Harold has big dreams of making it as a Broadway composer, and bigger medical bills after accidentally crushing his foot. Can the rabbit find another way to unleash the music in his heart?

Today’s story is “Background Noise” by Ezen Baklattan, who just recently realized they’ve got a knack for the written world and has just completed the first draft of his novel, tentatively titled “Notes from the Alterspace,” and has more stories along the way, from post-mortem mayhem to cervines in love. He adores stories about finding joy, melancholy, and magic in the most unlikely places, and hopes you enjoy finding them with him. 

Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

and Today’s story is

“Background Noise” by Ezen Baklattan, who just recently realized they’ve got a knack for the written world

and has just completed the first draft of his novel,

tentatively titled

“Notes from the Alterspace,”

and has more stories along the way,

from post-mortem mayhem to cervines in love.

He adores stories about finding joy,

melancholy, and magic in the most unlikely places,

and hopes you enjoy finding them with him.

Please enjoy “Background Noise”

by Ezen Baklattan

“See, what’d I tell you?

Of course people are worried about you,”

Harper assured me as she sifted through the array of get-well cards from

the likes of a few colleagues,

a friend from college,

and our parents. For now,

the postal service only delivered good tidings.

In a week, they’d deliver the surgery bills.

I limped towards the front door of my lower Manhattan flat,

sidestepping the sheet music books and instruments

I had left out the day before the accident.

My twin sister rolled her eyes at the sight,

sweeping in to save the day while chiding my organization skills, or lack thereof.

To Harper’s credit,

she was blessed with a keen eye for cleanliness.

“You know,” I mumbled in self-defense,

“I read a study somewhere that said messy people tend to be more creative.”

“So, when’s the next great classic in musical theater coming, Harold?”

the cottontail snarked.

“Genius takes time, little sis.”

“So does tidying your place!

Besides, you’re older than me by

what, seven minutes?”

“Pretty sure it was at least eight.”

By this point, Harper saw a restoration of my former spirit,

or perhaps more honestly

a convincing impersonation.

She had other commitments in town,

but sure as hell wouldn’t leave me alone in this dire a situation.

“You sure you’re going to be okay hopping around on one foot?”

“I’ll make it work,”

I told her amidst my failure to maintain an upbeat façade.

“Look, I know you want to be out in the world, spend time with Jasper, but you gotta take things slow before that heals,”

I looked down at my left foot,

hovering inches from the ground and wrapped in bandages,

“and also, when you get back to the studio, don’t try to move grand pianos around by yourself.”

“Oh, believe me, I learned that lesson already.”

I slumped onto a chair at my table for one.

My ears drooped faster than I could descend into a scowl.

I thanked Harper with genuine sincerity,

stopping my train of thought before selfishly asking her to stay.

“Call me if you need anything at all.”

“Will do.” “Worst case scenario, if it doesn’t heal, you can go ahead and chop it off,

list it on the dark web.

It’s a sign of good luck, you could get a million or more.

Billionaires are fucking weird,

man.” We laughed at her twisted imagination,

but I must admit,

I did contemplate it for a few seconds.

“I’m heading out,

Harry. If I need to swing by, I’m leaving a key under the welcome mat so you don’t have to get the door.”

She really did think of everything.

After the best hug I could muster in my current condition,

she went on her way.

Without a twin to mellow the mood and laugh about dad’s outlandish theories about what my next play ought to be about,

the gravity of the situation dawned on me.

Weeks upon weeks of desolation and pain awaited me.

Maybe I was a bit overdramatic.

Then again, if I wasn’t, I had no place in musical theatre.

What began as a solitary, self-sustaining lifestyle

had turned on its head.

Anything I needed from the outside world;

another would have to deliver.

Aside from physical therapy sessions prescribed by the doctor,

my days of wandering the city came to a pause.

On the kitchen counter sat one of my greatest releases in this coming journey:

a bottle full of high dose painkillers.

