Page 77 of Devil Inside

“Yes...? And?”

“Sound waves are produced through vibrations. They create their own energy.” There’s something charming about how excited he is. How animated. A boy, so eager to explain.

Jordan drags the other speaker across the floor and positions it between us. “Deaf people can only hear sound that’s internal to them,” he says. “The music has to be inside.”

I’m pinned between these two black monoliths. Centered in each column is a copper crater. They look like totems to another time. A sonic Stonehenge.

“The nerve endings in our inner ear convert vibrations into electrical impulses,” Jordan explains. “Our brain receives those neural messages and reinterprets the sonic information and makes sense of it...” He flips each speaker onto its back, so the glaring copper eye stares directly up to the ceiling. To the heavens, perhaps. “Even those who are hard of hearing process these electrical impulses the same way. The messages don’t come through their ears... they come through their body. They listen with their skin. Their bones.”

He leans in and kisses us, then pulls back, waiting for us to respond. We don’t know what to say. “What do you have in mind, exactly?”

“I want to listen to music with you.”

“You have.”

“No, no—withyou.”

We don’t understand at first. His insistence—you—suddenly sinks in.

Me?

He’s doing it again. Searching for some sign of myself. He’snot content with this vessel. The flesh simply isn’t enough for him. He wants more. He wants all of us. All of me.

Can we give it to him? What if he were to see what I truly am?

“Trust me,” he says.Trust.“This is an experience we can share.”

Jordan sifts through his records. Flipping from one disc to the next. He’s searching for the right sound. The right song. What music will he pick? I’m curious.

Very curious.

“I want to listen to music with you. Through you. The two of us. No third wheel.”

Jordan stops sifting. His eyes widen, just a bit.

He’s found the one.

“Beats cause vibrations. More vibration, more sensation.” He tugs out a particular record. The cover is so scuffed. It must be old. An ancient thing. A relic from another era.

Jordan holds up the record. A woman stares out into the distance from its cover. Her gaze focuses on a spot beyond the photo, a gulf that seems to travel over time and space.

“I put a spell on you,” we read the sleeve out loud.

“Nina Simone,” he says. “Ever hear her?”

I’m not sure. “I can’t say we have.”

“You haven’t lived,” he says.

Lived.

Jordan slides the vinyl out from its sleeve. The blackened shellac catches the light in the living room and shines. He spins the record between the fingers of both of his hands.

Jordan places the record onto the turntable—gently—as if it were something holy. To him, it is. All music must be. Look, just look, at his collection. An odd assortment of songs and their singers. Musicians that expand beyond any particular genre.

Jordan powers up the turntable. He cranks the volume. There is the faintest hum of electricity coursing through the speakersalready. The faintest sibilance, like a fire crackling. Each copper eye burns with an invisible intensity, ready to awaken with sound.

“Are you ready?” Jordan asks. His own eyes are so electric. There is an excitement there. He wants this—needs it—so badly. It’s infectious. I can feel it spreading. Into me.