Earworm

Since the beginning, death has often come at the hands of those you love, but this was a new innovation of that ancient truth. The room was a mess. The skewed blinds cast angled stripes of light across the floor. Outside, a tropical sun in a cloudless sky seared the landscape of palm trees, canals, and abandoned asphalt. Inside, the lights were out and the A/C was dead. Lala sat slumped on the floor, back against a cracked plaster wall, covered in sticky sweat that felt as if it had become a permanent layer of her skin. Glass and chunks of plaster littered every flat surface. The largest shard stuck out of a body imprisoned by those bars of furious light from the gaps between the window blind slats.

"I'm sorry, mum."

She whispered the words because somehow it felt insincere to her if she'd said it any other way. Less than a minute later, the humming started. So that's what it sounds like she thought. For months her mother had complained about a song that wouldn't leave her head. Sometimes she even sang it, but she was so off key that Lala couldn't get a good idea of what it really sounded like. Now that it was in her head, she recognized it.

Of course that's what it was she thought.

thum to da dum dum sung her brain.

Things were going to get worse before they got better, if they ever did get better. Lala had to move quickly. She was at least in well enough shape that she didn't need immediate medical attention. Pulling herself to her feet, Lala limped out the door. Her perspiration soaked clothes felt all the more oppressive once outside. A thick haze lolled along the street, which was empty save for a big white bus with a bright green stripe. It appeared at the top of the hill and lumbered down to her at about the speed of an alligator that had just eaten. At last it stopped near her and Lala climbed aboard. She was, as she expected, the only passenger. The bus driver gave her a look of recognition. She stopped.

"Lala?" he said.

"Shit." she muttered.

The tune continued to play in her head, a little louder, a little more insistent. She glanced to the back of the bus and through its rear window. In the space of a few moments, the sun's glare had become so intense that it was impossible to see the crest of the hill from which the bus had just come. The light was getting worse. Soon there would be no more darkness at all and the light would be too intense to be outside with eyes open. She dreaded that descent into eternal day, of endless hours wishing for nights that would never return, dreaming of the moments of early morning solitude or late hours danced away with the man she loved.

"You're Lala, aren't you?"

"Yes, hi." was all she could muster. "This bus still goes to Edgewood?"

The driver's blue eyes, set in a face with strong angles, narrowed. It was hard for Lala to look at that face. It always had a way of melting her when she stared right into it. His sand colored hair was tousled too, in that way that always made her think of mussing it up even more when they rolled in bed. I can't do this anymore with you, Danny she thought.

"I can take you there." said the bus driver. "But you need to explain something, like how I know you and what the hell's going on around here. It's hard to ignore." He swept a hand in front of him, indicating the bare sidewalks and dark store fronts that extended before the bus. "Somehow I know you have answers. Am I right?"

Music was coming from a little player the driver had stuck to the dash with Velcro. Buses didn't come with radios and the drivers weren't usually allowed to play music, but what difference did it make now? This man had been riding up and down this street alone all day. Lala was actually thankful for the vague pop tune trickling out the tiny speakers, because they gave her some relief from the melody eating away at the base of her consciousness. She wondered if the music would become like the light, growing until it was all that she could hear or think about. Is that what ultimately drove her mother crazy?

thum to da dum dum

"All right." she said, sitting in the first green plastic seat. "It won't take long." She took a deep breath as the bus rolled again. "Do you remember the via vacantem? No, of course not, what am I talking about... let me start over. Think of the brain as a house with lots of rooms connected by lots of hallways. There's one hallway that is never used, and for a long time no one knew what it was for. Well, turns out it's not for anything. The brain evolved and developed better ways to connect all those rooms, leaving this one hallway abandoned. That's the via vacantem."

"Let me level with you." said the bus driver. "I'm scared. I just want to know what to do."

Lala watched the burning landscape go by for a moment before saying, "Stay away from everyone you love."

"What?"

"I did something I shouldn't have. I found a use for this dingy little hallway in the brain. I developed a sort of program that could be implanted there. It makes use of wasted space, I thought. But it wasn't satisfied with occupying just one corner of the brain. This thing wants to take over the whole rain. It becomes a virus that tears apart your mind and then moves on to another host."

"I don't understand anything you're saying. I'm just a bus driver."

"No, Danny, you aren't." she said. "You're my husband, the man I love the most in the world. You warned me this would happen and I didn't listen. And it was you that figured out how the intelligence learned to replicate itself from one body to the next, through music. It's something familiar, something you've been hearing all your life."

Danny turned the radio off.

"It's not that." said Lala.

"What is it then?"

"I don't remember what it's called." She shook her head. "I forgot the moment I realized what it was. My mum told me the same thing. She couldn't remember the name. She tried to hum it but couldn't manage. All she could say was... it's something so familiar you forgot there was ever a time before you first heard it. Towards the end, with her last breath, she managed to sing it perfectly, and then it moved from her to me."

Danny just stared ahead. Lala put a hand on his shoulder and he responded not with surprise and aprehension, but a tactile change in his mood. Her touch had always done that. Was it too soon for him to remember? She looked back. The light was still coming. It was as though the sky had stretched over the earth and erased it. Perhaps there was no point avoiding their fate anymore.

"Danny..." she said.

"That's my name then?"