I couldn’t take my second dose until ten,

but surely, the throbbing agony in my foot would signal when the time came that the former dose ran its course.

I thumped my functional foot in hopeless rage,

quickly realizing soon after that it wouldn’t fix anything.

If this were to be my life for a little bit,

I contemplated as I glanced towards my keyboard piano

and the now cleared walkway between that and my bed,

I should get on to the phase of acceptance as soon as possible.

Hours passed, signaled only by the timestamps of texts from concerned friends.

I told Jasper about the ordeal with the ulterior motive of a bit of sympathy flirting.

I had grown to enjoy our conversations,

and I prayed that the timing of this ordeal wouldn’t have turned our fling into a one-night stand,

if for no other reason

than to escape humiliation.

Shortly after checking into the hospital and searching for my insurance info,

I accidentally flipped to his latest message,

something most of my peers would refer to as a “dick pic.”

To that point, the sloth was probably in a state of surrender to the devil’s lettuce.

I figured I wouldn’t bother him right now.

I then figured out the best way to pass time in all this.

I could make my dream happen

without so much as a toe outside my door.

I’d been waiting for a means to eliminate all restlessness and possibly distraction

from the outside world.

I couldn’t think of a better time to start this magnum opus if I tried.

A few yelps of pain and pulled muscles later,

I made my way to the flimsy keyboard bench.

I made a mental note to tighten those screws at a later date.

“Brain, go,” I thought to myself.

Nothing turned out.

I dwelled on favorite movies,

books, musicals, myths,

historical events, social media threads, and anything else that could possibly be turned into a story

on the great white way.

Perhaps I could get the rights to turn “Out of Position” into a musical.

I scanned the bookcase for anything else I could adapt.

No idea lasted in my head longer than a minute.

I even revisited the disturbed and irrational words knifed into the bathroom wall by the studio’s previous tenant,

whose life I had no interest in thinking about

lest I spiral into a state of anguished horror.

I banged my head on the keyboard enough times to write a symphony of my own.

Certainly, it would be better than anything my brain could whip up.

“Think, Harold, Think!”

I commanded my stubborn psyche.

It turned out as well as one might expect.

Realizing I hadn’t enjoyed so much as a filling lunch yet upon the

golden hues of sunset meeting my window,

I entertained hunger as a cause to my creative woes.

More specifically,

I deeply craved some Fratelli Lupo Pizza.

I fixed myself a carrotini to go with the greasy goodness,

figuring a bit of intoxication couldn’t hurt the creative juices.

I’ve seen virtuosos create masterpieces without a hint of sobriety in the creative process.

I doubted my hypothesis

and certainly didn’t want to rely on alcohol to solve my problems,

but if nothing else,

I had rationale to celebrate returning home.

After the delivery stoat arrived with a piping hot Margherita pizza

and a heap of garlic bread,

I asked for a hand before he reached the stairs back down.

Luckily, the kindness of strangers saved me just in time from screwing up my legs again just to pick up a pizza.

I exchanged a few pleasantries with the stoat,

who surprisingly recognized a few of my works.

“God, the twist at the end of the sixth issue was amazing!”

“Wait, issue?” I asked in confusion.

It turned out, he thought of someone else.

If I couldn’t even conjure up a good theme for my next work,

I had little hopes of reaching such notoriety in this industry.

The fleeting moment of fame provided the most of any positive emotion I’d felt all day,

and I didn’t care if all of nine seconds passed in the confusion.

Left to my own devices once more,

I had eight slices of bubbly cheese and zestful tomatoes on a crunchy crust,

and not much else that evening.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have gotten as close to finishing the pie in one sitting as I did.

As I strolled towards the kitchen,

a cacophony of the outside world filled the open window right by the stove.

The sun grew distant enough to light the neon insignias on the streets below,

bringing with them the socialites seeking dinner before their primetime performances,

buskers a few dollars away from making their rent,

and harried tourists

stuck on a detour in their journey to Times Square.

