By Shikhar Bhatt
The baton is a bone.
He hadn’t noticed before.
Thin, white, humming with pulse.
Not rhythm — pulse.
It shakes like a tuning fork
when he lifts it,
as if it remembers more than he does.
The violins obey.
So do the cellos.
So does the shape
crouching behind the timpani.
Was that there during rehearsal?
A cough echoes twice.
No — not a cough.
A rasp,
like a zipper sliding down the back of a throat.
He looks out at the house.
Faces.
Bright, flushed, clapping masks.
Then the front row blinks
in the wrong direction.
Just shadows,
he tells himself,
just the house lights playing their tricks.
But the skin on that man’s cheek
ripples like steam above asphalt.
And someone in a green dress
is clapping her hands backward.
Inside out.
He cues the flutes.
They enter like obedient ghosts.
The oboes smear in behind them,
but the notes are sweating,
melting off the page
like ink on a corpse’s letter.
He feels —
not dizzy,
but too awake.
Hyper awake.
Like his heart is seeing for him now.
In the third balcony,
a child’s face blooms into three.
Then none.
Then a candle.
And he’s sure
someone is playing a violin
with a knife.
He wants to stop.
But the orchestra won’t let him.
They play on.
Perfectly.
Mechanical.
Mouths stitched shut in discipline
but eyes —
the eyes shimmer with pity. Or warning.
Is this the coda?
The end?
No one told him there’d be breathing
behind the cymbals.
The horns bellow.
Not in harmony.
In hunger.
The applause, when it comes,
is wet.
Not hands.
Just sound — wet sound —
slapping against the silence.
He bows.
The audience rises like tidewater.
Faces now liquid and loyal,
melting in unison.
They smile
like something inside them has just
finished hatching.
He drops the baton.
It twitches.
Then begins to conduct
on its own.