The Beat

I was at the theatre when I believe it began, sitting in the second row, thinking of art. A man appeared on stage with a knife. I rose and was on stage with him, my coat in my hand then wrapped around him as he lunged at one of the performers and I threw him to the ground and fell upon him, a performance in itself.

No one was harmed.

They wanted to hail me a hero but I knew not what I was. All I knew was the sound in my right ear, the beating of a drum, the ticking of a clock, methodical. It began with the applause I received upon rising to my feet with a madman wrapped in my coat. As the hands slowed and the sound faded, the beat rose in its place.

I tried physical movement to stall its invasion.

I tried to think of nothing and think nothing of it but it was ever present, in the foreground.

I began to walk to its rhythm, enslaved.

One step.

One step.

One step.

I would stop and count at a different speed but everything would align and I would be back to one, one, one, one, one, one, one. An endless cycle that repeats, one, one, one, one, one ever in my right ear, only in the right, a melody performed by clapping hands, stamping feet, devoid of whistles and catcalls.

I ate to its call.

I thought to its pace.

Always there, a sound, a personal metronome.

The next morning I saved a boy from being hit by a car. He ran into the road and I was beside him, the beat taking me there without my knowledge, me knowing only the beat, the one, one, one, one, one that took me onto the road and took the boy in my arms and took us both from the passage of the car as it took the air from around us and I took my leave.

It happened again, this time a girl in a river. I emerged, soaked, and those who had seen my heroics clapped and cheered, each sound fuel for the fire that fed the beat.

I had no time to think, no time to sleep. I was the beat and the beat was me.

The world became mine to save and every time I stepped beyond my door into the corridor and out onto the street I would find myself here and there. A child, a girl, a man, a woman; each time someone would be saved by the beat and I would be hailed a hero and the beat would find sustenance in the adulation that rang around us.

I locked the doors and remained within the confines of my thin walls, my keys around my neck on a piece of black cotton, tripled for strength. I could hear the neighbours night and day, marching to the beat that lingered without the applause. Those above, below and at my sides ate to it, slept to it, cried to it. Music did nothing to quell its presence. Television slowed, falling into place.

One, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one.

I let it swallow me.

One, rise, one, fall, one, eat, one, sleep, one, blink, one, blink, one, blink.

What else could I do?

I stopped talking to those I had long since stopped talking to. Even the girl I had gone to the theatre with, a slip who had offered herself to me after the performance because she wanted to live the life of a movie and thought that such behaviour was becoming in such a situation.

I had accept her offer though I hadn't wanted to, myself fearful of being seen as insensitive if I turned her down.

As such I was alone.

Though I had the beat and the beat had me.

Sleep, that left me soon enough. I became fearful that if I were to fall asleep the beat would stop. It had become my heartbeat, a pulse that kept the blood I failed to use circulating.

It beat for me. And I beat for it.

I took a knife to my arm and cut to the rhythm till I fell onto bloodstained tiles, laughing in sharp, bursts, all, to, the, beat.

I took to watching quiz shows, thirsting for the applause I knew to come, feeding off it as one might the admiration of others.

My neighbours must have thought me mad for if they had listened at their floors and ceilings and walls they would have found me akin to a machine, a marching man who did everything in one-second bursts.

Some activities were easy. Others hard. Showering was the latter. I would turn the tap on, off, on, off, on, off, the stream never running long enough to garner any heat. Cleaning was rhythm, cooking an exercise in patience.

But through it all I had no alternative, for what could I do? She was a part of me, the beat.

I looked out my window and saw empires rise and fall to the rise and fall in my mind.

I looked to the sky and saw the sun rise and fall to the rise and fall in my right ear.

I looked to the street and saw the footfalls of the people, the passersby, the actors in a play performed just for me.

I imagined that one would walk to a different rhythm, that just one would stand out from the masses. But they all walked the same.