With a numb limb and a full belly,

my fully functional senses

must have taken twenty levels upwards in their sensitivity.

I could hear every syllable uttered by every pedestrian

along with every gust of the air conditioner in the streets below.

The interior of my apartment building provided far more sources of noise.

Between the raven’s opera lessons,

the infantile tiger’s raging bawl of a filthy diaper,

and what I could only presume was an orgy of mustelids,

I lost any hope of getting an evening’s peace.

The trek across my flat

to retrieve my headphones proved only marginally fruitful in drowning out the noise.

To think I spent four hundred fucking dollars on a brand specifically designed for rabbit ears.

To the chagrin of whatever optimism I had left,

Jasper had yet to reply.

As if today didn’t need more salt to the wound, the bottom right corner of my phone screen displayed two checkmarks.

All the greeting cards in the world couldn’t overpower that wretched contradiction,

when you’re at the center of the world but nonetheless lost and alone.

Granted, much of my internal monologue would presumably cool down over the following days as the grieving period went forward.

I tried to tell myself that,

but I knew myself to be a stubborn bastard at times.

This was such a time.

Even if it wasn’t temporary,

it still hurt to see everyone having fun without you.

I certainly didn’t expect the world to stop for me,

but the symphonies next door felt like the universe was rubbing it in, almost.

My phone dinged again,

followed by two car horns in direct succession.

A second ding on the phone came right after.

For a brief moment,

I expected two more car horns to perfect that four-bar rhythm,

so I filled the gap inside my mind.

That was when it decided to hit me.

My ears gently contorted around to pick up the best signal

as if I were a living satellite.

The flimsy wooden bedframe

shaking with each thrust in the apartment above me could set the rhythm.

The orders for ramen in the café below

every second note.

I tossed my phone onto the bed sheets

and thrust myself back up on my crutches

to hop back to the piano.

In the journey, lyrics began to fire in my head right on schedule.

I can make this work, gotta get on my feet.

I guess more, one foot,

I should probably repeat.

I’ve got plenty of options to pick for the beat.

From the whirring of the fridge,

to the folks in the street.

I stopped in the doorway separating my bedroom

to mess around with the crutch,

tapping it against the frame and experimenting with different tempos and rhythms.

While I didn’t have the clout to weave a justifiably modest autobiographical story,

at least not yet,

my creative spirit finally kicked back into gear.

It wasn’t like I had anywhere else to be.

In the voyage to the piano,

I created a four-bar tempo with each footstep

and tap of the crutch on the worryingly creaky floorboards, which I in turn managed to time

with the soundtrack in my head.

The clock showed a half hour past seven,

an omen of a magical evening just getting started.

I stretched my paws together

and tuned my ears to whatever sounds I could imagine.

I began by translating the creaking and footsteps into a rhythm,

one accent per step

and a sharp half note per creak.

From there on out,

my entire thought process carried itself with the beat

in the same fashion I’d walk through Greenwich Village

and time each footstep to the symphony in my earbuds.

I think after a bit of experimentation.

I’m satisfied with this musical permutation.

If I keep at this rate,

as a matter of fact,

I won’t sleep before I’ve drafted an entire first act.

Seeing how I didn’t have so much of a plot line or even setting

nor thematic thread to cling to for this magnum opus,

chances were good I set myself up for disappointment.

I always had the fallback of using my physical condition for sympathy points,

and I did have a few fans at the Llama Desk Awards from my previous works,

but I hyped this up too much to let myself make a fool of myself.

Inspiration seldom arrived when looking for it;

if tonight only consisted of freeform optimization, so be it.

I shouldn’t be working myself this hard on an injury to begin with.

Instead, I continued to tune in to the world around me.

My ears captured a lullaby the tigress played on

what I perceived as an early 20th century music box,

undoubtedly a family heirloom

or a spontaneous antique shop purchase.

The melody evoked a haunting melancholy,

and my psyche raced to create a scenario that caught up with the tune.

