
“Well a dear member of our chapel recently passed, we had let him borrow a relic for the purpose of conversation and it seems that after his death it has ended with you,” the man answered, resuming his movements.
“Oh?” I replied, kind of tuning out the conversation a bit.
“It should be a small cassette tape labeled something like ‘The Word’, or ‘Word of Himself’ or similar.”
My thoughts drifted for a moment, remembering the tape I found in the box. I had to fire something back quickly, quickly something was strange about this. A religious nut come at three in the morning to look for a cassette tape he magically knew I had.
“I’m sorry, I do not have such things with me, now I would like it if you woul-” he cut me off quickly by saying.
“Sir please, if you do not be reasonable with me, then we will have to become unreasonable, and none of us here really want that now do we?”
“We?” I asked confused.
The man raised his left hand and balled it in about a second. Once the fist was created the headlights of a van lit up.
“So, will you cooperate or will you be forced to?” he said lowering his hand.
I slammed the door in his face and locked it. In an adrenaline-fueled rush I ran to every door and window and checked then locked them, I sat in the middle of the entrance room with my phone in case I needed it.
“Well then,” the man said, “I suppose if violence is our only recourse, then may it be the one that we may take.”
I heard a sharp snap and then many footsteps reaching my front door. A quick door jiggle let me breathe a single sigh of relief when a sigh of frustration came from the other side of the door. A moment of silence was maintained before a massive smashing sound came from the frame.
In the second I was surrounded before I could react. I tried to quickly dial nine-one-one but someone with a hammer hit me sharply before I could.
I woke up in the morning, it was about seven and the sun had begun to rise.
“I see you’re finally awake, good morning,” the lead man once said, I saw many others moving in and out of doors in a frantic searching method. I heard a yell from my room as someone screamed “I found it, preacher,” as the woman brought the man the tape.
“Ah thank you, Audre,” the man took the tape in his hand.
The man got out a small cassette tape player and a small pair of headphones. I began to fight as he put them onto me.
“In a few minutes, you will not even remember why you resisted, why you fought his word.” He said in a deep, whispering voice.
He placed the headphones upon my head and popped in the tape. Then in a fraction of a second, he closed the player and pressed the button to begin to play.
For the first few seconds, there was silence, this was eventually broken by the singing of a figure. I could not quite figure out the sound in my ears, after a moment, ah, a child, something like the choir, but different. A single voice, singing in a language my ears could not understand but my mind seemed to fully comprehend.
It was after this point that it truly began. I don’t know what it was. It was an unknowable tune, against the rules of music theory and notes. It was like a thousand voices screaming in the most beautifully painful chorus all at once. Like a billion birds ground into their most basic parts, their songs of pain and misery translated into the human tongue.
Anguish, comfort, pain, pleasure, experience, life, death, all together, a sound of heaven and hell, a tune unheard by human ears but well known in the human mind. Out of the sublime white noise, a voice spoke to me in a language I could not understand, its instructions were clear but not to me.
A single tear began to roll down my face as the beauty and hideous orchestra played.
“It… is beautiful,” I said, trembling with each humble breath.
It felt as though I was floating upon the void of nothingness and yet I was feeling every human sensation, hearing every voice, tasting every flavor, smelling every pungent odor. Human experience played in a song, it was intoxicating.
In a moment I ripped from my toxic paradise.
“PUT IT BACK, PLAY IT AGAIN,” I said, snapping at the preacher.
“No no no little ram, I do not make sheep, you must do that yourself.”
He motioned to one of his followers, holding a skinning knife, and he cut me free, I was bound for hours so my faculties were not working at that moment.
“Please, give me the noise, let me hear his voice,” I pleaded with him, arguing my case to his deaf ears.
“No no sir, you have heard his word, if you wish to listen again then find us if you heard his voice truly you will know where to look.”
Within a moment he and his followers were gone with the blowing wind from the shattered door frame.
My bag is packed and I do know not where I’m going. In every step of purpose, I feel a guiding force taking me, carrying me to its source. I feel as though his very voice is in my head again. I do know not where I’m going. But I know how to get there, by following the voice of god.