Push

One of my best inspirations for writing a story has got to be music. Much like the stories I write just from looking at a picture, it's amazing what can be inspired with just a few notes from a song. I'm still working on this story, this is only an excerpt from it at the moment and it has become quite the labor of love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUSjmWIx7w

The song I was listening to was "Push" by Milosh, for some reason the gentle sweeping chimes reminded me of a cityscape, I envisioned a city at night, with quiet streets. As the pace of the song quickens I started to get these images coming to mind, someone running, maybe being chased? That final buildup and release, that apex "the push" brought to mind so many fleeting images and stories I just had to write something down. What if those three opening notes in the song could be integrated into the story somehow? I began to sculpt a world around this song, the three chiming notes of a curfew alert, the steady drum beat of a stranger darting across rooftops, the hollow echoing loneliness of an empty street, and the push, a revelation.

Here's what became of it.

Curfew

Chapter 1

                This city is a different place at night. The pristine white-walled concrete sky-scrapers and boldly contrasted advertisements no longer hurt to look at. The corporate color pallet of sterile whites and popping reds, yellows, and greens were lulled into a subdued, docile twilight. The wet glassy streets reflected the traffic light’s shift; a glossy streak of red sat atop shallow black puddles. The long walks home from my night classes were the ones I cherished the most. Probably the most romantic time of my life as well, everything was ideal, and I had the night to myself.  I would always make playlists with music for just the right mood on my DMP and listen to them on the way home. The songs were usually ambient electronic songs, really soft beats, soothing melodies and reverberating chimes, it was like someone had turned water into an instrument. Police sirens way off in the distance, probably in another district, seemed to blend seamlessly into the song. I marveled in the color of the night, the boggy mist blending, blurring and scattering lights, the quiet and calm. I couldn’t help but smile. I took my headphones off as I came to the step of my apartment building, I could hear the curfew tone ringing out down the streets.

                “This is a message from the Public Security Service, curfew will begin in twenty minutes, the time is 9:40PM” Followed by those three toned chimes ‘Doo,doo, doo’

                My sweatshirt clung to me as I peeled it off in a foray of static; the warm dry sheets were there to catch me.  I turned on the TV, the blaring color poured into the dark room. Super models appeared on screen with their platinum shined hair and flawless smiles, but after the first five commercials for Dangst: Age Reversing Skin Cream, I turned it off. I can hear the screech of a saxophone from the neighbors across the street. I opened my window and shouted up at him. “Hey man, that’s a noise violation, some of us are tryin’ to sleep!” I heard the sirens from earlier, no longer waning in the distance, but coming up the street.  The noisy musician quickly slammed his window shut, I did the same. I rested my eyes some more, against the sound of the muted sirens and the tapping of rain against the roof. The tapping grew louder and heavier, I went over to the window to see how badly it was coming down, but it wasn’t. I opened the window again, to get a better look- a dark figure and a pair of shoes slammed into my chest, knocking the wind out of me.  I staggered back into a desk. A young woman tumbled over me and caught her fall as she landed on her hands. Her face obscured by the darkness that clouded the room. I heard boots stomping up the stairwell, orders shouting, rooms being checked.

                “Shit, is that PSec?!” I put my ear to the door.

                “Mmm.”  She starts toward the door way and stops for an instant. With what seemed like a second thought she grabbed me by the wrist and asked “How fast can you run?”

                “Run? What, you’re joking right, this is- I don’t have any shoes, you- who are you?!”

 Before I can move another thought out of my mouth she shoves me out the door and starts toward the stairs. I stumble into the flashlight beams of 4 Public Security officers. “Freeze, PSec, don’t move!” For a moment in time I felt I was caught in some paralyzing grasp of authority, their lights and guns beating down on me. In a panicked surge of adrenaline I broke for the stairs. I heard more officer’s boots stomp upwards after us. I was in awe at how fast she cleared the distance from my room to the stairwell.  She leapt from step to step like a deer, she was so quick, even under the light I couldn’t make out her face.

Gasping for air I finally caught up to her at the roof top, my lungs on fire, wheezing out mucus. “Maybe it’s been a while since my last jog.” I struggle to catch my breath. “Well- do you have some sort of get-away ride waiting for you?”

I couldn’t exactly see her face clearly, but I heard a pleasant “Hmm”, her breath still steady as if she’d been walking a snail’s pace. Without a word she turned and with a running start leapt to the adjacent building. I sat there in disbelief, ready to just have the officers arrest me.  I stepped to the ledge and looked down at the barren alley below; I imagined my face splattered all across the pavement. I took a step back and attempted to get a running start, as soon as I saw the ledge coming closer I lost my footing in a fit of panic and veered off to the left. “Holy shit, no,no, no, we’re not doing this!”

She shrugged and began to hustle towards the next building, I looked behind me to see the PSec officers trampling down the door. Without a thought I sprinted and dove from one ledge to the other, I hung in the air for a second, not thinking about falling short of the ledge, or how easily I could lose my footing. I slid against the coarse textured rooftop trying to catch my momentum whilst shredding the bare soles of my feet. I looked up and saw that she was already on her way across the landscape of rooftops, I tried to keep a steady pace, I stuttered at every ledge like a kid dipping his feet in the deep end. The wind rushed through my face and I slammed my abdomen right into the ledge of the next building, a brief instant of crunching, invigorating pain,the shock of it almost made me lose my grip, but I dug my fingers into the graveled rooftop, scraping skin from my hands, and heaved my body over.

Going through the thought process, in my head, none of it made sense to me. I was totally out of my element, but it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before , running and diving from rooftop to rooftop, over balconies  and up fire escapes, it may sound cliché but I’d never felt so alive. The wind whipping through my hair created a vacuum of sound, everything was quiet and still, I could hear the sound of my footsteps, the sound of the final curfew chiming, its’ tone more soothing now, weaving through the empty streets. In the moment I could only describe it as pure momentum. I had forgotten about the pain, my fear of heights or the officers chasing me with guns.  The more I let go and let the momentum take control, the easier I moved.  That momentum kept me going, like a high or an energy boost, not like adrenaline but not in an anxious fight or flight kind of way this was much more calm, much more certain, like a wave ebbing and flowing with my movements; this was pure freedom, pure life.