Two lovers, torn apart by class divides in the Great Depression,

but subverting gender stereotypes by having the man into a family of wealth,

and the woman as the resourceful leader of a shantytown.

I adapted to flipping tempos and rhythms on a whim many years ago,

so switching sounds came as naturally as flipping channels.

Without any riches to my name,

Will you please love me just the same?

Whatever you need me to do for you,

I can. You don’t have dollars, but I know your worth.

I wouldn’t trade it

for anything on Earth.

I’d be honored if you wanted to be my man. Nope. It just didn’t sound right. I tinkered with a few more story ideas, but all fared just the same.

Clearly the music box didn’t provide the inspiration I so desperately needed.

I had to turn my ears elsewhere.

As if a sign from the gods, a convertible

crashed on the intersection I overlooked.

As much as I hated exploiting a tragedy,

it had been said that great art stemmed from suffering,

and it didn’t necessarily require the artist’s suffering.

The cast on my foot would say otherwise,

but dammit, I needed inspiration wherever I could find it!

Fortunately, nobody was injured, at least

as long as the rear-ended sports car’s owner kept his cool.

Regardless, the crashing interruption

suggested something novel in its discordant bang,

a visionary piece of destruction;

instead of looking towards the past,

it became necessary to examine the future,

namely its finality.

A post-apocalyptic musical with ruthless percussion and chant-like rhythms

would stand apart in a massive way.

The gift of my ears’ strength

turned against me when the expletive ridden argument overtook my thematic thought process.

Thank goodness I kept a pair of earplugs by the piano. I tinkered with a few dramatic,

overpowering sequences

until I stuck with something worthwhile.

Who will be the one to save us?

Who will be the one to save us? As the light around us dies,

And we hear the children’s cries, Who will save us?

Who will save us?

We know nothing can ever be the same.

Farewell to the world we had once known.

Every moment passes, and we barely survive…

A primal waltz was the kind of thing my brain conjured up when left unchecked, and for a moment,

I all too happily entrenched myself into the zone.

I envisioned the production in my mind,

the highest capacity theater in town with towering sets and acoustics to die for.

I fantasized then about the millions of dollars such a production would inevitably lose.

None of the ideas that knocked on my door had any staying power,

so far at least, but one day their worth might shine through, so I decided to jot them down regardless.

I wonder if the ensuing arrival of law enforcement spicing up the drama outside

furthered my distraction.

My mind wandered then

to the fun going on upstairs.

When I limped back to my flat’s elevator,

I shared it with a handful of sultry otters in barely enough attire to make it through decent society.

The flirtatious eyes of the skunk beside them didn’t help,

especially when he gestured towards the outline of a metallic cage near his nether regions.

In any better physical condition,

I might have thrown myself into the debauchery.

Instead, they currently kept creaking the floorboards above,

accompanied by their moans of pure euphoria

and the uncontainable clicks of glee that came in the package deal.

The moans and creaking suggested

a perverted haunted house,

but I realized then that I didn’t wait more than five minutes to get the faintest shred of inspiration and run with it.

How the fuck would I even make a horror musical

not become a campy disaster?

My career would never be able to carry on.

Using my ears once more,

I scanned the vicinity and found longtime friends getting together,

a family’s first night on the town,

a party to celebrate artistic success,

and the sole sports bar in our neighborhood losing it over whatever big game happened tonight.

Somehow, the notes appeared deeply familiar.

Even before the injury,

I had plenty of nights like this.

The only perk came from the possibly heightened hearing after losing all the feeling in my legs.

That part might have been a load of pseudoscience,

but the evidence did check out so far.

Either way, the ears weren’t necessary to figure out what made this night the same as any other.

Every night, the world kept spinning

while I drifted behind.

I’d look out the window

and see life unfold,

creatures of all types taking in every bit of life together.

As much as I loved weaving musical magic,

or at least something passable,

it often felt lonely.

The limits of my pain ceased to bother me any longer.

Instead, I kept wondering what I needed to be.

