Burn it Down

Another entry in the Short Story SmackDown. The musical inspiration I chose was "Burn it Down" by The Cog is Dead.

***

Sanjuro dug his thumbs into his temples, grinding away at his skull as if he could somehow push the terrible sound out of his head. He had tried everything he could think of to rid himself of the incessant thumping, the blaring horns, and the wretched English gibberish. But over the past three weeks, the sound had only seemed to get louder and louder. It was slowly driving him insane.

"Mifune, are you listening?" a voice called through the cacophony. "Mifune!"

Sanjuro's head bolted upright so quickly that he nearly tossed himself from his chair. "Ah, yes, I'm sorry sir! I... I just have a splitting headache. I... it must be a migraine. I'm having trouble concentrating."

Sanjuro's boss looked at him skeptically. "You've been acting strange since you returned from the sales call in Hong Kong," he said. "Did you pick up a bug while you were down there?"

"That must be it," Sanjuro lied. "I think I got sick from drinking the water." He was having trouble hearing himself speak over the sound pulsing violently inside his own skull.

"Go and have yourself checked out," his boss said, dismissing Sanjuro with a gesture. "We don't need you infecting the rest of the team here."

"Thank you, sir," Sanjuro said, bowing deeply as he stumbled from the conference room. "I'll go and get checked out immediately."

Sanjuro shambled down the hall, the sound of drums pounding rhythmically in his brain. The secretary said something to him as he passed her desk, but he couldn't hear her voice. The sound, the goddamn sound... by the time he left the building, his head was spinning wildly. For a fleeting moment he considered heeding his boss' advice and going to have himself examined by a doctor. But he knew he couldn't do that, not with what he had inside his head.

"Hey! Watch it, buddy," a man on a bicycle barked as he whizzed past. Sanjuro lost his balance, backpedaling until he tripped over a curb and fell to the ground, striking his head on the marble walkway.

Suddenly, the sound stopped. Sanjuro started to shake with relief... after weeks of the same wretched song looping endlessly in his head, drowning out everything else, he could finally hear himself think. He couldn't help but laugh out loud, and then laugh harder still at the crystal clear sound of his own voice. But then a sudden fear grabbed hold of him; how long would this silence last? He cursed himself under his own breath. This was a mess he had created. Everyone had warned him against getting cybernetic implants abroad. Hell, the government even had laws against it - which was why he couldn't go to see a doctor. Doctors were mandatory reporters. Once they scanned him and realized that he had an unlicensed implant, they'd turn him right over to the police. Sanjuro's stomach tightened at the thought of doing time in Fuchu prison.

"Ugh," he groaned, lamenting the mess he'd stepped into. He'd had friends and coworkers who had had cybernetic upgrades and none of them had had any side effects. Those positive experiences had convinced him that it was a good idea to skip across the border while in Hong Kong and get a cheap knock-off implant installed in Shenzhen. He'd save some money and get an upgrade, all while getting paid by his company. It seemed like a win-win.

But within days of returning to Tokyo, the sound had started. He still remembered clearly the first confusing moments as a driving drum beat had swelled in his mind. At first, he had thought he was hearing a ringtone or a loud radio from another room - but then the growling monotone of the singing had started and Sanjuro knew that something was very, very wrong. Sanjuro couldn't speak English very well, he could still recognize the sound of the language and he knew that what he was hearing was an English song. But the dominance of American cultural influence had petered out decades ago, well before Sanjuro was born. Nobody played English songs anymore. Especially songs that sounded so dated. What he had started hearing must have had something to do with the implant that he had just had installed. Somehow, the quack in Shenzhen had installed an implant that played an old American pop song on repeat instead of the auditory upgrade Sanjuro had paid for.

As he thought about his situation, the song started up again; quietly at first, and then building in volume and intensity. Sanjuro clawed at his ears and pulled at his hair. "No!" he screamed in desperation. "I can't take it any longer, I can't listen to this song for another moment!" He cast his gaze about, searching frantically for an escape. His eyes settled on the hectic traffic in the street just a few meters away. Remembering how the sound had stopped when he had struck his head on the ground, Sanjuro grinned to himself grimly.

The words of the song rang in his brain as he darted toward the street: It's time to strike a match and burn it down... Sanjuro had no idea what the words meant, but he knew the strange foreign syllables by rote memory. Screaming to drown out the sound, he launched himself into the road. In the moment that his skull made impact with the gleaming bumper of a speeding vehicle, the sound abruptly stopped and Sanjuro sighed in relief just before his head exploded and his body was shredded to pieces in the frenzied onslaught of traffic.