She pushed a tear back with the lump of muscle below her thumb and sniffled, "I'm sorry, I couldn't let you go. I locked up your memories and programmed you to drive up and down this road, as if I could keep you in quarantine until I figured it all out. Because Danny, the virus feeds on our most treasured memories, those things that make us who we are. Once they're gone, so are we."

"It seems it was you that made me forget who I was."

She laughed and it was a genuine moment of levity, no matter how brief.

"I fooled it!" she shouted. "It passed you over because you look empty already. But you're still in there. I think it's time you came out. There's nothing left to loose."

The bus came to a halt. Danny flipped a switch and the door opened behind his wife. Those clear blue eyes assumed an angry look now. Angry and afraid.

"Danny? What...?" said Lala.

"I don't want to remember. I'll just keep driving. Maybe this is what I am now."

"No, this isn't what you are." She tried to hold back more tears, but they burned like the incessant sun. The song drilled a million tiny holes in her brain, holes filled with wriggling worms of melody. "What you are, Danny, is all I have left."

He stood and walked towards her. He had never seemed so menacing before. Neither had his voice ever sounded like it did when he spoke again.

"I'm sorry. Maybe that's true, but I don't remember and I don't want to if it means what you say."

"But I know you remember something!"

"Stop!"

The sound of him shouting so startled her that she didn't resist as he shoved her off the bus.

Before closing the door he said, "I'll just keep driving the bus, like I said. It's what I am now."

It drove off and Lala was left alone with the song and the sunlight. Ahead, the road continued downhill in the direction of the ocean. There was a sort of peninsula there full of ragged trees and a fog that obscured the precipitous drop to the water. Edgewood. She walked on, thankful to be traveling ahead of sun's assault. It moved little slower than she did, but not by much, and soon she would be pressed against the sea. Nonetheless, it was the only way to go. Hours later, Lala reached a row of cement pillars connected by chains. There was a gate and a broad dirt road that wandered into the woods. She plunged herself into the inviting shade and came across something she hadn't expected: a white bus with a bright green stripe. She blinked. It was still there, listing at an angle on the uneven road and nearly leaning against a nearby try. She started to run.

"Danny!" she shouted.

She walked all around it. He wasn't there. Lala kept going down the road, shouting his name as she went. Now it was her turn to feel a hand on she shoulder. She gasped and tried to turn, but he used both his arms to keep her from doing so. Then he wrapped a length of fabric around her eyes.

"I was wondering why I had this." said Danny. "As I drove up and down my route, I searched and searched through my mind trying to figure out what the hell it was doing in my pocket. Your face was the only thing I could remember, which is why I recognized you when you stepped on the bus."

"I know." she said, not sure how much else he remembered and whether their meeting here again was good or bad. "I couldn't help but leave it with you."

"Now I know what this blindfold is for. I remember. Lala, you shouldn't have left me with a reminder if you'd wanted me to forget."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I think I know what we're here for. Let's walk."

He took her hand and led her through the woods. After some time they stopped. He removed the blindfold. They were deep in the woods now, out of sight of the ocean. Dappled sunlight fell among the branches and illuminated the ground with spots of gradually growing intensity. There was a hollowed out tree stump ahead. Just as she'd remembered.

"Do you know where we are?" said Danny.

"This is where you brought me when you proposed." she said. "You told me some story about a couple who left trinkets for each other out here a hundred fifty years ago. When the woman went down in a shipwreck, the man threw himself from the cliff. You said you'd found their last tokens to each other and blindfolded me to make it all the more theatrical. When we came out, there was a box with a ring instead."

"It would be our anniversary today."

Danny reached into the tree stump and removed some leaves, revealing a small wooden box. He held it up to her. There was a small brass crank on one side. It was a music box. Lala felt a tremendous heat rise from her shoulders and up threw her neck. Soon it was burning up her face, but it was a pleasant sort of burning. It was nothing like the terrible sun. After a few seconds, her face was covered in tears. She just couldn't hold it back anymore.

"It occurred to me..." he said. "That you might try to save me from the virus. I had to hide this in a place you would never find because only I knew where this spot was. I didn't realize you'd take my memory entirely, but lucky for me you couldn't help but leave me with the blindfold. Eventually, everything came back."

Lala's brief happiness turned to a sickening feeling in her stomach. She backed away.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"You wanted me to come here so we could share a final memory together before it took you. Your most precious memory. But I can't let that happen."

"Danny, I don't understand..."

"If I invite it to travel from you to me, then it will leave you alone..."

He opened the music box and it played it's song.

thum to da dum dum

It was that song. As she felt it leaving her, she could remember once more what it was.

thum to da dum dum

"Our first dace." she said.

"That's right." said Danny.

The music left her head. There was silence. Also - darkness. It was night out. Danny came up to her and embraced her. Lala was speechless. She should have shouted at him, maybe hit him. She should've screamed. Instead, she felt the energy leaver her body and she relented to the hug. Then Danny turned and walked off. Where was he going? To leap from the cliff? To disappear? Did it matter. He was gone. She couldn't bring him back. After a few steps among the trees, she couldn't see him anymore. Lala felt like she must have stood there for hours before turning back. The bus was still there. Beyond that, the street. She walked back home in the darkness. The warm night was full of ordinary people. She had a feeling that none of them would ever have to experience what she'd been through. Danny would make sure of that.