I complained that this injury would stop me from my day-to-day life,

but at times of total health,

not even I knew what that was.

I couldn’t look out the window.

It would only exacerbate those feelings.

I don’t know why you’re doing this,

I thought to myself in a battle against tears.

The cards were probably an obligation for most.

Harper found me insufferable.

Jasper would leave me the second he found something better.

Perhaps this was the universe’s way of telling me to give up on my dreams,

and with that I suspected that I might be slipping into melodrama just a bit.

Every preceding thought

wasn’t new, however.

My ears drew downward as I tried to cut out the world around me.

I sat in an uncomfortable silence

for almost a whole minute.

Then, a melody of words

leaves my mouth, timed with the outdoor walking signal’s countdown

as a makeshift metronome.

Within this door,

I know of all the world and those within.

But I need more, I always felt my destiny had yet to begin.

Whatever purpose you have in store, Just tell me, cause it’s long past time.

To take the step.

To prove them wrong.

To find my place underneath the sunshine.

I didn’t need a story,

not yet at least.

I changed my goal

to simply letting out what popped into my head.

Finally, I found myself going places.

I tuned myself further

and scribbled down lyrics and notations onto whatever pad laid nearby.

What began as a solitary ballad

turned into ten compositions over the course of two hours.

It didn’t matter.

The lights began to turn back on.

My functional foot kept tippling along to each new whim,

now that I didn’t need to seek out unwitting muses.

I could run with this for all the time in the world,

thinking about how each tune would wow audiences on stage.

The lonely and emotional pains

left me alone once the ghosts of Rodgers and Hammerstein possessed me.

Besides, I always tended towards the introverted side anyway.

I could deal with a temporary sidetrack.

Absence made the heart grow fonder, did it not?

I lost track of time,

far too deep into my creative spirit to even care.

All that mattered

was getting out whatever I could with this burst of apparently divine intervention,

quitting when I felt tired.

Right on cue, a sharp swell ravaged my body.

Maybe it had been there the entire time

and I just then began to pay attention to it,

but regardless, it hurt like a motherfucker. I bent

my leg up with a forceful jut to investigate the calamity,

but the keyboard stool slipped so precisely

that it slid off to the side

and threw me onto the floor below.

The dazy glance towards the analog clock

warned me that I was two hours overdue for my latest pain medication dose. I cursed in pain, thankful that it didn’t mess anything else up further,

but it sure as hell didn’t ease the pain in the slightest.

When I tried to get up, it quickly hit me that I couldn’t.

Not without putting more pain on that foot and undoing all that I paid thousands of dollars for.

“Ugh, shit,” I moaned out loud,

lying on the cold hard floor in what would inevitably be a low point in my life story.

I didn’t stop myself from descending into pathetic,

faint sobs. Whether they were from physical or emotional pain, I didn’t know.

Nothing I could make seemed to work in the slightest.

I surrendered. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten,

to the point where I contemplated spending the entire night on the floor,

hoping the pain would cede in the morning.

I caused this injury on account of my own foolishness,

on top of failing to create anything worthwhile when I had no excuse.

Not every dream could come true,

but the fall from cloud nine never hurt any less.

After fifteen somber,

the door handle turned.

Harper would have called if she swung by, so I arrived at the next most reasonable conclusion.

Getting burgled. What a way to top off the night, I muttered to myself.

I closed my eyes

and got comfortable before the door came open.

“Take whatever you’d like, just try not to kill me, okay?”

I quipped before drifting into an exhausted slumber.

“Harold?” a familiar voice called out. --

The next thing I knew,

I sat atop my bed,

having somehow magically changed into pajamas.

A half full glass of ice water sat on my wooden night stand,

along with a bottle of my painkiller medication.

Above the sheets sat two

paper plates,

while a two-liter bottle of soda adorned the floor.

In came Jasper, sporting ripped jeans and a beat up flannel,

with a box of Fratelli Lupo Pizza.

