CON FUOCO
My friend Blake plays the cornet in the Con Fuoco Orchestra. Or, rather, he will soon—musicians in Con Fuoco only perform once. But I’ve seen his sheet music and don’t get the hype. In this once-in-a-lifetime show, he only plays one time. A solo at the end, soaring into space. The last voice before the silence. I guess when I put it like that, I do kinda get it.
I go to the concert hall on the date indicated on my “friends and family” ticket, glittery earrings and clicky heels. Entering the hall, I smell the ancient, matted carpet and amalgam of perfume fragrances. I situate myself as the orchestra tunes, program in hand, skimming for familiar titles. It’s a long shot—it’s been so long since I played in the metropolitan orchestra, second chair to Blake in first. Apparently, though, Con Fuoco’s only playing one piece, and they’ve forgotten to print the title. Wait, no . . . is the date also the title? Must be. No composer or arranger is named.
The lights and voices decrescendo. I catch Blake’s searching eye and smile. You’ve got this, I whisper. Not like me, who always feared the burning stage lights and eyes.
The director steps out of the wing and bows. Her many rings catch the light as she raises her baton. A nigh-imperceptible flick, and the performance begins. The high woodwinds peck out a dry ostinato like birds foraging for seeds.
I smell smoke before I see it. It hangs thick over the stage, creeping into the audience. The other attendees seem unperturbed, eyes closed and heads bobbing. When the oboist bursts into flame, only I yelp in shock.
Even as the player’s lips and fingers char black, the oboe’s song soars through the concert hall—the musician’s scream made sonorous. It rides harmonies like air currents, diving into a cadenza that plummets through the oboe’s range. As the last note tapers into niente, the player turns to ash, crumbling and scattering around his chair. The audience cheers. He is survived by the ostinato.
What is happening? I say to the woman beside me.
Oh, he was fabulous, wasn’t he? She smiles.
I watch on, hoping this is a fluke, a trick, an extreme manifestation of “the show must go on.” Then the principal violinist inhales through her nose, exhales through her mouth. I know that she is next.
From the first shimmering note, she is engulfed. The flames dance to the violin’s song. I sidle through the audience toward her, as if to help. Fire, I stammer. Fire, fire! But the attendees scowl and hold fingers to their lips. The violinist has burned to cinders before I reach the stage. The following applause is like crackling embers.
Immediately, the bass clarinet picks up the solo and the conflagration. More instruments join, a ravenous inferno, swaying and swelling. The smoke rolls over me and I fall to my knees in supplication and asphyxia. Each time I raise my head, more people are consumed. The finest particles of ash swirl in the ensemble’s unified breath.
Please, Blake, don’t play.
Through blurry tears I see him, cornet on his knee. He gives me a little nod. Like, I can do this. Lifts the instrument to his lips. He has the look. He takes the breath. He becomes the note.
He burns so brightly, I have to squint. With shaking hands I turn on my phone camera and align a shot. But when I look at the picture, there is no fire. Only Blake with skin shining raw and deep red. Eyes already dead. And so I watch, enraptured, grieving every beautiful second that comes and goes.
Karris Rae is a fiction MFA/MA candidate at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She is also a reader for The McNeese Review and an assistant editor for Boudin. Her work has been featured in Metaphorosis Magazine, Reápparition Journal, The Chamber Magazine, The NoSleep Podcast, and will soon appear in Fourth Genre Magazine.