The Rhythm

By Vikas Fofandi

I was born silent, but my brother made me fluent. 

We spoke in a secret rhythm; his fingerprints traced on fogged glass and my Morse code tapped through walls so softly only longing could decipher it. He turned my muteness into a language, creating a secret world just wide enough for the two of us. We could only communicate indirectly through a secret rhythm. 

Somehow everything changed two months ago when the lake in front of my house boiled, not with heat, but with a riot of impossible geometry, with lights that flashed red, blue, and yellow, vibrating not just on the water, but in the air. Since that day, my brother has lost his rhythm. He began to drift to the shore each night, rain soaking him, his eyes empty save for the reflected light.

The first crack in our world was small but significant. I pounded our code against the windowpane: three short, two long; the syllables of worry, our signal for "Come home." 

He returned, drenched and distant. When I pressed our signal into his palm, dot-dot-dot, dash-dash, his fingers didn't return the touch. They were frozen like ice. Those colours did something unexplainable; it changed the rhythm.

We were inseparable, even together in our mother's womb. Our connection was pure; it transcended sight and sound. Others recognized him by his face or voice; I, by an unknown rhythm. Once, when we were children, he fell near the creek. While Mama screamed his name in a panic, I simply knew his location. I was always attuned to his presence or his absence.

But now his presence is synonymous with his absence. Though he stands before me, I do not recognize his rhythm. He moves through the rooms like a body without breath. The warm gaze has turned to tundra. He looked like my brother, moved like my brother, even breathed like him. But when I tapped the rhythm, the silence told me the truth: this was only his shadow.

A month ago, I hid behind the terrace door, poking a broken sliver of wood aside to peer out. I saw him, soaking wet in the pouring rain, staring at red, blue, and yellow that blinked in a hypnotic sync. Then he turned, his gaze utterly vacant, and passed right by the door, missing me entirely. He evaded me then, and the lights evaded me when I turned to look for them.

Tonight, the atmosphere is planning a murder. The continuous rain has led to a chilling coldness. Thunder knocked out a few electric poles, leading to blackout. The only light visible was due to periodic thunder crackling. I catch a flash of him slipping through the hallway, a silhouette only visible due to lightning. I follow, my heart stuttering Morse against my ribs. I trail him, stopping at the door. I remove the block of wood that Mom had used to plug the peephole he carved. Mom had joked that who would need a peephole in a terrace door; tonight, I do.

I look through the hole, and all I could see was darkness. Then, lighting worked as a torch, providing warmth, but I froze when I looked at the light-covered area. The terrace should be a torrent, but the space beyond the door is empty of falling rain. I can hear the downpour and see the water collecting, yet no drops touch the surface. For a second, I forget him, absorbed by this inexplicable mystery of missing rain.

I have to know. 

I step out.

Once I stepped out, a sharp light ignited the area, and I witnessed a black disk hanging silently beneath the storm; its rim deflecting the rain, humming a note that feels less like sound and more like a haunting. The lights stuttered, then a single, unbearable beam split the night, cocooning me in pure colour.

A smaller, oblong disc emerged from the larger vessel, drawing closer. It stopped, bathing me in those strobing, mesmerizing colours.

I tried to run, but my legs were locked. The small disc started scanning me with red, blue, and yellow light in a random, hypnotic manner. Scanning each part of my body.

Red – Hands. 

Blue – Legs.

Yellow – Face.

As I am frozen, I started thinking – Is this what happened to my brother? 

I feel a dizzying rush, a momentary loss of consciousness, a terrifying sense of floating. I fight it, calling on the desperate thought of my brother. I gasp, finding myself back on the ground.

I scramble back inside, panic driving me. Was I dreaming?

I turn to go back to my room. A shadow falls across my bed. 

Someone is already there.

My heart pounds a frantic, uneven rhythm. 

I creep closer, pull the sheet... 

My own face stares up at me. Eyes open. Unblinking. 

The person rises, moving with my body, my gestures but without a rhythm. I back away. It advances. And then, the horror: the person walks right through me, as if I am a mirage.

She finds my brother, and the house pulses with a familiar laugh. A laugh I longed for, like a deserter longs for human touch. 

The laugh stolen by this double. 

I try to scream but no sound comes. I try to tap a message on the wall, but my fingers pass through the surface, translating our rhythm into nothingness. 

Suddenly, a sharp pain and I felt a universal pull as I drift toward the disk, drawn along with a hundred other similar lights pulsating a unique rhythm. A barrage of lights and sounds on the black canvas of tonight’s painting.

I inch toward the disk with other light beams. 

I enter the black disk. 

I am frozen, but aware. Hundreds of frozen figures surround me; people trapped in glass bottles. 

I try to observe my surroundings; all I see are glass bottles containing humans in an endless space. Fear floods me in this endless space of light, glass, and confusion. I try to focus on the sound, but a constant, painful tune keeps piercing my ears.

And then I hear knocking from above – three short, two long. 

A sound I longed for months.

I try to find the source.

Above me, my brother presses his palm to the vibrating glass. And this time, it is not "Come home." It is a command, as if we developed a new language. The meaning crashes into me: "Listen, sister. You are not alone."

I answer. 

I pour my lifetime of silence, my love, my loss into my fist, tapping the glass of the window. My rhythm weaves through the surrounding, soundless yet seismic. The bottles pulse. The disk pulses. The surrounding rhythms flicker, attempting to absorb my noise.

But my brother smiles. He looks at me, a new confidence blazing in his eyes.

He raises his hand and knocks once more: three short, two long. The signal echoes, not as a message to me, but as a message within me, a declaration of our bond.

And I understand. 

The lights called him, turned him, abducted him, replaced him, but they did not rewrite him or his rhythm. They took the wall between us, but they gave him a new glass wall to tap against.

We are replaced but not erased. We are a part of a story: two people, standing on opposite sides of the universe, tapping a language no wall can silence.

By Vikas Fofandi