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Excerpt from Through-Sound, a novel (Chapter 2) Rob Saigh, St. Louis, MO
Tuesday. One a.m. Harmon dreamed he was in school, the first reel of his life called Frustration.... Harmon looked down to see he was bereft of clothes. He wanted to escape before any other student saw. Harmon grabbed some black roses to cover his genitals, but the thorns kept producing thin lines of blood, like dark varicose veins snaking along his skin. No one noticed him wincing. Ellen Sue Ambergris, with the pigtails and the fat five-colored pen in her front pocket, rose and strode to the front. She pushed her thick glasses up on her fat nose and proceeded to conjugate regler. "C'est parfait, Mademoiselle Ambergris."

"Merci, Maestro Bennett." The Maestro grabbed her ass under her plaid skirt. Ellen Sue blushed, curtseyed, and returned to her seat, her derriere pushing over the sides of the melamine chair disc. Wait, Harmon realized. Which class am I in? He scrambled through the workbook pages, but all the pages were blank. I'm going to fail, he thought. Again. The world cracked open. Harmon fell down a dark hole. He met a man, about 65 years old, named Momus, who berated him thusly: "You went to school to study classical music, and you didn't practice. You dropped out, smoked dope (not saving any for me), returned a year later, producing the same sniveling grades and didn't bother to look for a job in your senior year? You didn't double major? Oh, why were you born?" Flash forward, as in "A Christmas Carol" but without the happy ending. Momus berated forthwith: "Let me get this straight. You're still stuck in your crummy job? Why? Shame? Guilt? What a loser. Get out my dream. You cannot return until you shape up. Here, sign this." Harmon signed his name. "Push hard. It's in triplicate." He pushed harder, but the pen kept slipping through his sweaty fingers. "And these." Papers flew in, multiplied. More papers to sign. As they piled, they began to coalesce into a body with eight legs. Harmon was back in his bedroom and watched the paper spider, with a body nine feet across, approach him and wrap his head in a thread of words. He could not breathe and could not escape. His arms flailed. With his arms flailing in the air, Harmon awoke yet unsure he had escaped. He searched their bedroom and looked for the spider. Was this dream a new one? Emerald lay next to him, a memory pillow under her head, a throw pillow between her arms, and a body-sized pillow, her "Ducky", between her legs.

Two a.m. Harmon wanted to return to sleep. He counted pennies, sheep, clowns. He imagined driving down a night highway never to return, bodysurfing the crest of a wave the length of the Atlantic Ocean. He desired rest but ended with the same vision of a gray castle covered in old spider webs, draped like frayed chenille. Inside, a boy was lost, unable to call for help. Nothing worked. He sat up, and his stomach sagged. Emerald slept on. With her face softened by sleep, her cleavage peeking out from her satiny nightgown, and her hair soft and tousled, Harmon wondered if she'd be in the mood. He could begin by brushing her hair back, kissing her on the neck, kisses light and breathy. He would proceed to stroke her arms, drop the drawstring, open the gates, she would smile at him and-. Nah. She'd scowl and say, "Get that thing away from me. Isn't once a month enough for you?" He poked his stomach. Maybe, he continued, if I made more money, were more successful, were in better shape, were taller. Maybe if I were someone else. He rose, slipped out of the room, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He was a loser. I'm not throwing in the towel yet. A threadbare towel. No way, no how. One more chance. That's what I'll give myself. He tiptoed downstairs, selecting alternate steps to avoid the ones that creaked, and went outside to the cool, moist air. The chirping of grasshoppers vibrated arrhythmically, as if none of them could agree on a beat or a song cycle. The sounds accented the tempo in his veins. Somewhere above, billions of stars shone, partying in the sky. Four or five peeked through, as if specks of sand on a midnight blue floor. Light pollution blocked his vision, his trip into the past. And his neighbors hid behind a cloak of pretend security, paranoid and fearful, in their lockboxes. Their front lights on, 60-watt light bulbs, and the incendiary streetlights hovered, overwhelming their bulbs. Together, the light killed any chance of true darkness, the luscious, velvety, purple blackness you get when out in a forest in the country. You're walking along and you reach a clearing, look up and the Milky Way looms large and wondrous, draping itself on you like a grandmother's quilt, leaving you warm inside, vast on the outside, and aware. You fall back to a soft, ferny ground to gaze upon the Via Lactea, the affirmation of science, the realization of your smallness and you smile. You are alive, filling your lungs, your hands sweeping over the dewy grass, and you feel the molecules of air dancing. Then you blink once or twice, and the Via Lactea vanishes. Four a.m.

A van drove by and a man in his early twenties-must be his age since everyone looked younger to Harmon-threw the morning paper to his feet. Nice shot. Harmon looked at the front door lights across the street. Why bother with a front light? He looked at the newspaper. If I were a burglar, would I go through someone's front door in full view of everyone? I mean, what an asinine idea. You'd have to be a moron to do that. To get into these houses, as if they had anything, you would need a key. He ruminated that last thought, his face squinting. Okay, he continued. I may have a dead-end job, a repetitious life, close-minded neighbors with blinders, and a dog who eats my newspaper every morning, but life could be worse. What about a life of crime? He picked up the newspaper. I wonder. Could I be a criminal, capable of breaking and entering? I wouldn't want a gun or anything. Tears ran down his face, the salt entering his mouth, until all the sorrow deflated. Why can't my life improve? Why can't I improve my life? His shoulders sank, and he went inside. The cats circled and meowed out of confusion because the sun hadn't shown its face. They rubbed against his pant leg, and he shoved them away. "Stop bothering me. Don't touch me."

He sat on the couch, and it sank under his weight, its springs weary of working. He put his head in his hands before he knew he had done it. The cats waited, though not out of sympathy. Too tired for sleep, he became a statue, a tired Rodin sculpture, and waited for the coffee maker to signal more of the same. Same old, same old. That phrase described him, he realized. Perhaps he fell asleep in that position. He heard the machine waken, like someone banging a kettledrum under the surface of the Indian Ocean. Coffee. Kids. Work. Repeat whether necessary or not, so the instructions read. Don't the instructions also say Break glass in case of emergency? Today would be different. He would find that door out and become the man he always dreamed.

Robert A. Saigh, a native New Jerseyan, has been writing for much of his life, covering novels, short stories, scripts, and plays. What is most important, he says, is the word, its sound, its context, and its meaning and contribution within the whole of the work

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