Trumpet was secretly a little scared. First, French and Bass had disappeared. Then, Trumpet started having the visions.
They were just small glimpses at first. A raging fire. A desolate landscape. A crying mother, clutching the still body of a child. A dried up riverbed. A flooded neighborhood, the homes in ruin.
Then, the visions became accompanied by smells. Burning flesh. Metallic blood. Dry dust. Rotten meat.
Trumpet felt trapped in his own head. The final blow to his sanity, the one that drove him over the edge, were the sounds. Sizzling water. Dry wind. The screams. Of agony, despair, fear, loneliness, broken promises, shattered dreams. More screams. Of victory, fiendish delight, battle.
Trumpet was clutching his ears, curled into the fetal position on the floor of his bedroom, muttering nonstop about the pain, the desolation, the loneliness, the insanity, faster, and faster, and faster, and faster and faster and faster and faster. Trumpet screamed, he cried, he shouted, until his throat was raw, his eyes dry, and his voice ripped apart.
Hunger gnawed at his stomach, but he refused to eat. He didn't want more energy to hear more noises, see more places, smell more odors.
The visions, the sounds, and the noises began to stay longer.
Trumpet was trapped in eternity, inside his own head. Mumbling, screeching, crying, screaming, sobbing, more and more until his own terror swallowed him, scathing him with icy claws. His heart pounded, and every time he heard the thud, thud, thud, Trumpet could see someone being beaten. First, they were men, engaged in a fight. Next, the victim were women, being beaten with long metal poles, covered in dried blood. Before Trumpet snapped, they were children. Young children. Being kicked, bruised, starved. Trumpet was buried alive, every thud of his heart shoveling more and more mania on top of him.
And Trumpet Highnotes snapped.
His brain seemed disconnected from his body. It moved, it pounded, and it screamed. The intensity forced Trumpet to howl, to shriek, to beg mercy from an unwilling master. Trumpet couldn't take it any more. Then Nate Soakreed came to visit him.
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Brad awoke from the most horrifying nightmare he had ever dreamt up. Slowly and shakily, he got out of bed. Men in white hazmat suits swarmed in. Brad shouted and tried to claw through the suits, but he couldn't very well claw through plastic. The men held his arms and legs like Huns. One held a cool metal barrel to Brad's head. The clocked slowed down. The trigger clicked, Brad breathed out, the gunpowder ignited, the bullet spun out of the barrel.
And Brad could dream no more.
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