That Bass

Dr. Cin walked up the stairs of the apartment complex. There was a slight growth of mold on near the stairs and the whole building smelled of so many things that she couldn't even begin to recognize the smells. Most of all the smells were of home. Of food. Of clothes drying in the sunlight. Sounds of laughter and music from apartments drifted in the morning light. There were not elevators in the building and Dr. Cin was breathless by the time she reached the sixth floor. She faced the door of her mother's apartment and patted her hair once. Blue poked his head out of her carry-bag and meowed. 

"Hush, now," she told the kitten.

Blue disappeared back into the handbag. To sleep again. This kitty sleeps a lot, Cin thought to herself.

She raised her hand to ring the bell, when the door opened. Her mother was standing on the other side. She left the door open and walked back inside.

"Hi, mom," Cin said to the empty space left by her mother. She walked inside the room. There was a kitchen to the right and a parlor to the left where her mother interpreted dreams for people who wanted to know about the shitness of their lives. She spun them quite a yarn and people believed what they wanted to believe. Her mother had gone somewhere deeper into the house, looking for some music maybe. Cin knew that her mother liked to play music when she conducted one of her dream interpretations. It was always old jazz or devotional hymns. Cin hated it, but she had to endure it. She wanted answers, to know more about the bass. The visions in her dreams. 

While Cin battled with her thoughts in her mother's apartment, X was getting ready to send out another SOS. He had taped his fingers this time and there were tissues wedged in his nose already. Even if he bled, he was not going to fade out. This shit was going to be heavy. He stretched his arms and flexed his fingers and turned on the console.

Cin laid down in the chair her mother had installed in the parlor. She brought an old  gramophone record with her from the back of the house and soon strange, haunted music was floating in through the single speaker. She drifted from consciousness and in her dreams she saw the tower. It rose from the sea like a black nail. An insult to the sky, the water and the air around it. Cin moved closer to the tower and through the window she saw a boy with tissues stuffed in his nose and tapes on his fingers. For a moment, he raised his head, looked straight through her and then went back to fiddling with something on his table. The sound from the window was a vibration straight from hell. It shook Cin's soul and her essence and every thought in her head. She fell back and the sound chased her. It had claws and sharp teeth that bored into her head and tried to eat away everything that she had ever known and remembered. She fell and fell and then the water hit her like a cold fist of steel. All air went out of her lungs and she took in mouthful of water in her lungs. There was a weight on her chest that wouldn't budge and the sound was still with her under the water too. In a dark, cold moment, she knew she was going to die in this dream. 

Then she felt something brush her face. Once, twice and something sharp dug in her nose. 

She winced and opened her eyes. Blue, her kitten was standing on her chest with its paws on her chin and it was biting her nose. She fell from the chair and puked out sally water from her lungs. The room smelt of sea by the time she was done puking. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. There were no gramophone records on the table either. The flat was deserted, cobwebs hung from the ceiling and there was a musty smell of abandonment in the house.

Cin picked Blue, kissed the kitty on its nose, grabbed her bag and went out of the house as fast as she could.

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Our heroine meets her mother or does she?

Chapter 8

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