“Are you okay?” the sloth asked with a subdued

yet potent concern.

It would take a cataclysmic event to unleash his outside voice.

“Yeah, the meds will kick in, and –

wait, how did you get in here?”

“You left a key under the mat, remember?”

“Oh, right. So, uh, you – “

“Got you in bed, ordered pizza,

brought your meds, and helped you get changed!

Don’t worry, I just changed your shirt.

I figured we weren’t on good enough terms to tackle anything below the belt quite yet, at least not without your permission.”

I laughed at his candid honesty

and thanked him for the support.

“Sorry about being so late,

I was helping my cousin move into her place, and it took longer than we thought.

She was nursing this shoot salad for over an hour during lunchtime.”

“It’s okay, I don’t want to keep you when you’ve had a busy day, but – “

“So are we gonna eat this pizza or what?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already had a slice.

That being said, I would happily consume two more.

Shockingly, Jasper didn’t take many more despite his notable appetite,

and much to my delight,

he offered to leave all the leftovers with me.

“Thanks for the food,

but I gotta get back to work,

I’m not exactly in great shape to be an ideal host,”

“Back to work?” “It’s just,

I gotta keep finding something make this show work – “

He walked towards the bedroom door and shut it.

“You’re not going to get a lot done with a broken foot.”

“What do you mean?

I don’t need both feet to sit at a desk and write.”

“It’s not that,” Jasper confessed,

“You’re always working so hard to try and be the next big thing.

You never seem to give yourself a break, man.”

I grew defensive by the minute,

but had no patience left for another conflict.

My hosting abilities would be more threatened by the fact that I was in bed in fifty percent of pajamas

and the drowsy side effects of nightly pain medication.

I surrendered my resistance,

but droopy-eared melancholy took its place.

“What if I never get this right?”

I confided, “I just need to make something, right?”

“You will,” he paced faster than I’d ever seen towards my bed,

setting himself down beside me

and gently caressing my side,

“I love how you can find the music in just about everything.

There’s a magic to you that I’ve rarely seen in anyone else I’ve been with.

I promise you, when you’re fully healed,

and when we’re seeing the world together,

it’ll still be there.”

“We?” I asked, surprised at myself for that being the one aspect of his response I internalized the most.

Before I knew it,

he pulled me in for a kiss.

The pizza on his breath

lingered a tad much, while I kept worrying about my front teeth accidentally causing a chip,

but beyond those two limitations,

the spell it cast proved enough to turn the entire day around.

Our lips parted, but our beaning eyes

remained fixated on each other.

“Please forget what I said about not wanting to keep you,”

I remarked, “but depending on how things go,

just, remember I have a broken limb, please.”

We chuckled in agreement then

went right back to kissing.

Hours passed with detailed analyses of popular culture and awkward videos from 1980s soap operas,

scientific fun facts to wretched recorder covers of classical music.

Every moment, I laid in his arms.

After a third distorted power ballad,

I noticed that he had fallen asleep before I had,

wrapping his claws around my arm

and stretching his body out like a parachute.

Thank goodness I didn’t have to worry about rough intercourse further injuring me,

but I had to admit,

I did enjoy the thought of it.

I made a mental note to try again when spirits grew higher.

Even past midnight, the car horns and blaring karaoke sessions

stimulated my ears.

The world could spin on as much as it needed to.

One day soon, I would write something truly divine.

Instead, I decided not to look beyond this bedroom,

this moment, this lovely bastard besides me.

A handful of anxious thoughts on medical billing slipped into my mind,

but I managed to push them away for the time being.

I tucked in my ears and drifted to a slumber right beside him,

improvising a lullaby inside my mind.

Whatever purpose you have in store, I learned finding it isn’t a race, With every night at home,

I still know I’m not alone.

In the little things, I find life’s embrace.

This was “Background Noise” by Ezen Baklattan,

read for you by Khaki,

your faithful fireside companion.

As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening

to The Voice of Dog.