The tube station lights flickered in a flourescent dance among the faces of those waiting for the day’s last train. Cyrus Helm crouched against a beam in the depths of the station, watching the traces of every moving object as he felt the first rushes of his impending LSD trip. At least he thought it was acid. That’s what everyone was doing in London since the liquid light shows became de rigueur at every concert. He’d never tried the drug before, but he recognized the symptoms from the descriptions, posters and lyrics of the younger musicians with whom he jammed. The party he had just left was polluted with drugs, and acid being the drug of choice of this particular group, Cyrus was positive the drink he had was laced with it.

“Bloody freaks, someone should arrest the lot of ya,” a geezer accused Cyrus as he staggered by the musician who struggled to determine whether he was still standing or lying on the station floor. “Why don’t you cut yer hair, ya shite?”

Cyrus ignored the man, looking past him at a young couple; she in a tight miniskirt, he in the latest Carnaby Street fashion of ruffled collars and sleeves, tight leather pants with a wide buckle and snakeskin boots. The couple’s appearance made him self-conscious in his Hush Puppies, dungarees and pullover sweater.

The drug was making him sweat. He could hear the beads of perspiration whining in his ears as it dripped from his hairline down past his neck. The ringing grew louder as he thought of the jams he participated in at the party. Everyone was either talking about new drugs, new music or different religions. And playing music. They were, after all, the crème de la crème of the London musical scene. Members of bands that had become the old guard in only three years joined with musicians from bands that had just signed their first recording contracts. The music was loud, unruly, undisciplined. “Shite,” Cyrus thought aloud.

Flashes of conversation came back to him. “What do you think of the new Beatles’s record?” “Have you heard the Jimi Hendrix Experience? They’re absolutely fantastic!” “Nah, he’s shite, he’s ripping off Jeff Beck AND Pete Townshend.” And, Cyrus’s favorite, “The Maharishi shows the way to divine enlightment.” And the response: “No, Meher Baba presents a clearer path to Pravadigar.” Cyrus smiled. He suggested to the two mooks conducting the conversation that Maharishi and Meher Baba should settle their dispute like men–in a boxing ring. The response was not the gay laughter he anticipated. “Fuck ’em,” he thought. At least they hadn’t gone off the deep end with that Aleister Crowley black magic, he said. He’d seen too many of the old scene go that route with disastrous results.

Alienating the religious zealots, Cyrus won back their favor when the instruments came out and music became the agenda. At first, everyone discussed the tunings and chord progressions of musicians they admired. Then someone wisely yelled, “Shet yer yaps and play goddammit!” There were many passable guitarists there, and percussion was never an issue. Everyone seemed to keep adequate rhythm. But when it came to mouth harp, Cyrus overwhelmed the room. He was the one musician at the party that could truly be described as a master of his instrument.

It was love for the music and not just to pick up birds that Cyrus taught himself to play. He played old Lonnie Donnegan skiffle music, added color and dimension to some Elvis classics, and proceeded to document the history of American blues harmonica. His mates at the party struggled to keep up, but their knowledge of the genre was limited to the few songs covered by English bands. True, some of the Yank masters came to England and gave tutorials to some of the young British dilettantes, but Cyrus seemed to have been a “born-not-made” blues musician. He never told anyone about Zann.

Out of frustration playing with substandard musicians, Cyrus tactfully said his goodnights and headed to the tube. And now the drug caught him unawares. He reached into the cloth pocket of his jacket and took out a harmonica. Instinctively he blew a few bent notes that echoed through the station. The sound was brilliant and light and color washed over the grimy picture of the tube station platform. He stopped, the notes reverberating through the long tunnels of the tube, the colors subsiding into grayish hues.

His notes drifted into the atmosphere above the worn tracks and gray concrete of the underground where they were met and returned by the same notes repeated from a voice. As the sound’s impact reached Cyrus, he watched the tracks raise and the ground beneath them crack. He staggered back and waited for Zann.

He appeared behind Cyrus, a dispassionate look on his face. “Running out on the hacks, are we now?” asked Zann, his gaunt features reflecting the worst of the fluorescent light. “I told you that you’re too good to waste your talents with the likes of them.”

Cyrus smiled. He was aware of his own talents, but he still appreciated compliments from others.

“You’re high, aren’t you?” Zann rebuked.

“Yes. Yes. I guess so. Yes, I am.,” the response.

“Then we should play. Play what we want, how we want, shall we?”

“No, I can’t. I’m too high, I don’t feel right. This isn’t the time.”

“But it is the time, Cyrus, the perfect time,” said Zann. “We can finally perform to your level of expertise.”

“No, there’s my wife and son,” Cyrus stammered. “Me mum and dad.” Tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

“No, Cyrus, my boy, there’s only music. And music as only you can play it. Play, my boy, play.”

Cyrus wiped the back of his sleeve under his nose. He moistened his lips with his tongue and began to play. Beautiful draws of breath sucking the pain of the world and blowing it back out in bent and waffled bursts of sublime energy. The colors returned, bathing the tableau in darker shades of blue and mauve.

Zann listened unimpressed. “Play, goddamn you, boy. Play, because your life depends upon it.”

Cyrus played more intently. The colors swirled and the tracks again began to rise. Zann smiled. He took a step toward Cyrus, placing his hand on his shoulder, and opened his mouth: “Laaaaaa.” Again, “Laaaaaa.”

Concrete began to crumble as the tracks arced out of their beds, the ground beneath simmering with the life forces emerging from beneath. Many of them. Their claws burst through first, then the crowning of their heads, reptilian in appearance, and, finally they crawled forward from the track beds toward the platform.

Cyrus watched through the acid, the tears, and the fear of one who has conjured from hell the means to destroy the earth. He played, but his concentration became unfocused, watery. He threw his harmonica in the direction of the hideous monsters.

“Laaaaa,” resounded louder with the guttural noises of the beasts brought forth as percussion. “Laaaaaa.”

Cyrus, able to play party no longer to this séance of destruction, screamed: “Enough! Enough!” The beasts continued to come. Cyrus could hear the whistle of the arriving train.
Zann smiled. His goal, the goal he had spoken of many times to Cyrus, was soon to be realized. “Laaaaa.”

The tracks rumbled and bent downward as the train approached the platform. Before it could reach its destination, however, Cyrus ran forward, flinging his body over the tracks where the train ground his tortured body into indecipherable pieces. The word “Enough” still hung in the air.

Zann watched Cyrus’s suicide and retreated behind a concrete piller. “Daaaaaa.” The beasts receded from whence they came. “Daaaa.” An ode of dejection for unrealized dreams. “Daaaaa.”

Everything returned to as it had been. Zann, angry, took the tube out of town.