Random Story :
Dark Water
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer “When the Surface became …
Taking notes
Author: Colin Jeffrey
Nicole Celoni settled into a loungeroom chair, wireless earbuds in, ready to read and listen to music. She flipped open her book, pressed play on her MP3 player. Nothing. Confused, she checked the screen. Every file was gone.
Panic rising, she tapped through folders. Empty. No playlists, no albums. Years of downloads – vanished.
Grabbing her phone, she opened her streaming app. But instead of music, the homepage showed only spoken-word podcasts and news stories. No songs, no artists, no “Music” tab.
She searched: “Beethoven.” “The Beatles.” “Ariana Grande.”
Nothing.
She checked the Wi-Fi. Full signal. She googled “music.” There was one result: “Musick, a surname of Old English origin.”
Her stomach dropped.
She retrieved an old hard drive – her complete digital backup. Folders of music and videos by year, carefully organized. But every music folder was empty.
Desperate, she opened her university graduation video. She remembered the song playing as she crossed the stage – “Good Riddance.” But the video was nearly silent. Only muffled voices and applause remained.
Nicole rushed to the kitchen. Her husband Tony was chopping onions.
“Tony,” she said, breathless, “check your music files.”
He looked up. “My what?”
“You know – Music. Songs. Singing. You used to hum in the mornings…don’t you remember?”
Tony half-grinned. “Let me guess – is this some sort of internet challenge?”
“You’re really telling me you don’t know what music is?!”
He looked worried. “Nicole… I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you ok?”
She backed away, heart pounding. The realization that all was silent, was suddenly overwhelming. No distant “thump, thump” of bass from passing cars. No catchy jingles on the TV. No one whistling.
She opened her notes app. Typed “music.” It autocorrected it to “musk”.
Nicole sat in her room, switched on the recorder app on her phone, tried to hum, sing, anything.
The voice memo captured only static.
She sat in the dark, played it back. Over and over again.
She slept in the spare room that night.
The next morning, she wandered the city. Past silent cafés, mute bookstores. A phone rang somewhere – not a tune, just a robotic voice: “Phone call. Phone call.”
By lunchtime, sitting alone in a public library, she had half-filled a notepad with phrases – “A melody runs through a song.” “Rondos and scherzos abound in classical music.”
But now she just stared, uncomprehending at what she had just written. The words were lines of gibberish, the sentences completely indecipherable.
She tore the page out, crumpled it up.
Nicole soon realized she couldn’t remember what music actually sounded like. Not just specific songs – any music. She struggled to think of concerts she must have attended, or singing in the car… but those memories played out silently, like videos on mute.
A deeper worry set in. Not that music had disappeared, but was it ever even real?
Weeks passed. Nicole stopped trying to look for explanations. She gave up asking others if they remembered music. Soon she could barely remember why she had been asking.
The notes she once clung to faded. She couldn’t recall melody. She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to want to listen to a song. She began to accept the silence as a companion.
One morning, she opened her journal and found a sentence she didn’t recall writing:
“There was something, once – an integral part of the human condition – that could evoke and articulate feelings that were difficult to express in words”
She stared at it, unmoved. Then closed the journal.
And forgot it.