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Music Of The Piper by Matthew Wilson

Music Of The Piper
by Matthew Wilson
“I always hated being deaf, meningitis got me as a baby and nearly destroyed my inner ear as well as part of my brain and though mom told me I could still have a full, fun life, I still envied other kids hearing birds, running water and more in style at the time,” -Richard “The Piper” Omar
Idiots said he’d sold his soul to light up that guitar the way he did and when kids came to school wearing his image on their shirts, again I envied their coolness for getting expelled. The great Richard Omar oozed danger and so I wanted to sample this alluring music that topped the charts every week.
Until Omar killed everyone.
To be fair, I guess he made everyone kill each other but it was the talk of our household when police surrounded his villa on live TV for attacking that female fan at a hick city concert.
The police ordered Omar to his knees, but the great musician played one lick of his guitar and laughed when the officers turned their guns on each other and opened fire.
I’d read many sickly, devoted internet posts how Omar’s music could intoxicate it’s audience, transporting them mentally to a world of please or pain depending on The Piper’s mood.
Mom’s face lost its beauty when she threw her TV dinner against the wall and came at me with a bread knife. I was so unprepared that she’d clumsily stabbed me twice before I managed to bite her hand, making her drop it and panicked, threw myself from the living room window into the front garden.
By that time our neighbours homes were already on fire and the man across the road was running his working lawnmower over his pet Alsatian. I guess mom and I weren’t the only ones to catch the breaking news but the murders continued well into the night.
Sometimes, police cars passed by, firing from the windows, killing naked dancers waving bloodied rakes above their heads and sometimes those same officers pumped bullets into their own brains.
I don’t know how long after he started this plague of madness he submitted to his cowardice but when several brave police officers finally broke down The Piper’s front door they found him hanging from a ceiling beam, garrotted by a string from his beloved guitar.
None of his fans went to the funeral. The local cemetery refused to take his body and they tossed his ashes without ceremony into the deepest river. Initially, mom didn’t recognise me when I visited her at the hospital but though she’d bitten off all her fingers she retained no memory of the previous days. She didn’t even know how close she'd come to killing me, but I carried no grudges.
For the first time in my life I was glad to have been deaf, to have missed being infected by that madman’s music. In fact when I throttled mom to death with guitar string later that night I told myself it was for a completely different, same reason.
But somehow, I don’t think the police believed me.

This story was originally published in Issue #6. You can get the whole print issue here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/674614280/the-rock-n-roll-horror-zine-6

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