"Brother, the man saw it with his own eyes." Marc said, giggling in between words.

"This other man saw it?" Yared replied in a sleepy tone. "You know, friend, other men can lie sometimes."

"Why would he lie? He said you have to, like, give a special request. You pay for your hooker like you would, then you go to the desk all smooth and say 'Hey brother, I would like a room with bed service.' And they give you the keys..."

"And you go to your room and you find a midget?"

"No, friend." Marc chuckled. "You go an it is a normal looking room, but the hooker knows what is going down. They get naked, and they go to the bed and lay down, and then they knock on the backboard like..." he tapped one of Sahle's drums twice, softly so that only a weak echo played through the hollow of the instrument. "And then, wham! The backboard, like, opens up and..."

"A midget roles out?" 

Marc grinned as wide as he was high. "Yeh, brother! Exactly!"...

[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

...Sahle had only half-way paid attention to his band-mate's conversation as they stood backstage preparing. They had been talking about the other clubs for days, visiting them every time they got a night off. The other ones sounded a world away from the damp, smoke filled bar they had found work in. The others had casinos that stretched across several floors, and music blaring from bands that had more members than [i]The Dead Soldier's Den[/i] had patrons on any given night. There was steak dinners that sizzled on their platters, and shows that involved actual nudity. And they paid their gigs in stacks of crisp new Armenian dram.

The Den was none of that. It was dark and cramped. The carpeting always seemed wet, and there was no ceiling between the floor and the shell of the roof. On some days it was too hot, and on others it was too cold, but it was never comfortable. [i]It always smells like piss here. And not healthy piss.[/i] Sahle had feared, at first, that Aaliyah would not be able to take it. It was nothing like she was used to. Cairo had dripped with wine and gold, and their club had been alive. The Den felt like a tomb on buried on the edge of the real life. It even had a corpse.

The shriveled remains of the long-dead soldier - or whatever he had been - stood behind glass on the wall above the bar. It was on the opposite side of the stage, and during the rehearsal the pits where its eyes had been seemed to watch. At night, when it was showtime, the shadows of the darkened bar hid it. [i]It is still out there. Watching.[/i] The thought made Sahle paranoid. [i]The Acid is kicking in...[/i]

Aailyah had not left, but he was still worried. He worried about their job, and about her health. On the back of his mind, he worried about his identity. [i]I am Samel now. The drummer, and her man. The rest is behind me.[/i] In many ways, it was. His royal birth, his throne, his downfall... it all felt like a different world. Some nights, he looked up at the darkness and it all flooded him at once. Yaqob. Hassan. Baruti. His mother... 

But during the day, he forgot. His new world buried the old. That, and chemicals. Marc still managed to find them when others would clearly not be able to. Even as they fled, he had somehow managed to discover hard drugs in monasteries and rebel camps. It was his greatest, if not his only, skill. He had brought them a handful of acid tablets from Africa. They were little and flat, the size of a finger nail and with the appearance of paper. On them, the tiny image of an African man with a wild bush of hair and well kept suit smiled with approval. 'Try me'. It read. And he did. He could fill it pulsing in his veins and pounding in his ears, and a rainbow sheen was starting to whirl where once there had only been moist surfaces.

On the other side of the curtain, where the stage looked out across the crowd, an elderly voice belted out a somber song in heavy Armenian. It was long, and stiff, and full of consonants. [i]These people really love their country to sit through that for it.[/i] Sahle thought. When national anthems and parade songs had played in Ethiopia, Sahle had nodded off. Samel simply ignored it. He only noticed when the voice started to dip, and he felt time slow down like craters in the flow of his life.

"How is my tie." A little man with fluffy hair and rosy cheeks asked. He almost seemed to speak like a child, and watching him fidget with the bow of cloth at his neck was funny in its own way. He was a comedian - a man who just went on stage and told jokes. A showgirl dressed in a short red sequin dress helped him. "Hold still Darcho." she said in frustration. "You're making it worse." The impatience in her voice made Sahle feel as if he was naked and under attack. He watched them from the corner of his eye, nervous. [i]Was she talking to me?[/i] He couldn't be sure. He could never be sure. There were always vultures hiding behind the surfaces, waiting to buzz over and steal him from his life. 

