Soundtrack Of Life

The idea of being able to have anything you ever wish for, sounds like the best possible thing to ever happen to somebody. End world hunger, end all wars, own your dream car, et cetera, et cetera. However, when you finally stumble upon the opportunity to in fact get something you wish for, it doesn't always go according to plan.

It was a cold autumn morning. The leaves were just coming off of trees and bushes, creating symphonies of brown and red colours on the streets and on top of roofs. I had just moved into a new appartement, in the most gorgeous neighbourhood in London. I was in the middle of unpacking all my boxes, filled with great amounts of stuff I felt the need for to take with me to my new home. I was dancing and singing to the songs on the radio. I heard the mail drop on the floor behind my front door, as my mom had always told me changing addresses for mail is one of the most important things to do right away when you get a new place. I danced to the hallway to pick up my mail.

Most of it were just advertising brochures, but one of them caught my eye. It was a small flyer for a nostalgic looking music store, called 'Chester's Magic Music'. I sat down on the couch and scanned the flyer for an address and contact information. I was excited to find that the store was not even that far away from my new place, and I could easily go there by foot. Hoping to find a nice, old record player, I put on my warmest coat and went on my way.

Still startled by the cold breeze, I stepped a little faster. The sidewalks were relatively empty, people rather stayed at home when it got colder outside. I had to dodge a large pile of dog poop, but as soon as I did... SPLASH! A car had spotted a pool of water next to the sidewalk I was walking, and had me as a target. A huge wave of water came down on me, drenching me in filthy, brownish water. I squealed and jumped aside as fast as I could, not remembering what I had tried to dodge just moments before. With shoes filled with water, and smeared with dog faeces, I continued my walk, dragging my dirty shoes through the grass in hopes to clean it a little. I was relieved when I finally saw the Chester's sign outside a small building.

Upon entering, it immediately struck me that this wasn't just any ordinary music store. There were no modern-day instruments in sight. For me, that was no issue, as I was looking for an old-fashioned record player, with authentic sound. The owner, who I assumed would be mister Chester, quickly came to my aid and pointed out the most wonderful record player I had ever laid my eyes upon. At the register he asked me how my time in London had been so far. With a sigh, I responded: "Oh well, don't you ever just wish that life had a soundtrack? So you could know exactly what's going to happen, before it happens?" I pointed at my wet, and smelly, clothes and laughed, "Hell, I would be a lot happier right now if that were the case." Mister Chester just smiled at me, handed me my change back and said: "Just be careful what you wish for, you never know how it might come true."

The next morning, I woke up before my alarm. A rather familiar tune in my head had woken me up, and it didn't take me too long to realise it was 'Here Comes The Sun' by The Beatles, that played over and over. It finally left my brain, as I sat down at my dinner table with a cup of coffee, and watched the late morning sun come through my windows. I didn't even fully realise my mind was finally calm again, until my inner Snoop Dogg started rapping 'Drop It Like It's Hot'. My brothers used to play Snoop Dogg songs constantly when we were younger, so I knew this song was going to stick a long time. I tried desperately to think of something else, in order to tune out the song, but it seemed that the harder I tried to do that, the louder the song got.

I finally couldn't take it any longer, so the only solution I could think of, was turning on my new record player, to have actual music tune out the music in my brain. I took my coffee and walked to the other side of the room. I got one of my favourite records from a box, and put it on the player. When I reached for the needle, I felt something tickle my arm. I glanced. Not soon after, my coffee cup laid shattered on the floor. Hot liquid finding its way under my furniture, impossible to clean up later. It hadn't been a spider on my arm, or a hair tickling me. Crawling up to my shoulder, after having climbed off my record player, was a little creature. It looked like a human, but about as tiny as the pinky finger of a woman.

"Woah, woah, woah, a little more careful when holding something hot, please? You could have hurt yourself. Or worse, you could have broken the record player!" A surprisingly low voice came out of the little man, I could have sworn I felt the vibrations of it in the muscles of my arm, where he was sitting. I quickly debated if I should talk back to the creature, as if it was normal he was here, or check myself into a mental hospital, after burning the whole house down with everything in it. I decided it was a cheaper option to pretend everything was normal, so I said back: "Uhm, hello. Who are you and where did you come from? Also, what were you climbing up my arm for?"

As it turned out, the owner of the store had not been mister Chester. The little fellow, now on the palm of my hand, was the one the store was named after. He also told me he had been inside of the record player I bought yesterday. The store owner had been dying to get rid of him for a while, and had therefore not hesitated to sell it to me. When I asked Chester why, he only replied with an ominous "He got what he wished for." To the question why he had been climbing up my arm, I didn't get an answer.

The rest of the day I spent debating if I should tell any of my friends about this. I figured they wouldn't believe a single word of it, so I kept quiet. The song 'Drop It Like It's Hot' had left my brain the moment I dropped my hot coffee, which I thought was a strange coincidence, but I hadn't paid much attention to it, as seeing a weird, tiny person with a voice so deep it makes furniture shake, was a lot stranger than a song finally being gone from my brain. It was only a short moment that I didn't pay attention to Chester. I had turned away from him to make myself lunch and when I turned back to say something to him, he was gone. I felt a tickling sensation on my back, then on my neck, all the way up to my head. Then it all went black.

When I came by, I was in the old music store. I was laying down on a little bench with red velvet fabric. The owner of the store was busy at the register, he didn't seem too surprised that I was here. I didn't know how long I had been here, how I got here, or anything about what happened before I lost consciousness. As soon as I sat up, a shooting pain went through my head. I heard the voice of Chester in my brain, vibrating: "Thanks for making a wish, your life now has a soundtrack and I am finally free!"

My head felt like someone was running around in it. Multiple songs were playing through each other. So loud that I couldn't hear the store owner trying to talk to me. Everything that was about to happen today, and some of the next, was told to me in songs. Not just one song, as it had been this morning, but one song for every minor thing. Millions of songs, all at once. "I wish all music would stop forever!" I yelled out in frustration, all the sounds in my head now so loud that I thought my brain would explode. As soon as it had come, it was gone. Everything went silent.