Free Transcend by Christine Fonseca

chin and begins to play the song.
    Our song.
    The notes start off in slow, intoxicating rhythms. First the violin, then the piano. Each cadence is echoed and answered, a dialogue created in music. We work every sound, letting them weave around us, binding us together. The air crackles as every measure, every motif, creates our own escape. Our hearts beat in time with the cadences of the music pouring through our fingers and I pray this is more than a fantasy.
    Kiera closes her eyes and sways to the music, unleashing pieces of her heart into every note. I reply, our rhythm in perfect unison. Nothing but the music we create exists here. Not Mother or the deformity slowly killing me. Not the madness that lurks beneath this world.
    Nothing.
    Only this moment in time in a world created by our music.
    I’m filled by Kiera and the song that unites us. It reaches into the deepest parts of my soul, trapping me in an ecstasy I am helpless against. The notes rush to a climax, my emotions tethered to the sound. It ends too soon as shadows of the melody hold us in place until the tension is too much for me to bear. I push back from the piano and pull Kiera into a tight embrace, every nerve tingling in anticipation.
    She pulls away and my heart breaks a little. Starring into my eyes, she reaches for my soul. Nothing but silence passes between us, the air burning with tension. Until, mercifully, she leans in, her lips finding mine.
    The kiss lasts but a moment before the world around us shatters and Kiera disappears. “No,” I scream to the swirling landscape. “Kiera!”
    Emptiness fills me—a longing impossible to quench. I survey the scene, desperate to settle my mind in this world.
    Chaos and confusion continue to mingle until, in the distance, a picture starts to form. Kiera plays her violin. The same song. Every cadence, every movement, the same.
    A piano appears, but it is not me that plays this time. It’s James. They sway to the music, a dance in perfect precision. Jealousy, violent and hot, radiates through me. I run towards them as the world spirals, pulling me in different directions. Harder and harder I push, desperate to end the vision. Every note of my song propels me forward, increasing the rage that scorches through me.
    The music whispers its own taunts and nothing I do brings an end to the madness. My heart pounds against my ribs, as my ears fill with the sound of my torment. The song builds and tears blur my vision. An explosion of sound surrounds me as too many things happen at once.
    James pulls Kiera into a tight embrace.
    Their lips meet.
    My soul shatters.
    Mother’s voice echoes through the rage-filled spaces of my mind. “You’re dead, Ien. You’re dead. Let go now. End your misery.”
    Erik joins the mayhem ravaging through me with a chorus of laughter. “She was never yours, dear brother. How could she love someone like you?”
    The laughter continues, fusing together my rage, my madness, my deformity. I watch, incapable of turning away, as James and Kiera lose themselves in a kiss that burns through
    my
soul…
     
     

 
    11.
    “All we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream”
    ~Edgar Allen Poe (A Dream With a Dream)
    ~
    Ien opened his eyes in a rush, gasping as the last remnants of the images of James and Kiera stayed with him. He felt battered, broken, as if his insides had been turned out. He couldn’t shake the feeling that everything he had witnessed was real. Couldn’t shake the sound of his mother’s words or Erik’s laughter. He blinked once, twice, and the truth spilled out before him—he was still bound, sitting in the wheelchair in a long hallway. Two men dressed in white coats eased an older woman into a smaller wheelchair. She mumbled unintelligible words to them before she turned toward Ien. Her gaze penetrated through him, her eyes ruined from age or disease. She smiled, laughed.
    The scene unraveled around Ien and an invisible force pushed him forward. More fire poured