Aaliyah came from a hallway, and the ground fluttered beneath her feet. She was angelic - and it wasn't just how she dressed. It was her essence. Light emanated from her skin, and her clothes glowed with colors that did not exist on and three dimensional plain. Below, the cloth was white. She wore a silk veil that covered the upper half of her face - and the bandage that hid her damaged eye from the world. Her shoulders were bare, however, and the dress hugged her cleavage. [i]Her breasts are glittering with rainbows and gold[/i] The world around the embattled comedian and his helper now seemed like a demonic dark splotch on reality - pulsing fire and breathing smoke held in check by the divine light that Aaliyah brought with her.

"You're high." she said in several voices, and Sahle felt like his heart had been punched behind the ribs. [i]Is this how I am to be judged?[/i] Sahle worried. She saw through him, however, and a loving smile shined through. She wiped his brow with a small cloth and he stared at the wet geometry playing across the surface of her breasts.

"We at the Den welcome our next guest, Darcho!" A female shout came from everywhere. Sahle deduced it had been from the other side of the curtain, but the voice still rang in his head. It had made him feel small, like a man shrunk to the size of a mole in threat of being stepped on. Another voice replaced the giant's echo, but this one was different. It was playful, clown-like, and childish. "

"[i]Friends! Armenians! Lend me your beers![/i]" the voice made him jump, and he did his best to ignore it. [i]I'm just in a different place right now, and I have done this all before.[/i] Sahle was fighting the forces of anxiety in the dark red of his very own veins, but it was a fight he knew. 

"We go up next." the deep string-like voice of their Clarinetist reverberated through across the soft wet wood of the ground below them. He was an Armenian, Sahle recalled. And he was possibly a wrongness. His voice made Sahle uncomfortable, and it kicked up the smell of mold and bones in the wood below. That reminded him of the corpse above the bar. [i]He will be watching tonight, but will he like me?[/i]

"[i]I went fishing in the lake the other day. I went fishing, and I was very satisfied. I had a very good haul. I pulled up a plump trout, a juuuuiiicy whitefish, and a Georgian.[/i]"

That voice. It was evil. Sahle recoiled and his mind broke in two, one to protect while the other marveled. The curtains rustled to the beat of footsteps, like two instruments playing in harmony. It made Sahle hungry for his drums. 

The roof popped into place. It often did that, and every time it felt like it was going to fall. For a split second, Sahle thought a midget was going to roll out of the rafters and smash into him like a bomb from above. 

"Are you okay to play?" Aaliyah asked, and he felt like she had become his mother. Or was she? Those memories were beginning to weave. Suddenly, Sahle felt like he was in the gardens again, throwing rocks at Yaqob and Azima as they climbed a tree. And he had been caught, but his mother still loved him. She loved him and she wanted him to be able to play.

"Don't worry, sister." Yaqob said in a deep, sleepy voice. "He plays best when he is in the sky." 

"[i]The President asked in his speech that Armenians give up 'Comforts like pots and pans.' When word came to Sevan that the President wanted some pot, our patriotic young people put their stashes in envelopes. You can see the smoke going down the highway.[/i]" 

[i]Will that man stop threatening me?![/i] Sahle shivered. [i]I should send Aaliyah out there to vanquish it. She can do it. She can save me.[/i] Before he could muster up the courage to ask, the sea hit the Den. Wave upon wave of crashing force echoed through the main room, and Sahle felt the floor shake. The waves had their own rhythm, and their constant patter reminded Sahle of the sound of his own drums. Before he could contemplate that, the waves subsided and another voice boomed across the stage on the other side of the curtain.

"[i]We have here in the Den a new Abyssinian Blues Band from the darkness of Africa itself. Give it up![/i]" 

Sahle heard the roaring waves again, and he watched the curtain anxiously, afraid that water would break through at any moment. He was froze in place, and every slight sway of the curtain caused his heart to skip. 

