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Jane Doe was aware she didn’t feel things like the rest of the choir.
She knew she could feel confused and curious. She knew she could feel a sense of belonging and togetherness. She knew she could feel longing and want.
But she never felt happy or sad. She never trembled with fear or bounced with excitement. She never even felt tired or hungry – although she assumed that was not so unique to her as it was all of her new friends. Being in the warehouse seemed to twist the concept of mortality entirely, which was an ironic sentiment considering they were all dead.
She would watch as Ocean and Constance cried together on quiet nights, and she would listen to Ricky and Mischa laugh over jokes they had told one another. Sometimes she would walk over to place a hand on Constance’s back and nod along to her sorrowful words. Sometimes she would smile at Ricky’s jokes.
Yet she never felt anything.
And now, she was leaning against Mischa’s side, watching as he scrolled through photos of a pretty-faced brunette girl on his phone, feeling that sense of confusion once more. She wondered why her chest ached so much. She was confused as to why everything in her felt so heavy, and why she could barely find the energy to lift her arm. She couldn’t understand how she could feel such an intense emptiness.
The warehouse was quiet. No one had spoken since Noel had put down the playing cards and announced that he was going to try and sleep about an hour ago. They had all split off into their own little worlds, and none of them made a sound. The quietness was only fuelling her odd feeling, and despite the fact that all she had to do was tilt her head up a fraction to look in the eyes of one of her friends, she felt strangely alone.
But she knew that she was different from them. She knew they couldn’t always understand her, as much as Constance tried to. So, she assumed this must just be another one of her many oddities that she seemed to possess. The strange ways of “Jane Doe” that the choir would whisper about and share looks when they thought she wouldn’t notice. Jane always noticed.
So, as she had learned to do, she didn’t voice her unusual, new feeling. She just sat and watched Mischa’s screen. She guessed that this was his fiancée that he spent so much time talking about. She was very beautiful; with shimmering, soft, brown hair always braided eloquently and wrapped around her head underneath the colourful, veiled flower crowns she wore. Her flowing, white dresses seemed to ripple delicately with her every movement in the short videos that occasionally played amidst the photos of her smile and her almond eyes. Every now and then, Mischa would run a thumb over a photo of her and sniff, before catching himself and scrolling forward.
He was sad – that was part of the reason Jane had wandered over to join him, sat on the floor in the corner. He obliged when she asked to sit, and held out an arm for her to tuck herself into the crook of. She knew that, if she explained what she was feeling, he would probably adopt that concerned crinkle of his brow that happened whenever she said or did something the others found strange. So she simply remained quiet, and closed her eyes.
The silence hung thickly. It was not an unpleasant atmosphere, Jane found, as she fiddled with the ruffle on her doll’s little, white skirts. It was simply very still. The air felt stagnant and unmoving, and the weight in her chest seemed to grow with every passing second.
She suddenly felt like she wanted nothing more that to sleep. So she tried very hard to; to empty her mind and relax her body, readying herself to slip away into that bliss, rare unconsciousness. But it wasn’t working. She couldn’t sleep. She felt empty and heavy and hollow and she wanted desperately not to be awake, yet she was. Why was she still awake?
It was the most she had felt since she had arrived at the warehouse.
But soon, a new sound faded into existence. A simple melody, hummed with little thought nor effort, echoed softly around the warehouse. Jane opened her eyes and looked around for the source.
Her eyes landed on Noel, lying on his back on the other side of the room, absently picking at his nails as he sung his little tune. She watched him as he continued, chest rising and falling with every breath between phrases, occasionally pausing to figure out the next direction the path of his tune would wander.
And for a little while, the silence dimmed as Noel’s soothing voice shooed it away.
And then a new voice joined in – higher and a little louder. Jane looked to Noel’s left to see Ocean sat up, staring at him as her harmony melted into his, the sounds interlocking and weaving into one another as they seemed to follow each other’s lead.
When Constance and Ricky’s voices melded into the mix, the milky, smooth sound floated happily around the room, echoing and bouncing off of the walls as all the different pitches and tones and melody lines and harmonies joined together to create the most heavenly sound Jane had ever heard in her short, forgotten life.
Her eyes fluttered closed as she felt Mischa’s chest begin to rumble with the sound of his bassline; baritone voice low and gentle just above her ear.
The delicate fullness of their private symphony filled Jane with… a new feeling. It replaced her emptiness and hollowness and seemed to well up with a subtle kind of warmth that reached the tip of her ears, right down to her toes.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she felt herself begin to slip away. Her breaths found solace with the timing of the music, and slowed themselves to deep, calming inhales and exhales.
And as the sound began to dissolve into the back of her mind and her thoughts began to glide away into nothingness – as sleep overtook her in the cosy comfort of song – she found herself smiling.