"Come on." Aaliyah tugged on his arm. They were moving his drums out onto the stage. [i]No! They will drown![/i] He thought, but the words did not come out. 

"It is time, brother." Yared called out. The waves died down, and Sahle suddenly felt like he had been a fool to be afraid. He followed Aaliyah a meek as a child, and they passed through the curtain to the other side. [i]She will protect me. Mother always did.[/i]

The room was dark, except for the blaring light that hung like a sun above their heads. Sahle was now in his element. He saw his drums, and he saw the long stretching dark beyond the set, and he knew what he had to do. He had to play - play for universe, and for Aaliyah, so they would still accept him into this world. He positioned himself, listening to the music of his every breath. The deep patter, with its wet rhythm And then a slow whine woke the music of the instruments. A slow, tropical twang. It was only a moment until the others joined. The pleasant hum of the clarinet, the lively song of a trumpet, and his own drums joined the lonely Krar. Whatever hateful words or doom-filled waves had sounded across the stage before, it was no replaced with a solidarity of rhythm and meaning. Sahle could feel the strings of the universe itself being plucked in his muscles, and his hands danced across the drums to match it.

And they played. Sahle heard the bubbling sound the brother instruments made. They warped and whinnied, but they met with something so elemental to the cosmos that, for a second, he felt like he had spied the source of all its power. And then the voice started, sorrowful and strong and angelic. It gave him that power. The paranoia and anxiety which had fought throughout his pulsing blood fell back like an army broken against another. It was only him, and the drumsticks in his hand, and the sound that they made, and the sound that the brother instruments made. That was it. The rest of the world was blackness, left to imagination. [i]The dead man is watching, and he is smiling now.[/i]

Intertwined were the colors of multiple universes, and their past and present and future. [i]The clarinet solo is fine. He is no wrongness. He will make them dance.[/i] The place they were in had seen sadness, and so had the other places. The ocean bubbled into the ground, and revealed a cracked earth below riddled with smashed galleys and skeletons in bronze. They weren't supposed to be there, and they knew it. They felt it, somehow, in their absent flesh, and Sahle felt it too. [i]Or am I Samel?[/i] Those were too distinct people. The musician and the prince. A past life and a present. 

[i]The Russians have reclaimed Volgograd and the Americans have rebuilt.[/i] He now felt like the world was transforming around him. [i]There are men living in space and that trumpet is tight tonight.[/i]

A moment stole him back to the stage. [i]It is the voice. She has stopped singing and now it is just...[/i]

There was a commotion in the darkness. A sun-tanned man held light in his hand, and it flickered as he pointed hatefully toward the stage. [i]It is as warm as a star... no, it is as cold as steel.[/i] Someone screamed, and thunder filled the room with it's primal power. Then more screams. Sahle panicked within, but he froze on the outside. He had watched as a flash of fire came from the tanned man. His eyes had went white, and he fell too his knees. [i]The smiling soldier has a new friend.[/i] A man stood the tanned man and watched as blood pooled on the ground, rich and red. [i]I know that man.[/i] Sahle remembered. He had told them how women had kept his cockadoodle warm. And he had told him, secretly one night, that the old man did not hate Aaliyah. '[i]See that man down there? The old man.[/i]' He had pointed one night during rehearsal. The dancing girls had just taken the stage, and Sanos Horasian was slipping his hand down into his pants and began to... move. '[i]I am thinking this is why the old man is no liking womens having jobs. Someday he will be walking into a bank, and he will be seeing the girl behind the counter, and he will be.[/i]' Vasily had made a crude move then. [i]Vasily? What world am I in now?[/i]

There were screams everywhere. The screams of demons and of angels, and of shades who did not matter. They grated at his nerve, and he felt like he should move.

"Do not be worrying." He heard faintly amongst the cacophony in a familiar sing-songy Russian voice. "He is dead now." The speaker kicked the paling tanned man for emphasis, and Sahle thought he heard him cry. 

[i]In a different world, maybe.[/i]